Nizi Project: Season 2 (2020)

A Quality Survival Show

Nizi Project 2 is the second half of the survival show that resulted in the creation of the Japanese girl group NiziU ("Needs(y) You"). In this series the selected trainees from part one go to Seoul to train at JYP Entertainment and some of the women are ultimately chosen to debut with the group.

Unlike other survival shows, Nizi Project 2 does not emphasize the eliminations at all, and, in fact, almost all of the women are in seriously consideration for the group until the final episode. Instead, the focus is on training, preparation and performance with four new slots for puzzle pieces added to each of the trainee's necklace to be granted when each trainee "levels up" their skills. Once again, the necklace does not matter much because JYP can grant puzzle pieces pretty much whenever he wishes. Of course, it's pretty hard for some of the better candidates to show improvement since they were already performing at fairly high level, but no one would expect JYP to leave those trainees out of the final group, and so there's little suspense for those few.

JYP presents five sets of missions which are covered in sets of two episodes each, and once again the focus of the show remains on the preparation and the performances. Unlike most survival shows there is roughly a month of preparation and training time before each performance which is much more in line with the comeback cycle of modern K-pop groups and the additional time means that the performances are arguably of a higher quality than most survival shows though it must be said that some of these Japanese trainees here have had far less training time in general than their counterparts in the South Korean system who typically appear on survival shows.

We do get to see the interactions of the women in their dorms and in training than in the previous series, and we do get a few additional background segments. But, as in the previous series, the show spends most of its time on the preparation and performances. Thankfully as in the previous series, there are few if any product placement segments. One of the missions is performed in front of a studio audience who are, strangely, allowed to vote once before and once after JYP makes his pronouncements from his lofty desk (I'm not sure that this variation of voting is all that great of an idea since the audience is choosing between two options and so the people who change their minds nullify their own vote and those who don't essentially get two votes. But in no sense does the audience vote matter much in this case because no one's survival on the show is on the line at that point.)

Some Japanese-speaking JYPE talents serve as hosts and commentators for a few of the episodes, but, once again, this is mostly JYP's show, and once again he is mostly insightful and helpful with the occasional critique which seem overly harsh for what appear to be perfectly fine performances.

All in all the show is a fairly delightful promotion for what promises to be interesting foray of a K-Pop-style girl group into the the Japanese market. Several of the women who make the final group are extremely easy to root for and of similar talent and charisma to those in TWICE and IZ*ONE (which were both formed via similar survival shows).

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