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It’s easy to call Maddie Kang and Chris Appelhans’s KPop Demon Hunters 2025’s quintessential cultural touchstone. The Netflix-backed musical masterpiece has captivated hearts worldwide, and its toe-tapping songs are popping up everywhere — from TikTok and Instagram to ABC’s Dancing With the Stars. Fans are chomping for more, and an Oscar-nominated Laika film may be the perfect solution.

While Kubo and the Two Strings focuses on Japanese culture, Travis Knight’s 2016 adventure is no less thrilling. Audiences may not find tracks as catchy as “Golden” and the nigh inescapable “Soda Pop”, but a shamisen-heavy score by Dario Marianelli promises plenty of auditory thrills.

Kubo and the Two Strings Is a Musically Focused Family Adventure

FUN FACT: The giant skeleton is based on Utagawa Kuniyoshi’s 19th-century triptych Takayasha the Witch and Skeleton Specter (or Mitsukuni Defying the Skeleton Specter Invoked by Princess Takiyasha). Learn more about this delightful woodblock print and see the full triptych on Wikipedia.

By genre alone, these two films form a colloquial circle on a theatrical Venn diagram. Both are solidly classified as musical fantasy adventure films, although Kubo’s instrumental inclinations are less vocal than KPop Demon Hunter’s. That said, sharing a genre isn’t a surefire formula for fandom cross-pollination. Fortunately, the links between Kubo and KPop Demon Hunters are far from superficial.

Narratively, Travis Knight’s 102-minute masterpiece revolves around the same “harmonious found family” ideals as Netflix’s Kang-Appelhans film. Its plucky protagonist, Kubo (Art Parkinson), shares more than a few similarities with Huntr/x’s Rumi (Arden Cho/Ejae). His mission, however, is not quite as widespread. Where Huntr/x strives to seal the Honmoon that protects all of Korea, Kubo merely wishes to escape his grim, foretold fate at the hands of his grandfather, the Moon King (Ralph Fiennes).

To do so, he embarks on a pseudo-mythical journey. Like the Huntr/x girls, he meets and befriends (albeit with markedly more enthusiasm) two mysterious companions: Monkey (Charlize Theron) and Beetle (Matthew McConaughey). The anthropomorphic duo may not sing and dance with as much style as Demon Hunters’ Saja Boys, but they have just as much heart.

And this is where the narrative diverges from the path laid by Kang and Appelhans. Kubo and the Two Strings takes a decidedly more Odyssean route. Huntr/x never steps foot outside Korea, but Kubo’s ragtag crew undertakes a grueling journey across Travis Knight’s fantastical vision of feudal Japan. That said, fans of KPop Demon Hunters’ stellar fights will be pleased to know that Laika’s musical adventure is stuffed with edge-of-your-seat action sequences.

KPop Demon Hunters and Kubo and the Two Strings Are Homages to Cultural Traditions

FUN FACT: The giant skeleton was a fully constructed and rigged figure. It stood sixteen feet (five meters) tall and weighed 400 pounds (180 kilograms). Moving the behemoth required a custom-built robotic rig. See amazing behind-the-scenes footage of the skeleton on YouTube.

Obviously, there are some stark differences between Kubo and Demon Hunters. The most obvious is that, unlike Kang and Appelhans’s ambitious piece, Travis Knight’s fanciful fantasy film aims its lens at Japanese culture. Everything about Kubo and the Two Strings — from its visual style to its narrative structure — is a loving homage to Japan’s rich cultural heritage.

For example, in a post-Oscars interview, director Travis Knight specifically cited the minimalist, texturally rich works of Kiyoshi Saito as the driving force behind the film’s unique landscapes. The story, meanwhile, draws on the stylistic trappings of esteemed Japanese storytellers like Akira Kurosawa and Hayao Miyazaki.

And despite the two films’ seemingly incompatible narratives, there’s an undeniable spark of earnest admiration that links them together. Where KPop Demon Hunters embraces Korean culture, Kubo and the Two Strings celebrates Japan’s cultural impact. Both films also spotlight the mental aspects of a classic hero’s journey. Rumi’s struggles with acceptance and self-love, for instance, closely parallel Kubo’s search for a family. These films thrive on whimsy and eccentricity, and their characters are archetypal “odd one out” misfits with musical magic.

That said, Kubo and the Two Strings obviously lacks the club-ready soundtrack of KPop Demon Hunters. (Unless one includes skillful remixes.) It was never meant to be a musical, after all. The titular Kubo’s powers are more traditional, and his magic hails from purely instrumental shamisen interludes. That said, Dario Marianelli’s score (available on both YouTube and Spotify) is no less captivating. There’s even a smidgen of pop, as the end credits sync up with a Japanese folk cover of “While My Guitar Gently Weeps”, as sung by Regina Spektor.