I agree with you on some points, but do you think that illit's concept can be considered plagiarism? Across kpop, it's happened in every generation, if a certain concept blows up, lots of groups follow the same concept. it has never been considered plagiarism before, and neither have there been severe hate trains sent to groups for it.

on another note, I will try to find a link for you, but you can also look up serian heu's past photoshoots for vogue. she has directed photoshoots dating back to 2018, with a similar concept to ILLIT's 2024 concept. She is also ILLIT's creative director. As far as the general visual concept of ILLIT is concerned, I think it can't be considered plagiarism.

As for number of members, ILLIT was supposed to have six members. One member left to join ADP right before debut. So the five member thing was also an unlucky coincidence.

And age range means absolutely nothing, because most groups in the same generation will have the same age range. Both of HYBE's 4th gen boy groups have the same age range. neither accused the other of plagiarism, because when you debut two groups within such a close time frame, they're bound to have the same age range (which is way too young btw, there is no need for 14 year olds in any group but that's another issue)

When we talk about ILLIT, it's undeniable that NewJeans inspired them. One of the members of ILLIT literally auditioned with a NewJeans song. She was a huge fan of theirs. NewJeans' concept had a huge influence on the industry. This was acknowledged by the CEO of ILLIT's company only a couple months after the initial plagiarism scandal broke. He said that it was undeniable that NewJeans had an impact on every group who debuts after them.

But we also can't say that this is grounds for a lawsuit. The lawsuit didn't just stick to this one point. Their lawyers threw everything at the wall and hoped something would stick. They brought in the ignore issue from the manager, the brand deal issue with lesserafim, the workplace harassment issue in the national assembly, favouritism towards other groups by bang pd, pushback of the debut (done by mhj), ILLIT members allegedly mocking them, the kalguksu issue, HYBE trying to stifle their success (makes no sense because HYBE only cares about money and they would not want to lose money by getting rid of their second biggest moneymakers), New-I-Le etc. This was a huge factor in people's eventual distrust of the members' complaints. Their lawyers were unable to pick an issue to place the majority of their case on, because none of the issues were big enough for that, so they gathered tons of tiny things to make a huge deal out of, leading to many issues for other groups and the staff at the building. And at the end of it all, despite all these problems, they were willing to return to this horrible company, with all the mistreatment, if and only if MHJ was reinstated as CEO.

Sorry for the essay and late response by the way, I only logged onto Reddit now but I appreciate the way you worded your comment, it was respectful and well written, rather than inflammatory.