Zombie Stage Explained: The AU, the Story, the Round 1 Duel

Zombie Stage is the first alternate universe VIVINOS has introduced into the Alien Stage series. It was revealed on 5 June 2026 with a teaser and an illustration titled Where the Show Never Ends, and its first episode — Round 1 — arrived on 26 June 2026 with two songs released the same day.

This is the “read first” page. It is deliberately conservative: everything here is either official or attributed, and where something is a fandom reading rather than a fact, it says so.

The 90-second version

• What it is: an animated music-video episode set in an alternate universe of Alien Stage, where the performers are zombies in an underground circus and the losing performer is cut up and sold.
• Who makes it: VIVINOS (creator), STUDIO LICO (production), SCALAR (music releases).
• Where to watch: VIVINOS’s YouTube channel. One episode so far.
• When: teased 5 June 2026, Round 1 released 26 June 2026.
• Songs: Candy Scar and Little Bunny.
• Who is in it: Mizi, Sua, Hyuna, Ivan, and Mizi’s mother in flashback. No Till, no Luka.
• Result: Mizi beats Sua by one point. Sua’s arm is cut off and sold.
• Since then: Ache, a 19-page Zombie Stage comic, posted 17 July 2026.

What is Zombie Stage?

Zombie Stage — often shortened to ZOMST in the official release titles — is an alternate universe within the Alien Stage series, made by the same creator with the same cast of characters and the same voice actors. It is not a fan AU and not a spin-off studio project: it ships under the official ALIEN STAGE accounts, and its soundtrack is released by SCALAR the same way the main series’ soundtrack is.

The important thing to get straight early: it is not a continuation of Alien Stage. Nothing in it happens after Karma. It is the same people in a different world.

The premise, in the studio’s own words

The official soundtrack release carries the world description, and it is worth quoting in full rather than paraphrasing, because most summaries of this AU get it wrong:

It has been a long time since an unknown infectious disease engulfed the world. Criminal organizations and corrupt police have concealed zombies in the underground world, creating a massive entertainment culture that trades their beauty and pain. The lives of zombies — singing, dancing, loving, and getting wounded — become commodities consumed amidst the cheers of countless spectators. The circus stage, where desire and forbidden madness intertwine, raises its curtain once again.

Unpacked, that gives you the four rules of the universe:

1. A global infection turned people into zombies. The performers are infected humans, not aliens’ livestock.
2. They are hidden underground and monetised by criminal organisations working with corrupt police.
3. The audience is uninfected humans, paying for the show.
4. The loser of a match is dismembered and their body parts are sold.

Rule four is the one that changes everything. In Alien Stage the loser dies. Here the performers are already dead, so death is not the stake — the stake is how much of your body you still have when the round ends. Losing is not an ending. It is an invoice.

What “AU” means here

An AU — alternate universe — is a re-telling that keeps the characters and changes the world. In fan culture that usually means fanfiction. Here it means the creator doing it themselves, with the same voice actors and the same music pipeline.

Zombie Stage is the first one VIVINOS has introduced. On 5 April 2026, Kang confirmed that more episodes are coming in both the main universe and the alternate ones. No total number of alternate universes has ever been announced, and if you see a specific count quoted somewhere, it is not from the creator.

For how the AU sits against the main-series release order, see the AU timeline and the full episode watch order.

What happens in Round 1

Short version, spoilers included:

Mizi and Sua perform Candy Scar against each other. Interleaved with the performance is the flashback that explains how they got there — a high-school audition they fail together, a second audition only Mizi passes, Mizi’s career and the way the industry reshapes her, a bouquet of clematis handed to a staff member, a cigarette, a slap, a hug, a panic attack, and Mizi running into the night, where a zombie bites her beside the mouth. Sua watches it happen and does not intervene. Afterwards Sua breaks into the building where the infected Mizi is being kept and kisses her, infecting herself on purpose so they cannot be separated.

Back in the present, Mizi wins the round by one point. Sua is laid on a slaughtering table and her arm is cut off and sold to the audience. She does not resist. An acapella pass of Little Bunny — a children’s rhyme about a rabbit hopping into the forest — plays over it.

The full recap goes through it beat by beat, including the character designs and what is not confirmed about the episode.

The songs

| Song | Length | Role | Credits | | --- | --- | --- | --- | | Candy Scar | 4:11 | The Round 1 duel | M!M!2K (composer, lyricist, arranger), Kang (producer), Rubyeye and C!naH (vocals) | | Little Bunny | 2:04 | Acapella, over the table | Choi Yongsu (composer, arranger), Manju (lyricist), Kang (producer), Rubyeye (vocals) |

Two further tracks exist on the Zombie Stage soundtrack releases — The Dressing Room (0:31) and the title track Zombie Stage (1:07) — but no source places either inside the episode, and neither has a published lyric sheet. Our pages for them say so rather than filling the gap.

A note on credits, because this gets repeated wrong constantly: Rubyeye and C!naH are the singers, not the songwriters. Rubyeye is the voice of Mizi, C!naH the voice of Sua, in both universes.

The cast

• Mizi — a former K-pop idol, now a zombie idol. Performs Candy Scar, wins by one point. Where the top half of her face should be there is a heart-shaped hole; her eyes were taken by the owners of the stage.
• Sua — Mizi’s opponent and, in this universe, the one who chose infection. Loses by one point; her arm is cut off and sold. A dark gemstone covers her left eye socket; her right leg is skeletal.
• Hyuna — appears in Round 1. No role has been shown or announced.
• Ivan — appears in Round 1. No role, no track, no separate Zombie Stage profile.
• Mizi’s mother — flashback only, during Mizi’s panic attack.
• Hia (희아) — Sua’s older sister in this universe, blind in her left eye, status unknown. She exists on record but has not appeared in anything yet.

Till has not been shown in Zombie Stage at all. Neither has Luka or Isaac.

What the AU is about

This section is interpretation, and it is labelled as such — VIVINOS has not published a statement of intent for Zombie Stage.

The reading the fandom has converged on is that Zombie Stage is about the idol industry with the metaphor removed. The flashback is not subtle: a girl gets accepted, her friend does not, her face goes up on billboards, she is pushed to sexualise herself, she becomes someone her oldest friend does not recognise, and the person who loved her becomes indistinguishable from a fan. Then she is infected, her eyes are taken, and she is put back on stage in a cute dress to sing about pudding while an audience buys pieces of her opponent.

Candy Scar does the same trick musically. It is a sugar-rush fanchant whose lyrics, read literally, are about two corpses decomposing in public — 함께 썩어가는거야 미쳐 아름답게, “we’ll rot away together, beautifully insane,” sung in the brightest register in the song. The horror is not the zombies. The horror is that the show never drops the cute delivery.

And underneath it there is a love story, which is why the AU landed as hard as it did. Sua infected herself on purpose. She is at peace on that table. Whether that reads as devotion or as obsession is the argument the fandom has been having since June, and the episode does not settle it.

Is Zombie Stage canon?

It is official, which is the answer most people are actually looking for: VIVINOS made it, it is part of the Alien Stage series, and it is released through the official channels.

It is not part of the main storyline. It does not overwrite, continue or contradict Alien Stage, because it is a different world with the same people in it. Sua dying in Alien Stage Round 1 and Sua losing an arm in Zombie Stage Round 1 are not two events in one timeline.

What has been confirmed about the future is narrow: Kang’s 5 April 2026 post saying more episodes are coming in both the main universe and the alternate ones. Everything beyond that — how many AUs, how many rounds, what order — is unannounced.

Zombie Stage vs Alien Stage, in one table

Only rows that can be sourced. The longer version is in Zombie Stage vs Alien Stage.

| Dimension | Alien Stage | Zombie Stage | | --- | --- | --- | | Who performs | Humans, raised in captivity | Zombies, infected humans | | Who watches | Aliens (Segyein) | Uninfected humans | | Who runs it | The alien ruling class | Criminal organisations and corrupt police | | What losing costs | Death | Dismemberment; the parts are sold | | Round 1 pairing | Mizi vs Sua — My Clematis | Mizi vs Sua — Candy Scar | | Round 1 result | Mizi wins; Sua is killed | Mizi wins by one point; Sua’s arm is cut off | | Episodes | 12, from Sept 2022 to June 2025 | 1, June 2026 |

Where to watch and listen

• Episode: VIVINOS on YouTube — Round 1, 26 June 2026.
• Music: the ALIEN STAGE OFFICIAL MUSIC channel, plus Spotify, Apple Music, YouTube Music, Melon, Genie, Bugs, FLO and Naver VIBE. Every lyrics page on this site links straight through.
• Comic: Ache, 19 pages, posted 17 July 2026 on the official ALIEN STAGE account, with an official English translation on VIVINOS’s Patreon. It carries a content warning. More in Comic & Translations.
• Order: if you want to watch the whole series properly, use the episode watch order.

What comes next

A second Zombie Stage episode is expected in 2026. That is the whole of what is known — no date, no title, no cast, no matchup. Open questions worth watching, phrased as questions rather than predictions:

• Does Ivan get a Zombie Stage track? He appears in Round 1 with no role.
• Does Hyuna get one? Same situation.
• Does Hia appear? She has a profile and a design detail on record and no appearance.
• Do Till and Luka enter the AU at all? Neither has a design.

We update the next round release date page whenever something is actually confirmed, and nothing goes on it that is not.

Sources

• Official soundtrack release copy (VIVINOS / SCALAR, 26 June 2026) for the world description.
• Official ALIEN STAGE account on X: the 5 June 2026 teaser and illustration, the 26 June 2026 episode and OST releases, the 17 July 2026 Ache comic. Kang’s 5 April 2026 post on further episodes.
• Song credits and runtimes from the soundtrack releases.
• Episode content, character designs and the flashback sequence: the ALIEN STAGE Wiki on Fandom, CC BY-SA, quoted and paraphrased for commentary.
• Zombie Stage and Alien Stage are © VIVINOS / STUDIO LICO / SCALAR. This site is unofficial fan commentary.