聲夢傳奇2 第1-5集 回顧 Stars Academy 2 TVB - Episode 1-5 Review

Hello Everyone,

We are excited to be back with a new review! This time, we will be looking at TVB's large scale singing competition show, Stars Academy 2. Because the show will be airing for a few months and there are plenty of discussion points each episode, we will be doing reviews periodically based on groups of episodes. Since the first round of elimination just ended, we will be talking our thoughts for Episodes 1-5 so far. We were thrilled that this season finally began to broadcast, especially after filming had to be delayed due to the pandemic. When Stars Academy (we may refer it to as "SA" throughout the post) aired last year, we grew attached to the students and eagerly waited each week to catch the latest episode. We were amazed by how the students improved and now represent the new generation of Cantopop. In this review, we've included a summary and our thoughts of each episode, along with a breakdown of which judges gave each student a green light.

Disclaimer: This post contains purely our opinions after watching the show. The information presented is done according to the best of our knowledge. We would like to apologize in advance for any errors or missing information.

SPOILERS AHEAD!

Background

The show started airing June 11, 2022 and will have 15 episodes. Johnny Yim is the music director, and Sunny Wong is the dance director. There are 18 competitors this year, with one of them being the 6 member girls group, XiX, so there are 23 total students. After the huge success of the first season, the heavy funding for this season was evident with the filming taking place at Shaw Brothers Studio with a 4 sided stage and 5D technology.

There were also mascots designed for each competitor which can also be seen in various Café de Coral (大家樂) locations in HK as this franchise is sponsoring the show.  The mentors this season are Gin Lee, JW (Joey Wong), Vincy Chan, Phil Lam, Alan Po, and Eman Lam. After episode 5, the students will split into 2 teams led by Eric Kwok and Hanjin Tan. Like last year, there is a large range of ages this year as the youngest contestants are Charlotte and Sabrina who are 13 years old, and the oldest is Christopher who is 29. 

Episode 1

The show set off with a grand opening sequence of "Bohemian Rhapsody" that was filmed in an impressive one-shot take for the entire performance with many moving parts on the stage. It featured all the new contestants and some of the season 1 students together. The effort put into this opening is truly admirable. In our opinion, this video released on the SA official YouTube channel deserves more views!

We were a bit surprised that they didn't have full on stage performances yet like we saw in the 1st episode last year, but at least there was still singing to watch. Contestants were split into groups who either performed to Miss Chan Chan, Johnny Yim, Clayton Cheung, or 舒文 (Schumann Lee). We were able to listen to each competitor sing for about a minute. It would have been better if the performances did not sound as tuned. From the first episode, Sabrina's 《Traitor》and Janees' 《Greatest Love of All》impressed us the most. Jasmine's《一加一》was very popular on YouTube, especially the version where Johnny Yim suggested her to raise the key, and her sweet sound attracted fans quickly. Since then, Jasmine has been placed high on the show's popularity poll, and we can see that the girls tend to be popular than the boys.

Episode 2

This is when the mentors chose students to be on their teams and the first time the filming happens at Shaw Studios. Each mentor could choose up to 3 students based on the blind audition. The songs performed were:《愛是懷疑》,《可惜我是水瓶座》,《活著VIVA》,《原來你甚麼都不要》, and《Poker Face》.

Angel and Maggie were the ones whom no mentors chose based on the audition songs and had to sing an additional song to see if either remaining mentors, Eman and Alan, would take them. After Angel sang 《Pretty Crazy》and Maggie sang《風的季節》, Eman chose to take Maggie and Alan chose Angel to fill up their last spots.

Because Aster from XiX was the only one who performed《Poker Face》for their group, they arranged for them to do an extra performance《Candy Ball》, which was prepared in case they had to perform if no mentor chooses them. The performance was a good way to promote them early on in the competition to start gaining some more fans. We were surprised they improved so much since Stars Academy Junior!  With their youthful looks, strong foundation in singing and dancing, we hope these girls can go far in their careers.

Here are the teams after the auditions: 

In this episode, we also got to hear the full theme song for the first time with the students dancing on the Shaw Studios stage. This song was written by Aska Cheung from Season 1, and Kaitlyn, Rock, and Archie helped to compose the lyrics. 

ROUND 1 ELIMINATION 

For episodes 3-5, the first round of elimination began with the mentors each choosing 1 of their studetns to perform each episode, with 6 performances from each team per episode. 25 judges who are music producers, composers, lyricists, radio DJs, record label people, music writers, singing teachers, and musicians/singers are invited to watch the performances. They are each asked to press the green light if they like the performance and press the red light like if they don't.  From these 6 performances each episode, the student with the lowest score (least amount of green lights obtained) is eliminated from the competition. As a result, Crystal, Desta, and Mandy were the ones with the lowest scores in their respective groups and had to leave.

Episode 3

Song List:
Pamela -《愛的根源》
Jasmine - 《玉蝴蝶》
Christopher -《早班火車》
Angel - 《發熱發亮》
Sabrina - 《說散就散》
Crystal - 《I Wish》

Breakdown of total points:

We were curious to see if each judge decided to pass or fail each student, so we found out where each judge sat and kept track of which chairs lit up green on this spreadsheet (this would be easier to view on a desktop if available). Let us know if you see any interesting patterns or trends that we might have missed!

In the first round, the highest score was given to Sabrina who received 23 out of 25 green lights. Crystal received the lowest score of 8 points. Both  張仲恆 from TVB Music Group and 舒文 gave green lights to everyone. 舒文 gave green to all everyone from episode 3-5 which we found was surprising since he seemed like a judge with high standards last year. On the other hand, 伍仲衡 (Harry Ng) gave red lights to all 6 contestants. Only 2 judges did not give Sabrina a green light. That was Harry Ng and 鄭瑞芬 (Fanny Cheng). However, Fanny did give a green light to Angel and Crystal which was interesting. Jesper was another tough judge for ep 3, giving all red lights except for Sabrina. 4 judges gave 5 green lights and 1 red light. 3 of these judges gave their single red light to Crystal, while the other judge gave their only red light to Angel.

Highlight of the Episode: In this section, we have chosen our favourite performances of the episode. These are based on our opinion only.

Sabrina - 《說散就散》 

We foresee Sabrina to be one of the frontrunners in this competition. Her natural talent plus good training can be observed. In this performance, showcase of technique and belting appear to be her strengths. We are certain that TVB will promote her as she is only 13 years old, and her fluency in Mandarin and English lays the foundation to become famous worldwide. She has a strong and mature voice, but we also felt that she was more natural when singing English songs. Next up, we believe she needs focus on learning how to present the song in her way to make it her own. We are hoping to hear a Cantonese song sung by her at some point in the competition too and an opportunity to show off her piano skills to the audience.

Episode 4:

Song List: 

Sean - 《Why You Gonna Lie》
Zayden - 《愛與誠》
Desta - 《屈機》 
Nicole - 《You Raise Me Up》
Vivian - 《Dangerous Woman》

Timothy - 《你瞞我瞞》

Breakdown of total points:

Zayden was awarded the highest score of 23 points in this group. Desta had the lowest score of 8. We are seeing that quite a few judges who gave Desta a green light gave Nicole a red light. Harry Ng gave a green light to Sean and Vivian, but none of the others. This time, 溫應鴻 (Adky Wun) was harsh as he only gave Zayden the green light out of the 6 in this round. Jesper made a total 180 degree change from the previous set of singers⁠—this time giving everyone a green light, along with T-Rexx who also gave all green. 

Highlight of the Episode:  Zayden - 《愛與誠》

Zayden has a nice voice, and the performance was very stable. It is a solid start for the first round, and his technique seems to be in place already. We wished there was a bit more buildup in the final chorus to give us that final punch of emotion, but this may come with more practice and experience. We would like to see how he continues to improve and add on more complexity to the songs. Phil already has 2 students with 23 green lights which shows he knows how to pick students for sure.

Episode 5:

Song List: 

Duncan - 《綿綿》

XiX -《Me gustas tu》. 

Mandy - 《眼淚》

Maggie - 《我的心裡只有你沒有他》

Jason - 《記憶棉》

Janees - 《留低鎖匙》

Breakdown of total points:

Unfortunately, we were not able to see what some judges gave for XiX as it was not captured on the screen. Knowing that they got the highest score of 23, we can only deduce that the 2 of the judges that have a question mark in the spreadsheet above were the ones that gave the red lights because every judge shown on the screen that we could see gave a green light. Delta T seems to be one of the tougher judges with at least 4 red lights given this round, only giving a green light to Maggie (and possibly XiX). It's the first time 張仲恆 gives a red light out of all of the contestants, and it was for Mandy. We are seeing several judges who made the same call to only give Mandy a red light in this group such as 張佳添 (Clayton Cheung), 陳潔靈 (Miss Chan Chan), and 鄭敏 (Cheng Man). As a result, Mandy had the lowest score of 14 points in this group, even though 14 is not considered a low score. Her competitors in this round just happened to be quite strong. This time, 瑪姬 (Maggie Chang), T-Rexx, 黃敬佩 (Peggie Wong), 譚展輝, and 舒文 gave green lights for all 6 of the students. There could be more that gave all green in this episode, but we are not sure due to the missing information for XiX. 徐浩 (Terry Chui) and 周錫漢 (Randy Chow) gave identical lights in episode 4 and 5. They both gave 1 red light to Desta in ep 4 and 1 red light to Duncan in ep 5. With Jason getting 21 points, Phil Lam now has 3 high scoring students who all got above 20 lights in the first round. 

Highlights of the Episode: 

XiX -《Me gustas tu》

This was a performance we really enjoyed. At 13-15 years old, what they delivered was amazing. The girls were natural and really owned the stage with their smiles and stage presence. The dance was pretty synchronized while the vocals were maintained. It was not flawless with the pitch, and we wished their uniform was more youthful instead of black and white. The music break was well designed to further display their dance moves. Aster gets to stand in the center a lot, so we are wondering if she will be the group captain in the future. Caitlin is very strong singing, and Charlotte just looks so energetic when dancing. Vici sounded much more natural this time too. We cannot wait to see their next performance. We heard rumours that they will be splitting up into different combinations like 4 girls doing a dance song and 2 girls will be singing another song for future episodes. If it's true, it is a clever way to demonstrate their vocal abilities. If it's our choice, we would want Kiele and Caitlin to sing a duet together with an English song such as "For Good" for example, since we know they've sung broadway songs in training. It's obvious this group is Eric Kwok's favourite after leading them since Stars Academy Junior, and it was entertaining to see when he got defensive over them when judges were about give their comments. 

Maggie - 《我的心裡只有你沒有他》

Maggie completely wowed us from the first note she sang compared to her previous performances, where she was nervous and more shaky. She has a unique and highly recognizable voice that she should be proud of. Each phrase of this song came out easily and had power despite the low key and deep voice. When we saw Maggie was going to sing this old song after the song list was released, we were excited because these songs are well suited for her. She still needs to work on being more confidence on stage, but she is a dark horse in this competition for sure.

Janees - 《留低鎖匙》

There is no doubt that Janees is a strong contender. If she plays the cards right, we think she has a good chance to make far. Janees has a very confident aura on stage. She started off with a soft and more airy sound which created an emotional connection with the audience. We were not expecting this, since her style seems to be more powerful. However, she did begin to build up power in the bridge and final chorus, reaching those falsetto notes with ease. It seems like she is still holding back her ability for the later stages of the show. We believe that she chose a more mellow song to begin with and a Cantonese song, as she wants to save her strong suit of English songs later on. We would love to see her perform violin while singing in one round. As an example, she can sing Hacken Lee's《月半小夜曲》and have Johnny Yim rearrange the song to extend the intro, outro, and music break to let her showcase her performance level violin. We can envision her in a concert gown with the spotlight solely shining on her during her violin solo. She may become the first contestant to play violin and sing during a singing contest in HK. Hopefully, this type of performance can capture the judges' and audience's hearts.

Those were our thoughts for the first 5 episodes of SA2! Let us know in the comments if you have any thoughts to share with us.

- CeeJay

Images Retrieved From:

https://tva1.sinaimg.cn/mw690/67c260c2gy1h3nrhir6onj21hc0u0x6p.jpg

https://d5ttlem47o98b.cloudfront.net/s3fs-public/styles/banner/public/2022-04/AM%E5%A8%9B%E6%A8%82%20Link%20Post%E6%8B%B7%E8%B2%9D_104.jpg?itok=D4y2fzxC

References:

https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E8%81%B2%E5%A4%A2%E5%82%B3%E5%A5%872

https://www.youtube.com/c/%E8%81%B2%E5%A4%A2%E5%82%B3%E5%A5%87STARSACADEMY