Participating in the Nexon PEAK Post Challenge

Collaborations between games and K-POP have become pretty common now.
It's easy to find artist skins, special crossover events,
and even jointly produced OSTs these days.

But the K-POP collaboration that has stayed with me the most is Mabinogi Mobile.
Instead of simply casting a famous singer,
it naturally drew on the identity of a game where music has always been essential.

⛺ A Song That Represents Mabinogi

The promotional OST released before Mabinogi Mobile launched still lingers in my memory.
Lyrics were added to "An Old Story From Grandma," one of the most iconic OST tracks from the original Mabinogi,
and it was performed together by Kim Chang Wan and CHUU.
If you played the original, it's a song you heard countless times on the login screen,
such a symbolic piece that even the opening line is enough to bring Mabinogi to mind right away.

I also remember always keeping the BGM on when I played the original.
Hearing that familiar melody layered with the warm vocals of the two singers
felt like opening up childhood memories again.
Even the album art, set against a campfire,
felt perfectly in tune with the song, and I thought it captured Mabinogi's distinctive sensibility beautifully.

💨 A Song Sung by a Raid Boss

CHUU's connection to the game did not end there.
She later also took part as the vocalist for "Lullaby of the Wind," the theme song of the raid boss Airel.

Airel is a pure wind spirit who loves dancing and singing with adventurers
in a fantastical world shaped by music.
She even uses a battle harp as her weapon,
and her skill names are musical terms like Da Capo, Accelerando, and Capriccio,
so she is very clearly a boss built around the concept of music.

In the "Quartet of Concerto" pattern especially, Airel sings herself,
and the adventurers have to clear a rhythm game-style performance sequence in order to survive the next wipe mechanic.
It is not just a song playing in the background,
but an experience where the song itself becomes part of the raid mechanic, which made it all the more memorable to me.

CHUU's clear voice suited Airel's pure image so well.
Listening to the melody, with its slight Eastern touch,
sometimes made me imagine the stories of the spirits within the world of Mabinogi.

🎤 Ailee Everyone Had Been Waiting For

I also can't leave out the collaboration with Ailee, who is well known for enjoying Mabinogi Mobile.
When the news first broke that CHUU would be participating in Airel's theme song,
I remember there were people in the community who had been hoping for a collaboration with Ailee instead.
But in the end, I think the choice they made suited it better.

The collaboration with Ailee was unveiled at the 1st anniversary showcase.
She handled the vocals for "Seizing the Future," the boss execution theme,
and her explosive singing power matched the track's intense battle atmosphere perfectly.
During the event period in particular, it even played as the execution theme in actual raids and the Abyss,
which made battles feel even more immersive.

I still smile when I think about running raids with friends on Discord,
and whenever the execution theme came on, we would naturally all sing along
to the opening lyric, "Wake me up~".

✨ A Collaboration Worthy of the Name Mabinogi

Mabinogi is originally a name that means "the song of a bard."

That is why, in this game, music is not just background flavor but an important part of the world itself.
A boss who loves music appears, performance becomes part of combat patterns,
and even in the main story, the tales delivered by bards play an important role.

So Mabinogi Mobile's K-POP collaborations never feel like events built around putting a famous singer front and center.
To me, they felt more like a way of deepening the game's original identity as a world shaped by music.
So even now, when I think of K-POP collaborations in games, the first title that comes to mind is Mabinogi Mobile.
True to the game's name, it was the most Mabinogi-like collaboration of all—one remembered through music.