The Shounen Club 06 July 2003 review

I guess I am better at keeping on schedule for these Wednesday reviews but I may give them a bit of a break. I am just feeling some burn out right now so I probably will not blog so much for a little while before jumping back into everything once I feel recharged again.

Only thing of note with the introductions this time around is that we get the names of group members with the group name on the screen. Ya-Ya-Yah is back to the original five members with no Yaotome Hikaru in sight for this episode. But like I mentioned before I think this is still the period where the group members are in a pretty high rate of flux.

Jimmy Mackey and KAT-TUN start off the program talking to the crowd and trying to get them excited. I think this really shows at how much stronger KAT-TUN's presence is on the program now though it becomes hard to deny as the show goes on.

They start the show off with a medley of SMAP songs that were the most requested and cover the top five. And little Inoo Kei is an adorable thing of cuteness. In fact you can spot quite a few Johnny's who made up the batch of little Juniors during this time in this medley, like Nikaido Takashi.

Speaking of cuteness there is more with the final song, that is sung solo by Yamashita Tomohisa, with KAT-TUN being with the little ones for this. I first noticed Nakamaru Yuichi poking Nikaido's cheeks but then noticed that Kamenashi Kazuya is holding the hands of his little Junior to sway them back and forth in the background here. Again, lots of cute for this performance.

We get the return of the Club News segment, this time we are down to just the Four Tops to be the hosts for it. The talk about PLAYZONE as Hasegawa Jun was in that year's production of it.

We are saved from just boring talk by Imai Tsubasa, who spoils the fact that he is the guest for this episode, walking in front of them with some Juniors.

We are then introduced to a new segment with Ikuta Toma called Toma Scoop. He gets to interview the members of Coming Century, the sub-unit of the younger members of V6. Of course they have something to promote which is Cosmic Rescue a movie and a single for the group.

Imai Tsubasa is officially announced as the episode guest and he performs a song. Honestly Tsubasa does not interest me, he just comes off as boring, nice but boring. I was amused though at the sleeve of his jacket here that uase overtaken by pin badges.

The medley begins with Ya-Ya-Yah, that have become a trio for this with Yabu Kota, Ayukawa Taiyo and Yamashita Shoon. The perform Stompin' which is one of my favorite Yax3 songs and should be familiar with current Junior fans as the little Juniors did a medley with this song as well as the next Yax3 perform, Just wanna lovin' you, not too long ago.

Jimmy Mackey sings a terrible version of Stand By Me, but it is not so bad to sit through as Yabu, Taiyo and Shoon are there and being cute to help distract. It also is blissfully short this time around.

Then it moves into the Four Tops performing Nami. I kinda love how they decided to not even bother really trying to match the outfits outside of being close enough with the color.

I am not sure what this segment is about. It had Yamapi talking about Akanishi Jin yet in the background it looked like there was something going on. It looked like Nakamaru and Toma talking and Nakamaru feeling bad about something since it looks like he could be crying. But whatever was going on it was more interesting to me than hearing Yamapi talk to the camera.

Jin does get to be seen and he then does some talking but centered around the word he is holding up.

Tsubasa gets another performance and does a medley. Honestly I found it even more boring than his first performance as the songs were all slower and sounded pretty generic. His talk afterwards with Akiyama Jun failed to get me excited as well.

We get Toma doing his detective thing again, where he runs into the audience to find people that will ask questions for whoever is on stage. This time we have KAT-TUN on stage to answer the questions.

KAT-TUN then gets to perform their song, No-Matter Matter (I think that is how it is romanized but I am not completely certain). This song is on one of their early releases but I have never liked it and still do not. But it does feature Nakamaru Yuichi beat boxing which I do not remember being featured in a song for KAT-TUN yet.

Yamapi reads a postcard from a viewer writing about her mother's reaction to watching Nakamaru on the program.

That segues to the return of Tanaka and the duo do their usual routine. I am not sure if I am missing something but I do not find them funny for the most part, but I guess different people, different tastes and all that.

We get some more footage of Toma with Coming Century and get to see some old clips from Music Jump, the program that Shounen Club used to be. I think the most interesting thing I noticed was that I am pretty sure Juniors still wear these outfits, which means that the Junior outfits are probably much older than I had originally suspected.

Yamapi gets a solo song where he is backed up by members of KAT-TUN.

Then it goes straight to the end song with all the Juniors for them to sing the usual song for the end of the program.


Honestly not much stood out this episode, but it does seem like they have a good idea of what they want to do with the program now and are just testing various things to see how they can fit them in with the new venues.

Though I also cannot help but think that all this shifting is just going to be something that will happen throughout this season as with the November episodes we have NEWS' debut which should throw everything out of whack with groups being broken up and one of the main stars, Yamapi, no longer being a Junior and so much a part of the program. But I will save my thoughts on all that when I actually get to those episodes.