League of Legends characters form a kickass K-pop group, perform 'live' at World Championships

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K/DA is a League of Legends pop group made up of Ahri, Evelynn, Kai'Sa, and Akali, all of them LoL characters and thus not actual people who actually exist. But they came pretty close to it during the recent opening ceremony of the League of Legends World Championship in Incheon, South Korea, when they appeared on stage alongside real-life counterparts Madison Beer, Miyeon and Soyeon of K-pop girl group (G)I-DLE, and Jaira Burns, thanks to the magic of augmented reality.

It's a remarkable technical accomplishment regardless of its LoL connections, but the connection is definitely there: The virtual singers were showcasing new K/DA skins that became available for purchase over the weekend. Riot doubled down on that with the release of a full-length, neon spectacle music video that puts the skins front-and-center. And like the opening ceremony video, it stands entirely on its own merits as a very cool accomplishment, even if you neither know nor care about anything to do with League of Legends.

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I'll admit that all of this goes a bit (okay, entirely) over my head. It's a catchy tune for sure, but a real performance by pretend people who, as I understand LoL, spend their time outside of the band trying to kill each other is a lot to take in. My first thought when I heard about the performance was, "Ha, sounds like NG Resonance from Invisible War," and then it turned out that it actually is a lot like that. Hopefully the people behind the scenes are more pleasant, though. And if you have no idea what I'm going on about, well, now you know how I felt the first time I watched this video.

If you share my K/DA confusion, I would recommend Riot's crash-course in all things K/DA, including the lyrics to Pop/Stars (complete with phonetic Korean breaks, so you don't have to do the fake lipsync thing when you're singing along), at leagueoflegends.com. There's a more conventional skins trailer available too, but after these other two videos, there's not much point to it.

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Andy has been gaming on PCs from the very beginning, starting as a youngster with text adventures and primitive action games on a cassette-based TRS80. From there he graduated to the glory days of Sierra Online adventures and Microprose sims, ran a local BBS, learned how to build PCs, and developed a longstanding love of RPGs, immersive sims, and shooters. He began writing videogame news in 2007 for The Escapist and somehow managed to avoid getting fired until 2014, when he joined the storied ranks of PC Gamer. He covers all aspects of the industry, from new game announcements and patch notes to legal disputes, Twitch beefs, esports, and Henry Cavill. Lots of Henry Cavill.