Road To Kingdom Episode 7

Dropping some things I've learned since I first watched this episode nearly 2 years ago: Maybe it's Mnet's fault for what other fandoms felt was their way of shoving Pentagon's "sob story" down their throats or maybe it's the Cube curse of misguided fans punishing groups for a company's actions, but it always seemed to me like Pentagon got the short end of the stick in this show. I fell in love with them because of the show, though, so their day to shine finally came with "Daisy". I personally thought ONEUS's performance of "Be Mine" was top 3. The fact that deep-voiced Leedo pulled out his silky smooth singing for this and only Ravn rapped + Seoho's addition of the killer high note near the end... still gives me goosebumps. Finally, I'm reminded of TOO's struggles after the show (which inevitably led to them having to rename themselves to TO1). "That little bastard" is Woonggi, which you already know. I'm reminded that you really love those Mafia Dance videos, and Woonggi in the TO1 Mafia Dance of Son of Beast was the absolute best. I have mixed feelings about the voting, both for RtK and Kingdom. I understand you want to give power to outside votes, that's how you rope in viewers, but... it always ends up being a popularity contest instead of a fair competition. I really hate that.

Lunoki

I LOVED the choreo from Pentagon (thank you, Kino) for Follow, but i don't like song arrangement at all (sorry, Hui, i know it was hard for him to arrange it)

Marina Korab

My ranking when I watched was and still is exactly like yours, btw, though I could change ONEUS and ONF's positions as the third, maybe... This might be a bit TMI, but yeah, I agree with what you said about timelines. I'm older than you and my life is absolutely nowhere near where I wanted it to be. Comparison is a killer. I want to cry every time I see Kino cry because of this kind of thing because I've felt pretty much like that, and though I struggle less with that now, it hits hard. Thankfully Pentagon doesn't care as much these days, either. They have been talking about feeling freer and being able to do things they like, for Universe, and ignore mainstream audiences, and part of of what made them think like that was certainly, certainly the RtK experience... Basquiat. So, I hate the individual scores for this round. It doesn't make any sense to me unless I justify it as 'strategic voting' again (the same way the boyz and oneus got third in the pairings, which was unfair as well). To me, there is no way on Earth Pentagon's Follow deserved 5 out of 6 - how was that the second weakest? It belonged in the top 3. Sure, it was another hard-hitting song, but it came after soft, ballad-y and melodramatic Kill This Love and hyper and fresh Shine/Spring Snow, so the only other 'similar' one they'd done on the show had been Very Good -which was much more rock-heavy anyway. Two out of 4 is not 'too much' in my opinion.

C. M.

I actually have an account, and even though I click to download, when it gets to the end it fails

C. M.

I have tried twice, but when it gets close to the end I get a failure message. :(

C. M.

Pretty sure they have to be downloaded since I didn't split them up in parts back then

KpopPrince

It happened again - can only watch 1 hour of both episodes 6 and 7 :(

C. M.

I think someone did at some point! Definitely didn't know it while watching this though

KpopPrince

I dont know if anyone has pointed it out to you in the comments before, but i also found out recently, the girl (juliet) in the ONEUS Performance is Yuki from Purple Kiss :D

Yumo

I think if you download the videos it should play the whole thing. I don't have storage on my dropbox either but i'm still able to download the videos to my computer to play the whole thing. Hope that helps!

Nicoleirl

Great minds think alike. Those performances are also some of my favorites, I honestly just love the series and PENTAGON crushes it every time, it makes me happy! hihi

wowoooowow

it overlapped with mine! i requested both it’s live performances cause they are some of my fave performances ever hihi

Juuls

I typically break them up into two parts, but I didn't here because I'm more pressed to get these episodes out before Kingdom begins. Just downloading DB isn't a huge hurdle, though I wish I knew this before going with Dropbox. The reason I didn't choose Vimeo is because of their time limit constraints

KpopPrince

I don’t know if anyone has said this already, so I’m just going to bring it up just in case. The videos in dropbox only plays the preview of your videos (1 hour vid) and the only way you can play it through is if you have an account in dropbox with a space big enough to save it. So for viewers with no Dropbox or not in premium like me, we can only watch up to the 60 min mark of your vid.

Im catchin losses from all sides

LUC_Rambler

Wait!!! I can't agree with you about ONF. I think they are the best on this round ahahaa Oyeah, an important point about ONF's It's Raining: Rain was very popular last year around the time of Road to Kingdom. So the popularity factor is in favor of them. Also, the original song is basically pretty shit. So when they pulled it off greatly, it just wow-ed the Korean this time

Stanley Maximillian

Don't you dare hate on Space Jam

KpopPrince

heyyyy, I have never watched the animated Aladdin. And I do enjoy the live action one, not a masterpiece but it is enjoyable. Sorry for that (and I am 28 haha)

Stanley Maximillian

I have to admit that I don't really like Pentagon's performance. It is like what you said with boygroups. They usually show a hard hitting song and it becomes too much. This is exactly what I feel with Pentagon. But with that being said, they shouldn't be this low in the rank.....

Stanley Maximillian

I get mad every time I see this episode ahah. I think it is probably because for me in this miniround the good performance were good but the others were extremely underwhelming and the gap was really visible, so PENTAGON fifth was...a choice. You can absolutely debate top 3, but not less than that. I felt bad for Kino, he is young. I think Hui has seen a lot more and I really admire his perseverance and his mindset, as someone with similar but different background as you (thank you for sharing by the way, it's admirable you are still working towards your goal), I know life dos not work out as we expect it to, and having the strength to assess yourself and keep going after is not as easy as it looks. Especially since it not an isolated case. I did enjoy the performance a looot but to me the live vocals worked against PENTAGON, people are not used to it and people are not exactly flexible. But on an happier note, I was really happy to see ONF get first place, they deserved it with that performance, it had so much charisma! I also saw the YT reaction so ty! Glad you enjoyed both of them (and I choose my names to be unpronounceable, already used to it irl to my actual one). I chose the Jinho one because it was an interesting execution with great vocals rater than only belting in a mic as some of his other covers. I was surprised my Lovesick Boys request overlapped as I tried to suggest the randomest thing with some appeal but you never know in life!

wowoooowow

Since Pentagon were overall ranked in second place at this point, I think this was a perfect example of other groups purposely not voting for Pentagon because they were seen as competition. Like, eventhough you might think 'those idols will vote fairly', there's always gonna be a part in their brain that tells them to vote strategically, which I'm pretty sure is what happened with the votes here. No way in hell did they deserve 5th place this round. That's second to last!! How does that even make any sense? Like I've mentioned so many times before, I really wish they could've introduced a different judging system. Maybe 3 experts or something, with extra points for live singing aka for Pentagon every round. Someone mentioned earlier how kpop is very performance based, and sure it is, but that doesn't mean live vocals while performing shouldn't be praised even more. There's a reason why Pentagon was the only group able to sing live during the whole show. They balanced it out to their abilities. I could rant about this all day, but we all know they deserved better and that's most important. Poor Kino bby, we must protect

Juuls

I'm such a doofus, I just realized that I had to add the file to my dropbox in order to watch the whole thing. Anyhow, warms my heart to see someone feel similar towards Pentagon. It is also very troubling to think that there are people who have only seen the live action versions of Aladdin and Mulan...very troubling. But to extend an olive branch to zoomers, our generation did celebrate Space Jam as a passable movie...we took an L for that.

LUC_Rambler

While you're absolutely right that different groups have different skill sets and just because a group may be better with vocals rather than dancing or performance doesn't make them lesser, K-Pop in general is very performance based. On survival shows and in the industry for normal comebacks even a lot of it is performance heavy. I would like to see more live vocals in Kingdom (and we definitely will since BTOB is participating, they're mainly a vocal group rather than a dance group) BUT the amount of the performance aspect in RTK doesn't really bother me. The performances themselves are just so breathtaking and I already know that these groups have great vocals so it's fun to see performances you normally would NEVER see on, say, a comeback stage or concert. These intense performances excuse the minimal live vocals for me personally because when doing these you need to put less energy into either the singing or the dancing but then again i'm dramatic af and LOVE something that feels like a full on performance rather than just a song being performed ya know? Anyways, I can understand if you don't agree but I just wanted to add my two cents in since you've been saying the same thing about live vocals in like every single video lol

Cat R

I also felt that Pentagon was a better performance over TBZ ... but aside from that what you mentioned earlier about reaction to older music - I’m at the very least down being a fan who got into kpop over 10 years ago. There are some classics out there. And I’m also a huge fan of Stray Kids and I’m sure that there are more here. That’s how I found your channel in the first place. 💜

Thrashed Monbebe

"I really love that little bastard" I died lol. Btw the guy's whose reactions you love in ONF is Wyatt. We all love Wyatt lol and E-Tion is the runner up with his reactions.

KPOP Stan Sara

Now, again this is my personal opinion and I'm not dismissing anyone else's, but for me Pentagons cover lacked something and that's why I don't listen to it outside the show, but I can recognize a great performance. I was also shocked to hear they placed fifth in this round. And Follow really does seem like a difficult song to make sound like your own, it has such a distinctive sound to it. But again, Pentagon delivered beautifully. The Boyz never cease to amaze me. Just when I think they cannot top anyones performance, they do exactly that. I read somewhere that their company focused their money and The Boyz's activities on RTK and it really shows. Which brings me to another point. The fact that some groups (at least TOO and ONEUS) were promoting their debut/comeback and getting ready for new performances for RTK at the same time blows my mind. Great reaction!

sumi mia

I just finished Pentagon's performance - did you notice how LIVE those vocals were :) oooooof. To add all they did and the live vocals - like come on they deserved so much more....(I was more enraged the first time I saw it because I fell in love with ONF since RtK introduced me to them so I'm torn more when I watch this now)

KPOP Stan Sara

i am filled with rage even though it's been a while. Pentagon fucking slayed. i love the boyz and. ONF, but Pentagon took this round. they destroyed that stage. they blew me away/

claireisuche

ONF is one I'm most biased too, so they are absolutely my first pick. I was really proud of them making it this far into kingdom especially because they were probably the most unknown group out of the five haha. I think everyone can agree Pentagon and ONF make the best arrangements of the songs they cover, and that is personally what I'm more looking for, which is probably why I'm so drawn to both those groups

Ayeyassha

To this day, I still can't wrap my head around how Pentagon got that rank in their performance during this episode. They deserved way better than the rank they were given. Not to say the other groups didn't pull off great performances, of course not, but Pentagon's performance should have been at least top 3 that round. I don't want to say they were robbed cause that sounds a bit dramatic, but I have a hard time trusting that ranking.

JazzBeDamned