#especially when compared to a 25 yro

[sanstropfremir]

how would u rank seonghwa/san/wooyoung/yunho/yeosang as performers/dancers? when i first saw that 5 members from atz was part of the dance performance for kingdom it surprised me because….? that just seems like a lot esp considering that atz is only a group of 8 and it doesn’t make sense that 5 are dancers, 2 are rappers, and only 1 as vocal. unless maybe that is the whole point? as most 4th gen are focused on performance more than ever now.

hmmmm many thoughts, thank you for this question anon!

i'm putting this under a cut just because i spaced it out kinda long, oops

ateez is a special case even among 4th gen groups, who are definitely more performance focused than previous generations, because of the sheer number of talented performers they have. but! i don't think kq weighted the group 5/2/1 on purpose. if you look at kprofiles their current official positions are:

hongjoong - leader, rapper, composer, centre

seonghwa - vocalist, visual

yunho - performer, vocalist

yeosang - vocalist, performer, visual

san - vocalist, performer

mingi - performer, rapper

wooyoung - performer, vocalist

jongho - main vocalist, maknae

which mostly makes sense, as we've established they have a lot of good performers and yes they are also vocalists. but these are WAY more general terms than are normally seen with group position distribution; generally there's sub- and main and lead thrown around. on the kpop wiki, their positions are listed as:

hongjoong - leader, rapper, sub-vocalist

seonghwa - lead vocalist, sub-rapper, visual

yunho - main dancer, vocalist

yeosang - lead dancer, sub-vocalist, visual

san - lead vocalist

mingi - main rapper, lead dancer

wooyoung - main dancer, sub-vocalist, visual

jongho - main vocalist, maknae

and in the kq fellas predebut series that kq put out on youtube in mid 2018, their positions are labelled as:

hongjoong: leader, rapper, composer

seonghwa, yeosang, san - vocals

yunho, wooyoung - performance

mingi - rapper, performance

jongho - main vocal

and honestly? just looking at these designations after watching an ateez performance is confusing as fuck. seonghwa as only a vocalist?? san as only a vocalist????? what on earth was kq smoking??????

here's my hypothesis: kq didn't actually expect seonghwa, yeosang, and san to be good performers. two of them (seonghwa, yeosang) are the designated visuals, and idol groups are no stranger to propping up visual positions. san is actually a good vocalist with a lot of potential and he's actively been making good and interesting choices, especially in the last year. none of them had any reason to push being allrounders, but they're from a very small company and had their sights set big, and ain't that a fucking motivator. also honestly, and this is a big part of it, it's really hard to gauge how good a teenage boy is going to be at something in the long run. 18-20 is still the tail end of puberty for most dudes, and what i've noticed with male idols is that regardless of that they don't tend to actually fill out until 22-23ish, especially if they debuted in their teens. this is probably compounded by the fact that intense physical training can extend puberty, and because they're in the public eye, we can see them mature in real time. i promise i have a point here other than standing on my 'we should not be debuting idols under 20' soapbox and that point is other than wooyoung and yunho, i don't think any of these boys had invested any significant time (classes, dance training, etc) into being physical performers pre auditioning. and the fact that kq is a small company is a factor. the auditionees they're going to be pulling are not going to the be ones that have been training pre audition: those people are going directly to the big three, or even to the midsize companies like starship, jellyfish, and cube. the kids kq are pulling are going to be determined and probably good at whatever skill they audition with (likely vocals), but they aren't going to be 12 yro taemin. i could be wrong, since i don't actually know what ateez's personal stories are, but that's my guess. i think kq was looking to assemble a young, relatively evenly weighted group and accidentally managed to get three extra performers by nature of teenaged boys are sometimes are ducks made of silly putty: they take to the water extremely well and have bizarre malleable properties that you only figure out once you start working with them. ok maybe this metaphor is a bit mixed but you get my point.

ok as for actual rankings of who i think is the best performer, of these five specifically? san, seonghwa, wooyoung, yunho, yeosang, in that order. yunho and wooyoung are absolutely the most technically skilled, and i would also put yeosang in this category too, but san and seonghwa know how to act. well, they know how to operate a stage persona, i can't confirm if they can actually act. but this segues into the next point i want to make, which is that i don't think san is the best performer in ateez. i get that it makes the most sense to categorize the group like this because a) the positions, and b) kingdom made it real easy, but i think if you want to rank performers in ateez you have to include all of them, because even though he is one of the weaker dancers, hongjoong is the best performer. he has the widest range in performance, he can actually act, and he's the best at controlling and yielding centre. so a more fair performer ranking of ateez looks more like:

hongjoong

san

seonghwa

wooyoung

mingi

yunho

yeosang

jongho

i also think their individual skills are going to even them out in the next couple of years; we've already seen significant growth in all of them but notably from wooyoung, san, and yeosang since debut, and that's going to continue as they settle into being adults. pick and choose any 2nd or 3rd gen group and you can see the evidence. once the boys hit 25 and really hit their stride, we're gonna be in trouble.