Dreamcatcher Kicks Off 2023 With Content Spanning Past, Present, And Future
K-Pop — Dreamcatcher Recall
Vacation continued through the new year for K-Pop’s resident rock/pop girl group, but that didn’t stop fans from hearing more from them and their plans.
The New Year has always been a time for obvious beginnings and another 365 days of working towards, meeting, and setting goals for oneself, and Dreamcatcher is no different in this regard. After a banner year in 2022 in which many long-time milestones were reached, the group is quite ready to get things started again in 2023. While still enjoying some of their remaining time off, Dreamcatcher’s members were still quick to keep in touch with their fans and drop in a few content tidbits to tide them over until they fully return to work — ones which reflected past achievements and memories, present milestones, and some potential future teases.
Let’s take a look at some of the news and items from the past week from Dreamcatcher!
[embed]https://twitter.com/ForbesKoreaIDOL/status/1610081953453338625[/embed]
Forbes Korea, though a smaller channel, has always been kind to Dreamcatcher, and their various and occasional polls in conjunction with the Idol Champ app have produced some nice accolades for the group’s members. This time around, for their end-of-year Forbes Korea Awards (FKA), the group took home a trophy for the fan-voted Best Female Idol category. An accompanying article to the press had Dreamcatcher’s quoted, grateful response to this news, as the group once again thanked fans for their support and for making this possible. Not too shabby.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DhvvqWmnzLw[/embed]
We also got a bit of nostalgia this past week as well, as Handong reported in from her long-deserved return to be with her family in China with a mini-vlog about her time in middle school in Wuhan. Accompanied by one of her friends from back then, as well as her dog, Handong reminisced about what it was like to attend school, what she and her friends did as part of their daily routine and more. There was also a funny moment when Handong thought about just showing back up at school, but out of respect for students currently in class she decided not to. Being teased by her friend about being taken to task for her non-school uniform standard hair color should she show up was just a nice bonus.
Each Dreamcatcher member seems to be displaying their own style when it comes to vlog content these days, and Handong’s whimsical, soft style filled with her daily life definitely has a charm to it. Hopefully Handong will enjoy the rest of her time with her family before returning to South Korea to get back to work with her fellow Dreamcatcher groupmates.
[embed]https://weverse.io/dreamcatcher/live/2-111372847[/embed]
And speaking of the rest of Dreamcatcher, a new year in 2023 wouldn’t be a proper start without one of them celebrating their birthday to kick it off. As someone born in January, Yoohyeon has always been the first out of the gate to pick up one more revolution around the sun for herself, and this year was no different. I’ve noticed that after last year’s dalgona mishap that Dreamcatcher Company staff have moved to a bit less adventurous birthday activities for the members, and Yoohyeon’s 2023 celebration seemed to be in this vein with a chill chat with fans live stream. That said, Yoohyeon did still do something fun and interesting in that she did some paint-by-numbers stuff while answering fan questions, which was nice.
One thing that stuck out to me, in particular, was Yoohyeon talking about the surreal feeling she still has to this day with so many people celebrating her birthday as someone with celebrity status. Going from being a bit shy and not having many gatherings for her birthday to visiting at least 3 or 4 different events dedicated to that certainly must have been a change over the past 6 years or so, but I think for her, she continues to be thankful that people support and want to see her happy on the day she gets older.
[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XVmme6O52V8[/embed]
Birthdays were also not the only thing that was celebrated this past week, as a bit of future content was teased from a collaboration with VR app developer VENTA X. Dreamcatcher Company has been working with them to test out a 3D VR concert experience, complete with CGI spider from the “Nightmare” story series and a literal close-up view of Dreamcatcher as they performed some of their best and most recent songs. As of this writing, the concert is out for those with a Meta/Oculus Quest headset and will be free until the 14th, so if you have one or can get one, be sure to download the concert from the Meta Quest app lab and experience Dreamcatcher in a new and interesting format. Between ambitious CGI/greenscreen, graphical concert views and now 100% in VR (a format Dreamcatcher has played with before but not lately) the group and company continue to be unafraid to try out new mediums in order to bring their music and content to fans, so be sure to check out what they made before it goes to a paid model!
Last, but not least though, I can’t talk about future content without reporting on the news that Dreamcatcher began dropping “Behind” photos from the last comeback onto their official Instagram this past week. As veteran fans of Dreamcatcher know, the posting of hashtagged Behind photos is one of the first signs that a comeback is close and on the horizon for Dreamcatcher. This would surely be a comeback that (if it happens in the next month or so) would have a shorter-than-normal turnaround time than prior comebacks, something we haven’t really seen since debut year in 2017 when they rolled out three in relatively quick succession. But seeing as the gap between 2021’s “Summer Holiday” and 2022’s “Apocalypse: Save Us” was much longer than usual at almost nine months, having one that happened sooner rather than later might seem to balance the scales.
That said, Dreamcatcher has been immensely busy in 2022, and even though albums/choreography are in production and recording months in advance of any comeback, we may just be seeing a media dump ahead of something else (2021’s “Summer Holiday” Behind photos dropped a mere two months after comeback, after all, making way for the NEOGEN x Dreamcatcher collaboration) but nobody truly knows for sure. The only thing that we do know is that Dreamcatcher is sure to be busy to kick off 2023, no matter when it happens (my guess is around late February to early March right now given history and timing). The group is slated to celebrate their sixth anniversary on Friday the 13th, the first such Friday the 13th since debut that they’ll be able to do so, so it’s possible we may know more then.
Either way, be sure to clap, subscribe and signal boost if you like what you read here, as you know that I’ll be around, as usual, to write about the group. See you next week as I recap all of the sixth anniversary goings-on as well as more news from Dreamcatcher!
