聲夢傳奇2 第11-12集 回顧 Stars Academy 2 TVB - Episode 11-12 Review

Hi Everyone,

This is our 4th review of Stars Academy which will cover Episodes 11-12. Please read our posts about the previous episodes if you haven't yet here.  These were 2 very special episodes because students had the chance to perform with the mentors of their teams, and there were a total of 8 performances with mentors including team leads, Eric Kwok and Hanjin Tan. In addition, Team Red and Blue each prepared a  duet with 2 of their students as well as sending 1 student from each team to do a 1 vs. 1 battle against each other.  Afer this round, the 10 competitors are left to battle their way into the final. 

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!

Announcement: With the Top 10 contestants determined after episode 12, TVB has opened voting globally for the competitior you want to see win the competition. This could affect the final results of show. Don't forget to vote here: https://bigbigchannel.app.do/stars_academy_2_final before the finale on October 2nd! See details below.

Song list based on order of appearance (winners are bolded):

Sean, Vincy《愛如潮水》vs. Angel, Alan《網絡安全隱患》

Maggie, Eman《忘記他》vs. Sabrina, Gin《先哭為敬》

Jason, Vivian《小心地滑》vs. Pamela, Janees《依然》

Duncan, JW《你最珍貴》vs. Zayden, Phil《安徒生的錯》

Jasmine vs. Pamela《喜歡你》+《情人》

Janees, Hanjin《閉目入神》vs. XiX, Eric《重口味》

Breakdown of total points:

 

From these spreadsheets, you can see what team the 25 judges voted for in each round. Both teams won 3 rounds, but Blue Team won more points, so they were the winners of the night. This is because when Red Team won, the score was 13 vs 12 for Sabrina vs. Maggie, so Sabrina only won by 1 point. This was the same situation for Jasmine vs. Pamela; even though Jasmine won, it was only by a few points (14 vs. 11), but not enough to change the tides. However, Blue Team's wins tended to be by a wide margin. Janees and Pamela won Jason and Vivan 21 to 4 points which was the highest score. The final score was 89 vs. 61 with a difference of 28 points. Judge, 譚國政, gave a blue light for every match again, as he also gave all blue lights in the previous round.

Thoughts on the Performances:

The song is drastically different than the original and sounds almost like a new song, especially with the long rap parts and repetition of the chrous mostly. It's nice to finally hear Sean sing a bit more instead of only rapping because his singing is not bad. You can see the dedication mentors put in as Vincy said she didn't sleep to prepare for the performance and they had to write the rap together.

This was a great concept with Angel becoming a "Dark Angel" and trapping her "prey", Alan. 

Angel's look and acting matched the song well, and her stage presence is starting to grow. We were surprised that she could carry the dark style too.We liked Alan's super low tone and plucking the strings the end of the guitar added an eerie vibe which was perfect for the song, but he didn't take focus away from her. Angel has found new wans to reinvent herself throughout the competition, and we definitely think she should get the most improved title. 

Eman complemented Maggie in a more subtle way, mostly harmonizing Maggie's vocals. The loop station used by Eman is something we haven't seen used in this competition yet, so that was refreshing. Maggies has really eased up and semed to be enjoying the stage a lot more with a lot more body movements and facial expressions.

Overall, we found the song a little plain for a later stage of the compeition, but it was executed fine, and we are looking forward to how Maggie will handle the stage next time for the solo.

This is Sabrina's first try at singing a Cantonese song in the competition. 

Unfortunately, we couldn't really catch what Sabrina was singing especially for the verses. We think it's because the song they chose has more chunky and dense lyrics which might be hard for even a Cantonese speaker to sing. Then, when Gin Lee started singing her parts, it sounded really pleasant and we felt like we wanted to hear her sing the whole song. If a more simple Cantonese song was picked, it might have been easierfor Sabrina  to handle the pronounciation and enough to impress the judges. This was a good try for Sabrina as she has tried to do performances out of her comfort zone.  She won the round against Maggie by 1 point, and the judges might have given her the point for her effort in trying. We can't imagine the emotional impact if she lost again, since she was already crying even though she won this one. We hope that Sabrina won't put too much pressure on herself in the upcoming rounds.

We got the feeling they were a bit neglected by their mentors, having to design the harmonies on their own which proved to be diffcult. Unlike Janees and Pamela who seem to know  music theory and how to design harmonies, Jason and Vivan semed a lost and needed guidance. 

We felt this song was not suitable for competiton. It is a extremely diffcult to sing and find places for breathing, and again, there are so many lyrics that are a mouthful to sing. Vivian's voice did not have that power that was needed for this song. We could see that they gave it everything they had and tried very hard as they knew they might not have another chance. To top it off, their competitors were incredibly strong and hard to beat.

This duet was one of the highlights of the night. We did not expect it, but Janees and Pam's voices went really well together. Both their voices were bright from the intro when they sang without any background music, and Janees's first lines of the song were really beautfiul. Pam has improved quite a bit from the beginning, and she is more stable and breathing is less heavy. The harmonies were exceptionally well designed and executed. The pitch was precise, and there were a lot of variations and runs throughout the song that added texture to the song. We think this song will be looped a lot by fans, especially since it's in Cantonese and received great praise from the judges.

The visuals like the piano filled with flowers and waterfalls in the background were nice to look at.

Duncan looked very charming and was able to show off his piano skills. However, his energy did not match up to JW's, and we couldn't really feel too much of their chemistry. You could really feel JW's love when singing, but Duncan felt a bit awkward to sing romantically to JW and was not fully in character. 

This was a very stable performance, and Zayden does look a bit like Phil. Sicne this is Phil's song, it would have been easier for him to design harmonies for the duet. Both of them are very live stable singers, and Phil provided an opportunity for Zayden to hit a climax in the song which was not really in the original song. We hope to hear Zayden try a different style of song next time to see what other potential he has.

Some people commented that it was the battle of the "goddesses" in this round. This was a lovely mashup of 2 classic Beyond love songs, and Johnny Yim did a great job to blend these songs togehter. 

Pamela gave off a sweet and innocent vibe, whereas Jasmine gave a sadder mood. The judges were quite conflicted with which one they liked, and at the end of the day it came down to preference with both girls getting a good amount of votes. Both of them made it into the Top 10 easily, especially with their appearances and fanbase to help them too.

This is another favourite of the night for us. It's the battle between the leaders Hanjin and Eric and both pulled out all stops to win the round. We appreciated that both Hanjin and Eric arrange their own songs, lightening the load for Johnny and to show off their producer skills. Hanjin's design for the song is very clever, and he gave Janees the opportunity to shine with her strengths. Despite looking casual, Hanjin's vocals was on point and he shows how rapping should be really done. Janees's rap has also improved and is totally different than in Lady Marmalade. The dissing rap is pretty hilarious and refreshing for the song, and the transition back into the chorus after the rap flowed really well. They both made it look easy and fun to be performing on the stage!

It was a treat to see Eric dance, and we were shocked to see Eric do the backflip and admit how much he injured himself. When he burst into tears of emotion after the performance, we could just tell how invested he was and the love he has for the girls. Even though it was entertaining, XiX looked more like dancers to us and not the star of the stage. We were actually hoping to hear XiX sing a song without dancing like doing acapella for a Canto song or singing some musical number. Everyone already knows that XiX can dance, and even though we know that Caitlin and Kiele can sing well, the audience still need convincing that the whole group has the vocal ability, especially singing in Canto. 

In this YouTube video on Eric's own channel, the description box contains Eric's feelings about XiX along with a paragraph for each of XiX to describe how he views each member. It's easy to see how close the girls are just from this recordng as they cheer each other on before they go onstage. We always saw Eric as being very critical because we saw him as a judge mostly in singing shows, but since Junior, we were able to see a different side of him as he has been like a father to the girls. We are expecting him to produce the first official song for XiX after the competition ends.

Thoughts on the elimination

We expected Jason and Vivian to be eliminated. They had the lowest score of the night, so it made sense that had to leave. They gave it their all, so we hope they leave with no regrets. The mentors already had their favourites of people like Jasmine, XiX and Sabrina who they wanted to keep immediately. It will be interesting to see if Vivian will choose to stay in HK or move back to Canada and restart a job there. It made sense that Red Team is cut down as they have so many members, it might have started to be hard to manage them all. Phil already has 2 strong students with Zayden and Sabrina, so he doesn't have a lot of time and energy to continue helping Jason. As of now, all mentors have 1-2 students left. Both of these members were hardworking, with a strong passion for singing that is evident. We hope they will continue to pursue their dreams.

With only 3 episodes left in this show, the end is fast approaching. We expect to see the students take out their best weapons. Next time, 10 contestants will battle 1 on 1 to eliminate 5 competitiors. The winning 5 will head straight into the final to fight for 1st place on October 2nd. We also heard that the Malaysia Stars Academy winner, Britney Pang, and the Australian winner are supposed to go to HK, so we wonder how they will be incorporated into the competition.

- CeeJay

Images Retrieved From:

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

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