[PC stories/KPOP takes] RIIZE'S GENRE SOFTENED UP DUE TO SEUNGHAN'S CONTROVERSY?

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I was on the kpopuncensored subreddit and there was a post that said that “international fans [didn’t] actually understand the Seunghan situation”.

Under that post there was a comment that basically said the reason his expulsion became such a huge issue for international fans is because SM was trying to market them to be an international group (i.e. their chronically online behavior with their tiktoks/replies). They went on to say that that illusion was shattered when SM prioritized k-fans over the majority of i-fans that were supportive and against Seunghan’s removal.

There was another comment that mentioned how RIIZE became another boyfriend group with Love 119 and the Boo Heejoo thing (Boo Heejoo is a play on the fandom name—Briize—it sounds like a Korean woman’s name).

Reading those comments made me think that maybe SM chose to go with a more boyish concept for them since that’s what’s trending for boy groups in Korea and they know a good chunk of international fans stopped supporting RIIZE after the whole situation—it even turned off people that weren’t into the group and instead felt pity for Seunghan. To me it seemed like they wanted to take a more “mature group with throwback vibes” route because of Talk Saxy. All of the members have a face suited for that type of genre as well (never falling for the Sohee is ugly propaganda).

Impossible was nice since you don’t see much of the House genre in k-pop, but it felt like a filler release? If that makes sense? I actually liked Lucky a lot and imo it was one of their best done “youth-like” release.

Fly up was good but I much preferred Ember to Solar and would’ve rather had that as the title track. That’s actually kind of the direction I’m talking about that I think would suit them perfectly, maybe even something like Call Me Baby? (Purely for the song, I know that song isn’t throwback at all).

But yeah, it just looked to me as though they completely ditched that throwback thing they were going for at the start because all of the songs released since then are on the softer side—even Get a Guitar and Memories gave off that throwback aura with those haircuts they gave them.

I still vibe with their releases but I wish they would lean more towards songs like Talk Saxy—they put a more refreshing spin on the mature, “bad boy” concept other boy groups like to emulate imo.

Bag Bad Back was fun too, even if it was just a remake of an NCT song, the styling was perfect. This isn’t a post hating on them—I know how touchy ot6 Briize are here. I especially loved their recent album, for me it was one of the best releases so far this year!

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