Hey all, does anyone remember Z-Stars? Ya know, that Asian Pop group that debuted in 2019, had like 6 songs, then vanished into the void to be forgotten by 2020. Well, I forgot about them too, but I legit remember when they debuted and all the hype that was around them. If you don’t remember this group, I don’t blame you. Like I said, I’d forgotten all about them until a certain video popped up in my sidebar recently. Here is a link to the video, and I highly recommend you guys watch the video first and then come back to this blog, as it explains everything about the group’s origins and their downfall (meaning I don’t have to waste time here doing that).

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ABdwNU7EoMw

Did you watch it? Cool! Now you know pretty much all there is to know and all of the most important bits. So what am I writing this blog for then? What do I have to say that the video didn’t already say? Am I only writing this blog to ride some hype train and try to get attention from someone else who brought this topic up from the dead? Hell no, cuz ain’t nobody about to read this blog XD.

Well, don’t get me wrong, the video handled the subject great, but there’s one tiny thing I wanted to add my two cents to. Because I kept seeing comments all over the place saying, the same thing; not just in replies to the video, but in old comments for the groups’ official social medias.

I’m about to say something that I KNOW the original fans of this group don’t want to hear. They don’t want to hear it, because it’s easier to believe the alternative, instead of just accepting the facts. The facts are that the pandemic didn’t kill this group. Repeat after me: The pandemic did not kill this group. Bad choices from the companies long before the pandemic was even a thing killed this group. I’m here to argue that there could have been NO pandemic and Z-Stars still would have failed unless MAJOR changes were made to their marketing strategy. But if all else continued the same, Z-Stars would have eventually disbanded regardless, no pandemic necessary.

Note: As you heard in the video, Z-Project was technically created by the actions of multiple differently companies. Even though the video suggests it is 99% likely that Zenith Media Conents was the 'main' company who controlled what the Z-Stars group did, I'm going to always refer to the forces behind Z-Stars as ' the companies' plural in this blog. But feel free to replace that with Zenith, if you want for the sake of simplicity.

In the video, the Youtuber states his own theories for what went wrong and I agree with much of what he says, and I’d like to go into some greater detail with my own beliefs.

The biggest issue with this group is that despite calling themselves Z-pop and Asian Pop and Global Pop and blah blah blah, the companies CLEARLY wanted to sell this group to K-Pop fans. They were looking for K-Pop stans to follow and hype up this group. Whether they were Korean or international didn’t matter, it is obvious they wanted to appeal to K-pop stans. If you look at their old Youtube videos, many of them had Korean subtitles on them. And notably, in their Christmas song, there is a part where all of the members say different greetings and expressions of love in their native language and they end it all off with ‘Sarangehae’. Even in the behind the scenes shooting video, Priyanka greets Mahiro with a hug with the latter saying ‘saranghae’. This wouldn’t have been done if they weren’t trying to appeal at least slightly to a Korean audience, so obviously they were expecting or at least hoping for a large number of Koreans to be watching their stuff and following their group. Companies who want to appeal to a certain demographic will often have their idols insert their way into that group one way or another. Want to appear to westerners? Send the idols to western talk shows, news shows, late night shows, and tell them to speak English. Want them to appeal to Japanese audiences? Sign them up with Avex and have them learn the language, do Japanese releases, and concerts. It’s so obvious that the companies wanted to do this, with their target being Koreans and global k-pop fans.

And yet, despite that, the companies made the incredibly mind boggling decision to release all of the groups songs in English and ONLY English. None of their songs are actually in Korean which, you know, most Korean fans are going to want to listen to. This right here is one of the biggest reasons the group failed. The fact that they tried to create this group to appeal to Koreans but didn’t release a song in their language. They didn’t even make Korean versions of the songs to be used for music shows. And the members didn’t even have to be fluent in the language for that, they could have just lip-synched. But that’s another issue; none of the members spoke Korean. All of them had their own languages, but they all united under English, and sadly they weren’t all even fluent there either. That said, many of them were pretty conversational at least, and several members could easily get through English interviews for the most part. So you’d think they would have done something with that. Hm, if only there was some type of English language based K-Pop outlet they could have been associated with….a public broadcasting agency of sorts….(foreshadowing)

So anyway, since they had no Korean songs, and didn’t even speak Korean, they weren’t able to do any of the traditional Korean promos such as going on Weekly Idol/Idol Room, music shows, or radio shows for Korean or international fans to follow. Listen, K-pop fans are lazy. I would know, I was one for 7 years. They don’t want to have to do work to find idols or groups to stan. They want the company to serve that up on a silver platter for them in the form of sending them on popular shows where they might see their other faves. But Z-Stars couldn’t be on any of these shows or do any of the most common Korean promotions, so there was no way for them to gain K-Pop fans. And all of this was without a pandemic to stop them. The companies made this crazy choice.

Now I will disagree with the Youtuber and many older fans who feel it was also an issue that there was no Korean member in the group. I’m gonna make a controversial statement and say that I think they could have gotten by with no Korean member. TBH, as long as all of the members could at least speak the language enough to get by, respect the culture, and have likeable personalities; I could see them fairing fine without a Korean member. Of course, they couldn’t speak Korean so most fans feel a Korean member would have certainly helped them appeal to Koreans simply by being able to speak to them. But considering we’re living in an age where you can get ‘K-pop groups’ made of literally all Caucasian people on music shows, I don’t see why this fully Asian group wouldn’t be able to do fine, just so long as they actually spoke/sang in Korean for the most part.

But being able to speak a decent amount of English, you’d think they’d AT LEAST have them go on English based K-pop shows geared to i-fans like After School Club or Simply Kpop. Now, yes I know, THEY AREN’T A K-POP GROUP. However, I’d argue that at the very least if they had a Korean version of their main song they could have promoted, it could have been plausible enough for them to at least ATTEMPT to go on one of these shows. Also, Z-Stars did appear K-Sound on Arirang Radio in two instances and Z-Girls did sing their (English) songs on there. So if they were allowed on that show twice with no Korean song, SURELY they could have made it on ASC or Simply K-pop.

Actually, if anything, the companies seeking out a partnership with Airirang would have been brilliant! Okay, remember that foreshadowing from 1 minute ago…I want you to hear me out. Airirang is a network just like any other. And while international K-Pop fans may only know them for Simply K-Pop and After School Club, they did indeed show other types of unique and interesting programing. And all of it was in English to be accessible to Koreabo- I mean, I-fans. They have numerous variety shows covering a vast range of topics (interior design, giving tours in Korea to foreigners, food, etc), gameshows, the news, basic programming focusing on technology, Korean culture, and things like that, and so much more. And their broadcasting tends to change frequently. So just imagine if Z-Project got Z-Stars onto Airirang as representatives for uniting Asian culture in Korea or something deep and poetic like that. They could have had them in multiple roles and promoted them across the network. The members could have been announcers, simply announcing what show as coming on next every hour. Imagine if they could be guest hosts for Simply K-Pop or After School Club once in a while (after all, the hosts were idols). And imagine if their Youtube only variety/webshows were AIRED ON AIRIRANG. Every day, thousands of i-fans would be able to have Z-Stars content served up to them on a silver platter and all they’d need to do would be to turn their TVs on. All day, they’d see and hear the Z-Stars probably around 20 times if not more. The random short videos where we learn about the members, hear the members sing random songs, and do things like teaching the fanchant could have all been aired in random intervals during the day. Most shows lasted around 45 minutes to an hour, with some smaller 15 minute broadcasts and tiny advertisements being played between shows. They could have arranged for Z-Stars Youtube content to be those short broadcasts and ads in between shows, allowing viewers to see EVEN MORE of them. And of course, if the Z-Stars did guest on Simply K-Pop, they could have requested their songs to be played throughout the episode! (Simply K-Pop usually plays random, though mainly new, songs throughout the show). So many wonderful opportunities and yet the companies just didn’t take advantage.

Again, a pandemic did not stop them from being able to do these things; the companies just seemed to think that the Youtube was enough to promote the kids outside of the busking and country hopping.

And let’s not stop there, as there were even more missed opportunities. There were many comments from fans back then expressing hope that Z-Stars could perform at MAMA as they were known for hosting events in other Asian countries and inviting foreign guests like Keyakizaka 46, so it’s not like the performers needed to be K-pop artists, Korean, or sing Korean songs. Granted, I still think that if these opportunities had arisen, they should have produced Korean versions of their songs to sing there, but it wouldn’t have been horrendous to just sing in English. Not that it matters as Z-Stars didn’t perform at MAMA or any other end of year show sadly. And what exactly were they doing during this time? Seems they were busy releasing a Christmas song weeks before the actual holiday, doing promo events in other countries, and focusing their attention on the other big thing that actually killed this group (more on that later).

This is another big issue. The companies focused on all of these smaller events like busking instead of focusing on building a big fanbase through major events. A lot of time was spent country hopping across the member’s native regions as ‘promo’ rather than, you know, going on Music Bank or something! As stated in the video, the group would hop from country to country to do some activities for a week as their primary way to ‘promote’. The vast majority of their content came from their own Youtube channel, which was a problem. Casual fans aren’t going to subscribe to the channel of a group they haven’t become fully interested in yet. They’re going to just look for things like live stages and variety appearances to try to get to know the members casually over time. So focusing everything on the Youtube channel wasn’t the best move. Don’t get me wrong, this can have its benefits for ESTABLISHED groups or at least new groups with a decent online following who’ll make memes off of them and spam comment sections about them everywhere they go (we all know who), but Z-Stars weren’t that. TBH, they could have been, and heck, considering how 2019 was in terms of internet K-Pop stans with literally everyone and their grandma talking about K-Pop on twitter, you’d think they would have easily become ‘that group’ everyone just jumped on the bandwagon for. But it seems like there just wasn’t that much desire for people to follow them outside of traditional and expected K-Pop group activities (which there were none of).

Furthermore, their Youtube stuff should have been small percentage of content, not majority. Z-Stars only really existed for the year of 2019 and their channel has 215 videos! Over 200 videos and most of it is random garbage. Not to be rude, but c’mon, most of the videos are things like reading comments on their videos, learning slang terms from the member’s countries, unboxing their own album, personality tests, learning the song’s fanchant (idk why this even existed considering the main people watching this video would never get to see them perform), getting to know the members, vlogging, cuts from their self-made ‘reality/variety shows’, and so on. Yes they had the MVs, their dance practices, behind the scenes stuff, concert footage, and so on, but the majority of the videos are just random things like Halloween dance practices. (And yes, I know that is a K-Pop trend and is pretty harmless, but still it isn’t necessary in the grand scheme of things). The group should have been doing music shows throughout the week, not vlogs. And getting to know the members and personality stuff should have come through variety shows on TV, not their Youtube series.

And you know what makes this even more annoying? The fact that these people debuted with a KOREAN SHOWCASE! As mentioned in the video, Z-Stars had this big showcase in Korea with well-known K-Pop groups showing up to perform! AND it was broadcast on KBS World and even Airirang TV! If they could set this up, I just don’t believe they couldn’t have set up variety appearances and music show performances. They clearly recognized the importance of bringing out K-Pop stars to introduce their group to K-Pop fans. This literally shows a desire for K-Pop stans to follow this group. And yet, once they were debuted, they decided to just never do any major Korean events again. Please make it make sense!

So with all of that in mind, you won’t be shocked to hear that views decreased from debut to comeback, which is likely because a decent chunk of viewers were K-pop stans who were curious enough to check them out due to the initial hype surrounding their debut and were hoping to see more of them. But of course, that didn’t happen because of everything I mentioned above. So it’s possible that many viewers just weren’t interested enough to come back, but more likely they probably forgot Z-Stars existed due to NO PROMOS to show them off anywhere, meaning they were relying on the already existing small fandom, which just wasn’t enough yet. Seriously, how could everything go so wrong? Why did the companies do NOTHING to promote this group to the fanbase they clearly wanted to follow them? Again, it matters not whether they called themselves Z-Pop, K-pop, J-Pop, C-Pop, lollipop, ABCDEFG-Pop, or whatever else. THEY WANTED TO APPEAL TO K-POP FANS. If you want to appeal to K-pop fans, you need to promote your group the way K-Pop groups are promoted so those fans will find them, see them, and remember them.

And can I just go on a quick tangent on how Z-Stars’ companies were pretty against referring to the group as a K-pop group (considering they weren’t), when they wanted to be unique and cool and special and #z-P0p. But all of a sudden, when it was convenient for promoting the kids to K-pop stans, then they could be called a K-Pop group with no objections. There are a few old videos out there which specifically refer to Z-Stars as a K-Pop group, such as one where Sid and Priyanka are interviewed as “the first Indian K-Pop idols”. But even in the literal video, Priyanka specifies that they were Z-Pop and NOT K-Pop idols, and yet the interviewer doesn’t seem to care, and the companies didn’t seem to care considering the title and description to this day STILL refers to Priyanka and Sid as “The first Indian K-Pop idols” and I’ve seen no evidence to suggest this bothered the company. Now don’t get me wrong, obviously the channel determined what the video was titled and probably intentionally went for the clickbait, but the companies surely should have been notified about the video before it was to be uploaded. Surely they would have had some control over how they could describe their idols. And yet, no correction was made aside from fans in the comments. Another video actually DOES correctly note that Z-Project was Z-Pop and not K-Pop….and yet they still imply that they are a K-Pop group in the video title, so again why didn’t the companies stop this? At the very LEAST this is clickbait, which the companies should not have wanted their artists to be a part of. It just feels like the companies were totally fine with Z-Stars being lumped into K-Pop if it meant it could get them some promotion from youtubers with decent followings….cuz ya know, the companies doing the work to promote the group was just too much…

Anyhoo, those comeback songs themselves were pretty decent; Streets of Gold in particular is great and I’m sure many GG stans would love it. Holla Holla was certainly something BG fans would thirst ove- I mean, enjoy. (These boys were just teens here, remember that!) Regardless, none of these issues can be blamed on a pandemic; all of stemmed from bad choices which destroyed any chance of the group gaining hype.

Another big issue was the huge popularity gap between Z-Girls and Z-Boys. To put it frank, Z-Girls were miles more popular than Z-Boys. The debut and comeback MVs for the girls are sitting at 9 and 7 million views respectively as of the writing of this blog. Z-Boys debut and comeback MVs are sitting at 4 and 3 million views respectively. If you go back and watch initial reaction videos at the time, you’ll see that most people who first found out about these people only reacted to Z-Girls or they’d react to Z-Girls first and then Z-Boys after; sometimes even in later videos. And just looking at the reactors, most people clearly enjoyed What You Waiting For (Girls) much more than No Limit (Boys).

Most people preferred Z-girls for their catchy songs which had way more replay-ablity and nicer MVs. Z-boys songs were clearly a step below the girls. The songs weren’t the easiest on the ears, nor did they have a super catchy chorus (though I admit Holla Holla’s is miles better than No Limit’s). The MVs also weren’t the best and it’s clear that Z girls got bigger budget each time, especially Streets of Gold’s MV. Many people were picking biases for Z-Girls, all of the videos featuring them to this day have more views than Z-Boys, and even now if you see former fans of the groups, when talking about the potential the groups had, most people focus on Z-Girls being more likely to go big. Hell, some of them straight up talk like they were willing to sacrifice Z-Boys if it just meant we could have kept Z-Girls. There’s also the matter of visuals, where most fans felt Z-Girls had the more visually appealing members. No offense to Z-Boys of course, I’m not saying that I find the girls more attractive, that’s just want it was for the fans. Priyanka especially was easily the most popular member due to her looks. And this is just the tip of the iceberg.

Remember when I mentioned the groups going on K-Sound? Well, Z-Girls were the only ones to actually perform their songs on air. Or at the very least if Z-Boys did sing, there’s no footage of it anywhere on Youtube. Now, let’s be real, Z-Boys’ songs are…not all too fitting for singing causally on a radio show. Their releases were edgy dance songs with loud, chant lyrics. Causal pop songs and ballads are more fitting for something where you’re just sitting down in a chair and singing to the song. Which is probably why Z-Girls were the only ones to actually sing. But they could have literally just played the songs rather than having them sing live, and I’m really hoping they did and there’s just no footage of it. Otherwise, this was just more to show the girls being in the spotlight while the boys were more in the background.

And I think the best example of this is in the Christmas song, which was their last release and the only MV to feature all the stars together (not counting the documentary-like Our Galaxy video). The Music Video for It’s Christmas is basically Z-Girls featuring Z-Boys. I’m dead serious, go watch the MV and tell me it isn’t Z-Girls featuring Z-Boys. Don’t wanna go look it up, well I’ll explain it here.

The MV opens with 3 ZG members (Vanya, Bell, and Priyanka). After their part, 2 ZB members (Josh and Roy) come in for their part. Then another ZG member (Carlyn) sings a line. After her, Vanya and Sid come in to sing, meaning there are 2 girls and 1 boy on screen. Then Joanne and Perry pop up for their lines. And after that, ANOTHER GIRL, Queen comes up, making it 4 girls and 2 boys on screen. And you’d think a boy would come in now but NOPE, Vanya sings another line and then Priyanka come back in to sing again!

Next up we get 2 boys (Roy and Blink) for a small part, and from there it’s pretty even with 2 boys and 2 girls on screen for the next sections (Roy, Josh, Priyanka and Bell). Then Queen and Gai enter for their parts, and finally, Mavin comes in for the second rap, making it the only time there are more boys on screen than girls. All members then come on screen for that part where they all say greetings in their native languages, and the girls are strategically placed in front of the boys. Now I know what you’re thinking, ‘Well duh the ladies are in front because women are shorter than men and they need to be seen’. I mean, the girls are just hunched over, they aren’t even standing up. They could have put some girls up front and some in the back, or have the people up front sit in chairs or something. But no, they made sure to have the girls in front.

From here on, things remain pretty equal with the same number of boys and girls on screen for the rest of the video (Joanne, Queen, Mahiro, Gai, Blink, and Perry do the last verse and then the rest of the members enter the scene), but it should be noted that as all the members start entering the scene, the girls are all brought in first before the boys. And then, once again, the video ends with the group standing all together with the girls hunched over in front while the boys are in the back. I know you’ll say I’m reaching at this point, but really, small things like this show that Z-Girls was the priority while Z-Boys were seen as the lesser important ones. And naturally, the girls also sing most of the song, though to be fair, the song does lend itself to their style and voices more than the boys.

So this was another big issue, and of course there wasn’t much that could have been done to give the boys more attention…I mean aside from PUTTING THEM ON K-VARIETY!! And this is pretty harmful, because boygroups really need that established fanbase to support them. Many of them are fine suriving without the general public. Girl groups on the other hand are usually safe with catchy songs since their concepts appeal more to most people, hence why Z-Girls did pretty well, as their songs were pleasing to listen to. But Z-Boys  had a pretty lackluster first song, hence they couldn't start the buildup to an established group of fans right off the bat. They neded to do it through their other projects until the comeback came. A song like Holla Holla would have actually been better to start with as it weould have certainly attracted a fanbase. But since the first song performed so poorly AND because the boys had no Korean variety/music shows they could go on, Z-Boys took a major hit in not getting a fanbase like Z-Girls did. This was why Holla Holla did worse than No Limit despite most fans prefering the former song. They didn't have any dedicated fangirls who would support the song just becuase it was their boys regardless of what they thought of it. Clearly the companies did not know how to get a fangirl support squad despite clearly striving to appeal to the typical K-popboygroupfan.png., which is something you REALLY should know if you want to manage a boygroup. 

And, if that wasnt enough, Z-Stars second album features a song by 3 members of Z-Girls, almost like a subunit, in addition to the other main songs. Z-Boys did not have any equivalent. But due to this fact, I won't be counting this with the group's other songs as it really doesn't fit in with the group's concept. Again, this is just to highlight how Z-Girls were given more than Z-Boys.

But here is the biggest issue that truly ruined Z-Stars. No pandemic, but rather the decision to announce the 2^nd generation of Z-Stars a whopping FOUR months after debut. One song and one MV for each group in existence, and they announced that the 2^nd generation was already on the way. You know those couples who are expecting a baby, and the second that baby is born they start talking about baby names for their next baby? That’s like this.

Can you just imagine if a company out there, let’s say SM debuted F(x), then two days later announced that Red Velvet would be debuting in 2 weeks. It is unimaginable, and yet, this nugu af random company trio was doing this with their brand new experimental group. At least in the example I gave, SM actually has the money to do this type of if they wanted. Literally what the hell is some brand new company smoking to think they could pull this off?

As mentioned in the video, the entire thing was made into a survival show type thing and by the end, the winners were guaranteed the opportunity to fly out to Korea to being their training. This nonsense went on throughout most of that year, meaning the budget that should have been going solely to the existing Z-Stars was being divided between them and the second generation. During Z-Stars Thai promotions (where btw, the company put them on interviews and variety and had them doing the things they should have ALSO BEEN DOING IN KOREA!) at the end of November, and literally the day before the It’s Christmas MV came out, the official Z-Stars Youtube channel uploaded a video called “Z-Stars are seniors now”. Like bro, no they aren’t? They just debuted at the beginning of the year. You guys recruiting new rookie trainees early af doesn’t make them seniors when at the time they had a whopping two songs to each group’s name and one group song coming the next day.

And by the way, this is what I was talking about earlier when I said the group was doing other things instead of trying to book a slot for Korean end of year shows. Like I said, they announced this senior stuff in November, meaning this was their focus instead of trying to book Z-Stars for MAMA or something. WHY? The company could have been securing a spot for Z-Stars to perform on a major stage to close out the year. Instead Z-Stars was doing projects in Thailand while the company was possibly pouring any money they got into all of the stuff for Gen 2.

The decision to do this was beyond stupid, and I have no clue what was in these peoples’ minds. You don’t start planning a Gen 2 for a group that hasn’t even been around for half a year. The existing kids had no notoriety yet. They weren’t famous or anything. They were already struggling due to not being able to promote in Korea, literally who would think that it was a good move to put time and money into scouting for new trainees when that money could have been spent focusing on the Z-Stars. Most importantly, they could have been trying to get some Korean promos going!

But no, they decided that starting this new generation so soon after the first just had to be done, and I can’t understand why. This was so not needed. It’s not like Z-Stars burst through the gates with millions of fans and they were Super Junior level stars and everyone was loving them and following them and eagerly awaiting their next activity from the get go. Outside of that initial interest, barely anyone was talking about them, especially not the people they wanted to be talking about them (ahem, K-Pop stans!). Maybe, MAYBE if that had happened, I could understand them THINKING about a future gen 2, but certainly not attempting to start scouting recruits! But the fact that barely anyone was talking about these people and the companies still thought it was a good idea to find these rookies is pure insanity. I seriously wonder if they just THOUGHT there would be enough causal K-pop fans to look at them and talk about them, to actually gain the group popularity without the companies needing to do jack , thus allowing said companies to work on this Generation 2, but of course that did not happen. And alas, many fans were upset over this decision to create a whole show around building Gen 2 when Gen 1, didn’t even have 5 songs to each groups name yet…

This is the issue with these trendy groups who desperately need gimmicks and wacky concepts to get attention. The need to keep doing more and more to keep the public interested. “Hey you like this mixed Asian global whatever group? Well guess what, soon there will be MORE of them”. The only issue is that barely anyone was even interested in the first generation of Z-Stars. Sure, there was some curiosity in the very beginning, but without any Korean variety shows or music performances to put the kids out there, Z-Stars had to rely on existing fans and the material from other countries (and lets be real, casual fans weren’t watching that content). And understandably, these fans were not happy with the choice to start scouting for new recruits so soon. I think the companies felt they really had something going there and wanted to build an empire. I mean, they did have an interesting idea going on, the only issue is that an interesting idea means nothing if no one aside from hardcore fans can follow them easily. And then to add to all of this by talking about new people being recruited so soon? That’s actually a big turnoff for seasoned K-Pop fans.

But my guess is that Z-Stars were mean to be promoted more to newbie stans. The ones who are like 12 years old, just discovered K-pop yesterday, and who jump onto the stan train of anyone and everyone they can find. Those people whose usernames are 8 different groups that they stan. Those people who have 50 badges of their 50 biases from 50 different groups on Onehallyu and are OP of 50 different threads. Those people know so little about K-pop that they probably wouldn’t have cared about a 2^nd generation of K-Stars being developed so soon, hell they would have probably found it exciting. I imagine that this is why Z-Project thought they could get away with this. Newbie stans wouldn’t even understand what this type of situation would have mean for their group.

And let’s talk about that why don’t we! Because I think it’s obvious that the original Z-Stars would have been thrown to the trash the second those Gen 2 Stars debuted. I mean, there’s only so much you can do with 4 groups with the exact same concept. What would separate Z-Stars Gen 1 from Z-Stars Gen 2? The Z-Stars themselves were already pretty young, so I doubt it would have just been that Gen 2 is younger. Hell, they might have all been around the same age. I guess they could have given them different concepts? Z-Boys had the typical rough, badboy concept for their only 2 songs, so I guess Gen 2 could have had a softer image? Of course, the boys did go for a soft image in It’s Christmas and pulled it off pretty well, so honestly I don’t think they needed a Gen 2 for that. The Z-Girls on the other hand had a more…………okay tbh Idk how to explain their image. The only group I can think of that I could also imagine having their songs is Girls Generation (but my sister who is a fan of aespa said they might also fit), but they can pretty much pull off any image anyway. So yeah, make of that what you will. As such, the only thing I could see a Gen 2 doing is a super cute concept, as I wouldn’t see them doing anything super edgy with a bunch of young teens, when that can wait for later.

The point is, the literal only reason to create two new groups would be for different concepts, but that wouldn’t even be necessary. The group was brand new, that’s the best time to try out different concepts to see what images the members can pull off. Also, the kids were all teenagers, they all could have done some cute concepts with no issue. No need for another group for that. And mature/edgy/badass concepts could wait until they got older and would fit the vibes better. Long story short, there was no reason to create these new groups. And as I mentioned before, what would be the point of keeping the first Z-Stars around once the 2^nd Gen came out? If it is the exact same gimmick of having 7 members from 7 different countries (and the exact same 7 countries as the 1^st Gen), then there would essentially 4 versions of the same group walking around. That isn’t a smart move for a company that just debuted their artists, and for the 2 billionth time, only had 2 songs to each groups name.

So I have 3 guesses as to what could have happened if this whole Gen 2 thing went through. Option 1: Gen 2 would have literally just existed to act as Z-Stars little sidekicks; opening for them at events whatnot and essentially doing all of nothing (except maybe chilling on Youtube) while Z-Stars continued to busk around and make pointless videos on Youtube. AKA, nothing that was worth debuting so early and taking attention and resources away from the original Z-Stars for! Option 2: Gen 2 would have become the main priority, releasing more songs and doing more events than the actual 1^st Gen. Gen 1 would probably still release songs here and there, but the focus would have moved to Gen 2, with the original Z-Stars falling into obscurity. Meaning that there would have been no point to having Gen 1 in the first place. Option 3: Gen 2 would have been Gen 1 done RIGHT, by actually giving them Korean songs to promote on Korean media so they could build a Korean fanbase! And if this were to happen, it would prompt the question of WHY that couldn’t have been done for Z-Stars?!

No matter what would have happened with this Generation 2, it would all have been to the detriment of the original Z-Stars AND the second gen. There was no way these nugu companies could have properly managed all of these people and built a name for them, especially with no Korean activities. It’s pretty hard to tell what was going on with Gen 2 during the time Z-Stars was still doing their thing. It seems they were just chilling around waiting for their time to fly to Korea during their training, which was supposed to happen in March 2020.

But of course that never happened because March 2020 is when the lockdowns began in response to C19!!!

Wow, we’ve finally made it to the big thing that everyone claims killed Z-Stars! And as you can see, up until now, we’ve already reached the point where this group was doing poorly, would have long been forgotten, and was on a path to disbandment regardless, BUT let’s ignore that and just PRETEND for all intents and purposes that Z Project was still doing fine and then Mr C. came along.

Well, again, C19 was not the issue. The RESPONSE to C19 was the issue. For some crazy reason, the companies made the completely unnecessary and idiotic decision to send everyone home. All 14 members were sent off to their respective 7 different countries until further notice. This. Was. So. Stupid. There was ZERO good reason to send everyone back to 7 different locations, none of which was their primary base btw, when they barely had any major activities to begin with. Being split apart was the worst choice they could have made.

And I can hear everyone saying “WTF are you talking about! We were in completely unprecedented territories! People were dying and jobless and had no idea when they’d see their families again and blah blah blah. Of course they should have gone home!” Listen pal, unexpected things happen all the time, but not everyone just hops on a plane and flies somewhere else to deal with it. I was in my final quarter in my master’s degree program in a different state when the lockdowns started. Could I have traveled back home? Yeah, and many students did. But there were also many of us who stayed behind because we knew it was more beneficial for our programs to stay on campus. We needed access to the specific academic buildings with our special art equipment; we needed the student center, the library, and everything else. It would have actively HURT us to return home. This is the case with Z-Stars. It would have actually BENEFITED them to remain in Seoul and focus on the future of the group with everyone together. And I know ya’ll are gonna say, ‘it’s different because they were countries away not states’, but please just STOP. Unless there was an EXTREME family emergency going on back home, then they did not need to go back home, PERIOD. Hell, wouldn’t it be BETTER for them to stay together where their activity can be monitored as opposed to being around who knows who in another country and possibility bringing back the rona?!

And just for a moment, let’s talk about what the staff could have done to make the most of the lockdown time. They could have sat everyone down and said, look, we’re in Korea, we want you guys to be recognized like K-Pop stars even though you aren’t a K-Pop group, let’s work on having you guys learn Korean. Let’s work on creating Korean versions of your songs so you can perform them on music stages once we can go out again. Let’s work on your variety skills so you we can try to book some variety shows once things open again. Let’s practice becoming more fluent in English since we still want to appeal to that market as well. Let’s try to find some western TV shows you guys can go to once we can travel outside the country again. All of that would have been perfect for the group.

And BTW, I should mention that based on some comments the group made in one interview, it seems likely that there may have been plans for the Z-Stars to eventually sing in Korean and release Korean songs at some point in the future. BUT THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN A THING FROM THEIR DEBUT! Not something that came months after they already had been put out there. DAY 1! The same day they released those tracks, there should have been Korean versions. If they didn’t want them on the main Youtube channel and just wanted to keep that in English, then they could have made a second channel. Or better yet, have them released on 1theK! You know, that K-Pop MV channel that releases videos for a boatload of different groups! Now maybe because they weren’t a K-Pop group it wouldn’t have been possible, but again, if they song was in KOREAN, maybe at least there could have been a chance! But alas, we all can see by now that this just didn’t seem to be a priority before the pandemic, nor was it pushed up to a priority during the pandemic. The ONLY Korean activites they did in early 2020 were busking before the lockdowns, which is probably all they could do since they were banned from music shows due to having no Korean songs...

At this point now, we all know that other groups were able to promote just fine during C19, and no, not just Big 3 groups. Stop blaming the pandemic for the staff’s bad decisions.

Before the pandemic even happened, once the end of the 2019 was coming upon us and interest in Z-Project was dwindling, there was so much pure copium from fans even hoping that if Z-Stars wouldn’t become popular in Korea that they could become popular in the Americas. And this would be fine I guess….you know if not for fact that this would literally the pure opposite of what they were going for! This was a group formed on the basis of uniting Asian countries and building a music genre to connect those people. It had nothing to do with the western world aside from having English songs to be casually promoted to them. And don’t get me wrong, if Z-Stars had done well in Asia right off the bat, I’m sure the companies would have immediately tried to pull an SM western validation move and try to attract attention from westerners since they already had Asians ready to throw money at them. But Z-Stars concept had no significance to westerners, so it’s unlikely they would have caught on to anyone outside of, drumroll………………..K-Pop fans!

So in conclusion, the pandemic did not kill Z-Project. Horrible decisions from the companies controlling them destroyed any chance they had at making a name for themselves. This could have been a solid group from day one, but no one in charge seemed to have a clue what they were doing. But it wasn’t all bad. One benefit of all of this is that Z-Stars faded from existence quietly instead of it being a big deal. If there was no pandemic and the group just wound up disbanding after a year or maybe even 2 of barely getting any fans, they probably still would have had people who actually remembered their hyped up debut and had to witness this disbandment publically. And AllKpop and Koreaboo would have written articles about it and everyone would have logged into their dead OH accounts and gone to the glitched out OH and refreshed the page 30 times just to leave their “Oooooohhhhh nooooooooooo, I really liked them. They had such a cool concept and had the potential to be big! *Sad emoji*” comments. All of which would have probably come from people who watched their debut songs and nothing else :/ But yeah, that would have been pretty tragic. Of course, a major negative of all of this is that almost no one even remembers Z-Stars so any group who copies this concept in the future will be viewed as the first to have it, which Z-Girls and Z-Boys not even being a memory. Hopefully in the future, we can pray that good concepts won’t be wasted under bad companies…