Mastodawn

lookitmychicken Feb 24, 2025

Skimming through this week's #ChuangAsiaS2 on the tram today -- mostly just the performances. I'll watch the full episodes tonight.

I wasn't sure last week, but I'm pretty sure this week that they're not singing live during the stage performances.

Some of the singing isn't *great*, but there aren't any disastrous flubs like I'd expect from trainees on a show like this.

It's understandable and I get why they're doing it, but it makes it hard to tell who might genuinely be able to sing live while also dancing.

I guess that they'll move to singing live during performances at some point in the competition.

The cover of Seventeen's "Super" didn't disappoint. I was sad that it went head to head with the "Under the Moon Road" team, and only one of those teams could win.

The "Firework" team was so good too. #Thi_O is right up there with my favourites.

In fact I feel like something of a basic fan because my 2 faves are also the top-ranked in the voting.

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lookitmychicken Feb 24, 2025

"Still Monster" team was disappointing in that their performance didn't seem to match the lyrics of the song. Part of it was the choreography and the somewhat insipid backing track arrangement, but a big part of it was that most of the team didn't seem to be able to embody or convey the meaning behind the lyrics.

Among the mentors, #The8's comments tend to be the most insightful and useful. Having smoke blown up your ass can be fun, but it doesn't help these boys to improve their performances.

Having said that, I hope #BamBam continues to fanboy and flirt hard with #HuYetao. I love that he openly acknowledges his bias and gets excited whenever he's in Taotao's presence. I dont think Taotao was quite expecting this but he's doing a good job of bouncing the energy back and forth with BamBam. (He's clearly used to boys being smitten with him, but perhaps not massively successful and experienced seniors??)

#ChuangAsiaS2

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lookitmychicken Feb 24, 2025

Now that I've seen all the performances and the MVP voting for each team, it's more obvious that the Thai trainees have a voting boost from the Thai studio audience.

This is not to diss the Thai trainees at all! Most of them are genuinely excellent, and deserve to have their high rankings.

It does make it more understandable how Ninja (Thai) beat Hu Yetao (Chinese) for MVP on their team. The votes were close between the two of them, and it might have been some extra votes from the Thai studio audience that gave Ninja the edge.

#ChuangAsiaS2

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lookitmychicken

"Under the Moon Road" has 2 of my faves from the lower ranks (#Shoya and #GouMi). They're both excellent dancers and choreographers, and they're great to watch. I'm glad to see that both of their voting ranks have gone up after this performance.

#Kohi, the sole Korean trainee on the show, is better than I expected. He looked pretty ordinary in the early episodes. I had uncharitable thoughts about him being the only Korean trainee on this show because he got rejected by the equivalent Korean shows. I'm sorry Kohi. I was wrong.

#ChuangAsiaS2