Starship Entertainment, home label to WJSN (Cosmic Girls, 우주소녀) recently got called out by K-pop fans, due to the glaring similarities between the girl group’s upcoming photo book and fellow K-pop act BTS (방탄소년단)’s album designs.
Last night (Tuesday, 7th July), Starship released a teaser for WJSN’s first ever photo book entitled “1st Photo Book [On & Off]”. According to the poster, the photo book is scheduled to be released on 12th August.
As the name suggests, the book has two versions – “Persona: On” and “Ego: Off”. Similar to BTS’ previous albums, “Map Of The Soul: Persona” and “Map Of The Soul: 7”, the WJSN photo book uses Jungian theory (the persona and ego) as a concept, much to the fury of both fandoms.
In this case, a number of ARMYs (BTS fans) pointed out that “Map Of The Soul: 7” album contains songs such as “Intro: Persona”, “Outro: Ego”, and also their most recent hit “ON”. Not only that, a few designs of “Ego:Off” was also frowned upon for resembling BTS’ Japanese album “Lights”.
Realising the striking comparisons, both Ujungs (WJSN fandom name) and ARMYs (die-hard BTS supporters) have been blaming Starship for this case, accusing the company of plagiarising the latter’s album concept and designs. Some even threw shade at the “Save Me Save You” jam-makers over things beyond their control.
starship was this really necessary? our wjsn girls deserve so much better than a photo book that's a little too similar to bts' album :( i mean yeah it's fine to use the words persona and ego but this whole design is a little too much… the girls don't need that kinda promotion pic.twitter.com/JGV09Fgb7P
— ? (@bbeomcnvs) July 7, 2020
I don't care if this is just a photobook, this is so irresponsable. The creative director should have know better than to ride over the success of other people's creations. This plagiarism. STARSHIP is just staining WJSN's efforts and good image, they deserve better#BTS #WJSN pic.twitter.com/3ohEKmGgD2
— ?????⛥ (@mmr_ax) July 7, 2020
"Can I copy your homework?"
"Yeah just don’t make it look too
obvious."ADVERTISEMENT
Starship really did wjsn dirty…even the fk font is the same as BTS’ pic.twitter.com/fvXcah2rUa
— b ◡̈ sunghoon’s valentine (@tbzsthetic) July 7, 2020
we all know that we are number one worldwide so they go here tryna make their flop idols unflopped ??
— mauii (@namuggukkie) July 8, 2020
On the contrary, a few Ujungs have came forward to clarify that it wasn’t WJSN’s fault in this matter. Some of them even apologised on behalf of the agency, asking ARMYs not to take out their anger on WJSN.
https://twitter.com/BOCASJE0N/status/1280496621667725314?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
https://twitter.com/SHNYGGUK/status/1280504203471962113
https://twitter.com/UjungEnt/status/1280487233708003329
So far, Starship has yet to release any statement to address the controversy.
Source: Koreaboo.
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