An Outlet: Part 5

19 January, 2019.

Last night I slept for very little time. Why you ask? Because I finally gave into to my curiosity of watching YG Treasure Box. I had heard a lot about the ongoing competition among the YG trainees but never actually watched it until yesterday. And when I did, I couldn't stop. I watched all 10 episodes (spanning 30+ minutes  each) in one stretch! Because it was that good!

So YG Entertainment is one of the top 3 entertainment companies in Korea and out of the big 3, this company is known to bring out very talented artists. YG (who seems to be a super strict person) has a reputation of not letting his/their artists have a comeback frequently and people jokingly say that YG artists (and trainees) are kept in the YG dungeon for most part of the year. YG's argument is that he will not release anything that isn't perfect according to him so the artists and the YG team have to keep redoing their work until the boss is satisfied with the final outcome. I don't know who is correct in this situation.

Anyways, YG plans to debut a new 5 member boy group amongst it's existing trainees this year and the whole selection plus debut process is happening in the form of a broadcasted survival show called YG Treasure Box.

YG traditionally always looked at talent over visuals, meaning he didn't care if the idol's visual were not that great (according to Korean standards) if the person was very talented and had swag.  But this time he said he wants to have visuals in the new boy group. I was a little irked by this in the beginning but it soon went away because great visuals or not, almost all the trainees were/are boody talented!

So in the beginning, there were four sets of trainees.

1] Treasure A- 2 years+ trainees aka the trainees who have been trained at YG the longest.

2] Treasure B- trainees who have been trained at YG for only a couple of months. 15+ age.

3] Treasure C- trainees upto 15 years of age but trained for longer time than Treasure B trainees.

4] Treasure J- Selected trainees from YG Entertainment's Japan base.

I don't know if this happens at every company but apparently YG has monthly evaluation for it's trainees to see their progress or well... lack of. Each trainee is critiqued by YG himself and the trainees showing very little signs of improvement are kicked out. This was YG Treasure Box's first round. We didn't get to see everyone perform but the ones that did were too good!

All the trainees were ranked based on how they faired in this round and the highest ranker of each group was made the leader for that group.

Treasure A- Bang Yedam
Treasure B- Wang Jyunhao
Treasure C- Jung Junhyuk
Treasure D- Haruto

The next round was a group performance round which took place in the YG building itself. YG selected 2-3 members from each group base on the group performance.

Treasure A- Bang Yedam, Kim Junkyu, Kim Seunghun

Treasure B- Wang Jyunhao, Ha Yoonbin, Park Jihoon

Treasure C- Park Jeongwoo, So Junghwan

Treasure J- Haruto, Mashiho

Out of these only 7 got to be the first Treasure 7 which was the official start of the competition.

Kim Seunghun, Wang Jyunhao, Park Jihoon, Park Jeongwoo and Mashiho had to prepare a song (they chose 'Love Scenario' by iKON) and only 2 of them (Park Jeongwoo and Mashiho) got to join the remaining 5 to become the first Treasure 7, which is one step closer to being the debut group.

The following rounds took place in a studio with a stage. Before each round began, the Treasures sang 'Going Crazy', an original song which is catchy af. It could also be the debut song, who knows.