After a long-awaited, with both exciting and frustrating anticipation, another music survival show has come to an end. Many K-Pop fans have been paying close attention to the survival show ‘Build Up’ that streamed from January 29, 2024, to March 29, 2024. Build Up’s contestants consist of already well-known singers which differs from other survival shows.

Build Up had contestants like Yeo One from the popular boy group ‘Pentagon’, Kim SeungHun from ‘CIX’, and Jay Chang from ‘One Pact’ who was also a contestant in the popular music survival show in 2023, ‘Boys Planet’.

And well-known people featured weren’t just the contestants, but the judges too. The judges featured were: Lee Seok-hoon, Baekho, Seo Eun-kwang, Solar, Wendy, and Kim Jaehwan. They also featured other guest judges such as Seungkwan and Lim Seul-ong. Because of this, a lot of K-pop fans were very interested in Build Up.

The votes for the winners in Build Up were split up into three sections: online, judges, and live audience. Most votes were online, the live audience were those who went to see the performance live, which was less than 100, while judges were the least with only six, sometimes seven, votes. These votes made up the whole voting system.

Because of these votes, it stopped biased opinions and allowed the contestants to be evaluated properly. This voting system also limited the stress on fans in case any scandals or unfairness happened. Compared to shows like Boys Planet, where votes were entirely from the online audience instead of judges, Build Up allows a more fair representation of talent.

In total, Build Up consisted of 40 contestants competing to be a part of the 4-member debut group, B.D.U.(Boys Define Universe) In the end, the winner of Build Up was the team HunMinJayBit consisting of Kim Minseo, Jay Chang, Bitsaeon, and Kim SeungHun.

Build Up is different compared to most music survival shows. The show was produced by Mnet, a company known for unwarranted editing. They would mix their contestants’ words just so the show’s favorite contestant could win. Despite this, the show was pretty much fair and had much less cruelty.

Viewers believe Build Up was less cruel since the editors of Mnet weren’t too biased to focus on other individuals and they didn’t edit their least favorites out as problematic. Unlike most other Mnet music survival shows, Build Up didn’t have it nearly as bad.

For instance, I-Land, the survival show that created Enhypen, had “basement” treatment where the contestants that were voted out had to go to the basement instead of home, making the contestants feel even more ashamed than when they felt being voted out. Boys Planet in 2023, which created the group ZEROBASEONE, had an unfair voting system. On the last day, votes were doubled; however, the voting was for overseas fans in the middle of the day. This means most of the overseas voters couldn’t vote since they were at work or school, which gave better advantages to South Korean fans.

Meanwhile, Build Up had a rank where regardless of what rank you were, you had the chance to improve on your own rather than favorability deciding your rank. 

Even though some celebrities could be more popular than others, it is evident on how each contestant was given fair treatment which was proven in the fourth elimination where a team that consisted of three well-known celebrities, almost got eliminated by the judges.

There were also earnings and rewards for the contestants in Build Up. For example, after the third round, the MVP of each song chosen by the judges was given an advantage to not only choose whether to keep their team or not but also the right to decide who’s on their team depending on the order the judges placed you in. 

We eventually saw how this advantage for the MVP was not a disadvantage for the contestants who weren’t the MVP because the team WaterFire proved this.. Although other contestants got the chance to choose who was on their teams, the last contestants who weren’t chosen and became a team automatically, made it to the final three using talent only. The team actually couldn’t have been happier with the final result. “I’m just happy I made it into the final three,” Sunyoul of UP10TION said in Build Up episode 10.

Some viewers or fans may disagree with the fact that Build Up is less cruel. In particular, in episode 3, ‘Dangerously’ by Charlie Puth, covered by Jay Chang and Bitsaeon lost to Wumuti and HAYOON with the song ‘Falling’. Originally, the judges were fascinated by Jay and Bitsaeon’s performance, but the duo lost by a small point difference to Wumuti and Hayoon. Because of this, a lot of fans were very upset.

However, this voting was very fair and there shouldn’t be much to argue with. Wumuti and Hayoon did place first, but Jay Chang and Bitsaeon placed second leading them to risk elimination for going against the falling team in the 2v2’s. Also, teams got to decide who they wanted to go against. In other words, the show had nothing to do with the talent differences and rigging wins since the choice was solely left to the contestants.

Build Up was entirely fair compared to most K-pop survival shows and outshined past music survival shows. Build Up had almost no savagery towards the contestants and wasn’t completely biased either. The fairness was unmatched! Build Up was a good show for those interested in survival/elimination shows, the stress relief in Build Up makes it the fairest survival show of all and still keeps the suspenseful interest.