The Shounen Club 3 April 2005 review

A new Shounen Club season begins which of course means that we are going to see some changes to the program. Of course since these changes for SC tend to just be tweaks here and there it will probably take a few months to figure out if some are here to stay or not. On the other hand there are some that are certain to be around for a while as the debut of a certain segment this episode will show.

Instead of introducing groups at the start the show just launches into a song, TOKIO's Jibun no Tame ni, to kick things off. We get a mix of groups performing the song as well, which makes me happy to see.

One of the first known changes to the show that we are introduced to is the "producer" role that a Junior will have for each episode. Honestly I never quite got what this position really was, but I assume the Junior would at least be given some say about the theme and the songs sung. Kamenashi Kazuya is the producer for this episode and introduces his theme of "tokidoki" which can be translated to a racing heart beat.

NEWS gets introduced as the guests and they talk about things that make one's heart race. Yamashita Tomohisa brings up that he was accepted into university for him and they take the time to bring up that Tanaka Koki was also accepted into university. The latter kinda surprised me as I had not really heard about it before, but seeing as there has never been a graduation announcement for Koki I think it is safe to assume he never got a degree in the end.

After the opening talk the first medley starts and it is a Shingakki Tokidoki Meldey (Heart-racing New School Term Medley) which Ya-Ya-Yah actually has a strong presence in since they get to do the opening and ending songs.

In the middle of the medley we get a skit with Nakamaru Yuichi playing the role of a new student at a school trying to figure out what club to join. My favorite part is Kame and Taguchi Junnosuke being members of the Friend Club and showing off the appeal of their club by playing a friendly game of tag.

The best part of course is Nakamaru rejecting their offer to join because it gives him a bad feeling and Junno's reaction face to it.

After the medley Nakajima Yuto reads a letter he wrote about an experience that made his heart race, his audition to enter into Johnny's.

After he is done KAT-TUN perform Kizuna with Kame starting it off solo. Perhaps because I fell in love with the song as a solo having it sung by a group just seems weird to me. But in any case I still do think it is a lovely song.

This episode marks the return of Matsumoto Kouhei and he is placed back in J.J.Express making the group a five member group. He gets to do a MC segment with Yabu Kota as they call over Yamapi and Koyama Keiichiro to give them advice for starting at a new school.

We then get a Yax3 medley which starts off with a solo for Yabu called Mayonaka no Answer. I like the song and would love to see Yabu revive it for a concert performance at least. Also he gets an interesting mix of back dancers with members of Kis-My-Ft. and A.B.C. Jr. there.

His solo is followed by one for Yaotome Hikaru, titled Atarashii Yoake. It is another song I would not mind to hear again from him. He has back up singers for it, as well as a couple of back dancers of the smaller Juniors, which included Morimoto Ryutaro.

For the back up singers the two most notable are Hashimoto Ryosuke and Sanada Yuma. Another to note is Fukusawa Tatsuya, who will join Hashimoto in becoming a J.J.Express member later but after it breaks up become a member of the Junior group Snow Man.

After the solos we get an actual group performance from the group of their song Start. I really like this song and look forward to seeing it performed more for a while at least. Also we get a funny typo in the lyrics for this performance.

There is a new game segment for the season, this one being called Jr. no Mirakuri Daisakusen. The game being played for this episode under the segment is called Mr. X wa Dare da! The game has a small group of Juniors try to guess who Mr. X, who is normally a guest, is by giving out little hints by asking questions. The audience gets to find out before the players and even get to be asked questions about him to help the contestants make their guesses. And it is fun to have the video screen to show Mr. X react to what is being said.

Jimmy Mackey gets to show up and remind us that he still is around, or at for now. He gets to talk to NEWS about their heart racing experiences before they go to perform.

Cherish was one of the songs that won me over to NEWS when I was first learning about them. It was one of my favorite songs from the group back then and still remains a favorite for me. So it is a highlight for me to see the group perform it, and with all eight members. Sadly it will not be much longer before the group starts losing members again but there should still be their first album they will come back to promote on the program as an right member group, IIRC.

This episode gives us the debut of a segment that current SC watchers should be very familiar with, Junior ni Q. I am happy to know that I can now look forward to this segment from now on. The best part about it is that it usually highlights younger Juniors that may not have a chance to be seen much on stage and lets the viewers learn a bit more about the various Juniors.

Koki and Nakamaru are our first hosts of this segment. Koki seems to have an interesting way on greeting the Juniors called over to explain what they wrote on the board.

So it should have come to no surprise that one of the Juniors, Nikaido Takashi, had written that Koki made his heart beat fast because he thinks he is scary. Which is something Koki does not take well to but plays with all the same.

Jimmy Mackey shows up to give KAT-TUN a puzzle they need to solve before being let to go on stage. Overall the group does better with half of them making it on stage before Jimmy has to give them an obvious hint for them to get the answer.

With that done KAT-TUN begins to perform SHAKE, which is always a rather fun song to see performed. In the middle of it the older groups get introduced, which just seems like a strange spot to do it.

After the introduction the other Junior groups join in on the song and it becomes a more fun performance with them all involved. Especially the little ones because they are just full of cute.

Kame spends some time talking about the theme of the episode after the performance to lead in to the finale of the episode.

The new ending song is called Wonderful World and sadly it is KAT-TUN again the only ones that get to sing it. It is rather annoying as all the Juniors that sang the previous song still have mics in their hands as they back dance so they could have easily sung with KAT-TUN instead.


While it is not the extent of change I would have loved to have seen the changes made are still good overall and if I have learned anything from past seasons is that there is still always a chance for the show to change things up a bit more as it goes on. If anything the fact that the other Junior groups get a good amount of screen time compared to KAT-TUN is good and I hope that will be more the standard going on.

The addition of the producer position for the Juniors gives hope that this will lead to more balanced episodes for when the producer is not a member of KAT-TUN. I know it happens as I can recall an episode that Yamada Ryosuke produces, but I think that is in the next season of the show.

The Shounen Club 9 January 2005 review

As happy as I am to finally be on 2005 episodes now I still really feel like I want to catch up soon so I can comment on the more recent episodes. I guess I should at least feel good about getting back to two reviews a week as that should help with catching up though I still probably have months to go still.

We start off the episode with KAT-TUN on the stage before the curtain is raised. They give teases about what will be seen in the episode before it begins. There is nothing to really note of the introductions as there has been no group changes and everyone is accounted for.

The guests of the month is Kanjani8 which helps sets the bar for these episodes to have some pretty fun moments. The theme of the episode is Kibou (Hope) and the various Junior groups are asked about hopes they have while Yokoyama Yu camera bombs them all.

The first medley is one of the more KAT-TUN heavy ones with only the younger Junior groups, mostly Ya-Ya-Yah, getting some decent time even if most of it is shared.

There are two Juniors that are important to note that can be seen in this performance. The first being Hashimoto Ryosuke, who is going to eventually be joining J.J.Express and post-Hey! Say! JUMP debut be added to A.B.C. to form A.B.C-Z.

The next is another future JJE member, but he will debut with HSJ, Morimoto Ryutaro. Of course one of the important things to note about Ryutaro's appearance is the fact that he joined Johnny's with a group of Juniors that had their audition filmed for Yax3's TV program and that group also included Yamada Ryosuke. So if Ryutaro is around it should mean so is Yamada.

We get a dajyare (pun) segment with Taguchi Junnosuke who reads a postcard from a little girl that works in a pun about Ueda Tatsuya riding a bicycle in it.

With the segment over Ueda shows up on the stage riding a bicycle, and I can imagine making a little girl so very happy.

JJE peform Kibou ~Yell~ with A.B.C. Jr. backing them up for parts of the song. I rather like the performance as it has a lot of my favorites in it and Arioka Daiki actually does not look like he hates life while performing here, just kinda bored.

Yamada is so small and blurry.

And while I almost missed it there is a small glimpse of Yamada in this. It is sometimes hard to remember that Yamada did not start off as being promoted as one of the more promising Juniors. Ryutaro was the one that got the attention from his group and it took a while before Yamada started getting the breaks he needed to eventually break out. So I look forward to seeing him go through all this in the coming episodes.

Tanaka Koki and Yasuda Shota talk about traveling on the shinkensen (bullet train), as K8 has to do that when they come to Tokyo for work. It is rather nice to see other members other than Murakami Shingo and Yoko get to do these MC segments for a change.

The game segment of the episode is Junior Hai School with members of KAT-TUN and K8 competing in it. We also get some Junior helpers which include Takaki Yuya and Sanada Yuma.

They play a couple of word games, the first is giving reasons why they do not want to become adults. The second is that they have to come up with a phrase that is three lines long and use a character of the word kibou to begin each line. Needless to say this is the highlight of the episode as they all just try to out goofy each other with the answers, especially with the second game and using Ueda's name to begin the final line.

Junno leads a talk with a few of the members of K8 about their concert tour. It is nice to see Ohkura Tadayoshi be highlighted in something as at this point he seems to be one of the neglected members of the group.

K8 then perform a medley of their songs. I really do like the pants they have for this outfit. The "fins" on the outside leg of them just looks silly and out of place. Not to mention the fur lining on the tops really do not go with them.

Afterwards KAT-TUN does a rock medley. While I enjoy rock songs I am disappointed that this ends up being KAT-TUN performance without any real choreography. The songs lose some energy with the group mainly just standing around and it is the Juniors back dancing that have to make up for that.

Kis-My-Ft. get to have a MC segment to themselves as they talk about things they hope to do. This leads into a joint performance with the members of A.B.C. in what they call a "dance battle".

A.B.C. perform first and I find it quite hard to find a way to find a screen cap that can really give an idea of the performance. They are hitting the point that their acrobatics are looking impressive so their performances are fun to watch if just for that.

Kis-My-Ft. trade off with them and perform Midnight Shuffle, which seems to be their assigned song for now. The group remains energetic and you start to get the feeling that they are really starting to mesh now as a group.

Jimmy Mackey gets to give a riddle for KAT-TUN to solve before being able to go on stage. Junno ends up being the only member to get it without Jimmy practically giving the answer away.

The group then sings a song named FLY, and it is yet another forgettable song. It also does not help that it is yet another KAT-TUN performance with very little choreography.

We get to the end theme and I am just so ready for the new season of this show to start. It would be one thing if other groups than KAT-TUN performed it but since it is not it is getting pretty boring to watch. The only thing that caught any bit of my attention this time was that Akanishi Jin let Junno go through his legs this time around.


Even though it is a new year it is not a new season of the program so very little has changed. While being rather KAT-TUN heavy it was not so bad as there were a good amount of times to see some of the other Juniors and Kanjani8 always helps make things more enjoyable with their great sense of comedy. So overall a good episode and it is always nice to see more Juniors that go on to debut show up.

In any case only three more episodes before the end of season recap episode. I will probably go ahead and make that recap episode a Monday review so I can get to the new season, which will hopefully bring around some of the changes I have been waiting for.

Sprout First Impressions

Decided to take a look at Sprout and while it is not knocking me off my feet I will probably watch it when I can when I have time to kill.

To say the least I am not really impressed with this series. Mostly because I feel I have seen this all before and done better. This is about as standard and generic as shoujo (girls') romances get and it does not seem to really add anything unique to it.

Not to mention the main character Ikenouchi Miku, played by Morikawa Aoi, is not the kind of character I feel any desire to support. She is very much a typical teenager, thinking that the world revolves around her and her problems, and seems to spend a large amount of time daydreaming about her "destined one", who is really some stranger that helped her out once.

Honestly I would love to see a series play with this trope to have the "destined" person be someone that the main character not only does not end up with, but would not want to in the first place. But unfortunately that will not be this series.

Even though I do tend to worry about Chinen Yuri's acting skills he is not so bad so far. Of course this is not a challenging role by any means but he does not come off as wooden as I have seen him so I am willing to think he may have actually improved. There is not much to say about his character, Narahashi Souhei. He is your typical nice guy (though thankfully not a Nice Guy) and that is just about it.

While I loved Lewis Jesse in Shiritsu Bakaleya Koukou I cannot get myself to care for his character in Sprout. Of course a good portion of this is because he is stuck as the "cool" guy with playing Katagiri Hayato. This means he has to pretend to be emotionless for the most part and is the trope I really hate in shoujo romance stories, the asshole that the heroine will somehow have feelings for. Thankfully it is pretty transparent that even if (though I am almost certain this will happen) Miku ends up in a love triangle with Souhei and Hayato she will end up with the nice guy over the jerk which is actually the reverse of what usually happens in these stories.

I kinda feel sorry for Souhei to be paired up with Miku as he does seem like a genuinely nice guy. And I fear for whatever reason the story will think up for why he will be eventually breaking up with Miyuki to be with Miku instead. Because really this series is that transparent. And Miku is pretty self-absorbed, which makes sense since she is a teenager but it rarely makes for an endearing character.

Probably the real reason I will keep watching this drama is for Hashimoto Ryosuke's character, Takigawa Naoharu. The character is pretty much Miyata Toshiya but with a pretty face. He has the highlight of this episode and makes watching another one worth it as long as he shows up.

Other than that there is also the eye candy that is Fujii Shuuka. Tanaka Juri and Yasui Kentaro may have small parts but they are not bad. In fact I would take a drama about Miku's friends over Miku already as they seem to actually have interesting personalities.

This is very basic shoujo fare and I do not expect to be surprised by anything that happens in the drama. It looks like even for the genre it plays it safe with being as generic as possible for the most part. In fact I would say that Hasshi's character is the only thing that is stand out about it.

But as generic as it is it is not what I would consider bad. Boring if you know the tropes well and most likely forgettable, but not bad.