BABYMONSTER CHOOM in Manila — One Seat Short

BABYMONSTER opened its first-ever Philippine show on September 5 the way "Choom" - Korean for "dance" - promises: four of its hardest, most familiar tracks back to back. "WE GO UP," the title track "CHOOM," "BATTER UP," and "DRIP" ran in sequence at SM Mall of Asia Arena with no room for the crowd to catch its breath, a deliberate front-loading choice that turned Manila's first fifteen minutes into the loudest stretch of the night before the group had said a word to the audience.

My overall assessment is that BABYMONSTER delivered a genuinely high-energy debut in a new market, powered by a dance-first tracklist that suits arena-scale staging better than most rookie setlists this thin can - even though the six-member configuration the group has toured with since Rami's ongoing health hiatus began is now a permanent, unresolved feature of every stop on this tour, Manila included.

The show's strongest stretch outside that opening run came during the individual member segments, where Rora, Asa, and Pharita each took separate solo spotlights built around English-language pop covers - Rora on "Havana," Asa on "Temple," Pharita on "Super Bass." These are the moments built to distinguish a seven-turned-six-member group as individuals rather than a unit, and they land: each performer gets a clean, uncontested stage to work a genuinely different register than the group's high-tempo singles allow. The trade-off is that the song choices themselves are safe. A "Havana" cover doesn't require the same risk an original arrangement or a less obvious cover choice would, and for a group this far into a global tour, a handful of well-worn radio hits in the individual slots reads more like a placeholder than a statement.

The gap that doesn't fully resolve is structural, not a performance failure: BABYMONSTER debuted as a seven-member group, and Rami's continued absence means every formation, every vocal blend, and every stage configuration on this leg is being built around six. The remaining members are visibly filling that space with energy rather than pretending it isn't there - but a full-scale world tour, five continents deep, is still touring without its full lineup, and that's worth naming plainly rather than glossing over.

It also raises the practical question of how "Choom" scales as the tour moves into venues built for spectacle rather than dance-floor intimacy. Manila's Mall of Asia Arena, at roughly 15,000 to 20,000 capacity depending on configuration, is a mid-size room by the standard of what's still ahead on this route - a dome show in Osaka this month, stops across Europe and South America still to be confirmed. A six-person lineup filling that opening run of "WE GO UP" through "DRIP" with the density this show showed suggests the choreography has been reworked with real intention rather than simply thinned out, which is more than some groups manage under similar circumstances.

This review draws on official setlist data, ticketing information, and agency and press coverage of the Manila stop rather than firsthand attendance, so it reflects what was documented - song selection, sequencing, ticket tiers, and the touring configuration - rather than the specific in-room texture of the September 5 show itself. Treat the read here as an assessment of what BABYMONSTER built for Manila, not an eyewitness account of how it felt live.

What the Manila stop actually reveals is a group still moving faster than most of its peers can match: this is BABYMONSTER's first-ever performance in the Philippines, arriving two years and five months after debut, on a tour that will make the group the first K-pop girl group from its debut class to headline a Japanese dome later this month in Osaka. That timeline - Seoul to Manila to a dome show inside a single touring cycle - is the real story of "Choom," more than any single setlist choice. Whether the group can sustain that pace with its full lineup intact is the question this tour still hasn't had to answer.

BABYMONSTER's "Choom" World Tour continues through Macao on September 11-12 and Kyocera Dome Osaka on September 22-23. "Choom" is out now via YG Entertainment.