Nizi Project (2020)

A Quality Survival Show

The Nizi Project is a survival show made in collaboration by JYP Entertainment and Sony Music Japan to create a "global" girl group by which they mean a Japanese girl group that they hope to market internationally. The idea is to create a J-Pop group using the training methods, aesthetics, and standards of K-Pop. This 10 episode series is the first of two which resulted in the creation of the group NiziU ("Needs(y) You"). This first series is mostly set in Japan and covers auditions in 8 cities in Japan, an audition in Hawaii and one in Los Angeles as well as a subsequent elimination process to select a group of trainees to be sent to Seoul for the second series of the show.

The host and only vote which matters for this show is JYP himself, Park Jin-Young. He does take care to listen to his staff, but at each step of the process, it's pretty clear that he is the one who will be making the decisions, and, ultimately, choosing who will go on to Seoul for training (and, in the second series, who will be in NiziU).

Each of the women who pass the audition episodes are given a necklace with four slots for bedazzled puzzle pieces. Filling all four slots will result in the women being sent to Seoul, but the gimmick is pretty pointless since JYP can grant additional puzzle pieces to the women pretty much whenever he wants to. The necklace does, however, serve to frame for the viewers the four abilities that the women are to be judged upon throughout both series: singing, dancing, variety show skills and likability/cooperation/discipline.

Unlike many shows in this genre, the focus is almost entirely on preparation and performance. Very little time is spent on the women's background stories, dorm-room interactions or variety show games. Furthermore, I do not believe there were any product placement segments at all (other than the music used for the performances - you will hear a lot of JYPE's TWICE and ITZY) in either series.

JYP is charismatic and knowledgeable, but he can be capricious in his criticism occasionally lambasting the individuals for being outside the narrow scope of what he considers the essential standards of K idols even when the performances are good.

The candidates themselves are the usual mixture of pop-star wannabes of various levels of skill and and training with a few ringers who have already been training at JYPE for years. There is not much tension for a few of the women who probably should have debuted a year or two ago, but, nevertheless, it is very fun to meet all the candidates and see what they can do.

The fact that there are no live audiences and no viewer input whatsoever is probably why this is one of the best singing competition shows ever produced. There can be no accusations of vote rigging or producer manipulation of audience voting via wildly disparate allocation of screen-time when there is only one voter who is not even seeing the final edit of the show. If you always wanted a singing and dance competition where the focus is entirely on, you know, the singing and the dance, then this is the show for you.

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