26 September 2012

The Shounen Club 14 March 2004 review

Since this is just a recap episode I will not spend much time with it as it just goes over clips of episodes I have already reviewed. Also I will do the first episode of the next season of Shounen Club up tonight so I can go back on schedule again with these.

The recap episode is hosted by Yamashita Tomohisa and KAT-TUN this time. They show off all the mail the program has received from viewers and promise to read some of it.

This screen shows everything that they will be reviewing in this episode by category. First up are clips from the Junior performances that used a large number of Juniors, usually in group collaborations. But eventually they do all nine categories.

Between the VTRs the seven sit and talk about various topics that usually tie in to the next set of VTR footage.

One of the things this recap has that makes it a bit more interesting than the others is that they do the mini screen in the corner to show reactions of those watching the clips. Which is nice because then you at least know they are watching the footage and not just pretending to.

One of the letters/postcards they show is from a fan that drew faces for each of her favorite Juniors. Though I can only assume they must have the names of the Juniors on them as I do not think anyone would be able tell who was who.

During one of the talk segments the panel that has the cardinal directions is brought up and Ueda Tatsuya gives the explanation for it mentioning that the directions are in order to spell out NEWS if you take the first letter of each in English. Tanaka Koki points out it should be Yamapi saying all that since he is in the group. But they move on to give us the one VTR segment that is not something shown before on the program.

This VTR of NEWS has them as the current eight member group in one of their early outfit sets from their debut concert, IIRC. Since the group have been together for a couple of months they get to update what kind of character each one of them have. Instead of picking their own this time around they have to pick an image for another member. Like Uchi Hiroki pegs Kato Shigeaki as the serious type.

Kusano Hironori gets Nishikido Ryo and says he is the shy type. He tries to explain why but during the explanation Ryo slaps him calling his choice into question.

NEWS end their segment by blowing kisses at the screen.

The members of KAT-TUN then see about giving each other titles for what kind of people they are. The conversation is pretty fun as everyone is joking around with each other and you can tell they have reached the point that they are comfortable with each other as a unit.

The guys wave good bye before the final clip plays, which of course is of one of the performances of the end theme, Non Stop, Don't Stop.


I think this is a better recap episode in comparison with the one done earlier in the season. But that could just be partly because there was more to actually recap. But the KAT-TUN interactions were actually rather fun, though Kamenashi Kazuya and Akanishi Jin actually are not seen as much as the others who really carried the show in general. Plus it was nice that there was something new to be seen with the NEWS talk segment.

Though like past recap episodes if you have been watching the episodes then this has little to offer. So unless you are either a KAT-TUN or NEWS fan you probably would be better off skipping this.

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