23 January 2014

The Shounen Club 17 January 2010 review

I figure as long as I do one of these a week I will be okay. Hopefully I will be able to get back to a regular day for them but so much is just up in the air right now. But watching these episodes work as a good distraction for now so I do want to continue trying to do this for that.

That aside the episode starts with the main Juniors groups (or the ones that have their own songs that have been prominent in the show) all get to sing a snippet of a song as the show starts. The other main Juniors come out during a dance break to get their screen time so they can have their name appear on the screen. This serves as the introduction portion.

And we also get the guests of this episode Hey! Say! BEST in it as they sing the final song for it, School Kakumei.

For the opening MC HSB get officially introduced as the guests of the episode. Then Tamamori Yuta is brought over to help introduce the theme of the episode, Kansha (thanks, gratitude).

The following performance is a medley of older Johnny's songs, I believe it was mentioned this is a tribute to those older groups so it ties into the episode theme that way. It does let us see more of the ungrouped Juniors and the groups that usually do not get a lot of screen time though. Like the current grouping Kyomoto Taiga is a part of with Anderson Casey, Kawashima Noeru and Yasui Kentaro.

You can also start seeing Nozawa Yuki and Sanada Yuma being separated from the rest of Mis Snow Man in this medley as they perform a song on their own before the rest of the group come out for the next song.

The following MC is with HSB as they are asked about things they are grateful about with the members of their group. HSB all seem to be in high spirits here and this talk does allow them all to speak. Inoo Kei even gets to speak first, and I do wish he was given more chances to talk in general as he usually has something interesting to say. This time around he talks about some of the teasing he gets back stage from the others.

HSB then perform a medley of songs. They bring back songs from their Junior groups, J.J. Express and Ya-Ya-Yah, respectfully during the medley. Personally I love seeing them sing these songs as I like them both, Back In Time and Stompin. Especially the latter, and it is nice to see that these Junior groups are not getting forgotten even though they are not around any more.

There is a Gekkan Koyamaru segment this episode and it is Koyama Keiichiro's turn. He has a couple of photos and like all of his they involve other Johnny's, mostly his fellow group members. This time around we get this gem that is a photo of Koyama and Kato Shigeaki.

Up next is a performance by frequent visitor Yara Tomoyuki who has They Budo with him. They perform a medley of songs, with of course dance being the major focus of the performance.

This is followed up by the game segment. I usually do not care to see debuted Johnny's in this segment but with how they set it up having the three members of HSB participate as well was not much of an issue for me. This was a dance quiz with four teams of three so there was a decent mix of Juniors, as the HSB members were only one team. This game was made really hard by not only the song choices but the fact that the song had to be guessed from a single dance move.

Kis-My-Ft2 then get to perform their song Tension. While I do not care much for the song itself I do like the performance as the group get to show off their roller skating skills for it. And they change things up a bit for the performance as the guys go backstage and around to go through the audience near the end.

The VTR segment was a learning corner again. This time it is Nakajima Kento, Kikuchi Fuma and Tanaka Juri learning about voice acting. Furukawa Toshio, a prolific voice actor who is the Japanese voice of Piccolo from the Dragon Ball series, is their instructor for the segment.

This is followed by an MC with A.B.C-Z and Yabu Kota. Yabu is there with the group as during this time he was starring in a musical that had four of the five members of Ebi also in it. So they get to promote that.

The performance continues with the six as they do a medley so Ebi and Yabu get their own songs to perform.

And since the whole group was around we have Hey! Say! JUMP performing the final song, Romeo & Juliet. The rest of the main Juniors come out on stage to back dance for the group.


This is a good solid episode of the program and put me in good spirits watching it. While I prefer the episodes that focus more on the Juniors I think this had a good mix as the Juniors did not feel like they were being overlooked in favor of the guests.

2010 may not have a lot of excitement for Johnny's I think there were plenty of solid episodes like this to enjoy for the program. For that I cannot wait to move on through the next ones.

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