~ Episode 2: To the World (1) ~

Hello everyone and welcome to the debrief of Kingdom: Legendary War episode 2! After the meet & greet performances, it's time we get into the serious stuff!

I. Final rankings for the Meet & Greet performances

Ateez, BtoB, SF9, Stray Kids, The Boyz and Ikon performed in that order for the Meet & Greet, and it was previously announced that Ateez were in fifth place, SF9 in fourth place and BtoB in third place. We started episode 2 with the rest of the ranking. Stray Kids were the winners of this round, while The Boyz ended up in second place and Ikon in sixth place. 

I did anticipate this ranking, especially that The Boyz and Stray Kids have fanbases that are really devoted to the voting process. I am really happy for Stray Kids, because they seemed to doubt themselves and now they have the proof that they are capable of achieving big goals. 

II. Round 1: To the world 

The theme of the first round is "To the world". The contestants had to chose a song of their own that they wanted to show to the world. The cue sheet was built by Stray Kids, as they were the winner of the meet & greet round.

The Boyz

The Boyz are the first group to perform for this round and they decided to perform "No Air". Indeed, No Air is a very good song choice in my opinion. But what I loved the most was how they analysed the situation. Juyeon pin-pointed their strength which is the fantastic and acrobatic aspects of the performances. But then he added "If we continue doing this it will become too predictable" and I totally agree with him. Then New suggested that they focus on the desperate aspect of the lyrics and make the performance look extremely delicate, which it was indeed. After that, The Boyz went to an under-water filming studio to shoot underwater. The guy who came up with the idea is a genius, because we do feel very heavy when we're underwater and obviously we cannot breathe air. 

Moving on to the actual performance. I think I can sum up this performance in three words: Good usage of the stage, powerful storyline, and creative ideas. The Boyz are known for occupying the stage in a clever way, making the most use of the space at their advantage, but they also managed to create another powerful storyline just like they did in RTK and the whole crown story. Add to that the creative ideas such as the stunts, Sunwoo hanging on a rope and that whole portion with the white background, we get a perfectly well-balanced performance. 

Ikon

Ikon is the second group to perform. Here the song choice was a bit more laborious than for The Boyz. They all seemed to agree on performing "Love Scenario" at some point, but wanted to do a mashup and ended up choosing "Killing Me" as a second song. I find that the combination makes sense, since the first one is about love (and the song is more towards the cute/fresh concept) and the second one about pain (more towards an EDM style of music). I also love how they just started mentioning their whole discography to see what song will be the second one, like "Dumb&Dumber", "Bling Bling" and "Apology" that aren't as known as Love Scenario or Killing Me. 

Now regarding the actual performance, I really liked how they arranged Love Scenario to a borderline musical theme, and everything was built around this idea (the costumes, the set, etc.). But then the atmosphere changes completely and Killing Me starts playing. I feel like they could've played more around this contrast. The link between both songs wasn't obvious and it maybe killed the magic of the performance,  because that's the only "problem" I could find in this performance. Everything else was on point: The acting, the dance, even the props. The lighter idea was very clever.  

BtoB

I will go straight to the point: BtoB's performance was my favorite of this episode. This performance had everything: The vocals of course (especially in the last chorus where they sang almost acapella and everyone started singing and clapping along), the choreography (especially with Minhyuk's fighting scene), the aesthetics (the scenery was astonishing with the trees, the petals at the end, and even the dancers), and the concept (it was indeed a theatre version because I really felt like watching a play). 

I asked your opinion on Twitter (if you still don't follow me there you can do it now by clicking here) and the polled received 77 votes in total: 35 votes for BtoB, 32 votes for Ikon and 1o votes for The Boyz. 

III. Next episode preview

Next week we'll see the performances of Stray Kids, SF9 and Ateez. Stray Kids are going to perform "God's menu" (maybe a mashup with another song, we don't know yet) and SF9 are going to perform Now or Never (if you still don't know that song go watch it here). We don't know what song ATEEZ will perform yet, but the preview shows Jongho hitting a B5, which is extremely rare for a male to be able to hit that note. Now, as someone who has a bit of knowledge in the singing department, I was really afraid that his vocal cords would be damaged. I know that Jongho has training years behind him, but it still looked like he put a lot of pressure on his cords to hit that note, which made it feel a bit too forced. Don't get me wrong, that was really impressive, I'm just hoping that he's okay. 

That's it for the debrief of episode 2! Let me know in the comments which performance was your favorite, and I'll see you next week for the debrief of episode 3 and my full ranking of the first round: To the world!

Love, Swan