The Shounen Club 09 February 2003 review

Already on February and honestly I am getting pretty excited about getting to the end of this season to begin the next. Mainly because the next season introduces a format of the show I am much more familiar with.

Intro is the same as usual and we even get Ya-Ya-Yah performing the song they have done to death already and I cannot get myself to care about. Unless Masuda Takahisa is back dancing though, but for this episode he is not so the cares I give are around zero. Mainly because right now Yax3 is more Yabu Kota and these other kids than anything else.

So the guest this week seems to be one of the hosts, Ikuta Toma. Toma gets to be the center of discussion as he has a role in Domoto Koichi's musical, SHOCK, so there is a lot of promotion for that.

Personally this bored me as I do not find Four Tops and Jimmy Mackey that interesting on their own. Sometimes they can be but it is hit or miss for me and this time it is a miss.

After that we get KAT-TUN performing Heartbreak Club. This time with Tanaka Koki adding a rap to it, though I do not think it does the song any favors. But at least we get more KAT-TUN looking like KAT-TUN.

For the second talk segment we get VTR of Arashi. They promote an upcoming single then we get to see a PV for a new song from the group, Tomadoi na Gara. There really is little to say about the song or PV as I personally found both boring. Though I do find it interesting that the group already was moving on to a more mature look even before the next FIVB group debuting.

Then after some more talk Toma gets to perform a solo song from the musical. He gets KAT-TUN to back dance for him for this.

Then onward to the message board. I did not find much interesting this time around though I do rather love the drawings Massu did for his answer as they connect to the drama he had a role in.

We have an odd combination for the end song with Yamashita Tomohisa with the three Ks of K.K.Kity. Though I guess if you really wanted to you could theorize that Johnny's was perhaps testing to see how Yamapi and those three would sound/look together to prepare for NEWS' debut in about a year's time from then.

Yamapi does his end segment somewhere outside. I can only assume it is some place right outside of the studio as I doubt any special expense was given for this.


Overall an okay episode. While there were things hear and there I was happy to see and enjoyed there was also quite a bit I just did not care for.

Still rather excited to have this episode done and be one episode closer to reaching the next season.