The Shounen Club 31 July 2001 review

And we take another jump in episodes for the next one I have. Thankfully the quality is much better than the last one, but honestly that is not hard to do. This episode though is in the second season of the show, with seasons ending in March and beginning in April in Japan, so there are some minor changes for its renewal.

First change is a new opening film by Takizawa Hideaki, this time though the focus is mainly just on the future 4Tops members, Yamashita Tomohisa, Ikuta Toma, Kazama Shunsuke and Hasegawa Jun as well as Jimmy Mackey.

One noticeable difference right off the bat is that the board they were using in the first season is gone and is replaced by just overlays on the screen for when they are discussing the topic. They still go over everything at the beginning and Kazama and Jimmy do it for this episode.

What I found to be really interesting is the fact that even if KAT-TUN was still not a group the six members got introduced in twos at the start of the episode, Kamenashi Kazuya with Nakamaru Yuichi, Ueda Tatsuya with Tanaka Koki and Akanishi Jin with Taguchi Junnosuke. I think at this stage it is easy to see that even though they are not grouped together officially these guys as Juniors are the ones to look at for getting the spotlight and getting bigger in the future.

Nobody expects Yokoyama You.

Yamapi, Kazama and Yokoyama You are still the main hosts of the studio portion of the show. I still find Yoko to easily be the most interesting host as he is really spontaneous and just so in his element doing this kind of thing and making it interesting. Though the other boys have come a long way since the first couple of episodes and can be pretty entertaining as well.

Again Arashi is the guest of the show. I honestly cannot remember the last time they were on the program once they switched studios but I guess that is just the way of things as it has been a while since groups like NEWS, Kanjani8 and KAT-TUN have been guests on SC as well after being frequent guests for so long.

I also want to note that Ninomiya Kazunari is the winner of the most unfortunate hair for this episode. It looks like he is going for the main character of a shounen manga series look. But it is probably more surprising for him to have beat Matsumoto Jun, who seems to be a grand champion of unfortunate hair for the group.

Little Matsujun!

By request from a fan they do a segment called Kawaii kara Kakkoii e (From cute to cool) for Matsujun. In which we get to see his first television appearance as a little Junior.

And we get revisited by the thing he called a hairstyle. I really do not get it at all or why anyone thought it may have actually looked cool.

Even Sakurai Sho questions the hair there as the members of Arashi rib Matsujun after watching the clips for the segment.

Of course Arashi also perform on the show, I guess they are on to promote the single Jidai as that is the first song performed.

Noticeable point about the performance is that we finally have the song lyrics on the screen. Honestly I did not really notice them missing from the earlier episodes until I noticed them being present in this episode.

We are now on Junior Fight III. This episode is a pictionary-esque contest between two teams of Juniors, one having Ueda Tatsuya on the team.

We still have Yamapi as referee, but with a new outfit for it and he has helpers with Ikuta Toma and Jimmy Mackey.

After that we get another Arashi performance, this time with reflective outfits. They could probably blind entire streets with those on a sunny day.

Toma gets no respect.

Ikuta Toma has his own section of the program now that has him dressing him up as an old fashioned detective. I guess he was supposed to find something out about summer with Matsujun and Aiba Masaki but the two Arashi members just spend the entire time goofing off together as Toma talks.

This question for the Juniors this week is about karaoke. The highlight for me is that Tanaka Koki has answered that the song he likes to sing at karaoke is Vanilla by Gackt. I kinda really want to see him perform that but really not surprised that would be a song he would like. Also of note Kame is down as liking to sing Gackt songs as well, and I just find that amusing.

Find it interesting that Koyama Keiichiro likes to sing Kinki Kids songs, seeing as that does not seem to have changed with his love of the Domoto Koichi penned Love Addiction.

Little Kawai!

The end song is surprisingly not Arashi. Instead it is a Junior group called ING Shinkoukei. I think the only reason this group would get any notice by current Johnny's fans is because of this member, Kawai Fumito. Though IIRC he is not in the line up for long.