The Shounen Club 14 May 2006 review

Still happy that we are getting closer and closer to the Shounen Club that I knew when I began watching late summer of 2007. This will be a year I will be very interested in seeing that this should be the era that the future Hey! Say! JUMP members should start getting some pushing and a couple of the Bakaleya6 members should be showing up as well.

We start off this episode with the hosts, Koyama Keiichiro and Yasuda Shota already on stage. They get to introduce the Junior groups.

For the final group, Ya-Ya-Yah the group gets to start off with their song, HA RU NA TSU A KI FU YU. It is nice to see the group performing as four now that it seems we have hit the the period of time that Yabu Kota and Yaotome Hikaru are getting stronger pushes together without Yamashita Shoon and Ayukawa Taiyo.

The producer for this episode is Hikaru and his chosen theme is Hikari (light) which uses the same kanji character as his given name.

So of course the first medley is a Hikari medley, though they seem to be going off songs that let people shine or something as I fail to see how Real Face, Sennen no Love Song or Freedom tie into the theme of light.

The MC segment following it has Hikaru saying that he wants to shine at dancing and I believe Kawai Fumito and Kitayama Hiromitsu are spotlighted to give him advice to do that.

Kis-My-Ft2 get to perform their original group song, Endless Road. I really wish current Kisumai would go back to the level of member promotion in songs that they had back then. Is it really that hard to have some of s-My-2 sing with KiFt for some of the lines?

The game segment is focused on the guests of this episode Kanjani8, but has a bit of the Juniors as well. This game segment has K8 be given a theme that they need to make a pose about with various objects to help them out. Like the smile of 'I love you' that Nishikido Ryo shows up in the screen cap above.

My favorite pose came from Maruyama Ryuhei for face of what I think translate something like Please, God I beg you. Of course by this time is was apparent that no matter what the request was K8 were just going to do whatever they wanted.

We then get some poses from the Juniors, like Tsukada Ryuichi and Kawai doing a pose of friendship.

The game segment is followed up by K8 performing their single Osaka Romanesque. I rather like their outfits here, even though not everyone is in the colors they will eventually adopt for themselves.

Then there is a letter exchange between Yasu and Maruyama in the K8 outfits I really dislike. I feel proud that I got the part with Yasu bringing up that they met at Maru's second audition for Johnny's, which he did not need to do but thought he did as he had not heard anything from the agency after his audition but he was still in. But that is about where my understanding stopped. I do wish I knew more about what was being said as Maru got Yasu to crack up pretty hard.

There is another K8 performance, of their song Mystical, which allows a few of the members to break out instruments to play for it.

We get another Junior ni Q segment that is not so Kisumai/A.B.C. heavy as the previous one. The highlight is Kawai explaining why he thinks he shines when he is "naked", as in he can show off his flesh by having an open jacket if I am following it right.

Then there is Miyata Toshiya showing off a walk that probably belongs in the Monty Python silly walks skit. It is interesting to see him here as you can clearly see bits of his personality there but you have to get through so much awkward shyness for it.

There is an MC that has the members of Yax3 reading letters/postcards from viewers asking for advice about various topics that they then give some advice about.

Yax3 then do a medley of songs. I find it interesting that while Yabu's voice sounds like it has settled to his adult voice Hikaru's still has some deepening to go through to reach that level. And again we seems to see Yax3 as a duo more than a quartet.

For the end song we get the same one from the last episode gooood. Still do not care for the song and hope it is changed out for the next couple of episodes of the program at least. But at least this time we get little Yamada Ryosuke singing for this.


I am so glad we are finally at a stage of Shounen Club that seems to be able to balance the focus of the Juniors and the debuted Johnny's on the program. These are the kind of episodes I want to watch for the program and I hope that with the new season around the corner for the current episodes we will see things move back to this direction.