Produce 101 Japan Shinsekai, Episode 9: Fallout, Cats, and Black Angels
We now have a more manageable group of 35 trainees competing, so I should be able to give more attention to the ones getting lost in the shuffle. But what I’m really looking forward to is seeing the fallout from the eliminations. Let’s see what’s left of the teams that were put together for the next challenge. We’ll also be seeing new celebrity coaches today. Welcome to Episode Nine!
We’re starting with what the show is calling “Team Realignment.” The teams are sitting in their practice rooms, assessing the damage. We start with a team doing the song “Dreamer.” (For this challenge, the trainees are performing original songs.) Team Dreamer started with ten members and now have six after the eliminations, which isn’t too bad. I mean, it throws off the vocal distribution and choreography of everything they’ve put together so far, but at least they still have a team.
Team Fuego is in the same situation – six members left after four were eliminated, including their group leader Rinto and dance leader Taiga. They’re feeling really anxious.
Miraculously, one team was left intact. The Black Angel team still has all ten members. But they’re dealing with the emotional impact of seeing friends get eliminated, so they’re not ready to jump up and start dancing just yet. And there’s more bad news being delivered by one of the hosts over a video stream. Other teams need new members now, so they’ve been ordered to cut three teammates. Any team with more than seven members left will have to let someone go.
Making this even crueler, these teams will have to vote to decide who’s leaving, which means the cut teammates are being rejected by their own teams. I remember on Boys Planet, trainees would volunteer to join other groups.
Overall, it looks like these teams got lucky. No one walked into the practice room to find out they were the only team member left. So everything should be relatively okay. Everyone votes, and then…
TEAM BLACK ANGEL VOTES TO REMOVE HYEONSEUNG.
I’m stunned. They’re also removing Kotaro and Takuto. This is still an all-star team with Siyoung, Yura, Kinari, and Shinhaeng on it, but how do you get rid of Hyeonseung? Are they trying to lose? No, I will NOT calm down.
Then the show tells us that Hyeonseung voted for himself to leave, which adds a whole new layer of drama to this thing. He wanted to leave the team that has both his former PICKUS bandmates on it. Maybe he wants to be on a team where he can stand out more. If so, that’s actually a smart move. I wonder if some of his other teammates voted him out so he wouldn’t outshine them.
The show drags this whole process out, and I start skipping ahead. There is no reason for these episodes to be three hours long. We now have five teams of seven. Each team will need to make a video presentation that shows the kind of group they are. Just a thought, but maybe shouldn’t they be spending this valuable time reworking their actual performance? They’ve lost so much time already.
But no, they make their videos and gather in a big room to present them to the stage managers. Okay, so the video is going to be part of the actual performance. This should be interesting.
Finally, the groups get into the practice rooms and start singing and dancing. They also record their vocals in a studio.
We cut to the day of the performances. Fans are lined up to come in. I’m really excited about this. Our Girls Generation judge Choi Sooyoung is hosting. She looks fabulous. She tells the viewers we’re actually in Korea for this segment of the show. Remember, the resulting group will debut simultaneously in Japan and Korea.
Sooyoung is good at working the crowd. She asks in English if anyone in the audience is outside from Korea or Japan. We have fans here from Thailand and China, and Sooyoung greets them in Thai and Mandarin. That’s so cool. I’m excited. Let’s do this!
We’re starting with Team Kick. Our crazy chef Kaname is on this team, along with Kotaro (voted off the Black Angel team), bad boy Yusei, lionhearted Ryuji, our Imagine Dragons leader Chisato, gymnastic dancer Ryota, and the trainee I need to learn more about, Goten.
We get our flashback. The group focuses on getting Kotaro up to speed. Right away, Kotaro battles two of the team members for their vocal positions and loses. Oof. Not a great way to start off with your new teammates. Now that things are totally awkward, they start rehearsals. But Kotaro is having trouble blending in and learning the choreography. Everyone else already knows the steps, and he’s starting from scratch.
This is one of the many reasons I hate this process of forming teams and letting them bond and then holding an elimination ceremony. I wish survival shows would stop doing this. Kotaro winds up leaving the practice room and locking himself into an individual practice room so he can cry alone. In a confessional, he says he’s ready to quit. He was the main vocalist on the Black Angel team, and then he was voted off and shoved onto a team where he doesn’t really have a role and has trouble learning the steps. What’s worse is that Team Kick is getting frustrated with him. They’re not showing him much sympathy.
He gets a pep talk from the vocal coaches and decides to try harder. He becomes more connected with his teammates. And then we get a new celebrity choreographer stepping in to help. His name is HOWL. I’m not familiar with him, but the trainees are starstruck.
HOWL
I just realized that I wanted to learn more about Goten, but this show isn’t letting me. The focus is on Kotaro. This is another frustrating thing about having so many trainees on these shows. The showrunners decide who gets more facetime with the audience. Goten isn’t one of the stars, and I have a feeling he’s not going to make it into the final group, no matter how talented he is. Granted, people like the former MIRAE and PICKUS members, as well as standouts like Rickey and Keito, are naturally more interesting, but many of the other trainees aren’t given a fighting chance.
The flashback wraps up Kotaro’s storyline, and it’s time for Team Kick to hit the stage.
This is the best I’ve heard Ryuji sing so far. His voice has gotten stronger over the course of this series. They’ve all gotten better. As the elimination ceremonies leave us with the most talented trainees, we’re seeing more performances that look like professional idol groups. And I may be wrong, but I think Los Angeles badass dance coach Rino really likes this performance.
I don’t know. She can be hard to read sometimes.
Interestingly, some of the other coaches disagree, saying this team seemed low energy. So far on this series, the coaches have been nothing but positive, but now that we’re nearing the end and the finalists need more constructive criticism, we’re going to hear more honest feedback.
Team Dreamer is up next. We have our rocker Keito, composer Adam, rising rankers Jaeyong, Issa, and Koshiro, struggling trainee Takuto, and resume padder Kaichi.
Flashback time, and Keita suddenly starts crying during practice because he’s having trouble keeping up. Adam, who dropped like a stone in the last rankings, is full of self-doubt. Takuto was pushed out of the Black Angel team and is dealing with that rejection. This team is not okay.
We meet another dance coach – Yunhwanz, who has choreographed for RIIZE. That impresses me right away because RIIZE has some of the most difficult and high-energy choreography in the industry. (Watch the video for “Siren.” Just, wow.)
Yunhwanz tries helping Keito, who gets more and more frustrated. This is where he starts crying during practice. Strangely, Jaeyong is kind of harsh in his confessional. He says, “To be completely honest, I did not want to comfort him for crying.” I know he had to have said more, but the scene cuts there, and I think Jaeyong is getting an evil edit.
The show tells us Jaeyong is furious. He scolds Keito in front of the rest of the team. This cannot be helpful. They wind up hugging it out later. Now we cut to showtime. Let’s see if Keito got better.
I’m not a big fan of the song (it sounds like the theme song of a children’s cartoon), but again, this is a solid performance. Adam gets a chance to show a tougher side of himself, and Keito matches everyone’s energy. I don’t think Keito will make it into the final group, but he does look like an idol.
So far I haven’t seen a performance that has really blown me away. These original new songs seem to be playing it safe. I need more power. I need a beast idol song. This challenge is rather disappointing so far.
Let’s see if Team Fuego can do it for me. This is the team Hyeonseung joined late, and now we find out he’s the new leader. We also have last-ranked Rikuto, lovable Rickey, Italian-Japanese rapper Giuseppe, drummer Maki, rapper Towa, and high-ranked dancer Kosuke.
Rikuto has an inferiority complex over his last-place ranking. He also has trouble with the rap because it’s in several languages. Issa gives him a pep talk and helps with the translation because he speaks Korean, English, and Japanese. This will be Rikuto’s first time rapping, and these are really challenging lyrics. The stakes are high.
Back to the stage. Showtime.
I am just not feeling the songs in this challenge. This is your standard house-music beat. The rapping is good, but the choreography feels low-energy. The audience and judges love it though.
Next up is Team Neko. This is the only team that didn’t need to add new members after the eliminations. They landed at exactly seven members. We have top-ranked Daiki, angelic singer Yoshiki, expression king Hyunjae, trainee I know nothing about Ren, drama-weary Shu, singer I like Ayumu, and quiet introvert Osuke.
Ren is trying to stop being so timid and speak up for what he wants. Right now, he’s at the lowly Rapper 2 position with hardly any parts to do. Everyone is struggling with the choreography, to the point that the normally cheerful Daiki loses his temper. He starts distancing himself from his own team.
Into this stress comes a new grumpy trainer, Yumeki. He’s coached for Produce 101 before, and we see clips of him coaching the female trainees. “I don’t think you deserve first place. This is not even at the level of a dance recital,” he snaps at the girls. Every shot of him looks like he can’t believe he got stuck coaching these idiots.
He watches Team Neko practice their choreography with all the enthusiasm of a hungover Squidward. “I told you that I choreographed this song,” he tells them. “This is not a performance you should be showing in front of the choreographer. It’s disrespectful.”
He criticizes the group leadership, their teamwork, and the way they use the mirror in the practice room. “I’m honestly so angry right now,” he says in that calm, almost friendly tone that movie psychopaths use before they start killing people.
Well. This took a turn. It’s hard to believe this guy wrote choreography to this happy, peppy song about cats. He does have a point, though, so everyone gets back to rehearsal and steps up their game. This takes us up to showtime.
Sorry for only two pictures, but I spent most of this performance dry-heaving. I hate this. I hate pop songs like this that are cutesy and silly and cartoony and performed by people who aren’t actually children. Now I understand why Yumeki is so grumpy. If I were an accomplished dancer and hired to write choreography for this song, I’d be cutting people off in traffic and insulting toddlers to their faces.
I just know this team is going to win this challenge. Excuse me while chug a gallon of Pepto-Bismol.
Okay. One group left. It’s Team Black Angel, and I really need a strong performance after that. Come on, guys. You may have made the mistake of letting Hyeonseung go, but you’ve still got an all-star group. It’s Siyoung from MIRAE, Yura from PICKUS, job-leaver Kinari, gorgeous voice Shinhaeng, and finally, Yuma, Yuki, and Ryoga from my lack of notes about them. Okay, so half of an all-star group.
The flashback shows them reassigning parts after letting three members go. We get another new dance coach. This is Baek Koo Young. We met him back in my Boys Planet recaps. He’s worked with a ton of K-pop groups and hopefully has a better disposition than the grumpy guy. He’s irritated that they haven’t practiced the song enough or memorized more of the choreography, but at least he’s not insulting.
The group gets back to work and improve, and now it’s showtime. I know I left a lot of stuff out, but this is a long, long, long flashback.
Please be a good song.
Wow. It’s a great song and a great performance. I love it. It’s the first performance I’ve been excited about in this whole challenge. It’s dark and sexy. I could see Enhypen doing this song.
This is my favorite. This is the one I would vote for. It’s not going to win, is it? I just know the fans will vote for that cat song.
The fans cast their votes. Please don’t vote for the cat song. Anything but the cat song.
The teams gather in the empty auditorium for the results. I am STRESSED. They announce the team rankings in reverse order.
In 5th place, it’s Team Kick. Really? Last place? They deserve higher than that. Poor Ryuji is crushed. Oh God, the cat song is going to win, isn’t it?
In 4th place, Team Fuego. This hurts because it’s Hyeonseung’s team. I thought they were low energy, but the cat song was worse.
In 3rd place, Dreamer. Okay, everything hinges on what happens next. I refuse to believe the cat song will beat the dark angel song.
After a few minutes of suspense:
Thank God. Seriously, I would have been pissed. I’m know I’m being irrationally angry over a song, but have you really hated a song? I mean REALLY hated a song to the point where you wanted to find out who wrote it and drive over to the house and never stop punching them? Now imagine that song beat your favorite song in a contest.
The Black Angel team lines up to find out the individual rankings.
Wow. Shinhaeng won out over Kinari, Siyoung, and Yura. He’ll receive 100,000 bonus points. I think it’s safe to say he’s going to win this thing. Kinari receives 50,000 points, and I’m sure he’s going to win as well. I have a pretty good idea I know what the final group will look like.
(Right now, readers who have been keeping up with the show are rushing to the comments to tell me about Kinari. I know what happens with Kinari. Just wait. We’ll get there.)
The show gives us the updated rankings, but again, this will change as soon as the next commercial break, so let’s just leave it here. I’ve got one more episode to recap, and that will get us caught up for the finale on June 6th.
See you in Episode Ten!
Go to Episode 10 recap
