Welcome everyone to another Comments of the Week, where we feature some of the best comments from the site. Before all that, let’s have a quick recap of what went down this week.
In music, there were reviews for Cross Gene‘s “Noona, You,” Imfact‘s debut with “Lollipop,” Super Junior Ryeowook‘s solo debut with “The Little Prince,” and Yezi‘s “Cider.” Finally, there was “Sentimental,” and “Baby Baby,” two of the three music video’s released by WINNER for the first mini album from their EXIT Movement project, EXIT: E.
Meanwhile, in tv and variety, episodes 6-7 of Infinite Showtime was covered, Return of Superman was discussed, and some predictions were made for Show Me The Money 5. In drama, there was a recap of episodes 1-6 of Moorim School.
As the ISAC approaches, Lorenza listed some better alternatives to the annual sporting event. Madi saw Infinite in New York and shared some observations. With the recent announcement of SM Entertainment‘s NCT, how could we not talk about it? Additionally, Young-ji‘s future after KARA was discussed.
There was, of course, the usual Seoulbeats Segments. For Your Viewing Pleasure covered some marvelous pairings, The Sunday Social celebrated f(x) finally getting an official fandom name, and the Best of Weekly Music Shows.
And now, onto the comments:
Xiaolei on Ryeowook’s “The Little Prince” Suffers From Lack of Inspiration
The MV was lovely but not concise enough to convey his story, especially for someone like me who’s only seen summaries of original book. My favorite scenes were when he painted the sky and walked through the lights, and I wished they would’ve stuck more to one or two scenes like those and made them more lively as opposed to stuffing in so many dramatic walk-and-gaze scenes. Those grayscale-red scenes were a little too reminiscent of SJ’s “Evanescence” for me. I think “The Little Prince” did end on a high note or at least a contented one, so maybe Ryeowook is with his rose. I’d like to think so.
The song is pleasant: basically what I’d hoped for after learning it would be a ballad. Ryeowook’s voice is flawless as always. It seems most Ryeowook fans I’ve encountered were hoping for something different though. Hoping he gets another chance to show us something foxier.
NineDaysQueen on The Deal with Glocalizing: Just How Far Can SM Go with NCT?
I am fascinated by what SM has been announcing so far in 2016. First there’s Station, which is an amazing idea in my opinion, and then there’s NCT, something that both intrigues me and terrifies me. It intrigues me because this group is going to be the first of it’s kind, and terrifies me because I can all too easily imagine what will go wrong.
Honestly, I can’t imagine NCT lasting very long. Certain aspects of it I feel will just not mesh with a Korean (or even a Western) audience. The 40 member boy group isn’t the issue, as long as the groups stay in their respective areas of the world. If they start intermingling and rotating amongst themselves then we’ll run into problems. People get attached to members and get very angry when something changes. I think that there will be very angry fans and boycotts if members swap between the groups.
I am also aware that the group is meant to be rotational with new trainees taking the place of those already in the group. I think this is also a possible downfall for this group. Let’s not forget that SM has already tried this system with Super Junior. SUJU became popular among fans and the idea of any of them being replaced was met with extreme hostility. Just look at how people treated Kyuhyun during his 2006 debut, or how many people continue to treat Zhoumi and Henry. From what I can tell, the idea of a rotational group really doesn’t work anywhere outside of Japan. This was the case in 2005, and I can’t see it being any different in 2016. People are going to become attached (especially towards the Korean-centric group debuting this spring), and will become hostile at any mention of a member, however popular, leaving.
If the project does work, SM will have a complete monopoly over k-pop globally. Due to the way their groups are structured, their boy groups have a chance of gaining the love of teenage girls everywhere. However, I still don’t see this project becoming a success.
find_nothing_here on Imfact Debuts Happily With “Lollipop”
This is a typical idol release, but I’m actually liking the shift back to traditional idol groups after all the “hip hop” groups that came out the last few years.
That’s it for this week. Thank you all for reading and commenting!
