YMMV / IZ*ONE

• Archive Panic: In 2.5 years, they have had four seasons of Mnet reality shows (IZ*ONE CHU), two seasons of special videos (IZ*ONE ARCADE), three IDOLLIVE variety shows (IZ*ONE Eat-Ting Trip), one hundred episodes of behind-the-scenes footage (ENOZI CAM), and numerous other guest appearances across variety shows and dramas, not to mention a myriad of clips, photos, messages, and exclusive contents across (at least) three different paid apps. Post-disbandment, there's also twelve individual schedules to catch up on, as well as group schedules for the labelmates^note Yujin and Wonyoung for IVE under Starship, Sakura and Chaewon for LESSERAFIM under HYBE / Source Music and multiple individual social media pages to follow. Have fun.
• Award Snub: After being the darlings of South Korea and Japan upon their respective debuts in October 2018 and January 2019, the group had been doing well in terms of sales, awards, and overall popularity^note though it's important to note that most Mnet groups usually experience an initial burst of relative popularity (especially among domestic fans) due to their formation process being broadcast, therefore allowing viewers to have more time to develop an attachment to the trainees-turned-artists... and then the 2019 Mnet voting scandal happened. Following that, numerous award-giving bodies had dropped the group from their nominee line-ups with flimsy excuses and had excluded them from most popularity awards despite them leading by a huge margin in awards where public voting criteria weighted heavily. Fans in particular are most critical of the Golden Disc Awards (GDA) since excluding IZ*ONE in 2019 among the viable candidates for major awards and continuing the trend in 2020 and 2021 despite being objectively eligible for awards that involve physical sales criteria.
• Broken Base: Of the 4th generation groups in K-Pop, mostly due to the circumstances surrounding the group's formation and existence.
  • Did some Produce 48 trainees deserve a spot on IZ*ONE more than some of the final 12, or were they fortunate enough to not get picked because of the stigma now attached to the brand after the revelation that Mnet rigged the lineup for Produce 48 and Produce x 101?
  • Has x member really improved over time? Fans and even non-fans are divided over the fact that some of the girls seem as though they haven't really made much of a significant contribution to the group despite being two years into the contract. Each girl has their fair share of detractors as well.
  • More recently, there has been a growing rift in the fanbase for the perceived management push for certain members^note  most notoriously, members such as Minju, Yena, Chaewon, and Eunbi have been getting disproportionately high line distribution, performance screentime, and solo promotions/activities and the apparent lack of promotion for others ^note  accusations mostly leveled in defense of the Japanese members, Hyewon, Chaeyeon, and Yujin after the Mnet scandal . Debates rage on whether this should be perceived as a positive move as management is showing attempts to detach the group from its "Produce" branding ^note for example, promoting the girls in terms of their age order rather than final Produce ranking, pushing other members to the center rather than the two established co-centers, etc. or as a negative step in poorly excusing unfair treatment. For what it's worth, however, certain members (but not all) who are often ranked on the lower end in terms of performance distribution tend to receive production credits instead as regular lyricists/composers/producers.
  • Fans' stance on the overall concept of Private Mail^note a paid subscription service to receive regular mails from the girls which may contain snippets of their daily routine, random stories, or even exclusive photos and Q&A portions , more specifically on the extent to which its contents may be translated or shared. There are camps which believe that the photos should not be publicly shared out of respect for the members' wishes for privacy/exclusivity (to prevent content provision accounts from being shut down)^note The practice had been originally adopted from the mail system of the 48 Groups and subscribers in those apps typically restrict content sharing for the same reasons, camps which think that the secrecy is rendered moot by the private messages being translated in the first place, camps which actively defy these privacy/copyright rules to leak exclusive contents, and camps which fall somewhere in the middle.
    • Among non-fans, the very concept of Private Mail was also seen as laughable due to supposedly encouraging unhealthy parasocial relationships. Over the next few years, many similar subscription services would also appear in the (now-profitable) market for other artists (including idols and actors, among others) of different agencies.
• Common Knowledge:
  • Chaeyeon being a black belter in taekwondo. This information surfaced due to photos of her wearing a taekwondo uniform in school, only for her to clarify years later that it was a costume she borrowed for a sports festival. She was, however, a futsal athlete.
• Epileptic Trees: Wild Mass Guessing went abound for the music videos starting in their Vampire era; of all their MV productions, this had been seemingly the most narrative-heavy by far, though it was an isolated concept. By BLOOM*IZ onward, however, fans began to create theories about the connections of each title song concept and how all the music videos (FIESTA, SSOTS, Beware, and Panorama) linked together. For what it's worth, Sakura mentioned on her radio show that the girls don't really get any "lore" information on their work, but they do find fans' theories quite fascinating to read.
• Fandom-Enraging Misconception: Multiple:
  • None of the girls bribed nor persuaded Mnet to rig them into the final line-up nor were they aware that any voting manipulation had occurred at the time they were still competing for a spot in the group. After thorough investigations, Korean courts have stated multiple times that the network producers were at fault and that both the parties who were rigged out and rigged in are to be considered as victims of the case. It doesn't stop vocal critics and haters from using the scandal as an excuse to downgrade their team and individual accomplishments.
    • On a related note, haters would also sling criticism over the fact that all of their popularity relies solely on CJENM's corporate power (that is, popularity due to being the product of an Mnet show). Sales and media engagement records would show that there is a significant chunk of the fanbase who began following their activities after the scandal had been resolved in court - that is, when IZ*ONE had started to steer away from the PRODUCE branding and, by proxy, the aforementioned "corporate advantage".
  • The girls are often perceived as collectively having weak, limited vocal ranges with very few members standing out as exceptional vocalists. This is untrue on the premise that the group's songs are intentionally produced with very demanding specifications - nearly all of their songs are performed with strenuous choreography, intricate formations, and high-octave range tones, which most professionals in the industry acknowledge as very difficult to pull off for most other groups, much less groups who have been working together less than 2.5 years as these people have. Post-disbandment contents disprove most of the criticisms about the girls' performance skills as they have taken on wildly different genres of music from their IZ*ONE days.
  • IZ*ONE stealing their debut track, La vie en Rose, from CLC. The song had initially appeared in one variety show while being recorded by the CLC members, but it ultimately never got released. For unknown reasons, their agency had sold the rights to song to IZ*ONE's producers instead who tweaked some of the lyrics and instrumentals before cementing it as IZ*ONE's debut title track. Although the practice (songs being sold to be performed by other artists) is not an uncommon one, it doesn't prevent some fans from fighting as though the girls somehow had a personal stake in choosing their debut song, fueling the enmity especially as the debut enjoyed great reception (which some CLC fans believe their group could have enjoyed). If anything, it should be CLC's agency/producers to be held accountable.
  • Painting the girls as racist/discriminatory solely due to producers' misuse of stock images of mosques for some stage perforamance backgrounds (as the incidents have occurred more than once). The stage sets are typically determined by music show producers and definitely not by the performers themselves, yet critics act and demand for apologies from the members or consider it an irredeemable crime otherwise. (Not helping matters is South Korea's admittedly lenient/shallow views on internationally sensitive topics such as religious discrimination, racism, and colorism, leading to such incidents not receiving as much domestic attention and resolution otherwise.)
  • Nearly everything about the Parallel Universe Project, both inside and outside the fandom. The gist of it is that fans (mostly Korean ones) had decided to appeal to CJENM (parent company of IZ*ONE's management agencies Off-The-Record and Swing) and the members' respective individual companies to allow the group to release several unreleased contents (including, but not limited to, the concert-exclusive songs Lesson and Parallel Universe, the alternate language versions for various songs such as Yummy Summer and Spaceship, as well as other miscellaneous contents teased for release post-concert) and at least allow an opportunity for the girls to physically meet their fans^note The girls had expressed multiple times that they wanted to meet fans in person, but the final concert was limited to an online event with little fanfare; note that the last time that the girls had performed in front of a real-life, physical audience would be in mid-2020 during the SOBA Awards; before that, their last interactions with fans were in the drive-in concert which also happened in mid-2020 and the BLOOM*IZ showcase in November 2019; talk about bad luck..
    • Due to conflicting information from all kinds of sources, the plan itself kept evolving from truck protests at the false advertisement^note CJENM had initially marketed the March 13 and 14 concerts "ONE, The Story" as IZ*ONE's first concert in 2021, only to announce via Mnet on March 10 that it would be their final concert period at a point where it would be impossible to demand a refund for concert tickets and merchandise to formal demands of the resumption of contract negotiation talks^note as both official news sources and industry insiders have implied as late as February that contract extension terms were moving in a favorable direction due to the pandemic conditions to establishing a "paper company" that would support the production of at least one final album and other related event promotions/merchandising. The final objective resulted in the more prominent WIZ*ONE fans managing to raise over 3 billion Korean won in domestic funding alone, with initial plans to open funding to international fans as well. The plan, however, hinged only on the possibility that all the companies (and, more importantly, the members themselves) would want to stay together.
    • The plan would ultimately fail after a few months of discussions (the negotiation processes had been kept strictly confidential between the Steering Committee of the project - comprised of actual industry professionals such as a corporate lawyer, industry producers, and high-profile businesspeople among others - and the company representatives, resulting in conflicting accounts and numerous false information about what had occurred.
• Fandom Rivalry: IZ*ONE fans have a lot of enemies in other fanbases^note  albeit with a few notable exceptions.
  • A lot of IZ*ONE fans appear to have a longstanding enmity with Orbits, aka fans of LOONA. Interestingly, not only do the groups have the same amount of members each (12), but many of their members are close friends.
  • It's also not unusual to find IZ*ONE fans at odds with J-pop fans (especially longtime fans of AKB48 and HKT48); some radical IZ*ONE fans believe that the Japanese releases are inferior in terms of production and that the members (especially the J-line) would be better off staying in K-pop to re-debut, whereas radical 48 Group fans believe that the J-line has promised to return to their groups (many members of which they've been friends/colleagues with for a far longer period of time than IZ*ONE) and that they would receive greater push compared to the treatment and attention they've been getting in IZ*ONE once they inevitably return to their original groups.
    • This remains a polarizing debate after the group's contract ending: Sakura had briefly gone home to Japan only to announce her graduation from HKT48 after a few activities with them and then returned to Korea with rumors that she had been scouted by HYBE Labels for an exclusive artist contract, further fueling the heated arguments. On the other hand, there is also conflict among J-pop fans who bemoan the addition of fans from K-pop who decided to follow Nako and Hitomi's 48 Group activities, J-pop fans who call out K-pop fans who didn't follow their activities, and fans in general who still think that they would be better off in K-pop/J-pop/a mixture of both.
  • Finally, despite the Friendly Fandoms entry mentioned above, other Produce group fans tend to be at odds with IZ*ONE fans due to the group having the dubious honor of being the "last Produce group standing". Consecutive records of success have IZ*ONE fans as well as some critics strongly believing that the group deserves permanency or a contract extension at least ^note an argument which they defend on the basis of the three-month hiatus and the COVID-19 pandemic, both of which had greatly derailed the group's original plans whereas other Produce group fans argue that it would be unfair for IZ*ONE to be treated differently mostly citing arguments for I.O.I whose contract conditions weren't well-implemented ^note as the first Produce group ever, their promotions had gone differently from their own plans and had the least promotion time at less than a year, part of that time not even promoting as a full 11-member group WannaOne who still disbanded despite their great popularity and critical success, and X1 who was IZ*ONE's fellow collateral and a more severe victim of the Mnet scandal that had gotten prematurely disbanded.^note Again, as noted in Iron Woobie below, this decision was not a simple matter of, "Which Produce group should be saved?" but rather ran deeper than the views seen by most average Produce fans.
  • It's a general joke among the fandom that the more IZ*ONE fans hate another group's fans, the more likely the idols themselves are to collaborate or interact with each other either as professional colleagues or as personal acquaintances.
• Friendly Fandoms:
  • IZ*ONE fans are known to be very closely knit with fans of Seventeen due to a happy accident during IZ*ONE's first venture at the Idol Star Athletics Championship (ISAC). ^note Fans of Seventeen (Carats) shared some of their food, hotdog sandwiches, to some hungry IZ*ONE members who were watching from the sidelines while the games were ongoing. Fans of IZ*ONE (WIZ*ONE) took note of this act of unexpected generosity and repaid in kind for Seventeen's next comeback by participating in votes and streams without Carats even knowing or asking until after the fact. Fans of both groups endearingly termed the union as the "Hotdog Alliance" and they would stream and support each other's releases every comeback season ever since. ^note It came to a head during a certain comeback season when IZ*ONE and Seventeen were pit against each other in music shows and both fanbases would sincerely root for each other regardless of who won or would support the other if only one of them qualified for music show wins in that particular episode, something practically unheard of in modern K-Pop culture with its extremely toxic and competitive fandoms.
  • IZ*ONE fans are also fairly affable with fans of ITZY as an extension of the close relationship between the Lee sisters (IZ*ONE's Chaeyeon and ITZY's Chaeryeong) as well as the friendships between members (e.g. IZ*ONE's Minju and Yuri with ITZY's Ryujin).
    • Fans have been requesting forever to get their collaborations, and the rewards came true in the form of the KBS Music Festival 2020 where they had special stages performing Apink's Mollayo (Wonyoung and Yuna, plus Arin and Shuhua), NCT's Boss (Eunbi and Ryujin, plus SinB and YooA), and Lady Gaga & Ariana Grande's Rain on Me with Chaeyeon and Chaeryeong after many years of not performing onstage together.
  • A lot (but not all) of IZ*ONE fans in general tend to be multi stans^note fans of multiple K-Pop groups who are also friendly with fanbases of groups which IZ*ONE members themselves admire (and with their juniors who are self-professed WIZ*ONE themselves). Notable mentions include Girls' Generation, Red Velvet, (G)-IDLE, Weki Meki, Natty, and many others.
  • Many WIZ*ONE fans also happen to have become somewhat kindred spirits with BUDDYs in 2021 due to perceived similarities in their favorites' circumstances: Both groups were renowned for their breathtaking choreographies and formations, had disbanded in 2021 to much public news coverage^note the difference being that IZ*ONE disbanded on schedule despite implications that they would have had a contract extension otherwise, while GFRIEND disbanded without prior notice and to everyone's shock, including the members themselves, released their last comeback albums in late 2020 (GFRIEND in November, IZ*ONE in December) with little indication that they would be the final ones, and had supportive members who showed great chemistry and camaraderie with each other, onstage and offstage.
  • Post-disbandment, many IZ*ONE fans continue to support the members' individual activities (which technically result in them being within multiple different fanbases all at once, as in the cases for the solo members^note Eunbi, Yuri, Hyewon, Yena, Chaeyeon, Minju and the group-based members^note Hitomi in AKB48, Nako in HKT48, Yujin and Wonyoung in IVE, and Sakura and Chaewon in LESSERAFIM.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Chaewon is extremely popular in Japan, often ranking first in hi-touch sales followed by members like Sakura, Minju, Yuri, and Wonyoung.
  • Sakura herself, despite consistently ranking as one of the more popular members internationally, is near revered in China. Pre-order sales for Oneiric Diary (almost a whole month prior to the album's actual release) show her individual versions outselling the other girls' by a wide margin.
  Redditor: Sakura is a boy group. ^note Referring to how wide the gap always is when comparing girl group and boy group sales.

  • This actually caused major problems during one of IZ*ONE's Chinese magazine photoshoots when fans noticed the odd positioning of the members^note Sakura being placed at the far edge and leaving an empty/asymmetrical center and contacted the magazine editors only to find out that management had intervened in the girls' positioning. Needless to say, fans were outraged and threatened to boycott most succeeding promotions by their management. However, see Values Dissonance below for more.
  • Yujin and Wonyoung have similarly solid fanbases in China, several of whom form collaborations for events such as comebacks and birthday projects.
  • Chaeyeon has more vocal fans from countries outside of Korea and Japan (especially in the West) as they tend to place higher preference on her technical abilities (whereas Korea and Japan tend to prefer visuals) which are consistently ranked as top-tier not only among IZ*ONE but among 4th generation girl group idols period. See here for an example.
• Harsher in Hindsight: Yena has a visible neck scar that some fans seem to find cute, but then an interview IZ*ONE CHU revealed that she had lymphoma as a young child and her parents were told that she was almost a lost cause before she miraculously recovered. Fortunately, she's as healthy as can be, and is eternally grateful for her family's support.
  • Yujin is known to fans as the hyperactive puppy-like maknae of the group, but members have pointed out on separate occasions that she is often one of the more introspective and sensitive members of the group. She was one of the first members to resurface after the "dark period" where IZ*ONE was forced into hiatus, clearly sullen and unwell but putting on a brave face for the fans.
  IZ*ONE: When Yujin cries, we all do too. [...] She may not look like it, but she's very sensitive and easy to read, so [Yujin] needs a lot of extra care to handle.
  • Chaeyeon, a veteran of idol survival shows, is often praised for her amazing dance skills and vocal stability, but never makes it to the finals, and left one of the most known K-Pop agencies despite being a trainee there for almost half her life to (apparently) give her sister a chance to debut and shine on her own as JYP would not debut both sisters. She tries her luck once more at a idol survival show and barely makes the final 12 despite being a consistent favorite of the fans, the trainers, and even her co-trainees themselves. ^note With the revelation that the lineup was rigged, no one knows or is capable of confirming what her true rank is, but fans speculate that she was definitely higher and was only placed at #12 for dramatic purposes. Getting into IZ*ONE, her confidence remained stunted because of her self-admitted insecurities about her looks ^note That is, not having a conventionally "cute" or appealing visual to Koreans and Japanese, although international fans are more appreciative of her and the fact that she thinks she might not have anything else to show off besides her dancing. Anecdotes from her sister Chaeryeong during the "dark period" mention that Chaeyeon suffered from crying episodes and severe insomnia at the time, and now that they've finally, properly returned to doing promotions and activities, Chaeyeon continually attempts to reach out to fans (often with long, carefully-constructed letters) and reminds them to be mindful of what they post online as the members do see their feedback. ^note Among others, Chaeyeon's post was the first emerge on their group's official social media accounts (as a birthday post); she was also the first to host a Vlive after the long hiatus, and the first to revive their Tiktok account after its inactivity post-promotions.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Yena and Yuri, ever the bickering duo, had a long-running joke about how they would "only date, not marry" each other. In one ENOZI Cam episode, Yuri makes a snide remark about them being long-lost sisters, before settling for being a romantic couple in their past lives much to Yena's chagrin ("What did I do wrong in my past life [to deserve this]?"). Fast forward to July 2020 and IZ*ONE gets their fortunes read — Yuri's reading tells them that she was miserable in her past life because she lost a lover whom her family did not apparently approve of.. and when the other members ask which pair has the most ideal compatibility (bear in mind that the fortune teller was not aware of IZ*ONE's relationship dynamics), she nonchalantly states that it's Yuri and Yena!
• Iron Woobie: The girls, bar none:
  • Having only 2.5 years on their contract, they were nearly disbanded when the Produce scandal broke out in November 2019 where show producers confirmed the allegations that the final lineup for Produce 48 and Produce x 101 were manipulated. In order to avoid association with the involved parties, media agencies immediately dropped all collaborations and deals with both IZ*ONE and X1. IZ*ONE, in the middle of preparing their first full album BLOOM*IZ, was forced to undergo hiatus for three months as a group and as individual members (which included solo activities such as Yujin's hosting gig on My Little Television as well as Hitomi and Sakura's radio shows in Japan) while X1 was ultimately not continued as a co-managed group. ^note A common misconception was that they were disbanded in favor of retaining IZ*ONE when, in fact, it was the X1 members' agencies which had not come to a resolution regarding contract terms - which were not yet signed and finalized - at the time the Mnet rigging scandal broke out. By contrast, IZ*ONE's members had different agencies and were already operating on a year's worth of their contract, therefore making their disbandment more difficult to execute from a business perspective. Because X1 still had no finalized contract to sign, they were ultimately dissolved and IZ*ONE was put into an indefinite hiatus instead.
  • No sign or peep of the girls was heard from them within the hiatus period, except for the Japanese members who occasionally flew home. The first few signs of hope came back out a few months into 2020 once airport photos started resurfacing and the girls were visibly unwell and on edge, trying to reassure fans that the members were all doing well, but as their friends and family had revealed, many of them suffered from bouts of insomnia and crying episodes of panic, anxiety while facing public scrutiny, malicious comments, and even death threats despite having no direct involvement in the scandals at all. All the more heartwarming once they slowly began coming back to the spotlight to release their first studio album BLOOM*IZ to great acclaim among fans and critics alike. And the trend continues with Oneiric Diary in mid-2020 as IZ*ONE proves that they are more than what the rumors say about them.
• Memetic Mutation: So many, but listing them all here would be too much, so we'll link you to their Funny Moments page instead.
• Most Wonderful Sound: Chaeyeon's hearty laugh, which is especially contagious not only to fans but even among her members and their managers.
  • Nako's and Yena's as well.
  • Minju~ Angel~ (Minju Angel Angel!)
• Overshadowed by Controversy: Fans of this group are generally irked over the fact that IZ*ONE has genuinely talented/skilled members (and even those who weren't originally good per se had made significant leaps and bounds in improvement with their performance and stage presence) but are often reduced to being labelled as "that rigged temporary girl group" or "Mnet's daughters" (despite evidence showing that Mnet wasn't any better at giving the girls special treatment provided that the girls were dropped from nearly all media appearances once the scandal exploded).
  WIZ*ONEs: If it's not about the rigging, it's about the disbanding. When will the girls ever get proper recognition from everyone else?
  • This appears especially during awards shows season, where IZ*ONE not receiving an award would cause non-fans to call their album sales and existing achievements into question, while actually receiving an award would automatically cause non-fans to call rigging or fraud on their achievements regardless of the clear evidence and criteria shown.
  • Following a resurgence of the Mnet scandal in court proceedings, this is slowly starting to become subverted among the general Korean public as the courts themselves have declared that none of the members of IZ*ONE were found to have any direct involvement in the rigging and that they, too, should be considered victims of the negative consequences of the suspect's decisions. Reception among international audiences, however, is decidedly less warm.
• Retroactive Recognition: Played With. While obviously the Japanese members already have had decent exposure and experience (especially in the cases of SSK mainstays Sakura and Nako), most of the Korean members have appeared in some acting or modelling gigs prior to their debut:
  • Chaeyeon is perhaps the most known pre-debut member in Korea, having participated in at least 3 different idol survival shows including K-Pop Star and SIXTEEN (the show that formed TWICE) alongside her sister Chaeryeong (who is now a member of ITZY).
  • Eunbi first debuted in a girl group called Ye-A in 2014 under the stage name "Kazoo", but only stayed until the release of their first digital single prior to moving to Woollim.
  • Yujin was fairly famous for having appeared in some contact lens advertisements in Korea as well as appearing in some music videos by Starship Entertainment artists like Jeong Sewoon, Soyou, and Mad Clown.
  • Wonyoung and Chaewon have also cameo'd in music videos for their seniors' title tracks.
  • Minjoo (as revealed in Knowing Brothers) was a model for children's clothing prior to debut. She also performed collaborations and covers with her best friend and labelmate Kriesha Chu (who would later on debut as a soloist under the same agency). In addition, she had also taken on small to medium acting roles (among her best known credits include playing a character's younger self in the drama Tempted, a major supporting character in the movie The Fault Is Not Yours, and an acting role in iKON's #WYD) prior to joining Produce 48.
  • Yuri was a participant of another Mnet idol survival show (Idol School) prior to joining Produce 48 and was actually better known for her dancing skills rather than her vocal abilities at the time.
  • One fan diligently compiled MV cameos for some Korean members here.
• Values Dissonance: The issue of who should IZ*ONE's center be continues to be a significant debate among fans of different nationalities. There are fans who continue to fight for Wonyoung's status as the official center ^note  a right obtained by virtue of winning Produce 48, but even such a status is questionable at this point, whereas there are Sakura fans who feel that she is not being treated properly by management as a second center or is being used as a popularity booster ^note objectively speaking, Sakura holds a great deal of popularity over majorly desirable markets such as Japan and China due to her established career as an HKT48 ace member, and there are fans who are lobbying for Minju, Yena, or Chaewon to rise as the deserving third center ^note both due to their marketability as Korean members who are not only popular overseas but have also shown some of the greatest improvements from trainee to artist days. Such a debate, however, is mostly restricted among the fanbases as the members themselves acknowledge that anyone can become the center for a given era since the mere fact that they have become the final group meant that they were starting from zero and no longer needed to compete for established positions, a stance that is continually being emphasized by both the members and the management especially after BLOOM*IZ.

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