JoaneJ

Where can I watch this series?

Nice list! I think my tastes most align with Xiao Zi (I too loved Healer, Death's Game, and My Journey to You). Here are my recs for each genre:

Comedy - Guardians of the Dafeng (2024)
Friendship - Blood River (2025)
Historical - Destined (2022)
Wuxia - The Immortal Ascension (2025)
Xanxia - Love You Seven Times (2023)
Action - Strong Girl Bong Soon (2017)
Romance - The Princess Royal (2024)
Thriller - Reset (2022)
Sports - The King's Avatar (2019)
Fantasy - Guardian: The Lonely and Great God (2016)
Sci-Fi - Rattan (2021)
Crime - City Hunter (2011)
Drama - Coffee Prince (2007)
Life - Angels Fall Sometimes (2024)
Youth - Weak Hero Class 1 (2022)
Horror - The Guest (2019)

If you want to make it really challenging, try to guess the drama name before scrolling down to the multiple choice options, it’s more fun that way

This is too easy because in each of the 4 options in the multiple choice, DYX only appears in one of them, so even if you don’t recognize the still you can guess by process of elimination as long as you are familiar with his filmography

are the 3 main characters siblings? They all have the same first 2 characters in their name

I first noticed Nam Son and his killer vocals in the Shine performance (1st mission). Been voting for him ever since! Glad he’s getting more recognition ✨

I almost want to take back what I said here after what just happened with three of the Top9 contenders ALL QUITTING THE SHOW AT ONCE, including SYH! Something is up iQiyi, I shouldn’t have defended you.

Needless to say, I am dropping this show immediately. I’m not boycotting it - I just don’t care who the final lineup is anymore, and I think it would be too heartbreaking to try watching the rest of the show or follow the promotions of the debut group… so I will not.
If your faves are still in the show and you would still like the group, by all means continue watching.

lol I love how they started episode 5 with the signal song and then added in the alarm sound and 30 second timer and then repeated the song, prompting all the boys to yell STOPPP like SYH. They even edited in a clip from episode 2 from the little outburst. IQIYI is having fun with this and isn’t taking all the hate to heart. Even the boys can laugh along about it now.

Also note that this comment is not any shade to Sun Yin Hao - he is my one pick, my ult favorite contestant, and I hope he gets first place and wins the entire show. I don’t have a problem with him speaking up and I love him for it anyways, even if he was not in the right.

The boys are not being mistreated on the show. The amount of dancing they were required to do in a short amount of time during the signal song battle was entirely reasonable, and very indicative of how much dancing a real K-pop idol would have to do regularly. In a concert, groups usually perform at least three of their hardest dances back to back to open the show before they get their first break to do introductions – that’s more than 10 consecutive minutes of strenuous dancing. Then they continue to dance for 20+ more songs over the next two hours, with only a few 2–5 minute talking breaks sprinkled in. The contestants here were never forced to do this 90 second signal song more than five times in a row without a break (because they gave them breaks whenever the judges deliberated together and announced more trainees, and they showed the boys sitting down together, drinking water, taking breaks for bottled air, so it’s clear that these breaks lasted for at least a couple of minutes). This was no more torture nor inhumane treatment than the standard level of performance that we’ve come to demand from modern K-pop idols.
It’s clear that iQiyi edited the clips to make it seem dramatic (even piecing together a lot of clips of their fellow contestants crying and sympathetically turning their eyes away) to make Sun Yin Hao’s sudden outburst be received as righteous and caring. Because if the situation was not exaggerated as it was, netizens might have viewed SYH’s actions as presumptuous, rude, self-righteous, and a lack of respect for the guides, the producers, and even his fellow contestants. Because after all, the response from the guides and the host was to reason that their treatment was not too extreme, and even one of the contestants who was still dancing basically told him “ thanks, but you don’t have to speak up for me. I’m more than willing to keep dancing if it means getting the opportunity to prove myself.” And as already exemplified above, the amount of strenuous dancing that the contestants were subjected to may have seemed harsh, but it’s not un-representative of the current demands of the industry. IQiyi saw that objectively, SYH’s callout might bring him some backlash and purposely edited the scene to look more pitiful so that we could take more pity on the contestants and save face for SYH. And they did that because they really LIKE SYH. He was a finalist and crowd fave in their last survival show, and they would like to see him do well here, so they helped him out.
But iQiyi could not have anticipated how much backlash, anger, and even threats of boycotting would rebound on themselves when they portrayed the situation this way. It’s an unfair double standard, but they shouldn’t have expected the viewers to be impartial and logical. If the amount of dancing that they were subjected to in the signal song challenge was abusive and exploitative, then the whole K-pop industry is a clear human rights violation, and we fans are the culprits.