Produce Japan Girls trainees are quite bad compared to Korean Produce series

Korean Produce trainees were trainees of music agencies. They for sure received some training.

These Japanese girls mostly are commoners without any proper training.

The so-called trainers are not actually trainers. They do more of "directing" than training. So, those untrained trainees keep being untrained.

The voice in this show is very raw, no heavy edit.

I think it may also have to do with a difference of idol culture too.

How is this a shock? Haven't Japanese trainees been saying for years thats why they came to Korea to become idols instead? Even during Produce 48, the girls from AKB were all saying they didn't get any actual training despite debuting for years, your meant to learn on the job and the focus is cuteness not on skills which is why the first evals were horrible across the board.

Compare Sakura during Produce with now and you'll see a world of difference.

Somi and Sejeong are high bars to beat to be fair. They are like at the top of the industry in terms of star power and personality, not just in Produce.

Quote from Daisy_Queen

Ive always heard that kpop was about perfection and jpop was about improvement

It depends. Since the first season of Produce 101 that aired in 2019 with JO1 as the winner, many companies tried to go different ways with what to do and how to debut people. Before this, mostly only people under LDH or Johnny's had a logt of training. Johnny's sometimes had idols who trained up to 15 years before debut, which made people quit confused since you saw some groups being formed around when a few member had been trained for maybe 5 years and than instead of debuting them you see them sometimes joining events for years before they officialy debut. The boygroup Travis Japan for example was announced for the first time in 2012 after most member had been trainees between 1 and 3 years at that time and they only debuted in 2022. LDH on the other hand lets their people train 2-6 years, rarly even longer before they debut and you really see that as in for example how well THE RAMPAGE can dance since most of the member visited a dance class as kids before joining LDH as official trainees and now they are one of the best dancing JPop-group out there.

But from newer groups there is a big difference these days. Of cause the so called "underground idol" cullture still exists, that means small agencies who debut 1 or 2 acts without training them properly and also not really doing anything that could give the people exposure and makes them also not really earn much money since they often arn't promoted, mostly apear on cheap to even free events and earn no money from that. A former idol said in an interview that a girl in her group worked 3 jobs besides being an idol just so she could feed herself and pay rent.

The groups who arn't from a underground company and are not debuting as line of a specific styled company (as for example groups of the company WACK do have all quit the same weird but unique style) tend to be a lot more different noaways to what older groups of the same company looked like. I mean take a look at for example Avex, sure they do have a bunch oldschool sounding artists, because they focus more on debuting people instead of looking for what would count the most in debuting a successfull act, but you still see slightly differences with older and newer acts of the company. I mean look at for acts like Every Little Thing, Ayumi Hamasaki, SPEED and others, and now compare them to newer artists under Avex as like XG or Rikimaru, there is a big style difference troughtout the times. Sure companies like Avex still do debut acts with a more outdated style but the change is there and I think it mainly started when Avex begun to work with other companies as like SM, YG but also other Japanese companies as like LDH.

From seeing the debuts of new acts you also see often a list on how long they trained before in their profiles and mostly in new boygroups you can see a lot people who had been trained trought LDH, Johnny's or Avex before and some of them even have trained there for up to 10 years. One member of the boygroup BE:FIRST for example was a trainee under Avex for 9 years before debuting in the company called BMSG.

I think the way things change are there, however the majority of fast debuting and disbanding groups, the big underground scene in JPop and the will of mostly girls to debut are the thing why still so many debut with little experiences. In Boygroups it's a lot different since there arn't too many male debuts in Japan and if, than often from companies who took time to train them or work with people who got trained in another company or trought vocal and dance classes. And also the way how more newer companies try to set them up to mostly debut boygroups is also a big change. The CEO of BMSG, the Japanese Rapper SKY-HI also said that he wants to try to give a change to how people view JPop, especially for boys who think there wouldn't be a chance for them to debut in Japan. He said "I saw so many boys who said they think they can't make it since there are mostly only girlgroups on the market and so they all belived they should go to Korea instead of trying it in Japan" and you really see that when you look at one of the boygroups he debuted called MAZZEL where 2 members thought they would do better if they would go to Korea instead, of which one even tried to make his way to go to Korea. Especially mixed boys tend to also think they should go to Korea instead of Japan, mostly since they know Korean, grew up with KPop, tend to also think there are too many girlgroups and no chance for them in Japan,...

If you ask many newer groups, especially those who are popular and not associated to acts like AB48, Nogizaka46 or similiar than you often do find groups where people have experiences trought training.

I'm more surprised that the Produce series still exists

I thought Japan would be angry about the rigging stuff

they're not trainee.
its like a real audition.
anyone can enter. iirc

Is there any contestant familiar to ifans other than Kokoro?

I do think it's just the lack of " idol" training for the Japanese girls vs Korean.

Xg got trained and they can easily out do majority of active korean girl groups.

It's been known Japanese trainees/idols do not have the "perfection" performance standards of Kpop, but you can still have your charms and star power which is what OP is referencing (some is just flat out visual if we're being honest).

JYP has said this before, but being an idol is more than just singing and dancing. It's what you bring to the table to attract people and if that's going to be personality, variety skills or other things then so be it. I've only seen clips of this new show, but there doesn't seem to be that star power that you get in the Korean Produce show.

Quote from Dreamer95

Is there any contestant familiar to ifans other than Kokoro?

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