The Shounen Club 20 October 2002 review

Another episode in a row for the episodes I have. I am so glad to have so many of Shounen Club's 2002 episodes as I feel like I am getting a better sense of the program the more episodes I see of it.

It seems like A.B.C. have now inherited the costumes that used to be K.K.Kity's. I can only assume it was because the older members of K.K.Kity were getting too big for them, which is a shame as I rather like these outfits.

The first performance is Hasegawa Jun and Kazama Shunsuke covering SMAP's Taisetsu. This is one of my favorite SMAP songs and this performance continues with the love because of a couple of things.

Like Masuda Takahisa making another appearance! And he is so adorable for the couple of seconds you can see him clearly on the screen. I really wonder what Johnny's was thinking back then when there was Junior like him that had a good voice but was stuck being a back dancer with almost no screen time.

But we also get the adorableness of little Ya-Ya-Yah at the end. I think this has been my favorite performance on the show for a while despite it being really short.

The guest today is Domoto Koichi of Kinki Kids as one of the songs he wrote is being used as the new end song for SC. He makes a great entrance with starting off sitting in one of the kiddy chairs on stage.

Then failing to get out of it as he gets up to move to the usually guest chair.

Koichi is a great guest on the show as he was really funny. Though the host group does not do too badly playing off of him, like when they go to listen to a preview of a new Kinki Kids song and it does not start playing when it is supposed to in a beat they make it into a joke pretending as if they had heard the song and complimenting it.

The song does finally start playing and they just role with it, carrying over the joke.

Koichi at first kinda seems to be an odd fit for the program with the fact he is a part of the sempai group of Johnny's but this was around the time he was a bit involved with the Juniors. He was the one after all that grouped KAT-TUN and K.K.Kity together. I am glad he made an appearance on the program as he was one of the highlights of it for me.

They bring up that they sing a cover of Kinki Kids' Yokubou no Rain and mention that Ikuta Toma sings Koichi's part. They ask for advice and I love how nervous yet happy Toma seems to be for this opportunity. Koichi though blows it by getting the lyrics of the song wrong.

Ya-Ya-Yah get to perform a song for the show. At this time I will point out that oddly enough there was no audience for the performance portions of the show for this episode. I kinda wish I knew why they were absent as I do not believe any of the past episodes had this before. I also want to say that I am pretty impressed with Yamashita Shoon and Akama Naoya for the acrobatics they do at the start, especially the human wheel thing shown here.

The song though comes off as Yabu Kota featuring the other four for the most part, though Akama does get a few solo lines as well. Also they have the same four Juniors back dancing for them that were with them with Taisetsu, so there are glimpses of Massu to be had with this performance.

We get some VTR of Arashi which is mainly Aiba Masaki talking about the single and film with the rest pretending to be tough guys and grunting a lot.

The highlight of this is the mock fight Ninomiya Kazunari and Sakurai Sho break into and them being restrained by the other members of the group. 

We then get to see a portion of the PV for PIKA☆NCHI, and I am glad it was not the full thing. They way they edited the video for the PV made my eyes hurt after a while watching it. But it looks to be pretty much all shot on the set of their movie with a mix of movie shots and making of shots being the majority of it.

We then move onto the next performance of the show, this time by Four Tops singing first Nami. They seem to finally have sets of outfits for the group as they all have the similar yet different thing going for them instead of the previous everyone gets the same thing by Yamashita Tomohisa.

And we get the same kind of thing with their outfits for Yokubou no Rain. Like the other times they have performed the song though it is mainly just Yamapi and Toma with the other two not showing up until near the end of the song.

The question board for this episode was not as boring as it usually is as the Four Tops and Jimmy Mackey actually talk about their answers (the question being what they want to do the most now), which just proves to me why Junior ni Q is the much better version of this segment. But for me the biggest highlight of this for this episode is seeing Massu's answer shown on the board, partly because I am still so happy to have seen him in this episode and partly because of the cute drawing that went with it.

KAT-TUN get to perform the new end theme for this episode. It kinda makes sense they would be the first as I mentioned before Koichi had a hand in putting the group together in the first place.

And we have the return of Domo-kun! And Yamapi goes off on something about Koichi or something. 

To be honest I am really surprised that there was no sign of either Takizawa Hideaki or Imai Tsubasa this episode. I guess I am too used to a newly debuted unit sticking around on SC right after their debut for promotion that the lack of that with Tackey & Tsubasa seems just so weird. Especially with how connected this show is with Tackey.

But I really enjoyed this episode and so far it is my favorite yet from what I have reviewed so far. I hope there are more episodes like this in the near future.