The Conditions for Becoming a Kind Idol Leader - Episode 7
There’s been a slow but steady uptick in new fans lately, so I dug up a few things for the Aions who only got into the fandom recently. I honestly just wanted to gush, but it gets boring doing that alone too, haha.
It doesn’t have to be some story only old fans would know! Anything is fine, from the profile on the official site to tiny bits of TMI, as long as it’s not made-up gossip. Just try not to repeat what someone else has already said~
I’ll start!
- The name Zero One is said to carry the ambition of starting from zero and, one day, becoming idol number one. In the English rendering ZERO1, the O in Zero is written as the numeral 0 instead of the letter O.
- Zero One’s official fan club name is Aion (10N), which means eternity. It’s the idea of staying with Zero One forever. Since they both mean forever, Zero One and Aion are one and the same^^
- Except for the leader, Go Young-in, Zero One is the tallest idol group out there; every member is over 180 cm. It’s not that our leader is short, it’s just that the other members are enormous, so don’t get it twisted((((Young-in))))
- Zero One doesn’t have a single coward. (So fans keep begging to see them startled just once. They don’t flinch at ghosts, they don’t flinch if something jumps out at them, and they’re not even afraid of bugs. Guys, why are your hearts made of iron...? It looks like if you stabbed them, not even a single drop of blood would come out T_T)
- Zero One still hasn’t released a full-length album. (They debuted with a single and then put out three mini albums! Are we still holding out for the full album??)
My own opinion, so don’t start anything.
I’m not going to name names, but something about him just has that kind of face. You know, the sort that makes you think, at a glance, that he definitely isn’t a normal person?
There are a few members in this group whose eyes or faces feel weirdly unsettling.
The reactions weren’t that bad.
It had been a long time since he’d seen comments this clean when he searched for Zero One.
It would have been stranger if there hadn’t been a few uncertain rumors, curses, and trolls trying to stir things up.
He wasn’t particularly hurt by any of it. The old Zero One had been dragged through every kind of colorful insult imaginable, nationwide; by comparison, this almost felt affectionate.
In fact, it was enough to make him feel relieved.
Now and then, there were posts that made his stomach drop, the kind that made him wonder just how much people actually knew, but...
Once he started searching, there was no end to it. Sometimes there were even fans who seemed to know more about Zero One than Zero One’s own Go Young-in, which was embarrassing enough to make him want to look away.
With nothing else to do in the van for the moment, he killed the time by digging deeper and deeper into Zero One’s information until the agency came into view.
Inside the conference room, not only the Zero One members but also the agency head, the director, the choreographer, the stylist, the producer, the A&R team, and a scattering of other staff had gathered for Zero One’s comeback concept meeting.
Usually, they would first come up with the concept or the image the group would promote, and only then move the work forward. This time, though, the title track had already been decided, so they were going to build the concept around the song.
Go Young-in and the members were seated across from one another in pairs and trios. Cheon Sa-yoon sat there with a smile fixed on his face, listening closely to the meeting; next to him, Lim Se-bin was staring holes into the planning sheet; at Go Young-in’s side, Kyeon In-woo had his chin in his hand and was doodling on the paper; and Pyo Jae-ho just sat there with his mouth shut, his expression impossible to read.
Had it been like this before, too?
Go Young-in remembered that, back then, he had simply nodded along at the right moments and followed whatever he was told to do.
The staff member delivering the presentation wasn’t bad at all, and the other staff members seemed to be reacting reasonably well.
It was just that the final decision-maker, Kwon Dae-do of Double D Entertainment, wasn’t pleased.
He kept picking at the presentation the whole time, and his expression alone made it obvious he wasn’t satisfied.
Kwon Dae-do suddenly brought down the table he’d been drumming his fingers on with a bang.
What the hell.
Go Young-in blinked automatically.
What was wrong with him? The staff members could only keep their heads down and read the room because, after all, he was the boss.
The members, too, began to focus on the representative’s abrupt behavior.
Feeling those eyes on him, Kwon Dae-do smiled with obvious satisfaction and propped his chin on both hands.
“So, in the end, you’re saying we should go with something refreshing?”
“Yes. It’s scheduled for release in July to match the summer season, and it also blends well with the tropical house genre. It fits the idea of a summer special album, too.”
The staff member delivering the presentation had already probably said the same thing twenty times over, but he answered the representative’s repeated questions calmly, without so much as a crease between his brows.
“Haah... Fine, everything’s fine. Everything’s fine! But as you know, Zero One’s whole world is dark, somehow precarious, gloomy, and all that. Huh? It’s not the first time, so why is this such a problem?”
That damn worldbuilding.
K-pop idol culture had this thing called “worldbuilding,” a fictional setting built around a group’s identity and concept.
Zero One’s case, however, was a deeply fantasy-flavored world built on an apocalypse with no dream and no hope to speak of.
Setting everything else aside—
Why the hell would you want a gloomy, dark concept for a tropical house song?
If they left him alone, he would definitely end up saying the concept and the song didn’t fit and demand that the song be changed.
And last time, he really had changed the song halfway through.
Thankfully, the album hadn’t crashed and burned completely, but it hadn’t exactly blown up either.
Kwon Dae-do was the sort of man who was far too immersed in Zero One’s lore.
What’s more, even before that, his taste in music had leaned more toward the gloomy and the slow than the bright and the fast.
Because of that representative’s pointless stubbornness, every title-track music video Zero One had released so far had come packed with a bleak story tied to the lore.
Of course, the lore itself wasn’t at fault. Most idols these days created their own lore and used it as part of their concept, and even if people called it childish, plenty of fans secretly enjoyed it.
There were also fans who hated it precisely because it felt too excessive.
Zero One’s own lore was fundamentally built on the apocalypse—the end of humanity—with science fiction and fantasy all mixed together into one messy stew, so the overall feeling was the opposite of hopeful.
In other words, their concepts were mostly dark, gloomy, and heavy.
That meant the stage costumes and makeup were all intense or shadowy, too.
There had even been a school-uniform concept once, but because the atmosphere was cruel and hopeless—nothing like the old-school or youthful freshness fans had expected—people barely even counted it as school uniforms anymore.
And that ridiculously realistic bug crawling around on set drew criticism too, except from a few weirdos with very specific tastes...
Of course, there were plenty of fans who liked that heavy atmosphere.
But no matter how good a concept was, if you kept stewing it for two full years, people were bound to start talking.
This title track, if you thought about it, was Zero One’s first real attempt at something bouncy and genuinely refreshing.
But if the representative shut it down like this, the other staff members couldn’t give a proper answer either, because they were all busy watching his mood.
Ha. What a joke.
So coming back from the debut timeline really was a disaster, not a benefit.
No matter how he looked at it, it felt like the status window had scammed him.