Eighteen

Eighteen logo

***Eighteen*** was a reality survival show created by Gashina Entertainment and KPS. It determined Gashina's future boy group Again, and it put Eighteen Gashina trainees against one another.

## History

### **Pre-broadcast: Trainee troubles**

In early 2019, Gashina Entertainment announced that they would debut a new boy group aimed to debut in 2020, the first boy group to come out of the company since they opened in 2018.

In early 2019, Gashina trainees that had social sites privileges stopped updating their accounts and started appearing in Co-CEO's Honey's classes more. Fans of the Gashina Trainees started wondering if the reason they stopped updating and started showing up in the choreograph videos more was because they were preparing to debut soon.

A few months after the trainees started appearing in Honey's videos, CEO of Gashina Vrai announced that the new Gashina boy group will be formed by the survival reality show *Eighteen*, where Eighteen Gashina trainees would compete to debut in the nine-member boy group Again.

Shortly after this announcement several of Gashina's trainees left the company. At first nobody knew why and was questioning the label daily asking them why several trainees left right before they were going to debut. On May 17, Vrai, Honey, and CHICHI all released statements on their personal accounts and the official accounts for Gashina stating that all trainees set to debut have to go through an evaluation stage. During this stage they will launch a mock-investigation against the trainees and check their backgrounds, their social sites and forums to make sure nothing problematic could come up again later that would cause alarm and end with the group disbanding or the trainees leaving the group.

During the mock-investigation it was found that several trainees were known bullies in their youth and that on different forms the trainees were mentioned on posts calling out idols and soon to be idols for sexual harassment and abuse. When the CEO's learned of these past behaviors they let the problematic trainees go and apologized to the victims for not knowing about their trainees past's sooner and promised to cooperate with police if it came to that in the future.

Fan's were shocked to learn about the trainees and began questioning if Gashina Entertainment didn't really know about their trainees pasts. That's when Vrai released another statement saying that they track their trainees and artists locations when they are preparing to debut, comeback or doing a schedule. The trainees all live in the same building which is secured and tracks when trainees come and go using ID cards. The trainees use the same ID cards when checking into Gashina's building and when getting lunch. Same goes for the Idols and the employees that work for Gashina. Vrai explained that the security system they use as designed by Honey's Uncle and that many other types of companies use the same security system.

Vrai said that if asked they would turn over the security log-in's for the former trainees and prove they were at their buildings during certain times or prove that they weren't were they said they were during certain times too. Vrai also stated that when they first sign on trainees to their company it's mostly trainees they know through friends, idols, co-workers or people that were mentioned to them in passing. Vrai said that from now on they will do better when signing trainees, he said that he was talking with the other ceo's and that they would be re-working their trainee system and possibly doing the Mock-investigations when signing trainees rather when signing new contracts with them for debut.