Netizens firmly believe that YG is making a secret move to fire back to Mnet after the controversy surrounding iKON being treated badly by Mnet in ‘Kingdom’.
Currently, ‘Kingdom: Legendary War’ (abbreviated: ‘Kingdom’) has aired to the second episode. The show is only at the first stage, but the competition and investment of 6 groups The Boyz, Stray Kids, ATEEZ, BTOB, SF9, and iKON made a strong impression on viewers. However, the controversy surrounding unfair treatment has emerged. This time it seems that the target is iKON – a group from YG.
Accordingly, in the first episode of ‘Kingdom’, iKON surprised everyone by standing at No. 6 in the preliminary round. However, this could also be due to the fans’ votes, so the controversy did not break out. However, until episode 2 with the first official round ‘To The Word’, many people began to suspect that Mnet did not really treat iKON well.
In the round of ‘To The World’, iKON chose to perform the remix of the group’s two hit songs ‘Love Scenario’ and ‘Killing Me.’ Although the group performed very well, many viewers still felt iKON’s stage was quite simple compared to many other groups even though they were from the Big 3. Soon after, netizens claimed that Mnet treated iKON unfairly by not informing the group of a change in the maximum budget for staging.
In addition to the simple stage setting, many people realized that there were some camera errors during iKON’s performance recording. The controversy just started, but suddenly less than a day after episode 2 was broadcast, YG Entertainment surprised fans by releasing iKON’s dance practice video for their 1st round performance.
One netizen was convinced in an online community post, “YG dropping a video early Saturday morning? It’s never been known to happen. They were mad at Mnet’s s*** camera work, that’s the only explanation.”
Many fans agreed after watching iKON’s practice video version, that several scenes from their ‘Kingdom’ performance did not align with the “original”, particularly in the field of camera work. If you watched the full episode of ‘Kingdom’, you may have noticed how the shadow of the overhanging camera completely obscured member Donghyuk’s face during one dance scene.
Next, there was a scene where the camera suddenly changed the camera angle unnecessarily. This “took away” the ‘smoothness’ of iKON’s performance – something that fans only realized after watching the dance practice video.
Then many people even compared the stage of iKON with the stage of The Boyz (because in episode 2 only the stage of iKON, The Boyz, and BTOB was announced). Accordingly, the better the quality of The Boyz stage, the poorer the recording quality of iKON’s stage is.
Many netizens believe that YG suddenly worked so hard that it posted iKON’s dance practice video to throw shade to Mnet. In the dance practice video, thanks to the standard camera angle and better lighting, iKON’s performance was even more attractive. It seems that YG also wants fans to see it instead of watching Mnet’s poor-quality video.
Netizens commented,
“I’m so mad at the camera work.”
“Yeah watching the practice video I was like, but they didn’t show that part in ‘Kingdom’?”
“Those cameramen can’t do their jobs at all. What’s the point of rehearsals then?”
“WTF Mnet…?”
“What’s the point of smoothing out relations with YG after all this time if you’re just gonna piss them off again…”
“Anyone could tell that the camera shadow in that scene was just a big mess up.”
“This is just so ridiculous.”
“I think YG released the practice video to be like, ‘You f***ed up’.”
“If you do wrong to the one thing that YG considers their pride, stage production, then you better be ready to pay the consequences.”
“They literally ‘killed’ the stage…”
“Yup, YG is pissed.”
Source: tinnhac, allkpop
