The JYP girlgroup ITZY, which entered the Japanese market last month, is being criticized by local netizens for performing “worse than expected.”
Recently, a number of posts have been made on large Japanese communities such as 5ch and Twitter, saying, “ITZY’s choreography felt more plain than expected.” ITZY has been active in Japan recently, starting with their appearance on TV Asahi’s music program “Music Station” on the 12th of last month. Music Station, which first aired in October 1986, has been considered the most famous music program in Japan for 35 years.
ITZY also appeared on Nihon TV’s morning program “Sukkiri” to promote their new album. However, both performances of the group did not receive good responses locally. Hundreds of posts criticizing ITZY for “not showing the performance they showed in Korea” were made by Japanese on Twitter.
One Twitter user said, “We welcome ITZY’s activities in Japan very much,” but added, “Unlike what we expected, ITZY’s performance in Sukkri was very disappointing. Their choreography felt very loose compared to what I saw in their videos.” Referring to ITZY’s relying on AR (all recorded) rather than singing, some netizens strongly criticized, “If they had decided to focus on performance, they should have worked harder on the choreography. But ITZY didn’t even perform well.”
Criticism continued in the community “5ch“. In a post sharing ITZY’s stage video, Japanese netizens agreed, “Most Korean idols’ performances are impressive, but ITZY gives a weak feeling. All the members are pretty, but there is nothing else to see.”
However, unlike the above-mentioned evaluation, ITZY’s digital achievements are quite successful. Their Japanese debut album “IT’z ITZY“, which is scheduled to be released on Dec 22nd, topped the Amazon Japan Asian Pop Popularity Rankings and New Arrivals Rankings as of Dec 1st. Their pre-released track “WANNABE-Japanese ver.-” also ranked second on the Record Choke K-Pop Daily Chart and Line Music Song K-Pop Daily Top 100 Chart as of Nov 3rd.
In particular, in Japan Line Research’s “2021 Girl Group Popularity Rankings” announced on Nov 3rd, ITZY ranked seventh in the top 10 favorite female idol groups targeting teenage girls, and ranked tenth in the teenage boys category.
