#but this is the stuff I’ve noticed from ist + knowledge from why fans have been mad in the past

[slytherinshua]

I 'm so out of touch (touch-touch-touch-touch), why is IST bad?

so basically some smaller companies were eaten by ist at some point in the last couple years (playm which had many artists and cre.ker housing tbz) ist focuses on the artists that make them money which basically was just tbz especially considering their road to kingdom and kingdom promotions gaining them many many fans.

i think they fumbled so hard with weeekly who had that one song (after school i believe) that was literally EVERYWHERE in 2021-2022 yet they’re still nugu because frankly ist gives them no promotion. their songs are genuinely so good idk why they couldn’t be a more talked about and popular girl group at this point ?? usually having a song as viral as after school would get you at a good place for future promotion and success

victon situation is worse. victon had a lot of potential to be super super popular and were doing just fine. like they literally had successful comebacks and a supportive fanbase but then just kinda fizzled out when seungwoo went to the military and they were promoting as 6. under playm management they did well but under ist they got so little promotions and no music show wins lead to even less. since they debuted a year before tbz and were kinda making similar ish music I feel like they were overshadowed and discarded in favour of tbz. even now they still haven’t “disbanded” but haven’t had a comeback since 2022 like alices are just waiting silently at this point for the final blow

also apink was the only other big girl group under playm and also fizzled out in popularity + members left the company. idk too much about their management and how they were treated but I can’t expect it was any better than victon.

as for tbz there was a time where content was being neglected and comeback showcases dance practice videos etc weren’t happening which fans were not happy about. and general overworking of tbz because they were the main group doing well lead to them staying relevant I suppose but it’s not a good thing for any company to do… like there are ways to give them proper rest and regular comebacks instead of constant schedules. and I think tbz could’ve been even popular if they had better promotion and stuff like they’re talked abt in kpop but still in that middle ground. I think ist pushed for a lot of tours for whatever reason instead of building their popularity with good comebacks. you can really see in 2024 as well just how busy they’ve been with comebacks and tours and musicals solo schedules etc like tbz have been crazy crazy busy nonstop for a rly rly long time.

I know for atbo another nugu boy group under ist that they’re on their 3rd survival show or smth??? if that doesn’t show how little promotion and success they’re getting due to ist’s negligence idk what does. it’s like they’re putting all their eggs in tbz basket and hoping that the other groups can get popular and make money without any help from the company

honestly we as fans don’t know the entirety of the inner workings of a company or how a group is truly being treated behind the scenes but it’s pretty clear tbz are happy to have left (and with so many other ist artists leaving the company last year and this year…. It’s telling) I’m just happy for a fresh start for tbz and hope they can achieve even greater things under a new company with other big and successful artists (viviz taemin etc)

I have more victon mismanagement thoughts I’ll add later but I gotta rush to a piano lesson rn lmao but I’ll reblog w more thoughts on them specifically after!! thanks for asking tho anon <3

[popculturebuffet]

Animation Reviews: OK KO: Red Action to the Future

On to part 3 of Red Action 2 days because my schedule got nuts, and this one.. I was dragging my feet on beause I didn’t remember liking it nearly as much as the rest of the red action trilogy. Now while the same held for “Your Everyone’s Sidekick” I ended up liking that one.. this one... not so much. This one is however earlier in the season than it’s sisters in red action spotlighting: “Back in Red Action” was towards the end of season 1, while “Red Action 3: Grudgement Day” is literally the last episode before the finale arc, something i’d forgotten till today. This one is pretty early into season 2 and the why.. is really easy to figure out. For Season 2 Enid actually got a pretty intensive and long spotlight arc about her time at point prep, with rad and ko only showing up in a portion of it, so late in the season wouldn’t be fair as enid not only had the halloween episode then, but also just had a 7 episode arc basically to herself with Elodie as her co-star and rad and KO out of focus or even absent at times, so they likely did it early to prevent overloading the season with her. Granted they could’ve just had Red show up at school and done one episode there that wasn’t part of it’s overarching story, and still HINTED at the glorb doping arc while she was there, but they may also have not decided which one of the two they wanted Enid to end up with, and thus didn’t want to put her and elodie in the same space. I dunno. We’ll also be covering the POINT arc here eventually, but obviously there’s a lot of episodes to get to first, including the whole gar and carol backstory arc, before we get to that one.  And with that out of the way, let’s take a look at Red Action to the Future, under the cut. 

We open with Red playfully helping KO stock the shelves with new Double Dipped Lazer chips since, as Enid points out, it’s rad’s day off. She can also fire things in her canons , which is neat. It’s also highly noticable that she and KO are now on good terms and the two seem to be friends. Which despite their last interaction really isn’t THAT weird surprisingly: K.O.’s a forgiving kid as long as your not an out and out supervillian, and even earlier this season he was worried about Lord Boxman disappearing despite hating the guy most of the time for good reason. And with her past behind her in the future, Red is likely inclined to be more the fun kind of cool instead of an edgelord asshole, and likely apologized off screen and as we’ll see next time, she genuinely regrets her actions. That being said I do feel we could’ve had an episode with red trying to be better, but I do get the show has a lot of ground to cover, so this was an easier thing to have happen off screen.  Anyways the three are palling around, with red and enid being couply while KO panics when ENid points out his newly beloved double dip lazer chips are probably a limited time thing... ko’s wimpering “no I love them” is so relatable it hurts. But before Red can figure out KO’s snack dillema Yellow Technique yells at red to come home and help, Enid is too worried abotu pressuring her to ask her to stay, and Yellow refuses to let KO and Enid come along for reasons.. and frankly I don’t get that even with possible damage to the timeline. Besides you know, the end of this episode, we also have the fact that you guys HAVE TIME TRAVEL. If they gain a year or two, they’ll still come back and fufill their places in the timeline and you can CONTROL THAT, so if they had to stay longer than a year or needed to be back for something specific, you could bring them back and have two incredibly powerful allies for your war. The x-men have had a good handful of members from the future and look how well that turned out. Some of the time I mean Bishop did turn evil for a while and the younger cable whose around stabbed the older one and rachel went into a coma and then the future but she’s back now.... okay maybe she has a point. 

Anyways Enid regrets her decision, Red comes back for a quick break, with years having now passed, Blue shows up to yell at her to come back which seems.. harsh. Like I know she’s like Killowog, a good person whose probably murder on recurits but seems nice off duty from waht we’ve seen and her happily saying hello to enid, which makes me want an episode where they actuallyv isted the hue troop instead of this SIGH. Anyways, Enid finds a stray time capsule and goes to be honest with red

So now in the post apocalypse, Enid finds Yellow, who got seperated from red as they fight a giant version of the robots they’ve been fighting, with Red showing up just in time. But as with all giant killer robot based future’s they’ve evolved so these things have shields and Enid suggests laaunching her. So red shoots her girlfriend out of her.

And they win.. but Red refuses to let enid stay and gets huffy with her before Enid can tell her the truth and Enid leaves in a huff. Now this scene.. I really liked, from the action sequences to the fact that we see how their similarities, what attracts them to each other, is also a roadblock to them having a proper relationship. Both are stubborn, put walls up , and are reluctant to be honest with their feelings, we’ve seen that with red in the last episode and Enid in the episodes mentioned last time. They both prefer to run from their feelings and while their both growing, as you’ll see when I cover more tom lucitor stuff, it’s not that easy to just “become” a better person and sometimes old habits flair up. 

Enid regrets how things went, KO regrets not learning about chips, and we get one final red visit.. from a much older Red. i’m Dubbing her Cable!Red because A) her timeline probably still exists, it’s just not the one our red is linked to anymore nor the one the plaza future we see would create. She and enid hug and Red explains that it turns out the robots were weak to organic maatter and given they were only shooting at them, they didn’t realize it and it STILL , as shown by the fact Red is grandma age now, took years to fix and she has things to get back to with space congress, war hero stuff and all that. Also just a small note but something I only noticed this time that the episode DOES deserve credit for in my book is Kali Hawk’s voice acting as Red. Noticably with each time we see her red’s voice gets deeper and by future red she sounds entirely grown up. It’s a subtle change most probably wouldn’t of cared about aside from on old red, but it’s a nice touch that really does help theemotional part of the episode. Enid is finally honest about how she felt, and sad about it but understands.. but is also understandably still broken up when Old Woman Red Action leaves.. only for present-day.. ish time travel tenses are weird to pop up behind them has a hug with enid and flirtly says “I never left. “  Turns out Future Red decided to say Screw Destiny and told her past self to stay, what enid felt likely, or got enid to admit it or whatever, and told her to stay and enjoy her youth. She can go back and be a war hero later if she wants. And my honest guest given the Hue Troop turn up fine later is rather than callously abandon her teammates, Red’s future self simply went there for them and , to prevent a decades long war from ravaging her future, pulled a Cable and told them how to defeat the robots YEARS before they got so powerful it’d take years to beat them, as well as probably having knowledge of where they came from, how to kill them all or make peace with them or whatever, and future weapons to help even things. IT’s not an unfair assumption given that besides missing out on a future with Enid, Future Red would also not want her friends to go through untold decades of pain and death and since she changed the timeline already, there was no sense in not going all in. Also the chip thing is resolved with KO finding out they WILL be discontinued.. but replaced with triple dip instead. KO”s delighted and enid and red happily share a moment, the future is now what htey make of it. THE END.  Final Thoughts: As I made plain i’m not a fan of this one.. but in re-watch I did find things to like about it. The time travel story device was used really well,though I would’ve liked them to have old red say she was going to back instead of me having to infer it and feel, given theyd on’t show up at all next time and only show up for a cameo in the finale that the Hue Troop was vastly underulitized and coudl’ve used their own ep, and for once the cancelation dosen’t excuse this as they had the second half of season 2 to do this AND never dealt with Red, who gave up a future war for her, dealing with enid going way for what’s clearly months and was expected to be years. It’s also not very funny , which is fine if the episodes more dramatic like TKO, but for a standard ep it really didn’t quite work. It was just more dull than it should’ve been: it had an intresting hook: red slowly loosing her youth due to a future war, and Enid loosing her because of it, and Red’s cable self deciding to fix that, but it was instead a standard poor commuincation kills plot but with future robot wars. IT’s the first OK KO episode here i’ve reviewed that’s not good and honestly one of the few they had that genuinely wasn’t, and even then it had some good ideas just a flawed execution. Thankfully next time, there’sd none of that as we instead look at one of teh series very BEST episodes. IT’s grudgment day, and until then later.. today hopefully. If not tommorow.