UPDATE: We have been incredibly busy the past few weeks, so we apologize for not being able to get out a post about the finals of the show. We are considering combining our thoughts with when the overseas competition comes out. Thanks for your understanding!
Hi Everyone,
This review will cover the semi-final round of Stars Academy 2 from episodes 13-14. The top 10 contestants had to battle each other in five 1 vs 1 rounds, with the winning student advancing into the final. The draw was done based on the popularity poll. 1st place in the poll was placed against 6th place, 2nd against 7th, and so on. As the show is coming to an end, the competiiton is getting more intense, and many students brought their best to show.
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: Last chance to vote for your favourite student in the Top 5 before the finale on Sunday October 2nd! TVB has opened voting globally for the competitior which could affect the final results of show. Don't forget to vote here: https://bigbigchannel.app.do/stars_academy_2_final
Song list based on order of appearance (winners are bolded):
Sean《Can't Stop The Feeling》vs.Jasmine《這麽近那麽遠》
Duncan《愛你》vs. Sabrina《Rolling In The Deep》
Angel《餓狼傳說》vs. XiX《Nobody》
Maggie《精神分裂》vs.Pamela《電燈膽》
Zayden《阿士匹靈》vs. Janees《溝渠暢泳》
Breakdown of total points:
From these spreadsheets, you can see what team the 25 judges voted for in each round. Sabrina won all 25 lights against Duncan, so it was the first time that the score 25 to 0 was seen in this season. The scores were mostly of a large difference with the closest score beign 19 vs. 6 for XiX vs. Angel and Pamela vs. Maggie. In the end, Pamela and Janees of the Blue Team made it in the Top 5. Jasmine, Sabrina, XiX of the Red Team made it. Because there are no teams anymore, students were either assigned red or blue this time when competing against each other. Coincidentally, all students who were assigned blue won their rounds. Maybe it was the lucky colour that day haha.
Overall Thoughts:
There was a lot of debate about whether the rules this round was fair or not because of the favourable draw for those high on the popularity list. There is no way to really tell if who was ranked 6-10 either because they never released those results, and they could have easily done some switching to get the results they desired. For example, if Zayden was matched against some other contestants, we think he might have a better chance of winning but he happened to be ranked 10 on the popularity poll that puts him against Janees. As a result, all top 5 popular competitors successfully advanced to the final. The final contestants are also all females which is too bad for any viewers who enjoy watching the male contestants.
Thoughts on the Performances:
Sean chose another song where he could sing more than rap. He gave it his best effort here, even though
some of the high notes could not be reached well, and he overall couldn't deliver too much of that bubbly feeling this original song had. He probably didn't think he would get into top 10 and should be happy for his achievements!
This was a suitable choice Jasmine as it was safe and had enough opportunity for her to express emotion through the song with her head voice she uses commonly. It will definitely be interesting to see how Jasmine performs a fast song if she gets to show it in the final. We believe she needs a final surprise to wow the audience, so let's see if she can deliver it.
Duncan was not able to show off his strength here and his vocals were flat and not dynamic for most of the song. We were surpsied he chose this song for his final round, and we enjoyed his solo performances early in the show even more.
Sabrina claimed she sang this song since a young kid, so we were looking forward to it. The key she chose was a bit safe and lower than the original, so we didn't feel that punch when she burst into the high notes. Overall, we think Sabrina sings more naturally in English and this was a commendable performance for a 14 year old! Looking forward to her piano showcase in the final.
Angel never fails to continue surprising us. Even though we knew that the judges would favour XiX over her, we personally enjoyed this perofrmance more. We couldn't imagine how she would present this song, but she rocked the stage with the mic stand and totally owned it! Her stage presence stands out amongst her competitors and has the vibe of a diva.
It was very touching to see her share her mother's story, and we understand now why she pours everything she has into the performance everytime.
Angel's spirit is truly inspiring; in our hearts, she desrves the most improved award that they added this year.
This time, XiX's costumes were not bad. This time, we got to hear their vocals some more, but we are still hoping to hear them sing acapella. This classic song "Nobody" is quite brainwashing and repetitive, so we are glad they added lots of variation in the chorus so it's less boring. We find ourselves more excited for their own first commercial song instead of the compeititon because they are more than ready to start their career as a girls group.
Maggie has become so much more confident than the first time she was onstage.
Her body guestures has improved a lot, but we felt this song wasn't the best for a competition, and the song did not highlight the beauty of her voice. She could have chosen another song and delivered it with the same feeling.
This was one of Pam's best solo performances, and she continues to be quite stable. This time, she uses more emotion to tell the story. She must have improved after the acting lessons from Winki Lai. The question remains whether she can handle different song styles.
Zayden knew that he had to put in everything in order to get a chance in the final. We always wanted to know how Zayden would sing for fast songs, and we really appreciated him trying out this rock song. His voice was still able to carry crazy theme of this song that we didn't see before this round. If he was against a lot of the other competitiors, we think he would have a good chance of making it.
We hope he doesn't feel too bad about losing, and we are sure he will be given other opportunities in the future.
Last but absolutely not least, we have Janees who blew our minds. Janees's voice turned into her violin, where she perfectly controls the notes and pitch that is played.
We appreciated how she did not only show off technique but told a complex story though her voice, as she used different tones and phrasing for different sections of the song, and the effect of elevating and lowering the stage really matches her power levels. The destruction reaches the maximum point at the super long note. After the bridge, you could see her vulnerability where everything falls apart, and then she releases the monster inside her in the end for a final wow factor.
This channel, William's Classroom, analyzes the musical and vocal design of Janees's performance which is really educational and worth the watch!
Of another note, a netizen mentioned that they think Janees should sing Hacken Lee's "Victory" in the final as the fast song. We went to check out this song and totally agree because it has a lot of difficult violin segments that Janees could showcase along with really fast lyrics that could challenge her.
As the final draws closer, we are getting more and more excited to see how the students can surpass themselves a last time in this competition. We still don't know who will be the champion because they will also take into account the popularity votes. This year, there will be 7 awards being given out. That probably means there will be a split among several people instead of one winner of 3 awards like Gigi last year. The first place will also get the gift of Eric and Hanjin collaborating to write the first song for them. Who do you see taking home the champion title of Stars Academy 2?
Let's not kid ourselves. TVB absolutely designed the competition so that Jasmine will win. She's an okay singer but by no means the best. But she's of legal age in HK, fluent in Cantonese, and she's very pretty with a huge online following so it's a no brainer for TVB to want to lock her into a long term contract.
I really dislike how TVB used the online popular vote and pairing the men with specific competitors that will guarantee to eliminate them. I honestly think if Zayden went up against any of the men, he would have made the final five. But the male competitors will always get the short straw in this competition due to the online voting aspect. Archie got screwed last year and so did Zayden this year.
Overall, I found Season 2 disappointing compared to Season 1. The extended cast of Season 2 taking up more screen time, the lack of group/paired performances and rehearsals to see the dynamics between the team, the rehash of same songs (Zayden could've sang a different Hins Cheung song, Kiele singing If I Ain't Got You again) just made the show boring.
The lack of variety of songs by each singer is also a factor in this season not living up to Season 1 on the entertainment factor. Compared to season 1 where Gigi, Archie, Yumi, and even Rock showed range with their repertoire (to various success), here we see Sean only raps, Jasmine only sings ballads from male singers, Pamela can only sing in an airy soft voice, XiX only does Kpop/dance numbers, etc. The judges comments are also more boring compared to Season 1.
I was the one who made the other comments on your previous posts, but now I feel like I shouldn't say much now that the finale has aired and I can save most of my comments for that. I do want to say that Angela probably did end up being the one I ended up rooting for and it sucks that she couldn't make it to the final 5. It just felt like her steady improvements deserved to be rewarded, while others were making it through by being safe or being the mentor's favorites. I also want to note that Maggie has greatly improved throughout the whole process but her song choices were pretty dull. I wonder if this is where having a different mentor would have helped since I'm not sure if Eman chose these songs?
Thanks for both your comments and supporting us! We agree a lot with what you both said. The song choices this season was really disappointing, and the season had a lot of shortcomings. We're taking our time to fully reflect and gather our thoughts on what happened in the finale to write the post.
Hello fellow TVB viewers and fans, This is guest contributor Ah Tao here with a review of the sequel Big White Duel II . At the time of writing, the entire series has been released by mainland platform Youku, and the drama will air on TVB from July 25, 2022 - September 2, 2022 for 30 episodes (an increase from the first series's 25). If you don't mind the spoilers, then I hope this review will give you some advance info on whether you should pick up this drama! And if you just want a brief verdict, then skip ahead to the 'final thoughts' section. SPOILERS BELOW! Plot Overview Two years after the events of the first series Big White Duel , Marshall Paxton Hospital is at the forefront of yet another health care system reform. The chief executive of the hospital, Dr. YT Yeung (Roger Kwok), is campaigning for the Hong Kong SAR Government to fully open its drug formulary. Doing so will allow all patients to afford the prescription drugs they need, no matter how chronic or ra
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Welcome back to our blog! We decided to bring you another TVB drama review as many of you guys enjoy reading these and they're always fun to write! This is going to be a loooong one so break it down in parts by each author or however you want to do it if you don't have the time to read it all at once! Over Run Over is a 2016 TVB drama, which has just recently finished airing (we are totally not like over two weeks late ;) ) But we sincerely apologize for this super late review as it has been difficult compiling our thoughts and we have been so so busy! Anyways, this time we are also featuring thoughts and opinions from our part-time contributor, Ah Tao!! We will be starting off with a basic overview of the drama as always and then breaking it down to each of our favourite parts, shocking moments, acting thoughts... Let's get started!! Basic Overview: This is a spin-off of the EU Series from TVB. This time around, some characters in the drama have the ability to tra
Let's not kid ourselves. TVB absolutely designed the competition so that Jasmine will win. She's an okay singer but by no means the best. But she's of legal age in HK, fluent in Cantonese, and she's very pretty with a huge online following so it's a no brainer for TVB to want to lock her into a long term contract.
ReplyDeleteI really dislike how TVB used the online popular vote and pairing the men with specific competitors that will guarantee to eliminate them. I honestly think if Zayden went up against any of the men, he would have made the final five. But the male competitors will always get the short straw in this competition due to the online voting aspect. Archie got screwed last year and so did Zayden this year.
Overall, I found Season 2 disappointing compared to Season 1. The extended cast of Season 2 taking up more screen time, the lack of group/paired performances and rehearsals to see the dynamics between the team, the rehash of same songs (Zayden could've sang a different Hins Cheung song, Kiele singing If I Ain't Got You again) just made the show boring.
The lack of variety of songs by each singer is also a factor in this season not living up to Season 1 on the entertainment factor. Compared to season 1 where Gigi, Archie, Yumi, and even Rock showed range with their repertoire (to various success), here we see Sean only raps, Jasmine only sings ballads from male singers, Pamela can only sing in an airy soft voice, XiX only does Kpop/dance numbers, etc. The judges comments are also more boring compared to Season 1.
I was the one who made the other comments on your previous posts, but now I feel like I shouldn't say much now that the finale has aired and I can save most of my comments for that. I do want to say that Angela probably did end up being the one I ended up rooting for and it sucks that she couldn't make it to the final 5. It just felt like her steady improvements deserved to be rewarded, while others were making it through by being safe or being the mentor's favorites. I also want to note that Maggie has greatly improved throughout the whole process but her song choices were pretty dull. I wonder if this is where having a different mentor would have helped since I'm not sure if Eman chose these songs?
ReplyDeleteThanks for both your comments and supporting us! We agree a lot with what you both said. The song choices this season was really disappointing, and the season had a lot of shortcomings. We're taking our time to fully reflect and gather our thoughts on what happened in the finale to write the post.
ReplyDelete