The Shounen Club 18 September 2005 review

And we get to the second episode of the month. This is actually the first second episode for the show in a couple of months with the July one being pulled and August being a recap episode.

Instead of the standard opening we have it begin in song, Sayonara Namida-kun sung by KAT-TUN. In the middle of it though they do some Junior introductions. But it seems something is off with J.J.Express only having four members considering how many members they have when they perform later, but I will get to that when we get there.

The producer for this episode is Nakamaru Yuichi, which means now all of KAT-TUN have produced an episode. His theme for the episode is Namida (tears).

In the Namida medley we get to notice two things. The first is that Tanaka Koki is being just as hyperactive and all over the place as he was in the other episode. It is like he turned his silliness up to 11 for these episodes and makes for a fun watch.

Akanishi Jin on the other hand seems to be trying for something or just not trying at all and is not fun to watch. He acts like he does not know the dance moves and looks bored at times during the medley. This will hardly be the only time I will complain about this in this episode.

We move into Junior Ha~i School with Kanjani8 vs KAT-TUN for various games. The first two are janken (rock-paper-scissors) based with the second being the version that the loser has to protect themselves with a helmet from the winner hitting them with a toy mallet to end the game. The final game is a group rope jump and it is pretty easy to guess how that turned out with these groups.

The losing group has to do a love confession. While I did not want to spoil the game it would be too hard not to highlight Maruyama Ryuhei's brilliant use of English here. It really is not to miss as he does it in an announcer like voice on top of it all.

This is followed up by Nakamaru showcasing his beat boxing skills. I have a soft spot for good beat boxing so I loved this performance. Especially since her brings in Ishigaki Daisuke to join him on the keyboard as he beat boxes.

After the usual KAT-TUN performance post-solo we get a special Junior ni Q that highlights members of JJE, which can now be seen as including Morimoto Ryutaro and Fukazawa Tatsuya. Even though they were not in the introduction from the start of the episode.

With the following JJE medley we see that Hashimoto Ryosuke and Takaki Yuya have also been added to the roster for the group. So the group has now about doubled in size but IIRC it is not done adding members before later cutting members. But that should happen down the road.

It is fun performance to watch as with the younger groups there is a lot of energy. Plus all the songs are really upbeat and fun. Plus it is nice to notice things like Takaki's voice has not changed dramatically since then and that there was a time Inoo Kei got solo lines.

After that energetic performance things settle down with Kamenashi Kazuya and Shibutani Subaru doing a duet of Tsuki no Michi/Eien. Like with the last time they did a duet Subaru's voice easily over powers Kame's but thankfully who ever was doing sound was able to play with the mic volume so Kame could be heard when he needed to be in the song.

The ballad seems a bit out of place with the JJE performance before it and being followed by TaNaka doing skits. Even though I could follow these better than past ones I still do not find them all that funny and it seems a pity that they did not do a comedy battle again since they had K8 there.

Question? then gets to perform and it is not Holy Heaven for a change. Instead they perform a song called Precious Memories. It is actually rather forgettable but it is still nice to get something different from the band. It is getting more depressing to watch Question? performances as another member has recently left the agency and only two from the group remain.

Nakamaru reads the usual essay (I guess that is the best word for it.) to go over the theme of the episode in his own words.

This is followed by a performance of Precious One by KAT-TUN. It is another good song from the group from their Junior days and well worth having included in their debut album.

This takes us to the end song where Jin decides to act up again, almost tripping and falling either off the stage or into Kame. While I do not blame him for wanting to goof off for this song, as it is boring, I think he should have figured a better way to have done it. Like Koki doing his hip thrusts during a certain portion of the song or just something that may not screw other members of the group up.


While there are things I liked about this episode, even with KAT-TUN, Jin really drags my enjoyment down. While others have done similar things for laughs and entertainment on the program it is usually to an extreme so the viewer is keyed in that they are merely playing around. Since Jin fails to go that far it is hard to tell if that was what he was going for or if he was simply being that lazy. And if he was just being lazy than I see no point of him being an entertainer if he is not going to take his work seriously.

Other than that not a bad episode overall. Surely not perfect but it had some fun moments and the other Juniors got some time to shine.

Even though there was not a lot of K8 I am fine with that as it is pretty clear they are not on their A-game, which is to be expected. So hopefully they get a bit more time before being asked to guest again so some of their wounds can heal a bit more and perhaps be in some better spirits.