The Shounen Club 19 June 2005 review

Onto the second Osaka episode of the season where we get very little of the Kansai Juniors.

This episode begins with introductions for Kanjani8 and the Kansai Juniors but I would not get your hopes up to see much of the Kansai Juniors in this episode. 

Instead we have K8 introduce KAT-TUN as the "guests" of the episode and we learn that Akanishi Jin is the producer this time. His chosen theme is Love & Natural, which quickly gets questioned for being an odd choice.

For the medley we have A.B.C. performing the first two songs before KAT-TUN comes in and does the rest of the of the medley.

One of the songs they do is Rockin', which is a song I have grown to like from Bakaleya6's performances of it. And I think someone may have been truly worried about Jin when he decided to stand on top of the pony wall here.

We then get Kamenashi Kazuya reading a letter to his future lover and find out that he is pretty corny. He seriously looses a lot of cool points during this by being more dork than anything else.

We then get a K8 performance, this time of one of the song Osaka Rainy Blues. It is a nice song with some good choreography that gives the performance some energy but not enough to make it clash with the tone of the song.

There is a MC corner with Ueda Tatsuya and Totsuka Shota about the theme. It sounds like Totsu thought Ueda had shown him love with an emoji in a cellphone message but Ueda tells him that it is something he uses with the rest of A.B.C., if I followed everything correctly.

We get a Junior Ha~i School segment, with K8 helping out by acting out roles to showcase certain Osakan practices, like a selling vendor and a mother. The best part of course is the later one, as Maruyama Ryuhei is the one selected to be the mother and is prefect for generating laughter, even from the other participants of the act.

This is then followed by Jin reading a letter he wrote to explain the theme more and lists things that he likes.

He then does a duet with Nishikido Ryo of the Kinki Kids song Ai no Katamari. I guess it should not be too surprising that Jin managed to work in a duet with one of his friends in this episode.

For the VTR segment of the episode we get Yaotome Hikaru and Yabu Kota doing an interview with Kinki Kids, with us being reminded that the latter are from Kansai. I guess they figured they needed to at least pretend this actually tied in to the Osaka episodes in some concrete way. Domoto Koichi has the two stand up and is discouraged to find that they have grown so tall and grumbles about it. Yabu and Hikaru end up really just talking to the duo about the theme of the episode and then we get promotions for Kinki Kids' latest single, or the real reason why they had this segment.

We get the Osaka version of Naka Naka Ii Jyan with a Maru Maru Ee Yan segment with Nakamaru Yuichi and Maruyama. They even had matching happi jackets for them. But there was little difference otherwise.

I always feel sorry for Ohkura Tadayoshi as he gets stuck at the back of the stage so often because he is the drummer and that is where they have decided to place the drum set. I guess at least they make sure he still gets some screen time despite that. And he looks pretty young still here.

I kinda love that K8 gets to be able to really set themselves apart from other groups of their era for having not only the enka elements but of course the band elements, which are a carry over from their Junior days. With no hope of a new band group debuting in the near future from Johnny's it is nice to have groups like K8 that can have a band element to them if they want.

Jin does an intro talk before singing his solo care, which is one of the few solo songs from a KAT-TUN member that managed to be released on CD after their debut. Like previous episodes with a KAT-TUN member doing a solo he is joined by his group after the song to do a group song, this time it is Precious One.

We then get the usual end talk with of course reminders of where to send postcards and such. Subaru here looks like how I feel at this point of the episode.

The end song, or songs, are a mix of Kanjani8 and KAT-TUN songs in a medley of sorts with the appropriate groups singing their songs and it ending on a K8 song.


My biggest issue with the episode is the complete lack of Kanjuu performing in it. Why bother introducing them if they are barely going to be seen at all? Not to mention something just does not seem right when there is a greater Tokyo Junior presence in an Osaka SC episode, and that is not even counting KAT-TUN as Juniors. Sure Kanjani8 got a lot of screen time but they have debuted so they are not Juniors anymore. So I do not see why one of the performances could not have been given to the Kanjuu to do a medley at least.

I could go on for much longer on that topic but I am not going to bother. With each episode I get one episode closer to KAT-TUN debuting and having such a large presence in the episodes.