Before anything else, I will preface this post by saying I’m a (not-so) casual A’Tin who divides her time between two houses: the maisan, and the farm. I’m not a film or music expert, and I don’t claim to know everything about EVERYTHING. This blog post contains my personal interpretation and opinions, and anything said here should not be taken as FACT.
Anyway, Justin of SB19 released a new single and music video last week called Kaibigan, and the visual storytelling just tickled my brain in a good way, so here I am, writing a blog post about how much I appreciated how detail-oriented our bunso is with his work. Obviously, for Justin, storytelling is KING, and my oh my, how I looooove what he’s been doing so far!
But before we go to Kaibigan, let me first direct you to the music video for his first single, Surreal.
Hearing Surreal for the first time brought me such a nice, encompassing feeling of calm. The airy and soothing quality of Justin’s voice matched perfectly with the whimsical instrumentation, and I just think this song is something you’d want in your morning playlists if you’re the type to like a serene start to your day.
The music video was also an experience, and I expected nothing less ever since the MV teaser was released. Again, there was a whimsy, dreamlike quality to this that I really loved. It was so cottage core, so light and breezy, you could almost smell the flowers or feel the chill in your fingertips. My favorite part was Justin meeting the sunrise while standing facing the horizon. I remember feeling tears fall down my cheek and taking a deep breath as if I’d been unburdened of my worries. It was just so beautiful.
Now we move on to Kaibigan, which, we will discover later, is linked to Surreal.
Kaibigan was easy to listen to and such an earworm! I still can’t get the first two lines of the chorus out of my head and I find myself singing it at random moments. Justin’s voice was ~acting here, my friends. From beginning to the end, his voice was the main character of this song, and he took us through a journey of discovery, hope, and loss.
I gagged at the music video. GAGGED. I’m not even gonna talk about the quality of the video because SB19 MVs have been getting better and better throughout their respective eras, so this was just on brand. But the visual storytelling and color story was where it got me. It became more apparent from this second offering that Justin and Xi-Anne Avanceña (who is also credited as Creative Director for both Surreal and Kaibigan) know what they’re doing and where they’re going with this narrative. This is not your usual one-time drop; it’s a series of stories told in reverse, and I have predictions on where they’re going next.
But first, some details from the Kaibigan MV that I really loved.
Justin eyes are always on Nicole when she’s not looking, or he’s framed/shot opposite Nicole and RJ—a foreshadowing of the heartbreaking reveal at the end.
The bracelet colors! Nicole has a bright blue one, RJ has a lighter blue and white one, and Justin’s wearing a very pale blue (almost white) and black one. Nicole’s bright blue and RJ are almost the same shade, but RJ has a white bracelet as well, which matches Nicole’s blouse here, almost like saying “I got her.” The letters on the beads of his bracelet also seem to spell out DIFFERENT, which in my head is like this MV’s way of saying “I’m friends with Nicole too, Justin. Bu we’re not the same.”
Meanwhile, Justin’s bracelet—a very pale blue—feels symbolic. Like Nicole’s blue has rubbed off on him and will always be part of him, but his blue will always pale in comparison to RJ’s blue. He will never be the one Nicole chooses to be with, and so the black bracelet is there to signify the mourning of a love that could never be.
And now some Kaibigan / Surreal Easter eggs.
In the Kaibigan MV, While Justin and Nicole are walking down a dirt path, he steps on a bottlecap and saves it as a keepsake. A similar bottlecap reappears in the beginning of Surreal. However, the connection doesn’t end there because of the juxtaposition we see in Surreal, where instead of a bottlecap, he stumbles upon a pinecone.
And you know what? To some people, pinecones carry a lot of meaning. One in particular that I feel is appropriate for this narrative is maturity. Pinecones hold seeds that they release only when they’re ready, and I would like to think the pinecone in Justin’s narrative means being ready to let go.
The three woodland creatures we see in Surreal represent the three friends in Kaibigan. This hits me hard, because we know Justin is all alone in the Surreal MV, and everything seems to be the product of his imaginings, but the Kaibigan storyline really put things in perspective. He misses his friends, he still longs for the girl he fell in love with, but he could only spend time with them in his fantasies now.
It especially hurts when you consider the opening line of Surreal:
I just wanna live in my imagination
Where hatred does not exist
To me this is acknowledging that there was pain and hatred there, but there’s an effort to push that aside and imagine a better world, even without his friends in the picture.
There was a lot of speculation about Surreal when it first came out, but most of them were spot on in saying that it’s about a lost love. It just didn’t occur to me that it actually meant TWO PEOPLE instead of just one. But the empty spaces in Surreal made my heart hurt, especially when this line comes in:
I just wanna be with you in all the seasons
We imagine to actually exist
Because look at him smiling at no one in particular and reaching his hand out too! *CRYING* If you notice all of the empty spaces in the video and juxtapose that with Kaibigan, you’ll get what I mean.
Anyway there’s so much detail in both MVs, I’m sure you guys will have a lot of fun finding them when you watch them again and again and again. (Streamers, let’s go!) But before I get to my ~predictions, here’s a bonus thought:
I actually think Justin’s Sunday Morning MV was him singing to his friends who got together, mostly because of this detail:
So now in my head, the story looks like this: Kaibigan was heartbreak, Surreal was acceptance and letting go, and Sunday Morning was a celebration for two friends who found love. That said, I have some predictions based on *gestures around* all of this.
Surreal made use of a lot of land and air elements, which to me represent grounding and freeing. Grounding to soothe oneself from painful and overwhelming heartbreak, and freeing oneself from these negative emotions. Looking back and moving forward. Letting go of the past and embracing the present.
Meanwhile, Kaibigan, had a lot of water elements. There’s still a bit of land and air there—which still represent grounding and freeing in my opinion—but the water, man. They weren’t subtle when they got Justin walking into the water to let out his feelings. Water is a very powerful force that can sweep you away and drown you, and that’s exactly what happened to Justin’s persona in the MV. He got swept away by love and drowned in a sea of emotions.
If Justin is planning to release another single in the future, I think the fire in the end of Kaibigan is a hint in itself. But since we’re moving backwards narratively, I think we are going to get the beginning of the story next. How Justin and Nicole met, probably? The first meeting, the first time he felt a spark? The moments that kindled his burning emotions? Makes sense with the element of fire, doesn’t it?
Well, whatever Justin’s planning next, this A’Tin Tita is seated for it!