The Shounen Club 11 September 2005 review

And we have our first taping of SC post-Uchi Hiroki scandal. And honestly one would be surprised if anything was amiss with how ordinary the episode is. I think it goes more to show that Johnny's will push through any scandal by pretending that it never happened as quickly as possible.

Nothing to note of the Junior groups, they are all there and all members are accounted for. At the very start before the introductions began we get this short shot of Takaki Yuya who seemed to have been distracted by I believe Tamamori Yuta behind him.

The producer of this episode is Ueda Tatsuya and the theme is Negai which can be translated to wish/want/desire.

The song medley for the theme is all KAT-TUN. The most we get to see of any other Junior group in the medley is some of the members of Question? walking up to the middle of the stage to play their instruments next to the members of KAT-TUN for a TOKIO cover.

And they bring out the tiny Juniors so I can get my Yamada Ryosuke sighting in. He actually gets decent placement to be seen, not the best but at least there is no squinting to find him.

The first MC corner is with Ueda and most of Ya-Ya-Yah. I have to wonder if someone made the mistake of adding pants to what should have been a skirt or adding the skirt to these outfits. Because I doubt girl idols would pull off this look well.

This leads into a letter exchange between Yabu Kota and Jimmy Mackey. Of course there is quite a bit of talk about height, with how tall Jimmy is and that Yabu is no longer the tiny Junior he once was.

Yax3 then perform the song Kaze ni Notte. They really got some good songs and I am glad that some of them have been brought back for other Juniors to perform. Sure it is not the same with Yax3 not performing them but I think most of their songs can stand the test of time, as most are just fun pop songs.

Next up is Mister X wa Dare da! and of course with the return of KAT-TUN it means that they make up most of the contestants in the game. We do randomly get Ohkura Tadayoshi though which finally tips us off to who the guests of the episode are, Kanjani8.

Akanishi Jin seems to be in full America-love mode as he introduces himself simply as "John" and says he is from America. He even has Jimmy play into this as he pretends that "John" is an old friend from America when he comes on stage.

Sadly we again do not get to see Mister X on the screen which this time really is a waster as we have Yokoyama Yu as Mister X and he probably would have easily been as entertaining as Shibutani Subaru was. Then again, maybe not considering recent events.

Also to remind people why Jimmy was picked to be the one to give hints about Yoko we get to see an old clip from the show back when Jimmy was not the tallest Junior in the agency but still managed to be about as tall as Yoko.

We finally get to see the full group of Kanjani8, or at least of those who were there. Nishikido Ryo is missing, perhaps because of SUMMARY, and of course Uchi is no longer in their group either so they are down to their current group size with that.  They also seem to be more subdued than usual, which I guess is only to be expected as losing Uchi hit the group really hard.

They sing Oh! Enka and Mugendai in the hideous outfits that they have. I can only imagine the latter song had a lot more meaning for the group now than before being a song about friendship.

This is followed by a letter reading segment with Ueda, Nakamaru Yuichi and Murakami Shingo. And they read a letter that talks about Nakamaru having trouble with winking, if I am following it right.

Ueda then gets to perform a solo song that he wrote music and lyrics for, Pieces. It is a nice sounding ballad. Nothing too stand out but I think it is a good song for a beginner song writer and I know it helps me see how much better he has gotten with writing songs comparing it to his more recent ones.

We then get KAT-TUN singing SHE SAID, which is another song from their debut album. I think this time period KAT-TUN easily got some of their best songs, but that is partly because more of them have the rock sound in them that I love.

This Junior ni Q segment gives us only one Junior that is still with the agency that I know of and that is Tamamori Yuta, who has come so far since. His number one want is money to buy an expensive pair of jeans with.

And during the segment Jin shows up a couple of times wearing costume tops that are for younger Juniors.

Jimmy Mackey is paired up with Uesato Ryota and they sing Private Eyes, which I know is a cover of I believe an American song. Either way the lyrics are up there with the Police's Every Breath You Take with how stalkerish the lyrics sound.

Ueda then reads a letter he wrote about the topic of Negai and KAT-TUN sing, which of course is the usual pattern for the song.

Then to the usual end talk followed by Wonderful World, of course sung only by KAT-TUN. Yax3 get to be the Junior group featured dancing mid-song this episode.


As I mentioned at the start this episode is rather ordinary with little standing out from it. In a way that is surprising seeing that they had Kanjani8 as the guests. Then again I can completely understand why K8 were not their usual hyper selves considering they had just lost a member and considering the history of the group they had been a tight knit group so losing a member had to have been a terrible blow.

I feel bad that they had to just move on with having to pretend like everything was still just going along fine. I guess it really shows how far that they have come when the members were able to talk candidly about Uchi's scandal in the pamphlet for their concerts last year.