The Shounen Club 19 September 2004 review

As promised I am keeping on top of Saturday reviews of Shounen Club. Which is definitely needed with new episodes continuing to come out every month. I am hoping that I can get a Wednesday review this coming week as well, but we shall see.

A note about this video for the episode, as you will see that it has hard Chinese subtitles on it. I looked for a clean version but the source that I got most of my early SC episodes from was on Mega Upload so it is all gone now. And I did not want to delay doing a review for this episode now that I am getting back on track again. But I did do a quick check and this looks like the only episode I have like this and the rest are clean.

We start off the episode with KAT-TUN in one of the rooms back stage as they talk about some of the things to look forward to in the episode. Then rush out of the room to make it to their places as the opening number begins.

While the song begins without them KAT-TUN show up to join in shortly after and we see that they are spread around the audience. Kamenashi Kazuya and Akanishi Jin are with the first floor group, Nakamaru Yuichi and Tanaka Koki are on the second level while Ueda Tatsuya and Taguchi Junnosuke are up on the third level.

During the song, which is TOKIO's Ambitious Japan!, we get the two Kanjani8 members from the previous episode of the month, Yokoyama Yu and Murakami Shingo join in.

After the song ends they check in the KAT-TUN members on the different levels of the audience sections as they bring up the theme of the episode, challenge.

They then start the Challenge medley where the main feature of it is that it has the Juniors "challenging" various activities, some better than others as the hula hoops show. Overall it is an enjoyable performance with a lot going on that makes it worth watching again just to see what you may have missed before.

The next performance begins with Kame singing Tsuki no Michi and then part way through there is suddenly Shibutani Subaru there to join him and eventually the rest of their respective groups join in on the end.

After the performance the two groups talk and bring up that Tsuki no Michi and Eien are the same song, just slightly different versions. In fact if you look at the credits during the performance the only difference is that Subaru's name is on the credits for music for Eien, so I can only assume he changed some things up with it.

The three K8 members then perform the debut song for their groups, Naniwa Iroha Bushi. It is a rather fun performance even though more than half of the group is missing, but this is a song that really only needs Subaru for the main vocals for it to be performed without being a complete mess.

For Junior High School we have a drawing contest where the contestants are given a subject to draw without seeing it. They are told to draw a Meganezaru, which literally translates to glasses monkey, and is an actual kind of monkey. Of course none really get close to drawing what one actually looks like but the misses are vastly more entertaining honestly, especially with whatever Ueda ended up drawing.

A.B.C. get to perform a medley of songs. They seem to have really improved with their acrobatics as they no longer look a bit wobbly as they did before and I am pretty impressed with how energetic they were throughout as even without the acrobatics there was a lot of energetic dancing for the performance as well.

Kame and Jin look to have taken over the Scoop segment of the show as they visit with TOKIO. They talk to them about TOK10, the album that they released for the tenth anniversary of their debut. They had questions about the songs that the group covered for it and TOKIO had some interesting ways to write down their answers.

Back on the show Hina and Yoko talk to Inoo Kei and Matsumoto Kouhei to teach them some comedy. Then send them off to get ready for the next performance.

We get a J.J.Express medley which includes the introduction of their signature song, Back In Time. Probably the most notable part outside of that song is the fact that Nakajima Yuto gets to move to the front more in the group which is a sign of things to come.

Jimmy Mackey gets to read a letter from a fan in South Korea that is a big fan of all the Juniors. He then introduces the next performance.

This episode also has the introduction of another new song, this one is one of KAT-TUN's Junior songs that made it on their debut album, Never Again. I find it to be one of their stronger Junior songs and was glad to see that they now have it to perform on the program.

After that the three K8 members join them to sing a Kinki Kids song together, which of course sets things up for the final number of the program.

I am not sure what amuses me more, the fact that Hina was the only one of the K8 three that sang the entire song, that Subaru at least joined in for the chorus or that Yoko did not sing a single line and just jumped around on stage a lot. At least they all looked like they were having fun.


I finally went ahead and figured out the dates for K8's debut single, which was released as a Kansai only release in August 2004 with the nationwide release being the following month of September. Which does make it weird that there has been so little in the way of proper promotion for the release on the program. I mean this is the first time the debut song was even performed on the show and it is only with three of the eight members of the group.