IVE’s rookie rival is suspected of plagiarizing BLACKPINK, BTS’s junior group, and SM’s artists?
Seems like JYP’s new girl group is about to take over IVE’s title of “the problematic rookie”.
JYP’s rookie girl group – NMIXX – is in the center of attention on SNS due to its line-up which is full of visuals and talented members and a well-invested background from its big agency. It’s not hard to see JYP is putting its all into this group just by looking at the detailed promotion plan since pre-debut. On Jan 28th, NMIXX uploaded its 1st official trailer to prepare for their official debut in February, driving K-Pop fans crazy just by the girls’ visual.
However, as the heat from the first impression has passed, netizens start to look more closely at NMIXX’s potential, which leads to many controversies regarding the group’s name, logo, concept that reminds the public of many famous names in the K-Pop industry at the moment.
A “weird” coincidence in terms of the members’ names and group concept between NMIXX and BLACKPINK
Ever since the members’ names were revealed, many have discussed about how 3 out of 7 NMIXX members have similar names to the BLACKPINK members. Specifically, Lily reminds them of Lisa, Jinni is quite similar to Jennie while Jiwoo is not much different from Jisoo.
However, this cannot be seen 100% as a copycat move from JYP even though to many netizens, JYP seems to be obsessed with BLACKPINK as its girl group model. Fans are defending the new girl group, claiming that both Jiwoo and Lily use their real names as stage names. As in Jinni’s case, her real name is Choi Yunjin, which perfectly explains why her stage name is Jinni.
This controversy was believed to have come to an end but then NMIXX member Lily was suddenly accused by BLINKs of imitating Lisa‘s outfit and hairstyle in her cover of the song Finesse (Bruno Mars). This image of Lily reminds netizens of Lisa at ‘The Show concert’ in January 2021, causing them once again to think that JYP is deliberately copied BLACKPINK’s concept.
Be accused of copying SM’s music style and aespa’s logo?
Each K-pop company has a very unique style of music. For example, TWICE and ITZY have showed JYP-like spirit from the very beginning with many cheerful songs like Cheer Up, Dalla Dally, What Is Love?, Wannabe,…. However, NMIXX’s music concept is very… SM. This similarity is thought to be the result of JYP’s collaboration with producer Dem Jointz, who once composed music for NCT.
In addition, NMIXX’s logo has the same color palette and concept as aespa’s. Although their logo shape is completely different, the blue-purple palette accidentally gives the feeling that they are designed by the same designer.
Be accused of copying LOONA and Enhypen
Specifically, the New Frontier: Declaration trailer that JYP released for NMIXX on January 26 was accused of plagiarizing LOONA‘s MVs Why Not? and PTT. Netizens believe that the concept’s introduction film of NMIXX copies a lot of scenes in LOONA’s MVs.
There is an opinion that these similarities are inevitable because Digipegi – a video production company that used to work with LOONA is the same agency that created the trailer for NMIXX. However, the CEO of the company personally corrected that New Frontier: Declaration was not a product produced by Digipegi, the company only contributed to creating the debut trailer released a few days ago.
The previous trailer – New Frontier: Declaration was also accused of plagiarizing the concept of ENHYPEN. In addition, the logo of NMIXX is also commented to be extremely similar to the logo of ENHYPEN’s fandom, ENGENE.
It can be seen that NMIXX has not officially debuted yet, but has already been entangled in countless controversies. It seems that all of JYP’s efforts only have the negative effect as netizens increasingly believe that the company uses tricks to attract public attention for NMIXX.
IVE has previously been regarded as a good example of “dirty media playing.” Starship purposefully promoted IVE as a group of “Jang Wonyoung and friends,” resulting in harsh criticism aimed at the female idol and the entire group during their first month of debut. Is NMIXX ready to dethrone IVE to become Kpop’s next scandalous rookie?
