adevyish | atom boyz e1

alright, i’m caught up to atom boyz now. we’re just past the third round, the planets association event, where two teams are combined together then re-split into a vocal and a dance subteam. teams that are stronger in dance were paired with teams that are stronger in vocals. interestingly the teams got to nominate which members went on stage as part of which subteam.

based on how dd52 went, this is was done to trial combined debut teams. but i think this was also intended to push certain contestants out of their comfort zone concepts — like i said last post, atom boyz pre-arranged everyone by concept. i’m just going to directly translate the concepts and add my thoughts:

mercury: cute & young
- paired with venus.
- there’s a lot of shy wallflowers on this team. brian 李秉諭 stands out by being outgoing and having decent stage presence. will 須弘道 has a good pop voice.
venus: mysterious flower boys
- the “good dancers” counterpart to mercury.
- this team has some of the most outgoing, flamboyant contestants on the show, they’re not mysterious at all! because of their visuals, they’ve been mostly stuck doing cute concepts, even though they definitely could pull off a fierce concept. they’re also the designated comic relief team — which includes staff asking questions that make it very clear this is, implicitly, the gay team.¹ chris 蔡朕 even alludes to it in his teary speech in e7, saying that he didn’t think his dad would be happy he was on this team.
- they have some very strong dancers — yori even vogues. the members that have stood out to me the most in terms of dance/performance are chris 蔡朕 and blue 藍弟. they also have some great vocalists, including nelson, bobby 巴比 (very 90s mandopop voice), and skylar 廖學文 (whose voice reminds me a lot of bts jimin’s).
earth: boys next door
- summer 林佳辰 seems to be a supportive team member, really pulls off the boy next door vibe, and writes songs. zu’an 周祖安 got a cute dance teacher edit.
mars: fauvism
- paired with saturn.
- i guess this group’s concept is supposed to be “bold”?
- jim (j.lee) 李哲言 has good flow, a bad boy idol look, and good stage presence; i’m surprised he’s not on uranus actually.³ a lot of the guys in this group have 90s boyband vocals, like jacky 李承隆 and max 徐彭臒 (徐臒).
- max 徐彭臒 is also a good songwriter — he’s written or co-written several songs used on the show so far. i wouldn’t be surprised if he debuts as a solo singer-songwriter; he has a very mandopop voice.
jupiter: tall, reticent, handsome
- paired with neptune.
- no members have really captured my attention on this team.
saturn: impeccable dancers
- as the dance group, there’s lots of people with good stage presences. rex 林煥鈞 sticks out to me for having yuzuru hanyu energy — being cute and cool at the same time. keith 曹家齊 and lany (lcy) 呂植宇 have decent vocals but not much stage presence. lany 呂植宇 also has co-written songs for this competition.
uranus: idols, hip hop
- this is my least favourite team by concept, lol. a few of the members can write their own raps but they’re definitely … tryhard.
- kidz 小孩 has one of the strongest stage presences on the show; iirc he was the centre for the debut song. he’s also a good rapper + dancer. he’s also incredibly kawaii offstage; he’s the very definition of moe gap.
- yu ting (auztin) 吳昱廷 has a cool rap tone, and is a classically trained pianist. justin 陳子輇 has decent stage presence and can properly breakdance. bee 黃培峰 seems to have great vocals suited for r&b but somehow hasn’t been on stage yet.
neptune: individuality, tall, reticent
- the “good dancers” counterpart to jupiter.
- there’s some great pop singers on this team: corvin 劉浩文 and jie 鄭傑 hard-carried the vocal for the jupiter–neptune dance team. both of them and yy 邱勝揚 also could have been on one of the “cute” teams easily. ren you 陳任佑 is another great pop singer.
- fan fan 范范 is a solid dancer and performer.

the structure of this show is slightly less messy now, but there’s still parts where it’s obvious some celeb guest is on to promote themselves and not for a good reason, unlike with the first. as the show has progressed, there has been more practice content, but it’s still more on the level of pop idol rather than produce 101 or (my platonic ideal) the first.

there’s a lot of blatantly staged “spontaneous” moments where some contestant demonstrates some skill of theirs, or contestants and mentors exchange surprise gifts. (compare the team-bonding moments in idol producer training rooms, which came off as mostly genuine.) that said, it is cool that the show is highlighting certain contestants’ songwriting abilities. even if the songs weren’t necessarily written for the show (like with pop idol and the first).

however, it is very clear that everyone gets a good level of professional mentorship at each stage. there are a few contestants on here that have taught dance lessons⁴ but it’s not a “contestants must teach other contestants from scratch” situation like produce 101 s2 or, worse, under nineteen.

the elimination in the third round was team-based, causing some of the best singers on this competition to get eliminated. i liked the first because i always understood where sky-hi’s elimination decisions were coming from, and now i’m back to a show that combines judging and audience voting and — yikes? that said, the benefit of the team-based ranking/elimination system is that it prevents runaway solo faves, which was a huge problem in idol producer s1 imo. and the major eliminations are still down to the judges.

anyway, i leave you with this from guei 高胥崴 (uranus team):

this makes me want to go act in a BL drama with him.⁵

(hover for translations)

¹ “who is the most handsome?”, “who would you like to come pick you up in a lamborghini?”, etc.

³ as the show mentioned — jim 李哲言 has been putting in shifts at his own café while competing, and well 陳威愷 has been teaching 18 aerobics lessons a week while competing. that is something i like about this show, that, like the first, contestants can still have their own lives while on the show. there’s no moving you into a dorm for months on end.

⁴ this does worry me a little bit, because professional-level dancers sometimes too obviously stick out in a pop group. an example is sota from the first / be:first, whose moves are always just a bit too sharp and exact compared to his groupmates.

⁵ speaking of, is the show’s editor an rpf shipper?