Just to be clear I like both Yuna and Lily, and I'm not trying to directly compare one vs another. This is more of a discussion about roster building by JYPE since both ITZY and NMIXX are from the same company. Lily is older than Yuna and had been a JYPE trainee for longer so the age wouldn't have been an issue. In fact Lily is closer in age to the rest of ITZY and Yuna is closer in age to NMIXX members. Even skillset wise I feel like Lily was exactly what ITZY was missing: a super strong main vocal. Lia is great but she had a lot on her shoulders: she needed to both keep up with superior dance skills of her members and also fulfill the role of the main vocalist. Having Lily to split "duties" would have helped a lot. And while I don't think Lily was on the dancing level of Yeji, Chaeryeong or even Ryujin, she would have been good enough to keep up. Obviously Yuna was also the visual of ITZY, but it's not like she has been utilized as one a lot. Yeji and Ryujin were often the centres and they were also basically visuals, especially Ryujin who was the by far most popular participant during Mixnine. And Yuna would have been a great centre/visual for NMIXX who already had a great vocal line-up, so not having Lily wouldn't have been a huge blow to their singing. I feel like Yuna would have had way more impact on NMIXX than on ITZY especially with additional years of training. Both ITZY and NMIXX turned out to be fairly successful so it's not like JYPE made a mistake or anything like that. I'm just curious about the possible reasoning for Yuna in ITZY and Lily in NMIXX and not the other way around, since in my mind I feel like the fit would have been practically perfect if they swapped the groups they debuted in.
