General Grievous

Thank you! I will keep the sadness in mind, but I am looking forward to the story! There are many elements and extras that just can't be shown through the series alone :), so that is why I wanted to read about it from the book's perspective.

Raw or English are both fine for me :), just that I couldn't fine any complete or translated one (but guess it doesn't have one yet). Thank you for your hard work in translating it to English!

Is there a complete novel (with extended chapters) somewhere?

No endgame couples, they showed the calling and next day it was possible to date during the day with someone you hadn´t dated before, by night a date with the person you are most interested in. Next week the final couples will be known

yes, mutual

Confirmed dating after the show:
Su Been - Hee Sun
Jae Jin - Joo Young

They do have their own short afterstory, but the series is plotwise not connected to addicted. They just smartly use the lore to make it so.

For instance Yang Meng became a police officer in addicted, here it is changed.

Just some thoughts... up to a point it does feel scripted (last season for instance was too much launching of all pairs who had series, no surprises). But on another level first season with FirstOne it seemed all set to launch him with Latte, to be intervened with Tle and becoming a pair with him instead. So I do feel changes in pairs can be made.

Purely objective: I think Copper and Fifa have more in common for what they wanna do (singing + acting). I feel Pung leans more into acting. Choosing a partner is also vital in what you wanna do professionally... Same with Patji and Ryujin (I do believe they will end up as partners, but Patji loves singing while Ryujin seems unsure). In the end I hope they do get a say in it all, not just popularity polls. And remember they also cut a lot of interactions or conversations... First season had an extra episode with more extras they released where you could hear them choosing partners at certain times, but cut them out at the airing episode to keep suspense.

Prognostic: 3 partners being formed
North-Otto
Patji-Ryujin
Copper-Fifa

can't recall it either, but the asthma is also false as he is an omega posing as beta by faking asthma for getting inhibitors

I can see the curse of the number 1 spot manifesting again!!!

C-planet had Zhang Jia Hao (former make mate contestant) --> Zhou An Xin as center finds more popularity so far.
K-planet had Lee Dong-heon (VERIVERY's leader) --> Yoo Kang Min from VERIVERY is more popular so far.

Fast pacing plot and short episodes, so you can quickly binge this. Potential to have been more if invested in flow of plot and subplots, but they obviously wanted a short series. The story stays focused on identity issues and revealing the gaps in the past, rather than focus on the martial arts or fighting. Same director as WoH, so you can tell it is like a semi-different universe.

Spoiler alers! Not a happy ending (but in a way you see it was never an option to give it a happy ending, so it kinda makes sense I guess). The unhappy stuff is in the final episode, so you can skip the last episode if need be.

I see they didn't credit the novel character Ma Teng on the cast-page. Is there hope they change the novel version to a more likeable ending instead of the 3 year gap? Or more that his role is not important enough to memtion? They did credit his parents on the chart, so I guess they keep that part of the story intact.

True :), thanks for adding! Most C- and K-participants are also global on their own, but I guess they had something fancy going on

The scoring factor was mostly the judges with their 70% giving a final rank. From that score you had the placement in the released signal song video, and from that video you had the individual videos of the contestants views/likes in some formula giving 30% score extra.

So you have not known C-members who had little views/likes, but were praised by the judges and stayed in all star, while you had all star members with high views but less judging scores being downgraded to 2 stars. The fact that they had too many contestants didn't help, so the judges had to invent like this 'no star'- principle to eliminate candidates more quickly. But this gives outcomes as having a popular voting contestants already being eliminated.

3 big changes in general imo:
1st season had both K- and W- contestants (W = World) starting together (but in different groups), but they could interact and see each other etc (so when forming teams, they knew each person's strength or weakness). They did had seperation between K- and W-groups for the first missions, but mixed after first elimination I thought.
2nd season has completely seperated K- and C-contestants. At that time the plan was to debut 2 groups (K and C), but they changed that end of May to mixing them along the way (from episode 5 onwards) and debut 1 global group.

The biggest change imo are the rules. Last season you had 3 rounds before elimination round, and more time to show-off talents in general. This season you have each episode contestants being eliminated when receiving a 'no star'. Season 1 had no eliminations after the signal song for instance, but now they have eliminated 28 K-contestants and 46 C-contestants after the signal song.

Last change, which I find sad, too many contestants in limited amount of time. Because they almost doubled the amount of contestants this season, they rush through the episodes, giving little personal screening time. For that reason they brought the number down to 80 surviving contestants , about half the starting number. So a preliminary round in a way, probably due to having changed it from 2 groups to 1 for debut. But you notice it is being rushed (like 4 people did quite well on their signal song, so they just let you see like 10 s of each person together in a screen all 4 at the same time and be like "it was all star''.

His reaction (Dongho) was the most genuine and funny this season so far. To actually ask the girls what he did wrong for them to feel that way xD...

Shame a lot of focus resides on the Si An with others drama each episode. Makes it repeating and boring, since a lot keeps happening again and again, just with other men taking part in it.

I was surprised Tae Hwan is choosing to display his job as DJ and having a night club, instead of model and actor tho, it was a surprise (even the age since I thought he was younger)...

I am most curious about Dongho and his sudden situation with 3 females fighting over him ;O. I am wondering how Arin is going to handle the pressure as well as Dongho himself.

The only memorable reaction is that of Choi Young Joon hearing the final 9th member. Just look at that fragment, it says it all...

277.835 votes were enough for the final member to debut. I am not following (did not watch the episode yet) how the voting worked for the final round. But having that voting number seems quite low to be able to debut. Also weird to have higher ranked members drop significantly, while having whole show stable voting numbers. In perspective 12-13% of the highest vote was enough to debut

So these are the results for rival match, eliminations next week:

A1 (RIIZE): team white 'Boom Boom Bass' with 271 votes wins VS team black 'Memories' with 251 votes.

A2 (MONSTA X): team white 'Jealousy' with 324 votes wins VS team black 'Gambler' with 200 votes.

A3 (Stray Kids): team white 'LALALALA' with 365 votes wins VS team black 'Case 143' with 176 votes.

A4 (NCT127 / NCT U): team white 'Make a wish' with 473 votes wins VS team black 'Touch' with 62 votes.

A5 (TXT): team black 'Deja vu' with 300 votes wins VS team white 'I'll see you there tomorrow' with 253 votes.