The show aired from March 12, 2020 to May 30, 2020, and the top nine winners debuted as The9. Not to be confused with Produce 101 China (2018) or Produce Camp 2020, which are owned by Tencent.
It is hosted by Cai Xukun, winner of Idol Producer and former leader of the boy group Nine Percent. The mentors for the show are as follows:
Dance: Lisa Manoban of K-pop girl group Blackpink
Vocal: Ella Chen
Rap: Jony J
Tropes appearing in Youth With You Season 2:
- Accent Interest: During practice for the revenge battles, An Qi tries reciting the first line of the song in her native Sichuanese dialect, which her teammates find extremely funny and urge her to use for the final performance.
- The Ace: An Qi and Yu Yan are the only two trainees who were able to rank in A class all three times, making them particularly strong members of any team they are on.
- Aerith and Bob: The English names of the trainees range from the normal (Kelly), to the avant-garde (Lil Reta), to the nonsensical (Frhanm Shangguan).
- Affectionate Nickname: Several of the girls go by cute nicknames, like Gogo for Gou Xueying and Kiki for Xu Jiaqi.
- All or Nothing: Song Zhaoyi admits that if she fails to debut this time, she will probably have to quit the idol industry and become a dance teacher.
- Animal Motifs: The concept song Lion predictably features several lion-like dance moves.
- Ascended Fangirl: Yu Shuxin is a big fan of Lisa, and reacts excitedly when she first meets Lisa and later when she gets to take dance lessons from her favorite idol.
- Ascended Meme: Qin Niu Zhengwei quickly rises up the meme ranks with her insistence on rapping even though she is terrible at it, and netizens began using the "reader" moniker to talk about her. It eventually circles back into the show itself, where Nineone tells her not to rap again because she can't rap.
- Audience Participation: As a competitive reality show, Youth With You is built off this premise.
- Boyish Short Hair: Liu Yuxin, Lu Keran, Lin Fan, and Huang Xiaoyun all have short hair and especially boyish appearances.
- Breather Episode: In the episode before the third round of eliminations take place, the remaining 36 trainees hold a mini concert where they celebrate their friendships and perform special stages for each other.
- The Bus Came Back: After being eliminated before the top 36 ranking on Produce 101 China two years prior, Zhang Chuhan, Gou Xueying, Song Zhaoyi, and Ai Yiyi return to compete on Youth With You 2. Ella, who had also been a mentor on that show, pointedly asks them where they got the courage to come back, to which they respond that they wanted to showcase the abilities they didn't have two years ago.
- Several other girls were winners of previous idol survival shows whose final groups fell through shortly after debuting. Zeng Keni, Zhou Ziqian, and Yu Yan were winners of Girls Fighting, while Xie Keyin returned after the winning group of The Next Top Bang disbanded a few months after debuting. Xu Xinwen and Xu Ziyin also competed on The Next Top Bang, although they didn't make the final group.
- But Not Too Foreign: Though this is a Chinese show, Joey Chua and Huang Xinyuan are Malaysian, while Qi Sui is from Japan.
- Butt-Monkey: The show rather enjoys making fun of Huang Yiming, who ranked in F class all three times. During the phone call home segment, it switches straight from Yu Yan being confused about what there is to cry about to Yiming crying about not needing to own three gray sweaters.
- The Cameo: Several celebrities appear in the final episode in pre-recorded videos to cheer on the girls, including former members of Nine Percent and the members of IZ*ONE.
- Cat Girl: Averted with Li Xining. While she meows and acts like a cat, she doesn't actually have cat features.
- Challenge Seeker: Joey has difficulty hitting the notes for the My Secret song. However, rather than modify the tune to be easier, she decides to push through with learning the original since she doesn't want to hold the rest of her team back.
- Class Clown: Sun Rui is this, and she later reveals that she uses humor as a way of dealing with her own emotions.
- Aurora is also this, although her happy-go-lucky attitude takes a big hit when she ranks last during the VDR assessments, and when she gets eliminated in the first round.
- Colour-Coded for Your Convenience: Each class wears different colored sweaters. In addition, rap, dance, and vocal groups wear different colored hoodies (black, purple, and pink respectively).
- Confession Cam: Used throughout the series to give focus to individual contestants and give insight into events on the show.
- Cover Version: All the performances in the first and second live evaluations are covers, and include Kana Hanazawa's Renai Circulation, EXO's The Eve, and Billie Eilish's Bad Guy.
- Crippling Overspecialization: Nineone is a professional rapper who doesn't know how to dance, at least at first, and it lands her a C rank during her audition because the show is meant for well-rounded idols who can both sing and dance at the same time.
- Cruel to Be Kind: Jony J considers himself this when he tells Ge Xinyi not to do rap in her R&B All Night performance because it doesn't sound good. She decides to push forward with the rap regardless with the help of her team.
- Dance-Off: Before the first eliminations, six trainees are selected to represent their groups in a fast-forwarded dance competition with the winner earning special prizes for their group.
- Determinator: Most of the girls are this, and they remark on how being surrounded by other people who are passionate about the stage inspires them to be even more hard-working in response.
- Dreadful Musician: Su Shanshan has absolutely no concept of how to sing well, and at one point during practice comments that she knows she is singing off key but can't tell whether it is too high or too low. However, she's very aware of her weakness and good-naturedly pokes fun at it herself.
- Easter Egg: During the dance part of Ambush on All Sides 2, Han Dong includes a hand move from Dreamcatcher's Deja Vu choreography.
- Everyone's Baby Sister: Chen Xinwei is this for the other girls, who are quick to comfort her after she gets reassigned to F class following the Yes OK evaluation.
- Everything's Better with Sparkles: Many trainees wore sparkly "bling-bling" outfits during their auditions, something which Wei Chen and Wang Siyu remark enviously on, being from a poor company themselves.
- Filler: Due to the 24-episode format of this season compared to the 12 episodes of previous seasons, the second round of live performances were followed by a new twist where new girls were selected to perform practice room versions of each of the live stages. The performances did not count for anything and were a fun way for the trainees to showcase their versatility without the pressure that would come from having to compete for votes.
- Fish out of Water: Qi Sui comes from Japan and has some difficulty understanding Chinese, and she wore a recorder pen to her audition so she could record what the mentors say to her and review it later.
- Funny Afro: Zhang Yu's hair is styled like an afro, and the other trainees joke about hiding things in it and even touch it supposedly for good luck.
- Gratuitous English: Many of the performances include this to varying dramatic effect.Xue'er: "Sherry girl is lit!"Yuxin: "X queen make you crazy!"
- Hidden Depths: Xu Ziyin's audition wasn't aired, but she later receives attention during the VDR assessments for her abilities to rearrange a song and harmonize.
- "I Can't Look!" Gesture: Frequently made by the trainees when they are waiting for their live performance vote results to be revealed.
- Ice Queen: Subverted. Yu Yan received attention for having an especially cold expression when first meeting the other contestants, but she reveals in an interview that this is unintentional and she actually has a friendly and fun personality.
- Idol Singer: The goal of the show is to produce a highly competitive 9 member idol girl group, and is notable for being the first girl-centric season after two boy group seasons by iQiyi.
- Junior Counterpart: The two members of AKB48 Team SH are framed as this to the members of SNH48, as both were formed out of similar concepts. SNH was formed in 2012 and branched off into more mature styles and original music early on, while Team SH was formed in 2018 and still sticks by a cutesy and inexperienced image.
- Language Barrier: Lisa has this with the trainees, as she communicates in English and Thai while they only understand Chinese. There are offscreen translators who help translate Lisa's comments to them during lessons.
- The Leader: Every team has one for their performance. Liu Yuxin gets a special shout-out for leading both teams of the Missing You performance when she realizes they are composed of leftover girls who weren't picked for any other songs.
- Leg Focus: Many of the trainees wear shorts or skirts for their performances which show off their long legs.
- The Load: Joey Chua lacks the training foundation many of the other contestants have, which leads to her teammates having to spend time to teach her how to sing or dance. During the Ambush on Two Sides 2 Team A practices, Zeng Keni and Yu Yan argue about whether or not to hide Joey in the back or continue teaching her until she picks up the moves.
- The Makeover: Nineone undergoes this over the course of the show, transforming from her initial underground rapper grunge look to a much more feminine and sexy style befitting that of a female idol.
- Manipulative Editing: When Mo Han objects to not being named center for the first live performances, the sequence is actually edited out of order to make it look more malicious than it actually was, and the VIP segment shows the uncut scene.
- Meaningful Name: An Qi's English name is Babymonster, referring to her small stature and explosive stage ability.
- Averted in the case of Kong Xue'er. Her English name, Snow, is just a direct translation of her Chinese name.
- Multilingual Song: The Monolid Girl performance blends Thai, Chinese, and English rap.
- Older Than They Look: Applies to many of the girls, who are youthful in both appearance and demeanor despite being in their early or mid-twenties.
- Product Placement: During auditions, the camera often cuts away from the people to focus on the yogurt milk drinks and toothpaste brand they are promoting.
- The Quiet One: Han Dong of K-pop girl group Dreamcatcher is noticeably this, as despite having debuted as an idol and having performed in 20 countries, she is extremely quiet and subdued before the camera.
- Reality Show Genre Blindness: The Shen quadruplets vote for their sister instead of Chengxuan to be center for their performance even though Chengxuan's performance skills are stronger, a decision which both Kun and Lisa later criticize. However, they refuse to change the center and go ahead with the original lineup, an act which looks particularly bad on them since they are essentially ganging up against the other three members of their team. They never realize that this makes them look bad to the audience, who are the ones deciding which trainees are likable and deserve to go to the next round.
- Real Life Writes the Plot: Because of the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic, the second round of live shows were not performed live like in past seasons, and were instead streamed live for a small voting audience.
- Rousing Speech: Shangguan Xiai is rather fond of giving these.
- Singing Voice Dissonance: Wang Chengxuan has a very gentle and kid-like way of speaking, but her voice gets significantly deeper and more mature when singing.
- Sleepyhead: Jin Zihan's most notable trait is being this. It might have something to do with her getting up at 6 am every morning to watch the sunrise.
- Slogans: Wang Qing is fond of coming up with these for each trainee, and she even shows up to the finale with a large poster bearing personalized slogans for each of the top 20 finalists.
- Sole Survivor: Lin Fan is the only member of the Billy X team to make it through first eliminations.
- Special Guest: The mentor team for this show is smaller than in past seasons to account for the inclusion of special guest mentors in the music industry, like Yoga Lin and Silence Wang.
- Stage Names: Quite a few of the girls go by stage names on the show, including Nineone (Zhao Hui), DDD (Duan Yixuan), Shaking (Xie Keyin), and Aurora (Wang Mengyu).
- The Stoic: Subverted. Zhao Xiaotang has a tendency to perform with a poker face, but she is very expressive off the stage. In contrast, Chen Jue abides by this more strongly although she has brief bouts of emotion.
- We Hardly Knew Ye: 49 trainees are eliminated in week 5, many of whom didn't receive any significant focus compared to other trainees that made the cut.
- "X" Makes Anything Cool: The X theme of Youth With You 2 is meant to represent endless possibilities, reminiscent of Produce X 101's theme.
