The Shounen Club 9 January 2005 review

As happy as I am to finally be on 2005 episodes now I still really feel like I want to catch up soon so I can comment on the more recent episodes. I guess I should at least feel good about getting back to two reviews a week as that should help with catching up though I still probably have months to go still.

We start off the episode with KAT-TUN on the stage before the curtain is raised. They give teases about what will be seen in the episode before it begins. There is nothing to really note of the introductions as there has been no group changes and everyone is accounted for.

The guests of the month is Kanjani8 which helps sets the bar for these episodes to have some pretty fun moments. The theme of the episode is Kibou (Hope) and the various Junior groups are asked about hopes they have while Yokoyama Yu camera bombs them all.

The first medley is one of the more KAT-TUN heavy ones with only the younger Junior groups, mostly Ya-Ya-Yah, getting some decent time even if most of it is shared.

There are two Juniors that are important to note that can be seen in this performance. The first being Hashimoto Ryosuke, who is going to eventually be joining J.J.Express and post-Hey! Say! JUMP debut be added to A.B.C. to form A.B.C-Z.

The next is another future JJE member, but he will debut with HSJ, Morimoto Ryutaro. Of course one of the important things to note about Ryutaro's appearance is the fact that he joined Johnny's with a group of Juniors that had their audition filmed for Yax3's TV program and that group also included Yamada Ryosuke. So if Ryutaro is around it should mean so is Yamada.

We get a dajyare (pun) segment with Taguchi Junnosuke who reads a postcard from a little girl that works in a pun about Ueda Tatsuya riding a bicycle in it.

With the segment over Ueda shows up on the stage riding a bicycle, and I can imagine making a little girl so very happy.

JJE peform Kibou ~Yell~ with A.B.C. Jr. backing them up for parts of the song. I rather like the performance as it has a lot of my favorites in it and Arioka Daiki actually does not look like he hates life while performing here, just kinda bored.

Yamada is so small and blurry.

And while I almost missed it there is a small glimpse of Yamada in this. It is sometimes hard to remember that Yamada did not start off as being promoted as one of the more promising Juniors. Ryutaro was the one that got the attention from his group and it took a while before Yamada started getting the breaks he needed to eventually break out. So I look forward to seeing him go through all this in the coming episodes.

Tanaka Koki and Yasuda Shota talk about traveling on the shinkensen (bullet train), as K8 has to do that when they come to Tokyo for work. It is rather nice to see other members other than Murakami Shingo and Yoko get to do these MC segments for a change.

The game segment of the episode is Junior Hai School with members of KAT-TUN and K8 competing in it. We also get some Junior helpers which include Takaki Yuya and Sanada Yuma.

They play a couple of word games, the first is giving reasons why they do not want to become adults. The second is that they have to come up with a phrase that is three lines long and use a character of the word kibou to begin each line. Needless to say this is the highlight of the episode as they all just try to out goofy each other with the answers, especially with the second game and using Ueda's name to begin the final line.

Junno leads a talk with a few of the members of K8 about their concert tour. It is nice to see Ohkura Tadayoshi be highlighted in something as at this point he seems to be one of the neglected members of the group.

K8 then perform a medley of their songs. I really do like the pants they have for this outfit. The "fins" on the outside leg of them just looks silly and out of place. Not to mention the fur lining on the tops really do not go with them.

Afterwards KAT-TUN does a rock medley. While I enjoy rock songs I am disappointed that this ends up being KAT-TUN performance without any real choreography. The songs lose some energy with the group mainly just standing around and it is the Juniors back dancing that have to make up for that.

Kis-My-Ft. get to have a MC segment to themselves as they talk about things they hope to do. This leads into a joint performance with the members of A.B.C. in what they call a "dance battle".

A.B.C. perform first and I find it quite hard to find a way to find a screen cap that can really give an idea of the performance. They are hitting the point that their acrobatics are looking impressive so their performances are fun to watch if just for that.

Kis-My-Ft. trade off with them and perform Midnight Shuffle, which seems to be their assigned song for now. The group remains energetic and you start to get the feeling that they are really starting to mesh now as a group.

Jimmy Mackey gets to give a riddle for KAT-TUN to solve before being able to go on stage. Junno ends up being the only member to get it without Jimmy practically giving the answer away.

The group then sings a song named FLY, and it is yet another forgettable song. It also does not help that it is yet another KAT-TUN performance with very little choreography.

We get to the end theme and I am just so ready for the new season of this show to start. It would be one thing if other groups than KAT-TUN performed it but since it is not it is getting pretty boring to watch. The only thing that caught any bit of my attention this time was that Akanishi Jin let Junno go through his legs this time around.


Even though it is a new year it is not a new season of the program so very little has changed. While being rather KAT-TUN heavy it was not so bad as there were a good amount of times to see some of the other Juniors and Kanjani8 always helps make things more enjoyable with their great sense of comedy. So overall a good episode and it is always nice to see more Juniors that go on to debut show up.

In any case only three more episodes before the end of season recap episode. I will probably go ahead and make that recap episode a Monday review so I can get to the new season, which will hopefully bring around some of the changes I have been waiting for.