The Shounen Club 20 November 2005 review

Onto the next November episode of Shounen Club and more NEWS + Juniors goodness.

J.J.Express actually all have matching outfits finally. And it seems like I miscounted as there are nine members here and not eight.

This episode is produced by Nishikido Ryo and the theme for it is pride.

The theme medley is title Otoko no Pride Medley (Man's Pride Medley) and starts with one of my all time favorite Johnny's songs, Mihari, sung as a solo by Ryo. I had such high hopes for this medley based off of this.

And honestly it did not disappoint except for one area, and the disappointment was huge. We had Jimmy Mackey and Uesato Ryota butcher Freddie Mercury's I was born to love you again. There are just some songs once you have heard the original it limits your enjoyment of covers for it, as in if they are not good then you just want them to burn. This is one of those songs.

Surprisingly enough I found Yamashita Tomohisa coming to my aide with the next song in the medley, Domoto Tsuyoshi's Hyakunen no Koi. He sounds good in this song and brings the right attitude for a rock song. It is also nice that he had Toshin Yoshikazu & A.B.C. joining him in singing it. So my hope and enjoyment was revived.

The medley ends up on a strong note then moves to have Yamapi talk about his pride before introducing the next song, over from 20th Century, which NEWS covers. It's a nice song and even has the word "pride" in the lyrics.

We then have a few of the JJE members talk about things they are proud of. Hashimoto Ryosuke already looks to be as tall as the older members of the group even though he is the same age as Nakajima Yuto.

For Nakajima Yuto he gets to show off his flexibility when it is his turn to speak.

JJE finally get to perform a song, something I do not think they have done in a while, or at least not in the past couple of episodes. They perform Love Me Baby.

And because I can here is a screen cap of Takaki Yuya, who is one of the few from the group to actually get solo lines in the song. And his voice is already sounding like it does nowadays so no surprises there.

The game segment is a versus battle between a team lead by Yamapi and one lead by Ryo. The first game is arm wrestling.

The next they bring out a device that has the contestant sit in a chair and have them press a button. Once the button is pressed it will work as a timer as the contestant has to try to guess when it hits 10 seconds.

I just want to mention that Yamapi has just been on for these episodes. He actually looks and acts like he is full of life for a change instead of just being there. I think his role as Akira in Nobuta no Produce must be rubbing off on him in a good way. This is the Yamapi we need to return.

Finally, after being told that none of the wins or loses from the earlier games matter, there is a tug-a-war. Masuda Takahisa shows an interesting anchor technique for it.

The losing team has to play a batsu game, which is that they have to say a phrase in baby talk. I will props to Ryo for trying to get out of it by pretending they were out of time. But the captain must go down with the ship.

Next we have Question? taking the stage to perform their song Precious Memories. I do not think I will stop feeling sad watching them perform seeing as they are no longer a group and most of the members have left the agency.

Ryo's pride gets tested as he is brought out by Tegoshi Yuya for a special report that shows off pictures/video of him from when he was younger and has him talk about it. We get to see one of his really early SC appearances (October 22nd, 2000).

NEWS then perform a song called Heaven and I am disappointed this was not on a CD. Even though with the rockish sound it seems like it would have been a better fit with KAT-TUN it could have fit with NEWS at this time as they had yet to really get a set style down for themselves yet. Of course the chances of it ever getting on a CD is next to nil.

Instead of Junior ni Q we get KAT-TUN ni Q, I guess they felt that they needed to find a way to get the group in the episode somehow. So they all talk about things they are proud of, except for Nakamaru Yuichi as he is the picked on member of the group right now.

Ryo talks about the theme of the episode before he performs a solo. The song is Ai Igai no Nande mo Nai, which I am not familiar with at all. It has the kind of sound I would place with Domoto Koichi's solo material if I had to. Ryo's voice is one that lends itself to enough various styles it is hard for his to go wrong with song selection so this song works for him no matter what.

This episode saves us from hearing Wonderful World again as NEWS with Ya-Ya-Yah sing SUMMARY ~Ending~ instead. Another way it seems like Yax3 is being set up to be the next big thing for the Juniors. Either way it is nice to hear another song end the show and SUMMARY is always a nice song to listen to and this mix of it has that nice finale feeling to it, plus some nice group mixing moments.


Another SC episode I really enjoyed. I cannot believe that I am almost done with 2005 already but I guess it should have been expected with the sped up schedule for reviewing these. There is so much in the near future to look forward to, a few things I would rather not as well though.

I just noticed but KAT-TUN has been ranking rather high on my blog tags list. Of course I expect other groups to eclipse them eventually the further along I get with SC episodes. So they can enjoy their time near the top for now. Soon they shall be surpassed, I am sure of it.