Red Velvet's Debut Is Certainly...One Of A Kind?

So, SM has debuted another girl group, 5 years after f(x) made their way into the Kpop-sphere. This new four-membered unit, consisting of Irene, Seulgi, Wendy and Joy, has already made big headlines, but maybe not for the reasons you would expect.



Headline #1
Apparently, there's already a group with the exact same name. What are the odds for that? This group released a single some time ago but with no recognition, so for SM not to know of their existence is maybe not that strange, but surely they should have at least looked it up beforehand? Anyway, the two parties have reached an agreement so there's that settled, but it's not a great start for this new group.

Headline #2
Not only was the name of the group already taken, their group logo is not their own either. An Italian brand called Roncato has a very similar looking logo, and while SM might not have used it on purpose it's still, as with the name, a mistake a company like them shouldn't make.


Headline #3
Red Velvet's debut song is called "Happiness", and the video very much follows the theme of the track with its bright, cute and energetic execution, but there was something that didn't really fit it. If you look carefully, you will at one point see images referring back to the bombing of Japanese cities Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the 9/11 attacks in New York. For reasons that do not need further explaining, this pissed a lot of people off. SM later apologized and uploaded a new video with those bits edited out.



As you can make out, more controversies have affected this group in a week than what most groups experience in a year, and I don't know if SM is being lazy or just doesn't care anymore, but I really think these girls deserve better. At first I didn't like the song very much at all, but now I really like it, and the energetic live performances these girls put out sure are impressive. My favorite member is Joy, the youngest member, as she's a 96-liner like me and I find her the most eye-catching out of all of them with her adorable smile. Seriously though, the other three members look like they could be sisters, and right now I can only separate them by the color of their dip-dye. They're all really pretty though, like really pretty and the all seem to bring some kind of skill to the group. I suppose that's the advantage of having less members, as each one gets to shine more.

I think this group can make it quite far in the future and I wish them all the luck on the way, but I think that this time it's only up to SM not to screw them over even more. Let's stop the negative headlines here and make room for some positive ones.