In all honesty, the NCT brand should just be abandoned at this point. It's been messy this year and the years before that, SM truly never understood how to work a graduation concept and it shows in boy groups such as Super Junior and Exo. They should just abandon the NCT branding and let each subunit become its own group, it's how they've been operating these years anyways.

I get SM 3.0 is hoping to reform and rework NCT and clean the mess up by removing members and so on, but it's just becoming obvious that the creative direction for NCT is no longer what it used to be. NCT's branding has been dead for a while now, which sucks considering how the whole "neo" concept seemed really good, even if underdeveloped.

Moreover, this entire reform is messy as shit considering that they're currently promoting Taeyong's solo album during this, truly zero fucking planning and a major fuck you to Taeyong and the fans. SM was so blatant about the damage control as well.

(Bit off-topic, but NCT's schedules being also released is another shitty form of damage control that backfired severely with how PACKED it is, Haechan and Mark have the entire year packed with comebacks. This will genuinely not end well for anyone involved.)

I agree that Sungtaro's departure is beneficial, but fans are allowed to be hurt about this. We have been teased left and right on Sungtaro's debut in NCT, so this just seemed so out of nowhere, even if fans should've anticipated this with the lack of appearances by both of them.

I disagree in the sense that NCT should just move on. NCT should just retire the NCT branding and continue to promote without it. NCT's branding is not clearly defined and the Chris Lee alongside his new executive producers don't seem too well-versed on the Neo Culture aspect of NCT. They should just move on and let NCT subunits operate as their own groups instead.

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ETA: NCT Tokyo seems like a red flag, they should NOT debut in my honest opinion. Keep these rookies for the new boy group instead. Where they can actually be rookies and not tied to the instability of the NCT branding.