Road to Kingdom: Ace of Ace (2024)

Really suffered from the comparison with Road To Kingdom S1 and from lackluster storytelling

Finally !!! Road to Kingdom Season 2 made it to our screen, almost 4.5 years after its amazing Season 1 released in April 2020. Season 1 was excellent, its sequel Kingdom Legendary War was properly legendary as stated in its name...That's why my expectations for this Season 2 were pretty high: unfortunately, too high for the show.

There are some big flaws to this season that prevented me to enjoy it as much as I would have wanted. One of the big factor being the lackluster storytelling. There were very few "real" moments following the various teams, there were not enough sequences of them preparing for the show, training, facing issues together. There were even less moments of interactions between the various teams. It clearly prevented the viewer to get attached to the participants (unless you knew them from before the show of course). I wish the episodes (other than the finale) would have been longer (or that there would have been more missions/rounds) in order to get to know them more and to see more of the creative process.

I also wish the show focused more on vocals, I love strong performances emphasizing dance in KPOP but I also like impressive rap sections, amazing vocal parts...and here there were too few of them. It lacked LIVE vocals, there has always been backtrack music in most KPOP world but here it was so overwhelming that I could not hear the live singing (except for a few people). I also found the Mnet editing of the various performances quite bad...A lot of cut of the performances to see the reactions of the participants but not as well done as in their other survival shows that I have seen. The stages they did in front of an audience had also a much less creative camera work than when there was no audience, which is a bit of a shame.

I like a lot Taemin as an idol : he is absolutely the epitome of "idol's idol" and he seems super sweet in addition to have some real banger songs and impressive performance skills. Unfortunately, his soft-spoken demeanor was not the right choice for an MC role. It lacked attitude and punch, which for a show with kind of long sequences explaining voting rules and also announcing results, is a bit of a downer. He is totally a newbie in terms of MC jobs and he admitted during the program several time that he was anxious about his skills. I find his candor about it touching but at the same time I cannot help to think that indeed he was too green to make it interesting or exciting. I wish him well and hope he get the chance to improve in future MC roles.

I still appreciated some parts of Road To Kingdom 2, it is not all gloom fortunately. Except of a few individuals participants (like Geonu, Bain, Han Bin seen in other shows) and ONEUS (which participated in Road To Kingdom 1 but which I did not really follow afterwards), I knew very little about the teams participating : 8TURN, YOUNITE, CRAVITY, TEMPEST, THE NEW SIX and THE CREWONE. I really appreciated to have discovered them, even if it felt too little (for all the reasons I explain above). I also truly enjoyed the Ace concept put in place during this season. My fave performances were actually a couple of the ones done by the aces...It is probably the only ones I would want to rewatch if I am honest. I also felt that the various aces were the ones we get to know the most as an audience and to whom I got attached the most (probably to the detriment of interactions within groups and between teams). If they keep the concept (which I hope they do), the production team need to find a way to make it more balanced between highlighting the aces but also featuring enough of all the members relationship and evolution to make the viewer care about the groups and the ensemble picture.

I will recommend this to people that are avid fan of KPOP because despite all the flaws I found in it, it still features teams that I found interesting to discover and also because I am still hopeful that Kingdom War Season 2 which will follow up will drastically raise the bar and correct the flaws of Road To Kingdom Season 2. Maybe once again, I am excepting too much from this type of TV Show but I want to believe that we can see again iconic performances carried by emblematic groups and that it was not an anomaly to have that quality (in terms of way the cast is featured and production value) linked to the fact of the first seasons of 2020 and 2021 being done during COVID time when the idols, producing crew and staff had much more means and time to participate and go all in.

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