The Rise of Bangtan — An ARMY’s documentary for the group that changed everything
Ask any willing member of the ARMY, the name given to fans of the seven member Korean group BTS, and they’ll relay to you the countless on-goings within the fandom and the diversity of the people in it. BTS has created a world of art that fans from all walks of life extrapolate meaning from in their own ways. However, BTS’ story itself is one ARMY everywhere also have a deep passion for sharing with anyone who might ask, “what’s so special about them”?
One ARMY in particular, Aneesa, has responded to this question by editing together a documentary series that she has spent the last three years working on.
It’s called The Rise of Bangtan.
I distinctly remember coming across the series trailer in December as it was making the rounds on ARMY Twitter, initially going viral on TikTok. COMING JANUARY 2021 on my screen, followed by an impressive, and moving edit that convinced me instantly I would be tuning in. What began as a passion project now has nearly 74K subscribers on YouTube, including myself. With 15 episodes and counting, it remains part of my regular content upkeep as an ARMY.
But I was very curious about the person behind the docuseries herself. As a self-proclaimed videophile with a degree in television and film, I just had to talk to her about this amazing feat she’d taken on and her incredible storytelling ability. An alum of the University of North Carolina School of the Arts, Aneesa competed in the American Cinema Editors student editing competition during her time there and placed amongst the top three finalists two years in a row, proving to herself she had the skills for this creative medium. Eventually she moved to Los Angeles and has since done work for companies like Nickelodeon and Fullscreen. Naturally, our conversation began with banter about movie trailers, and how much she loves editing. This particular project, though, is one of the most ambitious things she’s ever done.
The idea came to her in 2017 when BTS won the Billboard Music Award for Top Social Artist, beating out artists like Ariana Grande and Justin Bieber, the latter had held the title for the previous six years. Then later that year they made history again by being the first K-Pop group to perform at the American Music Awards. The intense adoration and cheering displayed at these events from ARMY is very well known now, something that at the time was confusing Americans who had never heard of this group. But it was difficult for Aneesa to convey to those around her why the support was as loud as it was for them.
“I needed to somehow find a way to explain why it’s BTS that is here and not any other K-Pop group.”
Since then she has spent countless hours poring over years of existing content to piece together this journey of the biggest group in the world from their inception, all by herself. The trailer did, however, bring her a whole team of translators from all parts of the globe after its virality had fans offering to help transcribe her series into different languages: Spanish, Portuguese, Romanian, Swedish, French, Arabic, Polish, and Greek to name a few.
Aneesa’s attempt to document BTS’ rise to stardom is far from the first as anyone making their way down the rabbit hole can attest to. There’s an accumulation of fan-made content on YouTube for new fans (dubbed Baby ARMY) to learn about the group and gain a deeper understanding of their history and who the seven members are. This may be because it can often feel like ARMY are the only people fit to talk about BTS after many years of Western media narratives that have and continue to downplay the group’s impact, sensationalize their popularity and overlook the artistry, or simply exacerbate xenophobic perceptions of them — and by extension, K-Pop altogether.
Back in November of 2020, when Aneesa first posted an announcement on her socials for the series, she explained that this would be “a journey, step by step, from [the group’s] perspective. Not looking back on their days but living through them.”
Each episode is exactly that as she begins showcasing their rookie years through the use of the group’s pre-debut video logs, Bangtan Bombs, behind the scenes episodes of their events, fanmeets, variety shows — any piece of video material you can think of that holds some part of BTS’ past, she has done her best to include in encapsulating what they were going though at the time. Of course, with about 30 minutes per episode, it’s nearly impossible to get every single detail in. She even releases Deleted Scenes and Bonus Content clips each week after an episode premieres.
As sincere as she tries to make each edit, she’s still fully aware that not everyone will agree with her choices, and like with anything publicly shared and consumed, she’s received more than a fair share of hateful comments for her portrayal of BTS. They come mainly from solo stans (those who support only one or two members of the group, projecting a savior mentality onto them), mantis (those who think they know better than the group and/or their company about what’s in the group’s best interest), or even ARMY who simply don’t want BTS compared to the rest of the K-Pop industry.
This criticism was reserved for her earlier episodes especially, it seems maybe they missed the point of what Aneesa was trying to address. They didn’t break out of this mold by never being in it, it’s part of who they are. While some may not want the rest of K-Pop mentioned with BTS’ name, Aneesa thinks it’s vital to give that context.
“You sort of have to because that was the BTS narrative for the first two years of their career — them being compared to K-Pop. And so to almost not do that would be a disservice to what their narrative was when that’s what they were struggling with.”
Aneesa has been a fan of K-Pop since 2008, and an ARMY since their debut. She devotes her attention to many other groups aside from just the one unlike a lot of ARMY; in other words she’s a multi-stan. Before BTS it was quite unusual to only like one group in the K-Pop industry, liking K-Pop meant you followed the entire scene — though partaking in fandom wars and group rivalries have always been a thing. BTS, however, began to attract fans that were not interested to know every group. It’s a bit of a controversial topic in these spaces, and it’s no secret that ARMY and other K-Pop fandoms don’t always get along. While on one hand the targeted hate and harassment BTS received from K-Pop fans over the years and mistreatment from the industry itself contributed to this, for newer fans it’s also that BTS meets them somewhere other groups have not been able to reach. For many it’s the only K-Pop group they follow and support consistently and for others finding them was the first time they’d heard about K-Pop at all.
Some believe Aneesa should not be telling BTS’s story because she is a multi. But as Aneesa puts it: “How do you know that BTS does things different than other K-Pop groups unless you’ve also followed other K-Pop groups and know what they do? A multi-stan is probably the perfect person to explain why BTS does things differently.”
I myself have only been an ARMY since late 2019. I had to admit that it didn’t really occur to me to consider that debut ARMY were probably all multis themselves. Unless you followed this industry enough by then to have kept up with BTS’ pre-debut, their trainee days, their first appearances on music shows, it’s highly unlikely that you would have heard about them from day one. BTS was not an overnight sensation in South Korea let alone the world, even if from their start they stood out. They emerged from this industry, they followed the model and some of its practices, essentially learned the rules and then broke them; but while they may be beyond the K-Pop label at this point, you can’t ever fully separate the two to truly understand who BTS are.
ARMY has become so big and the content we receive is so high in volume that I sometimes think it’s easy to disagree over the details of the group and the fandom’s growth as it was happening. Not because we forget about what they’ve been through, but because our collective and individual experiences as ARMY are too varied for us to all agree on every single viewpoint, especially when so much of that divergence is dependent on when we found them.
It’s in these nuances that Aneesa lets her editing do the talking because one thing does remain true for all ARMY — we love and we care about BTS, and they have changed each of our lives in some way. That’s why this documentary is so important to her. The goal was ultimately to show her friends and family why this group has and continues to be such a huge part of her life. With BTS, words are often not enough and it’s why translators flocked to this series — it’s an opportunity to share with others why we as ARMY are devoted to these seven individuals and their music.
“This group is the reason I do what I do and I continue to get up every day. I am not only trying to show BTS and who they are but it’s reflecting back onto who I am as a person… I became an adult with BTS, learning the things as they learned them in life, it felt like I grew up with them.”
What’s incredible to me about the whole series is that through Aneesa’s storytelling, we’re able to revisit snapshots of the group’s history that at the time may have seemed smaller than their significance would end up being. It makes these moments that much more powerful at evoking emotional responses from ARMY viewers while still guiding Baby ARMY through this cohesive sequence of eras. It’s quite the challenge to accomplish this seamlessly when BTS’ story is one that’s still being written, and their introspective nature has them constantly reflecting on their past.
“I’ve sort of had to ignore things that have recently come out because what they say now about what happens in [my documentary] timeline currently might be what they feel in retrospect versus what they felt in the moment. That judgment call about whether or not what I’m showing people is what it really was, that’s the hardest part.”
Just the mere process of putting each chapter together is more work than I could imagine one person taking on, but Aneesa puts her all into it. The majority of her editing for each episode is done with subtitled content only to then swap it out with unsubbed versions where needed, and once completed she sends it off to some of her non-ARMY peers purely for narrative feedback. That can take however many rounds to settle on all changes and re-edits that ensure the story flows and fits the theme she’s trying to convey. Then it’s uploaded to YouTube to weed out any content that may be blocked by the site’s algorithm for copyright, and after those alterations are made she’s ready to upload a clean version for her team of translators that get about two weeks to send back caption files for her to download and include with the episode once it’s ready to air. The operation is extensive and meticulous, but the results speak for themselves.
Considering the time she dedicates to keep this going, she doesn’t often have the opportunity to partake in certain fandom activities or keep up with newer content, but for now this is her contribution in giving back to BTS what they have given her.
“We all have our part of the fandom that we participate in.”
From fan artists to writers, member birthday events, ARMY shops and academic conferences, to a Korean-learning academy on Discord, it’s hard not to be full of wonder when you consider the amount of activity that goes on in this subculture that’s bound by a coded-language. Even something as simple as the color purple, adopted by ARMY when one of the members decided the last color of the rainbow would mean they would trust and love us for a long time. It’s something quite special that eight years into the world’s biggest group’s career, they’ve amassed a fan-base so passionate that I can sit here and write about a professional level, fan-made documentary series by an ARMY that walked through every major milestone with them.
“I knew back then they were going to be really big. I don’t know why I knew, but I just knew!”
Yeah, I thought, that’s the thing about BTS isn’t it? They make you believe anything is possible.
