YMMV / Produce X 101

• Broken Base:
  • Kim Min-kyu is visually attractive to the point where Even the Guys Want Him, has decent vocals, is extremely humble, and tries to do his best in everything he does. However, his main weakness is dancing — his dancing is laughably terrible, to the point where the trainers and online critics slammed his performance several times. There are some people who believe his popularity is overrated and that he's better off being an actor or model; those people often feel that he's the Creator's Pet of the show and that the majority of his screen time would be better used on other trainees who dance and sing better than him. (Case in point: the training montage for "Monday to Sunday" mostly focused on his struggles when his teammates have been working just as hard as him — and three of them, including Kim Dong-yun, were also kicked out of the "Pretty Girl" team like he was. Also, while Min-kyu said he trained for 8 months, Kim Yo-han has trained for only 3 months and out-performs him.) On the other hand, there are people who are interested in seeing his improvement and find him very likeable because he has an extremely good personality.
  • The concept of the "X member" may feel poorly executed depending on who you ask. During the concept evaluation, Kim Dong-yun was brought back as the X member even though he was eliminated at rank 31 (one number from the cut-off), making it feel pointless. And that's not even getting into the final ranking drama when Lee Eun-sang was chosen as the X member in the debut evaluation.
  • The final rankings fractured the fan base, but unlike the previous seasons, there was now hard evidence that Mnet deliberately manipulated the number of votes for each member, after some mathematically adept fans quickly figured out that some of the votes were apart by the same number interval, something that has a very low probability of naturally occurring. It's gotten so bad that 272 people filed a lawsuit against Mnet demanding answers, and sponsorship deals are being pulled from the new group.
    • Some of the claims made by calculations led to some theories that Kim Min-kyu was supposed to be the X member instead of Lee Eun-sang due to Min-kyu's high popularity throughout the series, but Mnet decided to replace him because he didn't show enough improvement in time for the final episode.
    • Other rumors state that Lee Jin-hyuk was supposed to be in X1 (instead of Nam Do-hyon) but since Kim Woo-seok was vastly popular, and Mnet didn't want two already-debuted idols from Up10tion to be in X1, only Woo-seok was chosen.
    • Another rumor states that Koo Jungmo was supposed to be in X1 instead of Kang Min-hee, but perhaps was left out because his high popularity could help boost attention to Starship Entertainment's upcoming Boy Band while Min-hee, the supposedly "less popular" trainee from Starship Entertainment, could reign in attention from being in X1.
• Even Better Sequel: This season was considered a step-up from Produce48 because of how it focused on building friendships, and because of Lee Dong-wook, who was noticeably very involved with the trainees, unlike Lee Seung-gi, who barely appeared in the show due to his schedule.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Trainees like Cho Seung-youn and Lee Han-gyul were popular internationally, while trainees like Koo Jung-mo and Kim Min-kyu didn't meet the same reception they had in South Korea. Not only that, but there were some (baseless) suspicions in the Western fandom when the vote rigging scandal broke out that X1 members may have been selected based on international preferences due to the program's emphasis on building a "global" group and entering the Billboard chart.
• Values Dissonance: Evidence of Mnet rigging the votes for the final rankings definitely showed a difference in how fan bases operate in Asia and the West. South Koreans are very upset by this to the point of filing a lawsuit, especially since live voting (equivalent to 7 online votes each) cost 100 won per vote, and on top of that, many of the fans had invested time and money to support their favorites, such as subway advertisements (shown in episode 10), food trucks, and fan support events. On the other hand, most international fans didn't seem to care, as it's common knowledge that Western reality competition shows are rigged and scripted. On top of that, they were more defensive, as the line-up of X1 had members who appealed to them. Due to this, the South Korean fans are seen as unable to let go of the past, while international fans are seen as coasting off on their efforts, especially since they couldn't vote and weren't the ones investing time and money.