The Shounen Club 1 October 2006 review

This episode is a must for Yamada Ryosuke fans, plus there is the Shounen Club debut of another of the Bakaleya6.

In the introductions we get confirmation that Nakajima Yuto and Morimoto Ryutaro are now out of J.J.Express as they are introduced alongside Yamada Ryosuke and Kyomoto Taiga.

Followed up by JJE getting introduced as now a seven member unit.

And apparently I have been spelling the name of this temporary unit wrong, it is Kitty not KITY. Though I know the name comes from the first letters of the last names of the members, just have no idea where the second 't' comes from.

The theme for this episode is Sexy, which was not only chosen by the producer of the episode but is a popular request by fans. The producer for this episode is Yamada Ryosuke... At least when asked about the theme Nakamaru Yuichi does mention it seems off to apply it to Yamada and Yamada brings up seeing Domoto Koichi in concert and getting the impression that is what sexy is. So he wants to learn from others sexiness so he can be more like his admired senpai. (So this does avoid being as bad as Sexy Zone/Boyz.)

The Sexy Medley gives us a duet between Yamada and Nakajima as they sing Seishun Amigo. This is one of the SC clips I watched a lot when I was getting into everything as I was Junior Hey! Say! 7 fan and Yamada was one of my favorites from the group.

In the following MC Yamada gets to hang around as Nakamaru and Koyama Keiichiro talk to Ya-Ya-Yah about what they consider to be sexy. Yabu Kota ends up showing off the tucking hair behind an ear as an example which ends up as a bit of a running gag throughout the episode.

This is followed up with a Yax3 medley, with the first song being to the Freedom, which was covered recently on the program. This version of the song starts off with a ballad-like beginning so Goto Hiromi can play his violin for it. For also perform Ikujinashi for their part of the medley.

After the Yax3 portion of the medley we get Joey Tee, rapping(?), a song with two small Juniors backing him up. The song is pretty bad and I would normally not pay much attention to a performance like this except I recognized one of the the little Juniors, Jesse. I believe this is his Shounen Club debut and interestingly enough his name on screen is just his first name so just going by it is not such a new thing after all for him.

There is then a MC break with B.A.D. BOYS with OSSAN. All three groups are missing members for whatever reason. And they of course bring up the whole tucking hair behind the ear thing when talking about things that are sexy.

Since Nakama Junta is missing from B.A.D. the two members of OSSAN get to sing with Kiriyama Akito instead. And I am amused to think that it takes two Juniors to cover for Nakama.

Following the performances we have the game segment and again we have Shokura Mania, which I personally love for the fact you can play along with it easily. All the questions have the theme of Nakamaru for them this time around.

They move straight into the next performance, which is the first performance of what was one of Kis-My-Ft2's signature songs as a Junior group, Inori. I am so happy to get to this as Inori is one of my favorite Kisumai songs, and not just because Senga Kento has solo lines in it. They just need to start performing Fire Beat and things will seem complete for me regarding the group in their Junior days.

There is then Junior ni Q that asks Juniors what is sexy for guys. Senga gets called over to explain his answer of "n?". He explains that when a guy responds to a girl like that he thinks it is sexy of them to do. I kinda want to go through the Kis-My-Busaiku episodes to see if he used this in any of those challenges.

We also get little Kyomoto Taiga shown who says that low voices for guys are sexy. It is amazing to see him already looking much more relaxed in front of the camera than he was in the past couple of months.

Kitayama Hiromitsu ends up camera bombing the segment before the go to the last Junior to talk with.

Fujigaya Taisuke gets called over as well but I am not certain about his answer, it seems like it is along the lines of knowing a person's charm/appeal if I am reading the sentence right.

This is followed by a MC segment with Kitty and Yamada. Each member of the group get to talk about something they view as sexy.

Kitty get to perform a song called Fly high, which I can only assume was an original song for them. It honestly sounds like two songs that got smashed together in a way that no momentum could be built without the other "song" coming in to ruin it.

Yamada then gets to read an essay, which focuses on his admiration of Koichi and looking up to him to figure out how he can figure out the key to being sexy.

We are saved once again from this season's end song. Instead they sing Marui Chikara, which is one of Tegomass' early songs. But the duo does not debut until December that year so I am not sure if the song has been given to them yet or not as of the recording of this episode. Especially since it is not released by Tegomass until their second single in May of 2007.


Not sure if I care for so much focus being put on Kitty. It does make me recall hearing about it being pointed out as a temporary group that did not lead to a debut like some worried it would when I got into the Juniors back in 2007. I can see why one would worry about the group being set for a debut as it is getting a good deal of promotion, but I am quite glad it did not as I just do not see much in the way of group chemistry with the members.

But the highlights of the episode for me are Yamada getting so much spotlight and the appearance of Jesse. While the former ends up being very telling for what track Yamada is on for his career the latter just shows how unpredictable Johnny's can be. Because who would have guessed Jesse would end up being one of the more popular Juniors in about six years from then.