The Shounen Club 15 December 2002 review

This unfortunately the only episode I have for the month of December for 2002. And I really do wish I had at least the one before it as it looks like it had the same guests as this weeks, Kansai Juniors.

Of course the most notable thing about the intro this week is the inclusion of the guests of the program, the Kansai Juniors, who easily set themselves apart from the rest.

And we are finally spared from having Ya-Ya-Yah do the first song of the program. Instead we have Four Tops do Yokubou no Rain, which while overdone by them is not yet at the level of personal annoyance Aikotoba wa Ya-Ya-Yah is for me.

This week's guests are Kansai Juniors, or everyone who will be a part of Kanjani8 minus Ohkura Tadayoshi. Like past Junior guests they get to answer questions about the members of their group with each one having little name signs that have each of their names on them.

Part of me wants to go through all the answers as they were all pretty entertaining but this post is already set to be longer than my usual review so I won't. Instead here is a nice close up of Hina to prove the guy really has not aged in the past ten years.

Maruyama Ryuuhei wins the worst hair this week. That shade of blond looks particularly terrible on him and the shaggy hair does not help either.

The Kanjuu fail their timing completely for the song introduction, which is a perfect way to round out this segment for them.

Being December we have a Christmas song medley. And I will mention right now that I am not a Uchi fan. I do not care for his voice nor his personality so the fact he is featured so heavily in this does bring down the enjoyment of the medley for me. Thankfully he gets to be surrounded by Juniors, notably Ya-Ya-Yah as well as a little Nikaido Takashi above his shoulder on the right (also behind Ayukawa Taiyo) and then on the very far right is Miyata Toshiya if I am not mistaken.

Yoko tries to kill Hina!Santa with fake snow but thankfully he fails as they move over to the other stage to continue the Christmas medley with the rest of the Kanjuu.

And more Hina!Santa and little Nikaido because both are pretty cute.

Near the end of the medley they actually pull audience members up on stage. About half look awkward while the other half decide to just enjoy themselves and the fact that they are getting a chance like this.

We get to see a quick recap of the acts from the last episode which included Uchi and then Yamada (Maruyama and Yasuda's comedy duo name). But it looks like Yamashita Tomohisa finally decided to pass non-little Juniors as both received crowns.

Ryo, Subaru and Yoko make up a comedy team and their gag is that while Ryo and Subaru try to sing Yuuki100% Yoko mixes up sorta similar sounding words to "yuuki" and acts on those instead.

The three seem to break the streak of wins by being considered boring by Yamapi. And it breaks Yoko's heart that Yamapi would fail him. They still get to show off their group pose and be much more entertaining than most acts in this segment so far.

The Kanjuu then get to do another song medley. Nothing too stand out other than there is more Uchi than I would have liked.

The question board has been made into a message board for the Tokyo Juniors to say things to the Kanjuu and the Kanjuu write messages back.

The end theme is sung by KAT-TUN with Uchi, Maruyama and Yasuda. I can only assume the other four Kanjuu sang the ending with one of the other groups for the episode the week before.

Yamapi took up the topic of Christmas this time for his segment. They really picked a place with terrible lighting for him to do this at though as he looks pretty bad here.


The more I see of K8 the more I come to like them so I am glad to have at least this episode. I would love to have the other as they are really fun guests to have and actually get to be featured outside of the first talk segment.

It also reminds me that we are getting close to the Kansai Junior month for Shounen Club this year. In a way it will be nice as we should be getting a break from the usual acts on the program. I would not be surprised if they bring Sexy Zone over though for the taping as they will be starting their Osaka concerts around the time of the airing of the Kansai Junior SC episodes in August. But we will have to wait and see as it is near impossible to find taping reports for these episodes.