The Shounen Club 11 June 2006 review

First off I am sorry for the great delay in posting this. I was busy all weekend volunteering at a comic book convention and had little to no time to do much on the internet. The posts that did get posted over the weekend on my blogs were done in advance and unfortunately I did not manage to finish writing this review to have it scheduled to post on time. Today and tomorrow will be my catching up for my reviews for NEMP.

The opening is a bit of a change of pace with all the groups singing parts in the opening number with Question? getting an introduction for a change.

Kitayama Hiromitsu is the producer for this episode and the theme he chose was Otoko![Hero] (Men![Hero]). He comes out speaking some German as his heroes are soccer players and it is time for the year's World Cup and it was in Germany.

The opening medley is an Otoko Medley. We get to see more of Nakajima Yuto's Junior grouping that now includes Kyomoto Taiga, though only Yamada Ryosuke and Morimoto Ryutaro get to sing with Yuto.

There is then a letter exchange between Nikaido Takashi and Senga Kento. These days it is hard to forget how close the two are as we do not get to see much of them together anymore so it is nice to get that reminder with watching this episode. Also to remember that Nikaido has indeed always been a bit bratty.

Kis-My-Ft2 then perform their song TRY AGAIN. I feel like a bad Kisumai fan for not realizing that Yokoo Wataru has some solo lines at the very end of the song. Though it is a very Kato Shigeaki-esque of the 6 member NEWS era solo with it being "rap" lines that he does as another member is singing.

Kanjani8 are the only guests of this episode this time around. For their MC they have to answer a fans question about what makes a guy cool. They do not spend much time in answering it before heading off to go to stand by for their performance.

K8 perform a medley of Osaka Romanesque and Osaka Obaachan Rock. I kinda miss the outfits with the attack shoulder pads from the previous episode but it is nice to see things changed out a bit and just have the guys in street wear.

The game segment is having three of the K8 members judge the "manly appeal" of a few of the Juniors. Each one comes out and does something to try to appear manly. Such as Kitayama doing some tricks with a soccer ball.

A belly wave.

Tsukada Ryoichi shows off his stomach muscle control for his trick but he ends up having a challenger appear with Yasuda Shota.

Pregnant woman impersonation.

Yasu shows that Tsukada has a long way to go to be able to be on his level of stomach muscle control.

A.B.C. then perform their original group song, Crazy Accel. While I am not big on A.B.C. songs I do think this is one of their better ones. And being an original group song they have the usual break where they can show off their acrobatics.

We have a new VTR segment starting this season starring Totsuka Shota as Uwasaman. He goes around back stage and talks to the Juniors he find there about various things. Like when he talks to Yaotome Hikaru about a prank, which if I am following is him messaging Juniors lies. Kawai Fumito and Fujigaya Taisuke get brought over about the matter as well and it sounds like Hikaru finds out that he was pranked himself the same way.

Koyama Keiichiro and Nakamaru Yuichi talk to a group of the Juniors about what they think is manly.

Nakamaru then gets to perform a solo song called Understandable. While I did not find anything very stand out about the song itself I loved the beat boxing he did before beginning to perform it. Especially when he had Goto Hiromi join him with the violin.

Kitayama reads an essay about why his theme is important to him and I at least got that it had to do with something his mother told him when he was younger.

He then leads the performance of the TOKIO cover version of Kondo Masahiko's Gingiragin ni Saregenaku, which gives the song a rockier sound. He is joined by the younger members of Kisumai as well as Yabu Kota and Hikaru.

We then have the end theme of gooood, which seems to be lying about itself with its name. But at least they change things up a little with this episode they bring in Koyama and Nakamaru to perform it as well as K8 coming out. It seems Maruyama Ryuhei manages to trip and fall over the feet of one of the members of A.B.C. as he did so too.


A good solid episode of the show and I am still very much enjoying seeing the Juniors being placed front and center in the program again. K8 are always great to have as guests on the program which helps make this an enjoyable episode as well.

I loved Koyama and Nakamaru as hosts as even though they were a part of the show enough to be a part of performances there was still plenty of segments that they take the back seat to let the Juniors shine. That and there are no debuted groups hanging around that are not just frequent guests.

I am hoping that the April episodes of 2013 start moving towards being more like these episodes as it would be nice to get to know the Juniors that have the potential to be debuted, especially as there is only about two and half years before the next FIVB group debut now so it is the time period for potential older members of that group to start getting pushed if past patterns hold.