Dreamcatcher Shoots Into July 2021 With More Reality And Radio

K-Pop — Dreamcatcher Recall

Dreamcatcher has some Airsoft fun and opens new horizons in early July 2021.

July is here, and with the official passage into the second half of the year, Dreamcatcher continues their activities and work, both in front of the camera and behind-the-scenes preparing for existing, known gigs and potential future work. There was a decent amount of activity from the group this past week, so let’s get right to it!

This past Tuesday saw SuA’s latest appearance on SBS Young Street Radio, where fellow guest Sleepy and AB6IX’s Lee Daewhi talked about things that could confuse someone trying to figure out whether or not someone likes them, with maintaining eye contact, random chats out of nowhere, and having the same likes and dislikes. This was Sleepy’s last appearance on Young Street for a while, as schedules and work would take him elsewhere, and so a bouquet of flowers and an appropriately chosen “sexy dance” penalty served as send offs for the hip-hop/rap star. To SuA’s delight, Sleepy had improved quite a bit doing the Brave Girls hip dance from the “Rolling” chorus and her and Daewhi joined him to get it done.

As for SuA, earlier in the week the exciting news came down from Dreamcatcher Company that she would serve as a fixed/regular guest on SBS Young Street, giving her a persistent radio gig that would no doubt be good for her as well as the group. Those of us who are Dreamcatcher fans were by no means surprised to see SuA turn a two-week temporary show appearance into regular work, but it was nice to see SBS themselves recognize the personality and talent SuA brings to the broadcast. Even better is the fact that now SuA is guaranteed to have regular work and interactions with the new permanent DJ of SBS Young Street, Red Velvet’s Wendy, adding to the expanding network of high-tier K-Pop groups and artists that Dreamcatcher now has a connection to. I’m really looking forward to seeing SuA’s high energy level work with Wendy’s bright personality, and hopefully, the rest of you are as well.

But SuA isn’t the only member to find collaboration opportunities. Dami, who has been a big fan of long-time South Korean musician Sunwoo Jung-a, got to participate in helping to record her latest upcoming track, called “Buffalo”. In one of those “successful fan” stories you hear about in the K-Pop industry, Dami used her networking skills and the help of Dreamcatcher Company to work with someone as well respected as Sunwoo Jung-a, who’s collaborated with the likes of popular artists and groups IU and 2NE1. We’ll likely be hearing some of Dami’s signature voice (even if some of that is in creating buffalo-like moo-ing sounds), but the important thing is that it’s always good to see Dreamcatcher expand their boundaries.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wovSfOqpMZU[/embed]

We also got a peek into the waiting room for the 2021 Dream Concert that Dreamcatcher recently performed at via a Dreamcatcher’s Note. Oftentimes, during a longer concert like this one with a multitude of artists, there is a ton of downtime between appearances, so it was nice to see Dreamcatcher making sure the time was well-spent.

Most of the video showed Dreamcatcher trying to figure out what new gestures and movements to throw into existing, well-known choreography for what would be shown as a combination Odd Eye/Scream performance. We saw newly red-haired Gahyeon trying to see if pointing to herself would work, Handong throw in a reference back to the group’s “Chase Me” days, and Siyeon trying seemingly every kind of movement under the sun in order to look the coolest on stage. We also saw Handong and JiU start off an impromptu arm exercising/strength session, which likely might be the reason the two of them came in 1st and 2nd in the tug of war activity from a couple weeks ago in Dreamcatcher Mind episode 5. All-in-all, it was nice to get this bit of a peek into what happens on performance day, even if much of that was Siyeon trying to figure out how best to mime shooting at the camera.

It turns out all that shooting practice might have been Siyeon remembering what the group did for Dreamcatcher Mind episode 7, which was to travel to an Airsoft arena and have some fun PUBG-style battleground shootouts with one another. After how heavy the last episode was from an emotional standpoint, seeing the group have some light-hearted fun picking each other off with air-propelled handguns was nice to see.

Here’s the TL;DR of how Team Dream (SuA, Siyeon, Yoohyeon, and Dami) and Team Catcher (JiU, Handong, and Gahyeon) fared against one another:

• Team Dream preferred to utilize tactics and superior numbers, while Team Catcher decided to employ aggressive, all-out shooting.
• There were plenty of fun tactical moments, from Dami serving as lookout from the tower, to SuA dividing the battlefield into three zones, but also a great deal of chaos from bullet-spraying JiU and Gahyeon.
• The second half of the match saw the teams switch sides and also get some items to try to help things. Handong managed to find a pan that she used to create protection from her four-kill sniping spot. SuA found an umbrella that was torn, but still managed to use it to her advantage.
• The match was close with a bunch of back and forth, but Team Dream prevailed in the end, resulting in all of Dreamcatcher performing a PUBG-style chicken dance in celebration.

One of the reasons why I’ve enjoyed this series so much is how self-aware the production staff have been, and this episode was no different. They definitely told Dreamcatcher to ham it up a bit, and they obliged, from the funny action-movie trailer introduction sequence of both teams, to the mixture of both tactical and aggressive strategies, to plenty of moments worth remembering.

Part of the benefit of having a group so willing to go all out like Dreamcatcher is having every member have their time to shine, and that’s what we got here. JiU laughed like she was at a fun karaoke session rather than a shootout. Yoohyeon put all those PUBG hours to good use sneaking around to end a Handong sniper spree. Gahyeon discovered you could just shoot through objects rather than around them. There was definitely a lot to laugh and cheer about here.

Most of all, Dreamcatcher being willing to snap out of the stereotypical elegant idol image just to look ridiculous (such as in the end with the celebratory chicken dance) is part of their charm. To a certain extent, many K-Pop groups employ this kind of casual attitude about themselves off-stage in order to increase their appeal, but in Dreamcatcher’s case, since they so typically craft darker, more serious concepts for title tracks, the effect is a bit greater. There’s only 3 more episodes left, but I’m sure we’ll see plenty more of the same of this kind of fun from the group, no matter what they choose to do.

[embed]https://www.vlive.tv/video/255292[/embed][embed]https://www.vlive.tv/video/255292[/embed]

Aside from all the good clean fun of Dreamcatcher Battleground on their reality show, we did get a couple of vLives from Yoohyeon/Handong and one from Gahyeon talking about filming for the episode, where we learned Yoohyeon didn’t know there was bread as an item, Gahyeon said that several rounds were filmed (let’s hope for a clip montage of the stuff that didn’t make all these episodes), and all three were very mum on comeback spoilers of any kind. We haven’t seen much after the Behind photos that showed up two weeks ago, but there’s only speculation to follow as to why. Possible reasons could be going back to an established pattern of Mystery Codes after an extended amount of time past the Behind photos, the company taking a hard look at the current surging COVID situation in South Korea and needing to adjust things, or simply that they’re still working on music and just aren’t ready.

Either way, at this point I’m just waiting and seeing like all the other Dreamcatcher fans for what they have coming up in the future. Above all, the safety of the group is most important, so if an uptick of surging COVID cases in Seoul is giving Dreamcatcher (and many other groups, if the news is to be believed) pause, then that’s just fine. We’ll be here and will be around for whenever Dreamcatcher decides to comeback, but until then, we have plenty more to look forward to that we know will show up in July. I’ll be here to recap things as usual, and hope you stick around to read all about news from the group next week at this time!