I don’t really mess with animated groups, regardless of how they were created or the story behind them. However, PLAVE have grown too big to ignore, easily competing with K-pop’s upper classmen. It helps that they have some fantastic talent working behind the scenes, even if this has rarely resulted in music I’ve gone back to more than once. new title track Born Savage takes their sound in a more explosive direction, feeling as if it could work as a nice video game soundtrack.
I remain baffled by the fact that these virtual groups don’t take advantage of their unique configuration and release material that “normal” idol groups couldn’t. It’s so weird when these acts do music show stages that consist of the same overused choreo tropes we see all the time. If you’re going to go virtual, you might as well be flying around the stage, defying laws of physics! That’s the case in Born Savage‘s music video, which also looks like a video game (crossed with an epic movie battle).
The song itself is a fine slice of rollicking rock music. There are too many vocal effects for my liking, especially given the genre. Though the vocalists seem to be quite talented, no one has the undeniably unique tone needed to make a track like this flourish. Instead, Born Savage comes across as a little anonymous. It’s hard to tell how many people are singing since the voices tend to blend into one digitized texture.
| Hooks | 8 |
| Production | 8 |
| Longevity | 7 |
| Bias | 8 |
| RATING | 7.75 |
Grade: C+
The Bias List // K-Pop Reviews & Discussion 
Once again, the vocals are mighty fine. I could do without the lengthy smash and dash ending in the video which is just all noise when one isn’t looking at the video.
The song is actually pretty good. I think if it came from one of my stans, I would dig it more. For now, I’d give it low 8’s or so, maybe higher once I hear it in the car.
Regulars will know how often I have vented about how kpop choreo has become so ossified into the same movements, the same formations. Hip Hop dancing has come round full circle and around again and around again. Is there anything new to say in that dance language? (And don’t get me started on Lyrical. Vigorous bendy arm waving.)
I am old so the viral Molly Long “Pop Muzik” and “Double Dutch Bus” finally came onto my radar last week, and it was a breath of fresh air. A new vocabulary in contemporary dance. If I were a kpop agency, I would be signing her up pronto. Remember Parris Goebel did Big Bang choreo back when she was in her ascendency.
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Adding: I just went to US iTunes to download this one, and was happy to see that all tracks on this album today are high on the “popularity” meter, happy for all the creatives involved.
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As someone who just went to a concert for an animated group in Japan last month and had a blast, I’m probably this group’s exact target market haha. I really like what PLAVE is doing overall, and there’s a lot of great talent being utilized behind the avatars, so I don’t feel the lack of the human element that I do with the occasional stabs the industry has attempted with actual AI idols.
I do agree though that there’s a certain extra level of uniqueness that would go a long way if it was added to the music itself. Thinking to the tracks I really like from fictional idol franchises like UtaPri and Ensemble Stars, there’s always a bit of theatricality it. Since the characters have interesting back stories their audiences are 100% in-on due to the necessity of having a private life being removed, there’s a lot of potential for storytelling and freedom both lyrically and musically. I would love for PLAVE to be a little less by-the-book Kpop for sure.
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Revisited the other day Ensemble Stars Ryuseitai 1st Full Album after quite a few years away from the anime/gacha idol scene and had an absolute blast on how each song had such a strong personality and storytelling side to it all. What wouldn’t I give to get this sound in K-Pop as well!
And although Ensemble Stars gets the points of being a story-heavy franchise, l’d also shotout to Revue Starlight productions which are all amazing as well! I still get chills when listening to Hokori to Ogori
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Me again with the long essay comments. I recently watched MBC’s Virtual Live Fest that took place in November last year. It would’ve driven Nick absolutely crazy, not just because most of the virtual acts (aside from PLAVE and Isegye Idol) were presenting serially mid material, but because their stages were almost all straightforwardly boring. At least PLAVE did some mildly interesting things with platforms and moving backgrounds. If any of you ever wanted to see Naevis do her Sims 4 CC pose thing to almost zero crowd response, go hit up MBC VLF 2025. (Corporeal idol groups were also in attendance but none of them particularly interested me outside of AHOF covering Way 4 Luv; PLAVE and AHOF have a mutual in EL CAPITXN. Speaking of EL CAPITXN, this is the first PLAVE mini album where he hasn’t got a single credit – think his last one was for Dash, but I read he’s busy with touring and solo recordings lately.)
What I’m getting attempting to get at here is the thing I touched on last time in my SKINZ comment essay; to be doing the type of stage Nick is getting at, for a virtual group, is simultaneously an economical & logistical problem, and also on the company level an imagination failure issue (but with a caveat I’ll get to later). PLAVE started streaming from a pretty small basement studio somewhere in subterranean Seoul and could not hold a full five-man livestream until they later moved to a building with a slightly bigger basement studio. Even then, their first few five-man lives pushed their tech to the absolute hilt and were some of the glitchiest streams they ever did. In the second half of last year VLAST (PLAVE’s company) relocated to another building with presumably their biggest basement studio yet (my 3am brain can only think to link to the time they played freeze tag to help demonstrate how big it is). For action MVs like Dash and Born Savage they rig wires and do their own stunts (helpfully Hamin is a 4th dan black belt in taekwondo and does all his own kicks).
Needless to say PLAVE are in a very fortunate position that most of their virtual peers can only dream of. The mocap cameras VLAST are probably using (do you like the amount of qualifiers I am forced to use btw) cost upwards of $20K each, and they had at least eight of them last time we were able to count them. Good quality mocap suits aren’t cheap, computers are only getting more expensive, and then you need people to operate said computers (VLAST only got around to hiring a virtual clothing stylist about a year ago). And of course, you have to look after your talent. And then you still have to hope that anyone working with you approaches their job with a jot of imagination and whimsy. Anyone these days can go virtual on the cheap (and it’ll look it too) but if you want to do it on anything approaching PLAVE’s level then I hope you have some property to remortgage and/or some dead-keen investors. And as with anything to do with computers there’s a lot that can and will go wrong. For virtual groups not on PLAVE’s level, which is most of them, all of that works against doing anything but the bare minimum presentation-wise.
The caveat I mentioned is that I think while non-fans like Nick may grumble about it being uninspired and wonder why people even bother, most virtual idol fans do not. They just want to see their virtual idols sing and dance like any other idol, which they were surely doing at the VLF. But with PLAVE specifically I think it also has to do with the members’ backgrounds not being in VTubing/livestreaming but (without wanting to get too soft-doxxy about it) being former conventional wholly corporeal idols (as opposed to groups like the aforementioned Isegye Idol, who were a bunch of VTubers put together by a livestreamer). So for PLAVE, and now also OWIS (and maybe other virtual groups too) being a virtual idol was and still probably is more of a means to an end for them; gimmicky, yes, but a gimmick that might grant them a second shot at their dream to sing and dance for a living if they work really hard (….and are also really fortunate with timing and happen to know all the right folks, I’m just saying). Most of the fanbase is fairly cognizant of this (to varying degrees) and honestly just wants to see the normal idol stuff too (I can’t wait for the performance MV myself). Which is not to say the members haven’t fully embraced the virtual process along the way; just look at that MV, they’re superheroes now.
Also another wrinkle that just occurred to me, it’s probably quite hard to get a lot of this stuff working and operational while still meeting the deadlines for music show prerecordings, and they also don’t have full control of their ‘environment’ there, so to speak (as in, M Countdown probably should still look like and feel M Countdown, even when rendered in Unreal Engine). PLAVE do some really fun stuff at their concerts though.
…Suppose I should comment on the song at some point. I like Born Savage a lot, maybe more than I initially liked Dash, and I liked Dash a lot too. I can’t personally agree with the comment about it feeling anonymous, because frankly the members of PLAVE are the opposite of anonymous to a fan like me, even under that much vocal filter, but then I have spent a worrisome amount of hours listening to and/or watching these guys over the last couple years (I fell asleep to a livestream once and woke up to the sound of Noah’s hyena laughing). I also liked that they opened their album with the a cappella doowop of Blossom Parade; it feels odd, but PLAVE are frequently an odd group (in many more ways than just the obvious) and it’s very in keeping with their special brand of oddness. Think I Am is my fave B-side (a boppy little new jack swing late 1st gen/early 2nd gen throwback) but already I am getting increasingly tetchy with people of the greater internet miscategorising it as city pop (just because PLAVE did actual city pop on Pt 1 with Chroma Drift). Might be a long week for me.
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Thank you for this detail. I think these guys have talent, so I am happy that they are growing and building.
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this website doesn’t deserve your explanations lol. people have tried explaining the irl lore behind the group and /why/ they make the kinda music they make, they just don’t wanna get it so they can keep critiquing them for not being experimental enough when that was never the objective of the group and, as you said, would blow their budget without producing any actual results.
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Hey, be kind. The world needs more kindness these days. We all have times when we have to say our peace about our under-appreciated stans. (Lord knows I can go on at times …)
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When has Ssaerom ever been nice?
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This mom of two teens says that sounds like something one kid would say about the other kid after I pick them up in carpool, to which I would say “hey, both of you’s in the back seat, knock it off”.
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i comment on this site once a year why are you keeping tabs on me
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Hey Nick, as you didn’t do a review for Plave debut song – Wait For You as these 2D animated virtual group is not your thing in the very beginning, out of my curiosity, how would you rate it today?
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another banger from my good friends plave—not that i expect the people on this site to evalute their musical output objectively.
i know for people would be eating this up if they weren’t virtual.
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