The Shounen Club 27 October 2002 review

While I am getting excited about the fact that I am starting to get close to being done with the pre-NHK Hall episodes of Shounen Club I do still find these earlier episodes interesting. But I think overall I do miss not seeing more of my favorites which should change shortly after the next season of the show begins.

There really isn't anything really worth noting about the standard introduction this time.

We get Ya-Ya-Yah doing an opening song again. Nothing really stands out this time except for a sighting of Kitayama Hiromitsu back dancing.

The guest for this episode is Murakami Shingo (Hina) of the Kansai Juniors. He is there to promote the play he was in at the time, The Kiss of an Invisible Man.

I am pretty happy to see one of the Kansai Juniors of the time show up on the program. Especially since it should not be too long before Kanjani8 is formed so I would expect to see more of those members appearing as they were pretty popular when they debuted so it would make sense for them to be appearing on a program like SC to reflect that.

At the end we get to see rehearsal clips of Hina practicing for the play.

As with Domoto Koichi in the last episode Hina is just there for that first talk segment and does not show up in the program to perform. Instead the next performance is KAT-TUN. They perform two songs but I only recognize the first, My Angel, You Are Angel, as they have released that on CD after their debut.

And this episode happens to have the new game segment for the program, Club no Ousama (King of the Club). The set up is that Juniors come out and perform a talent and Yamashita Tomohisa gets to judge them and either give them a pass or a fail.

Yabu Kota does that traditional Russian dance, but is mainly just adorable. It is hard to connect him with the adult he becomes as he is just so cute right now.

He of course gets a pass. Honestly you would have to be heartless not to. He gets a crown, which is what those who get a pass get.

We get Nakata, the comedy team of Nakamaru Yuichi and Tanaka Koki. They start with the hosts talking about their name and mentioning they picked it as flipping it around would have given them Tanaka, Koki's last name.

We also get to see that this is not the first time this segment has been done with them as they have the "batsu" stickers that those that Yamapi fails get on them.

We also get to see them earn another as Yamapi fails them yet again after they finish their comedy routine.

After that we get the next song performance, a multiple group performance of V6's Believe Your Smile.

The groups that get to sing are Four Tops, KAT-TUN, K.K.Kity and Ya-Ya-Yah. And Yabu's voice is sadly painful to listen to at parts as it sounds like he is screeching more than singing.

And we get some group mixing for the performance, which is something I always enjoy seeing. Part of why I love Johnny's Countdown so much.

Masuda Takahisa gets highlighted during the answer board segment. The question is about favorite words and he gets spotlighted for being in the Musashi taiga drama in 2003.

The Four Tops get to close out the program singing the end song, Love & Dream. And they finally have outfits that match completely. They seem to be looking more and more group-like with each appearance.

Yamapi has Hasegawa Jun with him for his end segment and pretends that Jun is a doll and makes him speak. So it is one of his more interesting end segments so far.


An interesting episode if just for the fact that I can finally see the new game segment of the program. Though it really was nice to see Hina, for as I mentioned this should be the time the eventual members of Kanjani8 should be rising as the debut dates of NEWS and Kanjani8 inch closer. Hopefully there will be more Kanjani8 in upcoming episodes.