Okay, so this was supposed to come out on Saturday, but because of unavoidable circumstances my weekend ended up being packed and I couldn’t watch this or Alchemy of Souls. It’s only now that I’ve gotten some free time to watch this, so this is why it’s going up now.
If you want to catch up before reading the recap, you can watch the first episode in the embedded YouTube video!
At the end of the first episode, I thought that this would just be four episodes, but I read somewhere else that this is actually going to be eight episodes total. Plenty of time for the boys to fill up the &Ring!
At the start of the episode, we find out that the boys have actually been together for a month. How long did they tape this? Either way, the debut group of K, Nicholas, EJ, and Taki are sequestered in four different rooms, with instructions to wait for their members for the second mission.
The remaining trainees have already been pre-assigned their leaders. Team Taki is made up of Yuma, Maki, Hikaru; Tean EJ has Yejun, Harua, and Fuma; Team K has Jo, Minhyung, and Junwon; and Team Nicholas has Hayate and Gaku. Given how there doesn’t seem to be an obvious similarity between the members of each group, the four team leaders aren’t sure what songs they’ll be singing.
But we find out soon enough! Team K will be taking on TVXQ’s “Something,” while Team Nicholas will be performing Monsta X’s “Hero”. Meanwhile, Team Taki has Taemin’s “Sayonara Hitori” and Team EJ has Tomorrow x Together’s “Blue Hour (Japanese ver.)” Watch the music video for that below!
There’s a sequence where Team EJ tries to do aegyo and it’s a little funny because other than Yejun everyone just sucks at it. It does go on a little longer than I’d like but I can live with it!
Team Nicholas, meanwhile, is trying to be all muscly because it is Monsta X after all and they do a round of thigh wrestling and quite honestly I don’t get why this is such a thing but it’s funny to watch because the guys give good face!
In the training room for Team Taki, they’re doing jumps and stretching because the Taemin song is modern dance-inspired, but thankfully they have ballerino Hikaru with them. And he does seem like he has skills but I say this as someone who only watches ballet sporadically and doesn’t have a deep understanding of it so I may be wrong!
They have a quick montage of the guys practicing, which I have to say isn’t my favorite editing choice but they do need extra content for the audience to watch before the next episode so I guess I’d have to live with to get content like the dance practice below.
There’s a hilarious cushion race that happens as they reveal how the team order was determined and it is kind of refreshing that there isn’t much negativity in this show. There’s no in-fighting between the team members, and it doesn’t seem like nobody’s being strategic. It’s not like I’d want this for all competition shows, but for this group of mostly teens, this environment is already stressful enough so I’d like for them to be as less stressed as they can possibly be.
Speaking of stress, Junwon from K’s team had to bow out for some reason — they don’t explain why — and K’s team had to redo their whole routine for just three people. Spare these children any more stress!
Even more stressful is the show reveals they’ve filled up less than 10 percent of the &Ring during the first round, and they only have three more rounds to fill it up. I am guessing that not all of them will be debuting after all, and that they’ll start shedding members in the last four episodes? Stress!
That said, I’m pretty confident they’re going to fill it up since the accompanying Naver webtoon associated with them is already being teased. So at least the debut team is assured of a debut.
They’re not making it look like the debut’s assured though, because EJ’s team gets scathing assessments from the producers and once again these teens are stressed enough so let’s not have in-fighting included please.
But of course, narratives like this one means that redemption follows, and Team EJ redeems itself and gets a buttload of positive comments! If we ignore the teaser for the next episode where one of the trainees is crying we can fool ourselves into thinking this is a happy ending!
Ron Does Stuff 
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