The Shounen Club 10 November 2002 review

Onto November now and with the gaps I have by the end of next week I will be done with 2002. Taking a quick glimpse at upcoming episodes the January 2003 episodes are both recaps so I will end up doing those together so it should be about mid-July that I will reach the next season at NHK Hall.

M.A.D. gets an introduction at the beginning so I guess that helps mark the beginning of that group. The boys in it have been back dancers for a while so really no surprise that they are in a dance group. I think currently M.A.D. no longer exists as it was sorta merged with M.A. a while back but I do not follow the dance groups too much to know for certain.

The opening song is Believe Your Smile, a V6 song, sung by various Juniors.

This week's guest is Yabu Kota. He pretty much is adorable throughout and it is a basic get to know him kind of interview.

Then Jimmy Mackey butchers Stand By Me with KAT-TUN helping out near the end. I will go ahead and state right now that I do not get the appeal of Jimmy. There is really nothing stand out about him to me other than he is not full Japanese and as a foreign fan I do not find that exotic.

We get another segment of Club no Ousama. Tagushi Junnosuke is up first and he juggles while reciting some long test, which from the amount of furigana seen is likely in olden Japanese.

Yamashita Tomohisa shows that he either has favoritism to the young Juniors or no sense of the amount of work and effort that something like that would take and fails Junno.

I bring up Yamapi favoring the young Juniors as then Yokoo Wataru comes otu to do some simple basketball moves and gets a crown for it. The last episode only the young Juniors got crowns so it feels like Yamapi is just okaying anyone who is young enough and failing the older Juniors.

We get the return of Nakamaru Yuichi and Tanaka Koki, this time going under the name Tanaka. I guess in the end they decided not to care that their duo name was the same as Koki's last name. To no surprise they also get a fail from Yamapi.

The song between is a Ya-Ya-Yah medley of the group's three songs. We get some fun acrobatics during one as well as who I am sure is Masuda Takahisa in the back dancing for them.

Next up after that is the question board. This time the question is about being an adult. No Junior highlighted is one I recognize though. I do kinda wish I could see Ikuta Toma's shirt better as it looks to have Engrish on it.

KAT-TUN get to do the end song for this episode, and there is not much to say about the performance.

I am not surprised Yamapi brings up eating in his mumbling as that does seem to be one of his favorite pastimes. But he has a large Domo-kun plush and is kinda cute with it so I will still place this as one of his better end segments.