With incredibly rare exceptions, like Seoyeon in tripleS, almost no idol has ever had an easy time making it to their debut. It takes an enormous amount of hard work over time to be recognized by a company and selected for debut. And in an age where reality competition shows have become popular in creating idol groups, the road to debut has only become even more dramatic! One of these programs is how Pocketdol Studio K-pop boy group Fantasy Boys was created: The conclusion of the MBC series Fantasy Boys revealed the final 12-member lineup of the group back on June 8, 2023. Unfortunately, original group leader Yu Junwon left under complicated circumstances prior to debut, making it an 11-member group. But the question remained of when the group would genuinely debut. So here is when exactly Kim Gyurae, Hong Seongmin, Oh Hyeontae, Lee Hanbin, Ling Qi, Kang Minseo, Hikari, K-Soul, Kim Wooseok, Hikaru, and Kaedan made their debut as Fantasy Boys.
Fantasy Boys Debuted on September 21, 2023
Fantasy Boys made their debut on September 21, 2023 with first mini-album New Tomorrow. The tracklist for New Tomorrow includes three songs in total: “New Tomorrow” (the title track), “One Shot,” and “Shangri La.” “New Tomorrow” was composed by Bangkok, Avenue 52, SQVARE, and Earcandy; arranged by Bangkok and Earcandy; and had lyrics written by Kang Eunjeong. On September 19, 2023, Fantasy Boys released three versions of a predebut “silhouette” performance video for “One Shot,” one of them being a Japanese version. On the day of debut, the “New Tomorrow” music video was released.
Fantasy Boys kept busy in the lead-up to debut. For starters, on June 18, 2023, the 12-members Fantasy Boys performed a special stage at Inkigayo, performing their song “Gesture,” among other stages the group has done. Furthermore, the group performed a fan concert in Tokyo, Japan on July 9, 2023, entitled “Welcome to Your Fantasy.” Originally, the group was to perform five songs there, but the group ambitiously requested to perform 10 songs instead, a huge amount for a predebut group. It was after these promotions, on August 23, 2023, that Funky Studio and Pocketdol Studio announced Yu Junwon would not debut due to a contract discrepancy, which we have detailed elsewhere.
To summarize, Fantasy Boys made their debut on September 21, 2023 with the mini-album New Tomorrow. For more about the group, check out how old the Fantasy Boys members currently are.