The official video makes its AI use explicit
Shift Up published “Wanna be in LOVE Feat. Evie | Stellar Blade: BLOODRAIN” on its official YouTube channel with an AI content disclosure.
The disclosure states that “sounds or visuals were altered or fully generated”. The video depicts Evie, the new protagonist of Stellar Blade: Blood Rain, singing and dancing as a K-Pop-style idol in environments resembling the sequel’s setting.
The presentation carries visible generative-AI artefacts and later includes synthetic “behind-the-scenes” footage. Those shots show a fake production crew wearing Shift Up-branded T-shirts, extending the generated imagery beyond Evie’s performance.
One scene also shows Evie holding a keychain marked “K-Pop Demon Hunters” with an image of Derpy the Tiger. K-Pop Demon Hunters is not associated with Stellar Blade or Shift Up, and the prominent reference has not been explained.
Viewer criticism has overtaken the intended promotion
The reaction beneath the video shows that its use of AI has become the dominant subject of discussion.
Video Games Chronicle reported that multiple commenters responded with “Are we deadass?”, while another wrote: “They really thought they were cooking with this AI slop.” A machine-translated comment from a Japanese or Korean viewer said: “So now you’re stirring up trouble on the official YouTube channel instead of Twitter.”
Other viewers separated the music video from their expectations for Blood Rain. One wrote: “Deleting this from my memory, Summer Game Fest trailer was amazing.”
The response was not uniformly hostile. Comments including “Yeah… I’m in love…” and “I’m [not gonna lie]. the video is funny, I’m not even mad” treated the result as entertaining rather than objectionable.
Blood Rain remains separate from the marketing dispute
Stellar Blade: Blood Rain remains an announced sequel without a confirmed release date.
Shift Up revealed the game at Summer Game Fest with an in-game trailer starring Evie. It was among the games covered in our round-up of Summer Game Fest announcements.
The music video adds a synthetic character performance to the campaign, but it does not establish that AI was used to develop Blood Rain itself. The confirmed use described by YouTube’s disclosure applies to the music video’s sounds or visuals.
The original Stellar Blade launched on PlayStation 5, and Shift Up has announced that it will come to Nintendo Switch 2 later this year. For now, the immediate issue facing Blood Rain is how an official promotional experiment has shaped conversation around a sequel that still lacks firm launch timing.
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