Oh god, where do I even begin???

Girls Planet started off very strong. My friend convinced me to watch this show and I immediately fell in love with all the girls and their talents (Hikaru in particular ♡). The performances began like any normal show, but this time with the unique premise of cells. One Korean girl, one Japanese girl, and one Chinese girl in each. Seeing them work together with their cultural differences in how they were raised and trained was a joy to watch...at first.

See, the thing about Korean shows is well...they're Korean. That's mainly where the problem stems from. As the episodes progress, you begin to get the feeling that something feels a bit off. That's because the show is wildly xenophobic. Once you reach a certain point in the show you'll begin noticing some key patterns within each group: the Japanese member is obsolete. Who even is that??? The Chinese girl is terrible. She has an absolutely AWFUL attitude or she's so overwhelmingly unskilled and selfish. And the Korean girl is AMAZING!!! She's so talented, she's final-group-ready. She is even skilled enough to help the Chinese and Japanese members, how kind of her!!! This is an ongoing "storyline" in each group. It's not even something that happens once or twice, it's ALL THE TIME. Not even exaggerating. I think it was the same exact thing for two entire episodes.

In that xenophobia lies another problem: voting manipulation. You may be wondering "how could they possibly have voting manipulation when they were caught from the Produce series???" and you're right. They probably didn't have direct manipulation, but oh man did they have MANIPULATION. Take the above scenario as an example. You now have a Japanese girl you don't know, a Chinese girl you hate, and a Korean girl who performed perfectly. Who are you going to vote for? Not only do you have that form of indirect manipulation, you also have screen time. Whenever I voted, I swear to you I recognized ALL the Korean girls and maybe 3-5 from Japanese and Chinese. It was no coincidence. Every scene, every praise, every moment was Korean! Korean! Korean! Don't even get me started on how the final votes were 50% KOREA, 50% THE REST OF THE FREAKING WORLD. YEAH, IT REALLY WAS. It's almost unbelievable how much they were able to get away with. It's actually offensive tbh.

So what about other aspects of the show besides the xenophobia? The mentors (or "masters" as they like to call it). Useless tbh, besides the dance instructors. However, other than choreographing for some songs (that they could've done without mentoring), none of them ever did anything except sit there and critique them. How come they never got up and gave them pointers??? How come the dance instructors never showed them how to perfect a move??? How come the vocal coaches never showed them how to sing properly??? Instead, you get a girl who practices to the point of straining her voice and the vocal coaches complain about her not being able to hit a high note :/// Sunmi and Tiffany were also just as useless. I enjoyed Tiffany's critiques, yet she barely got any screen time for some reason. Yeo Jingoo was the saving grace of this adult side of the cast. He did well as the MC and oftentimes made jokes with the girls, trying his best to genuinely bond with them. Even if the masters and the trainees bonded off-screen, how come they never give us a tiny glimpse of that?

Okay so xenophobia, useless mentors, what else? One of the most important parts of a survival show: personality. Yeah...little to none. They barely have any games, bonding exercises, or activities. There are a few more later on with less girls, but still the bare minimum. I could not tell you what most of the personalities on this show are like. Unless they're very expressive, like Wen Zhe or Hikaru, it's next to impossible to really know. You barely even know which members are close friends unless you stalk social media feeds. You should NOT need an outside source to be able to recognize friends in a survival show. One of the absolute worst offenses they committed on this show was not showing any of the eliminated girls. They never asked about their thoughts, showed the girls crying or hugging, or showed their wishes for the future. As sad as it is to see girls go, I usually enjoy getting to see their emotional final moments with their friends. It's touching to see them loving and supporting one another until they later show up in the finale. In this, I legit had to look online to see which girls got eliminated because they didn't give any of them screen time whatsoever. That's insane.

The last thing I wanted to talk about were the songs. This is one of the best parts of the show. They had quite good song selections (besides the sexual ones they made minors sing) and their original songs were pretty good. Snake was a real banger. The uniforms were super pretty as well, along with the sets and stages. Overall, the performances were really really good. Some are super memorable like Yes or Yes 1, Snake, Ice Cream, etc. Basically, anything with the girls themselves was fantastic. Everything else was big yikes.

And I am not blaming any of the girls at all for how poor this show is. All of them are extremely talented, hard-working, skilled, loving, sweet, gorgeous individuals that deserve to debut somewhere or some time. MNET just needs to stop. Someone please stop them for the sake of all Chinese girls who have a dream ://

In conclusion: save your precious freaking time.