Asia's Next Top Model Cycle 2 ~ 3 episodes impression

The second season of Asia's Next Top Model had premiered on 8th January 2014. You can catch the show on Star World (Channel 711 ASTRO Malaysia), every Wednesday at 9.40 pm (8.40 pm in Jakarta and Bangkok). Currently the show had already aired 3 episodes, so here's what I think about the reality show so far.

For this cycle, the competition is based in Malaysia which I think is a great move since the show had already been based in Singapore for its first cycle. Maybe they plan to have each cycle to be based in different Asian country? If that's the case, then it's even better as viewers would get a different vibe with each cycle and that would definitely help the show differentiate itself from the other country version of the reality show.

Nadya Hutagalung remains as head judge and host of the show, while Joey Mead-King, Mike Rosenthal and Adam Williams round up the judging panel. I'm glad Nadya Hutagalung and Joey Mead-King decided to stay on the show as I feel they bring in great energy to it. But sometimes they had too many guest judges that made the judging panel seemed crowded, like with the case in episode 2. I also feel that in the first 2 episodes, the comments by the judges sound like it were scripted (except for Joey Mead-King who I feel was amazing during panel) but fortunately by episode 3 the comments sounded more natural coming from the judges.

For the first episode, 16 aspiring models were showed coming to Malaysia's capital, Kuala Lumpur, and had their first challenge in which they had to catwalk on a runway submerged in water. After the challenge, we got our first elimination where Jessie was eliminated for performing the worst on the runway. It was pure bad luck for her that the first challenge involved water which she have a fear of. If it didn't involved water, maybe she could have performed better.

As for the first photo shoot, the girls had to take photos for their opening titles of the show. It was quite obvious from this photo shoot that the girls were still uncomfortable to pose in front of the camera. I think some of them do have modelling experience before but still almost all of the girls did a mediocre job in my opinion. I think they still need some time to get used to it, so I feel bad when Elektra became the first girl eliminated at the judging panel as I feel it is still too early for any of these girls to go home.

For the second episode, I can't say much as I missed huge chunk of the episode and only managed to watch the judging panel, so let's just jump ahead to the girl's photos where they had to pose in one of the popular tourist spot in Malaysia, Batu Caves, wearing clothes by Malaysian fashion designer, Melinda Looi. There are some good photos here which showed that the girls are getting more comfortable posing for the camera. I was really impressed by Nicole's picture and she won best photo of the week, which I think was totally deserving of her. Bona, on the other hand, became the second girl eliminated at the judging panel.

For episode 3, the girls had to catwalk a short distance and strike a pose on top of Kuala Lumpur Tower, a crazy and extreme challenge if you asked me, but I'm glad that all the girls did pretty well which was an amazing feat for each of them (seriously, I'm not even sure I could do what they did). As for the photo shoot, they had to pose in lingerie at cold temperature, minus 5 degrees Celsius! The photo shoot was done at SnoWalk, i-City, Selangor. I'm very impressed with this photo shoot as a lot of the girls had made huge improvement and their pictures seemed a lot better compared to previous episodes; maybe the styling and make up did help as well because all of the girls look gorgeous for this shoot. In the end, Josephine was announced to have the best photo of the week while Ji-hye was eliminated. While there are many good photos for this episode (in my opinion at least as some of the judges didn't quite like the photos that I think were quite good), my favourite has to be Nicole; she looks absolutely stunning and if she keep this up, she might have a great chance going all the way to the finale. But to be honest, it's still too early to tell and anything could happen in the coming weeks. And not to forget, poor Marie got sick while waiting for the judges' deliberation and was hospitalized. Hopefully she will get better and continue to compete in this show.

Four girls eliminated, 12 girls remain; Nicole, Sheena, Thao, Natalie, Jodilly, Tia, Katarina, Sneha, Josephine, Poojaa, Marie and Janice. I know I stated before that it's still too early to tell, but who do you think have a huge potential to be crowned the winner for this cycle?

Images from Asia's Next Top Model website.