The debuted groups of Johnny's (for now)

On the Hey! Hey! Hey! Music Champ November 5th episode Sexy Zone was on to promote their album. During the talk segment with the hosts they had a board with the debut information of Johnny's from Kondo Masahiko to A.B.C-Z.

Of course the list is missing any group that is no longer active, so no Hikaru Genji, Otokogumi and the like and the solo debuts of Akanishi Jin and Yamashita Tomohisa are also not listed.  Yet NYC is on the list, which just makes that group the more frustrating to try to figure out what is actually going on with it.

I do appreciate that they do have some clarifications for a couple of the more non-standard debuts, such as while listing NEWS Nippon as the debut single of NEWS it also has a line underneath saying that Kibou ~Yell~ is the group's major debut. And of course mentioning that Kanjani8's Naniwa Iroha Bushi had a Kansai only release a month prior to the nationwide release that actually marks their debut.

I had to feel bad for A.B.C-Z though as when the hosts got to them their reaction was of bewilderment as they did not know the group. That is understandable though as A.B.C-Z have not really appeared on the major music programs and I feel they probably are not really known outside of the Johnny's fandom. While I am happy for the group that they did debut I cannot help but worry about what their future is going to hold for them as they are hardly getting the same support as most groups that debut do.

I think it is interesting to see which acts of Johnny's the agency wants to let people know about and how they define their own history with them. As this list of Johnny's groups/acts seems to change every time it is shown so I look forward to seeing who will be on the next list and who will be left off.

Piece Ep. 5 first impressions

Well the usual source for the episode had issues this week so it took a couple of days more to get this to watch and review. On the bright side the subs have just about caught up with the episodes with only this recent episode not subbed now. Which is nice as I now know what I was missing from those episodes and this episode is pretty dialog heavy so it will be nice to know that it should not be long for me to know what was exactly said.

The episode starts off with the phone call to Yanai Takashi that Suga Mizuho made at the end of last episode. We do not get to see much of the phone call continue as we get pulled into flashbacks from three years ago again, but this time it is Yanai as the focus of them. Things starting off with the breaking of a flower vase that Yanai and Haruka end up cleaning up together.

Later/the next day Yanai is walking to school with his friend, Koike, played by Yasui Kentaro. There is a girl from another school waiting to talk to Yanai, I assume she is his girlfriend, and they end up talking in a nearby playground. The girl is clearly upset with him and if they are a couple she breaks up with him telling him that he has a deceptive appearance, if I'm reading that phrase on the screen right.

Yanai is surprised and unsettled by this and seems to be largely distracted by thoughts about whether or not it is true. That is until he is doing committee work with Haruka and he notices a new flower and vase on the table. Haruka ends up telling him that the flower is a Casablanca Lily and Yanai is impressed with her knowledge of flowers. Yanai's crush on her seems to really start here as she smiles and he notices that she looks more lively when talking about the flower. His narration of the event though mentions about his pride getting in the way of expressing his feelings for her.

This thought about his pride comes up again when he is talking to Koike later about love. Koike is pining over Madoka and Yanai says that he understands his friend. Yet when Koike asks if that means that there is someone that Yanai likes Yanai is quick to deny it.

Eventually he decides to go ahead and ask Haruka out and finds an event about flowers to ask her to. When he goes to do so though he accidentally overhears Haruka talking to someone on the phone excitedly. He pretends not to have overheard when he enters the room but does ask if she was talking to her boyfriend. While I do not think she outright said yes she did seem to give a pretty positive answer which of course crushes Yanai's hope for being able to ask her out.

We then get to jump forward to the funeral and can see that Yanai never really got over his feelings for Haruka. And when we get back to the present with him speaking on the phone with Mizuho he is in tears.

Mizuho ends up meeting with him with Narumi in a cafe. She asks him about Haruka and her boyfriend and Yanai seems to answer honestly. When Yanai asks about why Mizuho wants to know about who Haruka was dating Narumi causes a distraction as he notices that Mizuho does not seem to want to tell him the truth. Narumi loudly asks the waitress about cakes before leaving to check them out. Yanai ends up following him.

When confronted by Yanai about how he knew that Yanai liked Haruka, Narumi tells him that he spotted them together and could tell by the way Yanai looked at her that he liked her.

As the trio walk after they are done at the cafe, Narumi ends up having to leave to catch a bus leaving the other two alone. They talk and honestly it was hard for me to follow but I believe it was about being in love. Yanai at the end though tells Mizuho that he wants to know who was Haruka's boyfriend as well so Mizuho picks up another helping hand in her search.

Yanai is able to give Mizuho the next link to try to figure out the mystery by bringing up that there was a connection between Haruka and Setouchi Madoka. The next and final scene shows that this is true with Madoka looking at a box of notes, the top one having Haruka's name on it.


I am personally quite glad we are finally getting to the part of the story that lets the viewer see the other pieces of the puzzle. Haruka becomes much more of a person than we have seen her before now that we have gotten the chance to see her around someone who actually regularly interacted with her. There also seems to be some little things that are hinting at things, but until I have a clearer idea of what was said I will not speculate too much about them.

Also glad that there are signs that Hokuto is starting to get roles that are a little more diverse. I hope he continues to be kept busy with drama roles so he can continue to expand on that and continue to become more versatile as an actor as he proves with every role he gets that he has talent in this field.

For fans of Yasui I think this and the next episode will be the best for seeing him. He definitely does not have a big role in this. It also seems tied to Yanai and Madoka with no signs that we will get to see Koike without one of them. And I know that Suzuki Airi has been done with filming for a while now so I do not suspect to see much of Madoka once the episode is done.

It is a pity the ratings have not been great for this series, but I am hearing from unconfirmed sources that the program has been delayed for the past couple of episodes until more around 2AM instead of the midnight airing it is supposed to have. So I hope that is the main reason for that as I am enjoying this drama much more than the previous one for this time slot, which I honestly still have yet to finish.

Q&A Month! (2012): Question 2

I plan on playing catch up with this blog today, maybe tomorrow as well depending on how well I do today. So expect at least one more post today at least. Until then I will go ahead and answer a question.

If you have a question you want me to try and answer you can leave it in the comments on this post.

This question set is from bakadaboys:

for next FIVB group, is it possible for bakaleya6? which jr do you think will get chance??


Honestly if the Bakaleya6 are to remain a group I do not think they would be the next FIVB debut unit. The FIVB units are never pre-existing groups, the closest being the original Hey! Say! 7 all debuting as a part of Hey! Say! JUMP but even then the members had more or less gone back to their previous Junior groupings before the HSJ announcement.

B6 run a much greater chance of debuting as a unit like KAT-TUN and Kis-My-Ft2 which means they will have years as a Junior unit and have that time to build their fanbase so they can have a similar strong debut like those groups.

Seeing as I do not think either Nakajima Kento or Kikuchi Fuma, the two members of Sexy Zone in the agency the longest, were even in Johnny's or had only just joined a year out from Hey! Say! JUMP's debut I would say that it is much too soon to start guessing which Juniors could debut in 2015. When it comes to the FIVB groups I think it is better to wait until about a year or even half a year before the debut to start speculating on who would make it in. And even then by the nature of these groups it would be difficult to correctly guess who would make it.

Though I will give myself some credit in the fact that I did guess that Nakaken would be debuting in the 2011 group and that if Fuma were to debut it would be with him when I did attempt some debut predictions about seven months from the debut announcement.. Though I was so completely off about everything else. But honestly the younger three really were unknown at the time and I feel that perhaps if Morimoto Ryutaro did not have his scandal there would have been a chance for Shintaro to have debuted in SZ, as he was definitely the right age and he would have helped bring in early fans. But I guess that is neither here nor there now.

Quntastic! NEWS

We finally have a release date and more information for it for NEWS' upcoming single. It will be a double A-side with the songs WORLD QUEST and Pokopon Pekorya being the title tracks. It will be released on December 12th.

Thankfully there will be less editions than their comeback single with there only being three versions.

The first limited edition is the basic CD with DVD edition, only the title tracks will be on the CD but the DVD will have the PV and making of feature on it.

WORLD QUEST / Pokopon Pekorya [w/ DVD, Limited Edition / Type-A] / NEWS

The next limited edition will just be a CD but it will have two B-side songs as well as a 12 page booklet and two stickers that will have illustrations done by the mangaka of the manga the drama series Hana no Zubora Meshi is based on. One of the B-sides is untitled still but the other is being called Quntastic!

Pokopon Pekorya / WORLD QUEST [Limited Edition / Type-B] / NEWS

The the regular edition will have one B-side not on the other versions, called Hello. It will also have the karaoke versions of all the songs on that CD. 

WORLD QUEST / Pokopon Pekorya [Regular Edition] / NEWS

I do not think I need to say how happy I am about this. I have been looking forward to this news since the group announced that they had plans for a new single near the end of their tour. Of course that said I am not surprised by this news at all as I had been expecting this to get a December release after all with the tie-ins that were announced for the title tracks.

Also I am quite glad to only have three versions instead of the six of Chankapaana. My wallet breaths a little easier though I will have to pray that the LEs do not sell out before I get paid next. But hopefully Johnny's will make sure to have more LEs made for this release with Chankapaana doing so well.

This single to me is going to be the one that will be the better indicator of the amount of fans that decided to continue supporting the group. As come back singles do tend to do well in general and again there was the issue of just how many editions it had. But I have faith in this group and I do think they will do well. Perhaps they may never be big sellers but as long as they keep over the 100k range I will believe they are doing well, though I do expect this single to do better than that.

The Shounen Club 12 September 2004 review

Figured it was time to start getting these reviews back on track. I am first aiming just to get the Saturday reviews on track and then move to focus on Wednesdays as well. Once comfortable with those schedules I will do some Monday reviews to catch up for the weeks I missed.

We start the episode with Kamenashi Kazuya and Akanishi Jin on the side of the stage before the curtain rises. We get introduced with the guest of the episode, Takizawa Hideaki, at this time as they goof off a bit right before things kick off for the episode.

Not much to say about the introductions, other than Ya-Ya-Yah are missing, which probably has something to do with them doing the Stand By Me play I would guess. Also A.B.C. Jr. are present but do not get introduced. Otherwise the usual intro followed by the usual opening talk with the theme of the episode announced to be Kizuna which translates to "bonds".

When they ask J.J. Express about something that comes to mind about the theme they talk about the bond between them and Nakamaru Yuichi and Tanaka Koki who they say are really kind to them. This embarrasses Koki but it is not the first time one of the little Juniors has brought this up so I am willing to believe that it is true and Koki's soft side is being revealed.

The Kizuna medley is actually pretty fun to watch as there is a good mix of Juniors participating and some of the performance points are just really fun to watch as the boys seem to be enjoying themselves.

Near the end of the medley we get a couple of other guests, Kanjani8's Yokoyama Yu and Murakami Shingo. They join the medley to help finish it off.

Yoko and Hina get to talk to KAT-TUN a bit, partly about the theme of the episode and their bonds with other Juniors. These leads into the introduction of the next performance though from the song introduction I would have had no idea what the song title was.

The English title that was garbled of the song J.J.Express performs is Stronger Without You, which seems to be a pretty mature theme for a song for a group of young teen and preteen boys. But they do well enough with it though I find it strange to see Arioka Daiki and Nakajima Yuto stuck in the back of a group, but I guess that will be changing up eventually.

After this we get a new segment that will become a regular segment on the program. It is lead by Taguchi Junnosuke and he has Inoo Kei and Matsumoto Kouhei as his helpers. The segment is called Dajyarebu, with dajyare being the Japanese word for pun which is the kind of Japanese comedy Junno is best known for. They read a letter and of course Junno ends it the segment with a pun.

This segment is followed by the Junior Hai School segment. Kame is still the MC for it but Junno is brought in to be the referee for this episode. They have two teams, each with either Yoko or Hina as the leader and the other four members of KAT-TUN divided between them. This episode's game is that an item category is given and they have to find something that will best fit it.

For example the first category is item that heals. Nakamaru gets handkerchiefs from the audience while Ueda grabs A.B.C.'s Totsuka Shota from the back and dumps him on the stage after carrying him all the way there. Nakamaru explains the handkerchiefs help heal things like nose bleeds while Ueda has Totsuka do a silly rhyme, that I can only assume is meant to make you feel better emotionally.

They do this a couple more times then the losing team has to do a batsu game, which this time is eating half an unsweetened lemon. While the expressions of Jin and Yoko are pretty funny I was more amused by the fact that Ueda had no reaction whatsoever and just ate his lemon half as if it was just any other piece of fruit. I guess he must have a high tolerance for bitter things.

With the game segment out of the way we get Tackey's first performance of the show. And while I am not a fan I do admire him for always putting forth a lot of effort when he performs. I do not think he could ever put on a lazy or half-hearted performance and I do admire him for that.

After that performance he gets to talk to KAT-TUN about the theme of the episode. We get to see a bit of his trollish side as he refuses to link arms with Jin then immediately does so with Kame when Jin is facing the audience.

There is another Tackey performance as he shows off his "ero" dance, which seems to mean a lot of hip rolls and pelvic thrusts.

Koki gets to sit and talk about an old friend of his that he has a strong bond with. It leads into him doing a rap followed by the rest of KAT-TUN joining him to do a group performance.

After the song ends we get a MC break with Yoko and Hina in the audience with KAT-TUN uchiwa. They talk a bit before introducing the next performances.

Jimmy Mackey gets his performance in and it is a cover of Bon Jovi's Runaway. I think this is actually one of the better songs for his voice but I still fail to be won over and most likely never will.

After a short talk segment with Taguchi Junnosuke and Matsumoto Kouhei, KAT-TUN perform the song Aki, which is an Otokogumi song. Since Jin and Ueda are on guitar for this there really is nothing in the way of dance moves for the song but since it is a rock song it is not so bad, but probably not the most entertaining of performances.

Yoko and Hina decide to join the audience for the final performance and cheer KAT-TUN on, and it looks like they found uchiwa of Jin and Kame to use this time. So the camera moves back and forth from the stage to where they are in the audience. And with that the episode ends.


Not a bad episode to get back into the swing of things with. Overall it is pretty fun and you can see the Juniors overall seem closer than in previous seasons. I think it helps that they are using more groups for performances and having the medleys that include several groups. And of course Tackey always just fits right in with the Juniors, as he has managed to keep a good connection with them post-debut.

Something I have not brought up in my reviews, even though it does get mentioned from time to time in the episodes, is the "leader" of the Juniors. I have avoided this because there seems to be no longer any leader for the Tokyo Juniors but there does now seem to be leaders for the Kansai Juniors currently so I figure I will go ahead bring it up here real quick. But the leader of the Juniors seems to be something that came from Tackey's time in the Juniors, with him having that role. It may have existed before but that is as far back as I have seen it mentioned. After Tackey debuted the title was given to the Four Tops and when Yamashita Tomohisa debuted, leading to that group breaking up, it seems to have been handed off to KAT-TUN. To my knowledge they are the last Tokyo group to hold the title though I believe it used to be argued that Ya-Ya-Yah took over from KAT-TUN but I need to get to those episodes to see if they get called leaders like those before them. Other than that the title is currently being used for B.A.D. being the leaders of the Kanjuu which can be seen in the TV program Maido Jani and IIRC the latest Osaka SC episode.

Let's Speculate: Junior expansion?

EDIT: Meant to actually put this in the original post but for whatever reason did not. But there is very little in the way of actual concrete information about this. So this is pretty much what I have cobbled together from comments I have found in various places in the English language fandom and anything I could figure out from information about Hirano Sho on Japanese sites, which I will admit could be off as I am far from fluent in Japanese.

So basically this is a lot of speculation. Sorry if this has caused any confusion. I know usually I am much better about warning about that in these kinds of posts but I ended up ignoring my inner editor and failed to give this warning before posting. And it has honestly been bugging me since hitting the post button.

~*

This information has been floating around a bit but I finally got around to rounding up more information about it. But there does seem to be a third group of Juniors other than the Tokyo and Kansai Juniors, Nagoya Juniors.

Nagoya Junior: Hirano Sho

Word has it that there are only about 15 Nagoya Juniors. So far the only one that anyone has information on is Hirano Sho because of his inclusion in the Kansai Junior group Kin Kan (Which seems a bit odd seeing as Kin Kan stands for "Kings of Kansai", but whatever it's a Johnny's group name so it does not have to really make sense.). But this looks like to be a new development and most get grouped with the Kanjuu, like with Hirano getting put in a Kanjuu group.

Whether or not Johnny's plans on growing the group even more so they can eventually get their own studio for lessons is only known to Johnny's. Though expanding on the Juniors would not be surprising seeing that there are more and more debuted groups to back dance for and it is probably easier to just have local Juniors do that for groups instead of having to bring Juniors with them to all the stops on a tour.

Nagoya has always been on the map for entertainment behind Osaka and Tokyo. It does have one of the official Johnny's Shops and if a group is hitting only a few cities on a tour it is pretty much assumed it will be on that short list. In fact I believe one of the first concert tours Hey! Say! JUMP did for going outside of just Tokyo just had Osaka and Nagoya as the additional cities. Of course the huge success of AKS sister group SKE48 cannot be overlooked as they are not only based out of Nagoya but were the first sister group of AKB48. So while Nagoya is not as well known as Tokyo and Osaka it should not be overlooked as it does indeed seem to have its own strong entertainment ties.

Of course that all said it does not look like we will see too much of them for a while, outside of Hirano because he is in an active Kanjuu group. But it shall be interesting to see what the future will bring with this development.

Q&A Month! (2012): Question 1

Figured I should kick off this month by answering a question as thankfully people have already been leaving questions. Thank you for everyone who has already and I look forward to seeing more.

If you have a question you want me to try and answer you can leave it in the comments on this post.


The first question is from commenter JJ:

Hi! When Johnny's boys get into trouble (or when Johnny's men like Akasaka-san get into trouble), the general reaction is often to drop them entirely rather than to try to keep them in the organization and try to find them some help. Is that just an American reaction I am having that something more should be done, or is JE just really cruel? Or is it just part of Japanese culture? Thoughts, please.


It is something that is a part of Japanese culture, when it comes to drug usage Japan has a zero tolerance policy on that. And to be honest I am not even sure if there are any organizations in Japan to help with substance abuse, as treatment for such problems seems to be one of the issues that the Japanese media turns a blind eye to.

The reaction is more due to the idea that by doing something illegal it sheds bad light on the whole company and anything less than swift punishment, such as dropping them, will make the company look like it does not take the offense as serious as popular thought thinks it should be.

As an American I do agree that is does seem cruel to just drop someone who probably needs more support not less to help themselves out. But as I mentioned in Japan drug usage is severely frowned upon which is why it is considered a career ender and agencies want nothing to do with the talents caught using drugs.

Being a foreigner and being caught using drugs will expel you from the country and celebrities in the past have been prevented from entering Japan because they have been known to have taken drugs in the past. So the issue of severe punishment for drug use tends to affect pretty much anyone caught.

Of course with issues of drinking there is more lenacy, even with under age drinking, but that is more dependant of how popular a talent is. Uchi Hiroki would have been kicked out if he was caught when he was still a Junior most likely, but since he was a popular member in two debuted groups Johnny's was willing to give him a second chance. I believe Kusano Hironori benefitted from that as it would have looked bad for them to have kicked him out when there was not 100% confirmable proof of him drinking underage unlike Uchi.

Yet there is a massive drinking culture in Japan so the public opinion is more lenient to it. Unfortunately though if someone has a drinking problem there really is nowhere for them to go for help with it from what I can tell.

So in general substance abuse is one of those areas in Japan where they are embarrassingly behind other developed nations in.