The Shounen Club 19 March 2006 review

While the first recap episode of this month was more to salvage what they could of the unaired February episodes this recap is all about KAT-TUN and celebrating their debut.

The plus about this recap episode is that the quality of the video is good which means being able to clearly watch at least some clips of earlier episodes.

KAT-TUN not only host this episode but are also the producers of it. The theme of the episode is Kadode (which in this case would be best translated to a departure or setting off), to go along with the group's debut.

They start off with showing the PV for their debut single, Real Face. This is probably my favorite song from the group, but it helps that the music for the song was written by B'z guitarist Tak Matsumoto.

After that they have a "quiz" for the history of the group. The major events are on this board and members have to guess things like dates and song names to fill the blanks on it.

With this we get to see footage from the group's debut on the program Pop Jam back in April of 2001. So everyone looks really young.

There are some other clips of them from the early Shounen Club episodes, and it is nice to see these clearly even though they are all rather short.

There is then the first KAT-TUN ni Q segment of the episode. The first topic they have are the group's weak points. I think Taguchi Junnosuke is spot on with saying that one of their weak points is that members tend to get in the way of seeing those behind them. It has been an issue I have had with trying to get a screen cap of the group that you can see them all clearly with for a while.

The next topic is what I believe is a saying for the group from now on. They end up picking one from Ueda Tatsuya that is Pantsu ni Kedama, which all I get from that is hairballs in underwear. I could be a bit off with my translation there but I would assume it would not be too far off as the guys do seem to pick it because of how random it is.

After more VTR the group have a self request corner where each member shows a request of a performance they want to see.

Kamenashi Kazuya's request is Hoshikuzu no Spangle which they finally list what the original artist of the song for. So happy to know this now but I have the feeling hunting down such an old Shounentai album is going to be really hard. Also to note this is the only request from any of the members that is for a performance with the group.

After this Taguchi Junnosuke gets to read a letter from Yabu Kota of Ya-Ya-Yah. I get him congratulating the group on their debut and then having a message for each member.

After the letter they show clips of most of the Junior groups. I do wonder why a couple of them were selected as the J.J.Express one is of the group before half the current members were added and they show a Kis-My-Ft. performance even though the group has been merged to create Kis-My-Ft2. Though for the Kis-My-Ft. performance it seems to be from one of the episodes I had trouble playing all the way through so there is a silver lining there.

After they do the next KAT-TUN ni Q they announce that the group will be returning to be on the April episodes of the show. No big surprise there as this should be the usual newly debuted group is a regular/frequent guest on the program for a while.

At the end of this program there is a VTR of Kokubun Taichi to promote the start of a new program, Shounen Club Premium. This is a bit of a spin-off program from SC but the focus is on already debuted Johnny's with some of the older Juniors and is more of a talk with a performance thrown in. Either way it is nice to know when the program started as it is knowledge I did not have before.



And with this episode I am going back to twice a week reviews for SC. So the next review will be Wednesday.

Also for those that have been asking about getting their hands on these episodes themselves I have decided to share them over a the Jpop Central forums. You will need an account and you have to post ten times before you can access the Media Central part of the forum that I have put the links up for them. But there are plenty of spam topics, like "what song are you listening to" posts that should let you reach ten posts in no time. This is mainly because once I hit a certain point I know exactly who the original uploader is and I know they have requested that if the files are uploaded elsewhere it is done somewhere that is locked for members only. So far I have only gotten the first few episodes I have up but I hope eventually I will have it all up for people, especially these older episodes that are not so easy to find anymore.

Junior News Round-Up 004

Wanted to make sure I had a good deal of Junior related news to talk about for this one.

Kiriyama Akito has gotten a Tackey-bump as by recommendation of Takizawa Hideaki he will be co-starring with his senior in Tackey's upcoming NHK-BS Premium drama, Mayonaka no Panya-san. The drama will start airing in April of 2013 and will run for eight episodes.

JE News Daily (English)

I am so happy for Akito. He has been getting quite a few drama roles for a Kansai Junior and seems to be the "actor" of the group. And it is nice that this will be a national drama.

Not sure about how much attention it will get being on a premium channel and Tackey no longer being the big draw to dramas he once was but it is still a good opportunity for him and he will hopefully pick up some more fans with this.

~*

The Kansai Junior National Tour is actually national this time. Usually they just remain in the Kansai region but this time around they do have dates for other parts of the country. The Kansai Juniors listed for these concerts are B.A.D., 7WEST, Kin Kan, Naniwa Oji and Hamada Takahiro.

Concert places and dates:

4/14 Hiroshima
5/4 Sapporo
5/12 Ishikawa
5/19 Fukuoka
6/9 Nagoya
6/23 Miyagi
6/30 Tokushima
7/6 Tokyo
7/7 Tokyo

My personal hope is that this is another sign that B.A.D., 7WEST and Hamada may be edging closer to debuting, most likely in a created unit with them all. And Kin Kan and Naniwa Oji are being pushed so they can help fill the gap for the Kansai Juniors that will be created when those others debut.

~*

Kamenashi Kazuya has Juniors in his latest AOKI suits CM. The Juniors in the CM are Hagiya Keigo, Iwamoto Hikaru, Morita Myuto, Fukasawa Tatsuya and Abe Ryohei. The Official Home Page has images of the Juniors in their suits as well as the CM and a making of clip for it as well.


I am rather happy for the boys though I do not follow any of them that much. But with Snow Man more or less gone it is nice to see some of the guys from that group keep getting work. Myuto has been with Johnny's for so long it is nice seeing him get some breaks and I have liked Hagiya since Hip Hop Jump, not enough to really follow him but enough to feel happy when he gets a break like this.

The Shounen Club 5 March 2006 review

For those who are following along regularly, no I did not skip a month or am missing any episodes. Instead we have two more "lost" episodes, as in episodes that were recorded but not aired. Or in this case not aired in full, as I shall go ahead and explain about.

So sometime in what had to have been early February the second underage drinking scandal hit NEWS. While in Kusano Hironori's case nothing was 100% proven, unlike with Uchi Hiroki's scandal, the fact that it was not even a year since that first scandal it was still seen a big thing. Especially since it was a member of one of the same groups Uchi was in. So Kusano was pulled out of NEWS (it is said he withdrew but I doubt he would have been allowed to stay even if he wanted to) the group was put on immediate suspension and it looks like we lost two episodes of Shounen Club as none aired that month.

On the flip side we get two March episodes, both recap episodes but it looks like they tried to salvage some things from those February episodes at least. From the footage it was yet another set of episodes hosted by NEWS, which is what made them unairable after the scandal. But since by then they were involving the Junior groups more anyway they had enough footage from the taping without Kusano in it to make this special episode.

This special is hosted by Yamashita Tomohisa and Yabu Kota. Probably the thing that stands out the most to me about them is that Yamapi's happy mood he had in the recent months is completely gone. Understandable with having lost another group members and his group being put on indefinite hiatus. This episode does have a theme, or what is likely what would have been the theme of at least one of the episodes that did not air, Ai (Love).

We have what looks like what was part of an opening medley as you can see at least two members of NEWS walk off stage with mic stands as J.J.Express launches into their performance of Love Me Baby. And you know it has to be new footage as Yamada Ryosuke is mixed in with the group, though still not listed as a member. If this had been aired before in another episode I know I would have remembered this.

The medley is not completely without NEWS members though as Koyama Keiichiro and Kato Shigeaki sing Yume Monotagari for a part of it, but you can tell there are some obvious cuts done between some of the songs to keep the screen Kusano free.

Between these clips we return to our host in front of a green screen, who both seem to lack much spirit in doing the job. Not that I feel like I can really blame them as Yamapi's future at this point would be rather up in the air and Yabu was probably just following his lead being the junior of the two.

We get a VTR segment with Tegoshi Yuya talking about the topic Yabu and Yamapi did, jounetsu no ai (passionate love). From what I have gotten from the episode it was most likely that one of the episodes was produced by Tegoshi which is why he gets this VTR segment that no one else does.

The reason I figure Tegoshi was an episode producer is simply because after the VTR he solos a medley of songs. It is interesting to see him getting this kind of push. It makes the creation of Tegomass as a unit seem like something rather natural than Johnny's just randomly deciding to create it.

I am going to skip the talk parts with Yabu and Yamapi unless there is something I am able to catch that I find interesting. Even though the two seem to eventually move into better moods for the most part they are pretty awkward for the most part.

Next clip is a performance from Ya-Ya-Yah, which is starting to look more and more like a duo of Yabu and Yaotome Hikaru with their back dancers Yamashita Shoon and Ayukawa Taiyo. That is once the other two finally show up around halfway through the song.

Next up is JJE covering the Tackey & Tsubasa song Venus. Well technically it is JJE plus Yamada. Looking at the full group I think I can understand why they decided to take Nakajima Yuto, Yamada and Morimoto Ryutaro out of the group to group them with other Juniors, as there is an obvious difference in looks, with those three looking younger than the rest of the group.

Then Toshin Yoshikazu & A.B.C. perform a medley of songs, of course their acrobatics being the most standout part of it. Though it is really looking like Toshin is a bit of dead weight as he really does not do the acrobatics.

We get parts of one of the game segments. This one is edited so we do not see all of it and probably the only reason they showed it was because it was another game segment that had most of the Junior groups onstage so it would be easy to hide Kusano in plain sight that way. The game has Yabu hit a button to pair a random Junior with one that was picked to do some kind of challenge. Like Nishikido Ryo and Toshin had to hula hoop together with the same hula hoop.

Masuda Takahisa and Yamashita Shoon were the other pair shown in the footage and the had to confess things about each other that they liked.

Then we have Question? performing their song Kanjite Miro. They are still only four members this month so I think I can assume that they have indeed lost their second guitarist and it should only be a matter of time for Igo Akun to join the group.

Yamada hits another milestone for his career as a fan letter is read that brings him up to say that they like him. So even though he has not had much screen time he is already gathering fans.

After this we see that a Junior ni Q segment was saved as it was hosted by Shige and Massu. The highlight of it was Yuto who talked about his younger brother in a doting matter, finding him cute.

Kis-My-Ft2 are shown performing Sennen no Love Song again, and again they are missing Miyata Toshiya from the group.

We get an idea of what the theme most likely was for the other episode filmed with a Nippon (Japan) song medley. Since no members of NEWS are in it i can only assume that the producer for that episode was probably one of the Juniors. Though there was not enough from other performances to try to figure out who it could have been.

We get another Yax3 performance, this time all four are present for the whole song, Just wanna lovin' you.

There is a Yamapi solo that we get to see as well. This could have been cut and I think nothing worth seeing/listening to would have been lost. The song, LET ME, is bad and it looked like Yamapi decided to borrow parts from one of Akanishi Jin's costumes for the performance.

The special ends with Yabu and Yamapi just doing the wrap up talk at the end of the program.


While I am glad that they decided to air parts of the episodes post-scandal this format does not lend itself well to flowing nearly as well or being as entertaining. Also because the game segments had to be mostly cut I feel we missed out some of the more entertaining parts of the program.

On the bright side Shounen Club has been unaffected by scandals since this one with Kusano so no more unaired episodes because of them.

All that is left for this season is a recap episode for KAT-TUN to go with their debut now.

SMAP and Mentoring

They more I see of SMAP with either Yamashita Tomohisa or Kis-My-Ft2 the more I realize that the interactions between senpai-kohai for them is a true mentor-mentoree one. SMAP has in the past been more removed from other groups so you did not get much in the way of interaction between them and other groups. But with this recent shift with them working with Yamapi and Kisumai this has been changing, or at least with these Johnny's.

I feel that the interactions with SMAP for Yamapi and Kisumai will benefit them more than just simply trying to ride on their coattails. SMAP are tried and true veteran idols and the first to make that successful switch from just being idols to all around entertainers. Yamapi and Kisumai are getting the chances to work side by side with them, giving them valuable opportunities to learn from the pros as it were.

And I do think SMAP gets something out of this relationship as well. At this point of their careers they have hit so many highs it is probably hard to figure out what the next goal is, and by having younger talent to mentor it can give them that new goal, to nurture the ones that are coming up after them. And they seem to love interacting with the other Johnny's, even though they have not gotten many chances because of how busy they are.

I can understand why some fans may feel begrudged to Yamapi and Kisumai for getting these chances when really no other Johnny's act has gotten to. But timing is everything and they just got to be the lucky ones that where placed under Iijima Michi's management when it seems things are getting serious about finding the next president of Johnny's & Associates.

So in the end I see this as a clear win-win situation, with the younger ones getting to learn from those that can be considered masters of their trade, and with SMAP gaining a new way to find job satisfaction by helping their kohai rise in the entertainment world.

The Shounen Club 15 January 2006 review

This is the final new episode of the season, sorta, in a way. It gets a bit complicated after this and I will get into all that with the review for the next episode.

Forgot to mention it last episode by Miyata Toshiya is still M,I.A. from Kis-My-Ft2. I cannot help but wonder where he is. My only guess is that his parents wanted him to take a break from Johnny's to concentrate more on studying as it is the time of year that tests would be coming up.

Joey Tee gets his official introduction and says some things about himself in English, like he is from L.A. and came over to be on the program. Joey is a bit of a curiosity as he never really went anywhere but had decent time on the program. I guess if anything whatever management was trying to do with him let the Juniors of mixed heritage get some lasting time in the spotlight as we should be seeing some familiar faces showing up soon with him.

The producer for this episode is Tegoshi Yuya. He leads into his chosen theme by talking about how he is not a kid but also not an adult so he decided his theme will be Otona tte Nani?! (forgive me if my Japanese is off here but I believe it would translate to something like "What's an adult?!")

The theme medley is a Otona medley (Adult medley). Like the more recent medleys there is a good mix of Juniors with NEWS members performing in the medley.

I noticed that Question? looks to be down to a single guitarist. I wonder if it means they have lost their first guitarist and we will be seeing Igo Akun showing up in the near future.

For the first MC segment we get a few members of J.J.Express and Ya-Ya-Yah up to talk about what they think are signs of being an adult.

JJE then performs Yamadera no Oshousan, which is a Japanese folk song. We get the trio of Nakajima Yuto, Morimoto Ryutaro and Yamada Ryosuke leading the song at first. I kinds wonder why they did not just add Yamada to JJE at this time but I guess soon it will not matter too much when Yuto and Ryutaro get taken out from the group.

The belt-tie sewn on to the shirt of the outfits they are wearing comes loose from Yuto about halfway through the song. He does well to pay it no mind until the camera is off of him and he does not have to dance so he has the chance to retie it to finish off the song.

We then have a letter exchange between Kato Shigeaki and Ayukawa Taiyo. I actually understood a little of it, which was at the end of Shige's letter he scolds Taiyo about just calling him Shige when he is his senpai. Of course Taiyo has written his letter calling him Shige all through it.

This is followed up by Toshin Yoshikazu & A.B.C. performing the song BEAT MIND and then Kis-My-Ft2 performing Sennen no Love Song.

The Kisumai performance of course stands out to me, not just because I am a fan, but also because IIRC this is the first time the group is performing this song. The song is a carryover from K.K.Kity, the previous group of Yokoo Wataru and Iida Kyohei and is really the first one that I feel makes the group feel like a group as all the members get a good amount of screen time and the younger ones are not stuck in the back of the older ones for a change. And it is no surprise it was one of the pre-debut songs to end up on a Kis-My-Zero bonus CD for the group.

Following this there is a VTR portion with an interview of Tackey & Tsubasa by Shige. He brings up that when Takizawa Hideaki did his VTR for the episode Shige produced he failed to do one of the prompts given him, say "I love you" to the camera. Tackey protests and refuses to do it but Shige and Imai Tsubasa do it so he needs up finally doing it as well with the results seen above.

There is the usual talk about the theme followed by a plug for whatever new release T&T had out at the time, which would be their single Venus.

When we return to the filming it is for a game segment and a new game, Shokura Mania. It is a simple but fun game as it is easy to play along with. But they bring a large group of Juniors on the stage and they are given a question related to Shounen Club to try to guess the right answer to. It is a multiple choice answer and they have to get in the circle of what they think to be the right answer. If they get it right they stay, if not they have to leave the stage.

As fan of the program I found it fun to play along with. And even got to learn a couple of things along the way. Like the original logo for the program was handwritten by Ohno Satoshi.

In the end they end up with three winners after four questions. Since Kitayama Hiromitsu is the only Junior he gets the medal that the winner is supposed to get.

NEWS then get to sing a song, Towairo no Koi, another song that eventually made it onto a CD. The song is nice enough but the outfits they have on are really ugly. I am not a big fan of plaid though if done right I do not mind it but this is definitely plaid done wrong. Of course knowing my luck these outfits will resurface to be Bakaleya6 outfits or some other current/future Junior group I like.

In the following MC segment Koyama Keiichiro has Tegoshi pick between him and Nishikido Ryo for who was the most adult-like to him. Much to Ryo's joy and Koyama's heartbreak Tegoshi picks Ryo, but Tegoshi does spend a good amount of time pointing out Koyama's good points to make up for it.

Yamashita Tomohisa performs a solo song LOVE XXXX. It sounds really dated and I am glad this was never brought back for anything. But then again the song credits has Domoto Tsuyoshi so I wonder if this was just a cover.

This is followed up with Tegoshi speaking about the theme before the start of the next performance, him and Masuda Takahisa singing Sunadokei. I had no idea that Sunadokei was something that was around before Tegomass was made into an official unit so this took me by surprise. It gives me a different perspective about the song and makes me wonder if Tegomass may have happened even if NEWS did not get suspended for a year.

Then this should be the final performance of Wonderful World, barring it being shown in recap episodes. I will go ahead and mention that Yamapi seems to have been in a really good spot in his life as he has been rather energetic and happy in the past couple of months. A happy Yamapi is much more fun to watch than any other mood I have seen him in.

This is going to be the last episode we get with NEWS as a 7 member unit and the last we will see of NEWS at all for a good while as well. As NEWS gets hit by the second underage drinking scandal in the following month.

So while I liked this episode I had that bad feeling hovering over me during the watch because I know what comes next and it is not something I want to happen. But there is no stopping it as it is in the past and I guess at least there will be a lot of distraction with KAT-TUN debuting and then the usual changes that come with a new season.

The next episode does not air until March and it is an interesting episode considering what it is as it is not exactly a clip show yet is a clip show.