Atom Boyz e10–11

[adevyish]

This round was more Idol / X Factor than the previous rounds. We got sad backstories! We got teary moms! We got Summer 林佳辰’s older sister showing up to say that she uses all her votes on Lany (LCY) 呂植宇 🤣 All of Lany 呂植宇’s friends in Mars were cheering him on like you have a chance with this girl! and meanwhile Summer 林佳辰 was like eurgh I hope they don’t … don’t ….¹

Eliminated contestants were “sent to Pluto”, but of course the twist was that Pluto is now … performing! #FuckTheIAU Okay, the actually surprising part was they let The Joke Contestant on stage, along with other contestants who have never been on stage but have been ~hardworking. Plus some good singers and dancers to carry the group: Lany 呂植宇, of Atlantix;² Jim 梁善鈞; and Marvin 陳水豐, who has great stage presence.

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This round was supposed to demonstrate each team’s best/strongest point — yet two teams got concepts that weren’t in what I think of as their wheelhouse. As well, because so many people had to sit out last round, the show also had one eliminated contestant per team prep as an alternate just in case.

Uranus: I noticed him more in the last round but CY 蔡承祐 is really starting to show a stage presence. Guei 高胥崴 as well. They won the popularity points this round, and ofc everyone thanked Kidz 小孩 since he’s the evident breakout star of the group. But like I said! The show is structured in a way that doesn’t emphasize his popularity (it’s only ever acknowledged in a joking manner), which is good because this is meant to be a team competition. And also Kidz 小孩 always gets super shy when it gets brought up haha.

Mercury: A few guys went oh no we have to do a cool concept again!?, but meanwhile Brian 李秉諭 is like yes I’ve escaped the cute concept! Also, wow, I didn’t realize Fan Fan 范范 was so young because he’s so mature. I was surprised he was reassigned to Mercury but by age it makes sense. Free dance instructor I guess! In the case of Mercury, the alternate did so much better than one of the non-eliminated contestants, the producers and dance mentor decided to swap the alternate on.³ Richard 林毓家, who’s mostly been getting a “mischievous kid” edit, was perfect for this concept. This is the first time I’ve felt that Mercury as a whole group has potential, beyond just a few members.

Venus: Nelson has SUCH Heartstopper Nick Nelson energy; it’s not just the name it’s the slightly out-of-place puppy vibe. Venus also got a more serious edit this time: Mike 許孟維 talked about how he’s deaf in one ear. Venus got slow, sexy, girl group-esque choreo, which really isn’t a concept you see in boybands — I can only think of Taemin off the top of my head. Mingdez 鄭明德, the alternate, got swapped in for voguer Yori for no obvious reason ??? Also, why did they make Venus wear such high heels omg.⁴ The lyrics for their song was cowritten by team member Bobby, about how their team gets more hate than other teams.⁵

Earth: Yup, they also had to suffer through continuing to do a ~bad boy~ concept just like Mercury. Rex 林煥鈞, formerly of Saturn, like I expected fits the Earth concept extremely well.

Mars: Max continues to get a songwriter edit — but this time it was a setup to introduce Chih-Chih Kuo 郭艺吟, singer-songwriter of some of the DD52 songs such as “Poisonous”. Their song this time has some very high notes, and the line distribution ended up so uneven as Max 徐彭臒 (徐臒) and Jacky 李承隆 are the only guys who can sing high notes with the current pop singing style.

One of the interesting tidbits that got accidentally dropped is that J.Lee (Jim) 李哲言 said he thought the demo for Mars’ song was sung by Will 須弘道. If you extrapolate, since the music production team for this show is mainly Korean,⁶ the demos for most songs were originally not in Mandarin, and the Atom Boyz contestants often record the Mandarin-language demos.

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The mentors (dance instructors, producers, et al) have been involved in the elimination process from the beginning, but I guess since this is the semi-finals the mentors gave their scores on screen for the first time. Previously, mentors were the least transparent part of the elimination process, but they’ve had these mentors give more talking heads in the couple rounds.

I’m shocked that Mars got eliminated — yes they’re the least popular by vote, but I think as a group they’d have more longevity than Earth or Mercury. They have songwriters, are tight-knit, and have more distinctly marketable personalities. However, their combination of mainstream pop with a more mature concept is very established boyband — they’ll appeal to the general public but they’re not going to appeal to the core boyband market of tweens and teens.

This means that 3/7 Atlantix members have been eliminated. I do think everyone in Atlantix is going to get to debut — they’ve done public events as Atlantix already. But I can’t see them debuting with the original founding members of Atlantix. J.Lee (Jim) 李哲言 at least is going to get to go on variety shows — he has the looks and the comedic timing — and Max 徐彭臒 is definitely definitely getting a recording contract, though it might be as a soloist.

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Fave songs/performances this round:

• Mars / Desperado — this is a banger
• Venus / Believe in me — this song doesn’t fit their vocal strengths, but I really appreciate the choreo concept

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¹ The exact opposite energy of Jimin making siren noises when teenaged Jeongguk said Hobi’s older sister was hot 🤣

² After getting eliminated Lany 呂植宇 released an emo solo song on the Atlantix channel. Also, despite being eliminated he wrote the lyrics to the song used by Mercury in this round, so I hope he’s getting paid damn well.

³ For this alternate swap, the dance instructor gave her talking head in Korean which forced me to read the subtitles [screams] I did manage to read most of it without a dictionary!

⁴ Nelson was like, I’ve never walked in heels before and I was Dying. I think the costume team were trying to make everyone roughly the same height — but they didn’t bother for Uranus which also is a bunch of short guys + 1 tall guy.

⁵ Mike 許孟維 was crying on stage talking about reading online hate, and worrying about how they would get even more hate and disgust for this concept — the implication, of course, for being not masculine enough. (Lead judge Ella seemed genuinely upset about it, and the MC of the show hugged them both before and after their performance.)

⁶ Atunes is a mostly-Korean production team that has written and/or produced songs for Seventeen and Yerin among others. They’re also associated with some sort of Taiwanese idol academy; they wrote a track that CY 蔡承祐 & Kidz 小孩 released last year.