Alien Stage - TV Tropes (2024)

Alien Stage is an ongoing series of animations that began in September 2022, made by the creator VIVINOS, also known for her Pink Bitch Club series, alongside co-creator QMENG. So far a prologue and six episodes have been released, as well as two additional shorts.

After the Earth was invaded by aliens and human autonomy has long since disappeared, a reality audition program called Alien Stage becomes a hit among aliens. Another season begins, the number of which you don't know, and humans with different stories gather and sing on stage of their own volition. Meanwhile, a girl emerges who will break the fate of humans being ruled by aliens.

Watch the series here, and visit the official website here.

Alien Stage contains examples of:

• Aerith and Bob:
  • The majority of the human cast have perfectly normal-sounding names, such as Hyuna, Hyun Woo, Sua, Dewey, Isaac, Luka, and possibly Mizi… then we have Till and Acorn, which aren’t normal names at all. Ivan is an odd case because he has a normal-sounding name… but his name is derived from a Korean slang term for “homosexual.”
  • Vivinos' Patreon page reveals the names of some of Anakt Garden's other background characters, with the majority having normal names such as Mina, Rini, Luna, Eri, Jia, Bari, Nari, Sein, Ri, Minsu, and Yeong, with the exception of Rookie and possibly Siu. Even then, the majority of these names sound like nicknames rather than proper names.
  • All of the aliens introduced so far have unusual names, emphasizing that they’re otherworldly, though there is Till's sentient guitar tribe alien named Freddie.
• Aliens Are Bastards: Not only have the aliens destroyed Earth and enslaved humanity, but they actively cheer as the losers of each round are killed off. They still care for their kin though, as their reactions to Freddie (Till's sentient guitar) being killed in Round 2 shows.
• All Love Is Unrequited: With the exception of Mizi and Sua's love, which seemed to be reciprocal until Sua died. Ivan loves Till, who only has eyes for Mizi, who isn't interested in him romantically because she only loves Sua and doesn’t even realize he likes her. Even some side characters get in on it, as Dotori also had a crush on Sua but was rejected twice.
• All There in the Manual:
  • There are in-character interviews for each of the contestants on Vivinos' Patreon and in the official Alien Stage magazine, plus alien advertisements expanding on the worldbuilding. The posts are available for free in English, Korean, and Japanese.
  • The official art book explains the events depicted in each round, character relationships that aren’t touched upon in the series proper, and other things that weren’t clearly conveyed through the series’ visuals.
• Animated Actors: The bonus comics tease an AU where Alien Stage is a live-action production. There, Mizi is a rookie actress and still sweet on Sua; Luka and Ivan come from the same idol agency and used to be a unit together; Hyuna's brother is still alive, but simply was too big to come back on the show; and Till is actually the oldest actor of the group.
• Animesque: Per the norm for a VIVINOS work, Alien Stage is Anime inspired.
• Arc Symbol: Ivan's relationship with Till is symbolized by shooting stars and meteor showers. He compares Till's determination with the shooting stars he saw when he was being roughed up as a child; and the night he makes his escape attempt with Till, a red-hot meteor shower is going on in the background. The topic makes an appearance on "Cure", only this time it's Till singing about it in relation to his feelings for Mizi.
• Arc Words: "My God, My Universe". "God" in particular gets a ton of mileage in the songs, with the concept of a god representing hope for the singers (and, as Mizi puts it in round 1, humanity as a whole).
• Anyone Can Die: It’s a Vivinos work centered on a deadly singing competition, so it’s no surprise. Even the face of the series dies in the very first round.
• Artificial Outdoors Display: The humans on the show attend Anakt Garden — a "music kindergarten" in a room that displays the sky on the walls, complete with a day cycle and robot fish in a river.
• Art Shift: The series' art style alternates between Qmeng's, which makes the characters look more older and more mature, particularly in Round 6, and Vivinos' moe style, which makes the characters look rounder and cuter, in turn making them look younger. By the final round, the animators have seemingly combined both art styles.
• Breather Episode: Round 3 doesn't feature any on-screen deaths or plot twists, and has a much calmer tone than the previous rounds.
  • Hyuna's debut episode, All-In, while does feature some violence, is much less tense and somewhat more lighthearted due to some of Hyuna's onscreen antics and goofy expressions. The fact it comes right between drama-filled Rounds 5 and 6 also helps.
• Blue-and-Orange Morality: An interview with Mizi and Sua reveals that the children of Anakt Garden are brought up with the belief that dying on stage while singing is an honor and that even when they die, they will brought back to some place called Great Anakt. Seems like it isn't enough to cancel out the grief of loss though.
• Broken Bird: Everyone in the main cast, except Mizi, has been beaten down by the system by the time the story begins, though each expresses their trauma in their own way. Mizi quickly joins everyone in this at the end of Round 1 after Sua dies.
• Bury Your Gays: Zig-zagged. Sua and Ivan, who love Mizi and Till, respectively, are killed off in Round 1 and Round 6 in what were implied to be deliberate sacrifices to save the object of their affection. Mizi is (probably) a lesbian and lives on thanks to Sua dying in Round 1 and being saved by Hyuna in Round 5, while Till, who is one-sidedly in love with Mizi survives his first due to his popularity with the voters and his second round due to Ivan's sacrifice, before dying in the Final Round, ironically right after reuniting with Mizi..
• The Cover Changes the Meaning: The official covers of each installment's songs swap around the characters who sing it too, giving off a completely different effect:
  • Ivan and Till's version of "My Clematis", in contrast to Sua and Mizi's, sounds entirely one-sided; with Till singing in an almost bored tone while Ivan sings with passion. The final stanza is also split between Till and Ivan (Ivan getting the "stay by my side" line), and they don't harmonize at the end of the song like the girls do. In summary, it stands as a monument to Ivan's yearning.
• Crapsack World: Boy is it ever. Humans are a slave race to what may be the entire rest of the galaxy and are routinely abused at worst and treated as entertaining pets at best. Either way, humans are still disposable as can be seen with the losers of the titular Alien Stage show. There are some like Mizi who had good alien parents but that doesn't shield them from seeing the person they care for the most die right in front of them for said aliens' entertainment.
• Creator Thumbprint: Quite a few for VIVINOS appear in this work, such as a lesbian couple being at the center of the story, the story being darker than it appears to be on the surface, and a character being Axe-Crazy.
• Crush Filter: Till sees Mizi through one in Round 2.
• Curb-Stomp Battle: Till's opponent in Round 2 doesn't even get a word in while Till completely dominates the stage.
• Dark Reprise: Round 1 ends with Mizi singing the chorus by herself while grieving over Sua's death.
• Deadly Game: The series is about a group of humans competing in a singing competition where the loser of each round is killed at the end. From what has been shown, it seems both contestants sing one single song with each one singing some assigned parts of it and is given a score at the end.
• Downer Beginning: Downer might be too weak a word. Tragic is more appropriate. To wit, we learn that the Earth has been taken over by cruel aliens that have enslaved the human race and turned them into pets. The lovely duet the two characters were singing? The two characters shown through flashbacks to mean the world to each other? One of them dies and it's technically the fault of the other one. It only gets worse for our characters from there.
• Downer Ending: While nearly every other Round has ended on one, the Final Round makes sure to end especially painfully, as Till loses the round and is killed off moments before he and Mizi can finish their happy reunion.
• Dwindling Party: With the exceptions of Round 2, Round 3, and Round 5, a main character has died in almost every round, and by the Final Round, only Mizi, Hyuna, and Luka are left of the main cast.
• Even Evil Has Standards:
  • The aliens enslaved humanity and some are shown to be abusive to their pets from childhood, but the participants of Alien Stage aren’t able to enter the competition until they’re adults, suggesting they have some standards.
  • The alien onlookers look horrified when Till smashes his guitar at the end of Round 2, spilling guts all over the stage. This is because the guitar is actually a sentient lower-class alien named Freddie, meaning that despite all the misery they put all the humans through for their own entertainment, they still have empathy for one of their own.
  • They almost executed Mizi for assaulting Luka, although she was rescued by Hyuna before they could go through with it. According to ALIEN STAGE MAGAZINE, they launched a full scale investigation into the incident as well, mentioning that they were concerned about Luka and claiming that they intend to tighten security so that these incidents don't happen again, though it's unclear if they actually care about the safety of their human slaves or if they were more bothered by the disruption in general.
  • Both Ivan and Till are extremely popular as competitors in Alien Stage, but the aliens don't hesitate to execute Ivan after he started choking Till in Round 6, with this likely being as a result of the previous incident with Luka and Mizi.
• Flashy Protagonists, Bland Extras: Every fodder idol is fairly generic looking compared to the colorful main cast. This is averted with plot-important background characters Isaac, Dewey, and Hyun Woo, who have unique designs.
• Final Love Duet: My Clematis.
• Fire and Ice Love Triangle: Both Sua (the ice) and Till (the fire) are interested in Mizi.
• First-Episode Twist: Round 1 reveals that the show is a Deadly Game where the loser of each round is killed by the aliens.
• Five-Second Foreshadowing: A very cruel one indeed. Just before Sua dies in round 1, we see the scores of both her and Mizi. Mizi is one point above her and so she's soon shot for losing despite the fact that the two of them were performing a duet. Additionally, Sua is seen sweating, possibly out of fear of her imending death.
• Flaming Meteor: The falling stars shown throughout Round 3 become a shower of flaming meteors in one of the flashbacks.
• Flower Motifs:
  • The song in Round 1 centers around the clematis flower, which symbolizes mischief, artifice, and ingenuity.
  • Round 2 features the edelweiss, which symbolizes devoted love and purity, and according to folklore, is used to prove a lover's devotion due to how hard they are to obtain.
• Flying Saucer: The stage is shaped like one in Round 1 and 2.
• Freeze-Frame Bonus:
  • Pausing on one of the flashbacks in Round 6 reveals that the song Till was being forced to sing at the bar was "My Clematis".
  • In Round 7, pausing during the score reveal reveals that Till was very close to tying Luka in votes, with Luka winning by a small margin.
    • Pausing on any shot of the crowd in the second half of the video reveals that the vast majority of the penlights are Luka's color, with only a few Till's. Many of the aliens were also wearing glowing Luka-colored masks, just as they did in Round 5. This was already a clear indication that the round was not going Till's way and that he would most likely lose.
• Gender-Equal Ensemble: The main focus of the show is on three girls (Sua, Mizi, and Hyuna) and three guys (Till, Ivan, and Luka).
• Gory Discretion Shot: Sua's death is only shown through blood splattering on Mizi.
  • Averted with the deaths of Ivan and Till, as not only are they shown getting shot, but the viewer is forced to watch Till bleed out in the final round.
• Gray Rain of Depression: It starts pouring on the stage midway through Round 6, reflecting how bleak the circumstances have become for both contestants.
• Hate Sink: The titular aliens. Not a single one of them seem to regard humanity as anything more than entertainment and they are frequently shown abusing our characters. A prime example is when Sua is killed in Round 1, several of the aliens can be seen cheering.
• Heartbeat Soundtrack: Heartbeat can be heard at the beginning of Round 6.
• Hologram Projection Imperfection: Anakt Garden seems to be prone to these:
  • At the start of Round 1, one of the leaves flying by Sua glitches out, foreshadowing the nature of their environment.
  • In Round 3, the hallway Till runs into suffers from this.
• Human Pet: On the official Alien Stage website, humans are explicitly referred to as pets of the aliens and sold like animals. There are even instructions on how to raise them.
• Implied Rape: In the flashbacks of the bar in Round 6, Till attacks his alien abusers, injuring one of them in the eye. They easily overpower him and possibly put him on some kind of drug to sedate him. Moments later, the same alien Till attacked is seen naked with a bandaged eye, its large hand gripping and roughly stroking the head of a weakened Till who has lost all strength to fight back. We can only imagine the horrors that he endured.
• Kick the Dog:
  • This is Luka's method of dealing with his opponents: he digs up their trauma and weaponizes it against them, causing them to lose focus on stage and have mental breakdowns mid-performance, ensuring his win. What makes matters worse is that, according to Word of God, the aliens are so biased in his favor that he doesn't even have to do this to win; he just does it for fun and to feel in control.
  • At the end of the final round, Mizi and Hyuna are listed as "special guests" in the Alien Stage competition, with the aliens using a shot of Mizi still in tears from Till's death as her photo.
• Lighter and Softer: Ironically, despite the series centering on the enslavement of humanity and death, Alien Stage comparatively has a lighter tone and is not nearly as depressing and hopeless as previous works by Vivinos, quite possibly because it is a collaborative work.
• Long Runner: In-universe, the show has been going on a long time by the time the viewers meet the current contestants. It's eventually revealed that it's on its 50th season, with Luka having been the winner of the previous season.
• Love Hurts: A common theme throughout the series. Every hardship that the characters go through can be traced back to their love for another character. Though that comes with the cavet of their alien overlords putting them through brutal conditions just for their entertainment.
• Outgrown Such Silly Superstitions: Played for drama. Mizi notes that humanity used to believe in God, and furthermore believed that humanity was the center of the universe. The aliens, evidently, never had the same penchant for religion as humanity did; and over the years interest in religion waned as humanity spread out and was commodified for its new masters.
• Red Filter of Doom:
  • This happens at the end of Round 2 right after Till smashes his guitar. Till's guitar is actually a lower-class alien named Freddie, so him smashing it into pieces in front of the aliens must be comparable to killing a dog in front of a group of people.
  • Also happens in Round 5 when Mizi attacks Luka.
  • In the final round, after being triggered by Luka, all of Till's memories of Ivan's sacrifice are tinged in red.
• Rockers Smash Guitars: Played straight at the end of Round 2. The guitar, however, is another alien, and the smashing freaks all the audience members out.
• Shattered World: The prologue shows that most of the Earth's crust has been blown into tiny pieces, but some pieces seem to still be attached to the planet, and a poster in MIZISUA implies that the rebels are settled on those remnants. The events of All-in show that there are still human cities, and imply that the stadium for Alien Stage is also stationed on Earth.
• Side-Story Bonus Art: VIVINOS and QMENG occasionally post art of the Alien Stage characters on their respective social media accounts, mainly Instagram, though some were posted on their official Twitter accounts before they were deleted. VIVINOS also occasionally streams herself drawing fan art of the cast.
• Trailers Always Lie: The first Alien Stage video, aptly titled "ALIEN STAGE" and serving essentially as a trailer for the series, gives a somewhat false impression of what the series was going to be about by heavily advertising Sua and Mizi, giving the false impression that Sua would be a recurring character in the series, only for her to be killed off for Mizi's development in the very first round. Hyuna is also not a prisoner in the series, despite what is shown, but rather a free roamer in the rebel faction.
• Torch Song: Both "Black Sorrow" and "CURE" count as this.
• White Shirt of Death: Sua and Ivan both die in the round they wear white in.
  • Averted with Luka, who survives both of his rounds despite wearing mostly white.