The Shounen Club 12 November 2006 review

Some Shounen Club goodness to enjoy this weekend.

Nothing outstanding about the usual introductions of the Juniors. Still personally annoyed at not being able to tell what is going on with J.J.Express. I wish I had a couple of magazines from the time frame to see if those would not help a bit.

The producer for the episode is Yamashita Shoon, who is no longer with the agency. His chosen theme was Omoi, which can be translated to thought, feeling, sentiment, desire, etc... So the theme is one that is rather versatile and it would be hard not to find something that could fit under it.

In fact the medley of the episode is a Love Medley, which may seem a bit of a stretch but in the end probably fits just as well. The medley has Kitayama Hiromitsu doing a solo cover of Domoto Koichi's solo song, Deep in your heart. I bought the single for this song back before I got into Johnny's because it was the theme song of an anime series that I liked at the time. Or more I really liked the song, as I remember finding and watching the PV for it and enjoying that as well. But I never followed up on learning more about the artist, mainly because I did not care much for the other A-side on the single. So it ended up being one of the two Johnny's purchases I made before I was even away of the agency. And I just love it when it gets covered as it brings back all those memories.

This medley seems to be another one that focuses on the members of Kitty as all but Inoo Kei  get a solo, which seems to be the norm for this. Instead Inoo has to share with either his group, JJE, or with the rest of Kitty. Which seems a bit odd as Yaotome Hikaru is in his same age group so it is not because he is deemed too young and he gets solos in JJE songs still even though the main vocals in the group have changed.

The first MC has Koyama Keiichiro and Nakamaru Yuichi talking to Nakajima Yuto and Yamada Ryosuke about the theme of the show. Shoon seems to be there to just look pretty until the little ones go to stand by and he finally speaks.

Nakajima leads the next performance by first performing the song D.N.A as the main lead then Yamada joins him so they can cover Seishun Amigo together. The latter is a performance I remember watching before back when I was trying to find all the performances that my favorite Juniors at the time, Yamada and Takaki Yuya stood out. Needless to say Yamada was easier to find things for as few as they were.

The next MC has a handful of the lesser known Juniors that get chances to speak on the program, such as Sanada Yuma.

And this is all to preface something I have yet to see repeated again, a massive dance introduction for all the Juniors on the program. It is dressed up as a "dance battle" and smaller groups from each side, red and blue, would come up and dance a bit as they were introduced.

They would try to give some of them special dance styles to attach to them, like Sakuma Daisuke and Iwamoto Hikaru here are supposed to be doing ballet.

Of course sometimes they would not even bother with that. But in any case this was great to figure out who the back dancers of this time period are. And it pretty much confirmed for me that the future members of Mis Snow Man are pretty much all there, but are stuck as mainly back dancers.

This is followed by a letter exchange segment between Kitayama and Totsuka Shota. I think this is one I would be very interested in finding subtitles for as the two of them have both been in the agency for some time and known each other pretty much all that time.

There is then a Question? medley that has all the members up near the front of the stage, a nice change from having the keyboards and drums stuck in the back. The only that would have made the performance better would be if they performed one of their original group songs instead of doing covers.

For the game segment the participating Juniors are the members of A.B.C. and Kis-My-Ft2 that are present, so it is an even ten participants. And there is some picking on Miyata Toshiya as they get ready to start as it looks like he is already in his role for the group.

The game has the ten take on four different challenges. The first being a word game where each member has to say a phrase, which sounded like a bit of a tongue twister, quickly without making a mistake.

The next was having them use the recorder to, I believe, play a series of notes. I could not help but think of the Kisuhama Learning episode that used recorders as well, so I was glad this game was short.

The third game was having the guys "toss" a ball between them so each member got one turn.

The final game each member had to do the typical "love you" saying, but each one had to say something different than what had already been said. Needless to say I enjoyed this segment. Sure you really could not play along but it was still fun to watch the guys face the challenges. Of course it helped that I am a Kisumai fan so I was happy to see more of them, especially with something like this that let all the members be seen.

We then get to the guest of the episode, Tegoshi Yuya. I love that you can see how happy Koyama is to have any of the members of NEWS show up on the program. And we get Tegoshi doing his introduction with gimmick, which is bringing up his hand as the first kanji of his last name is the one for hand.

Tegoshi performs Sunadokei, a Tegomass song, as a solo. I prefer it as a duet, but if Tegoshi has anything going for him is that he is a good vocalist and has no trouble carrying the song on his own.

This is followed by a Junior ni Q segment. This one focuses on the lesser known Juniors of the time, so most are no longer with the agency. But we do have a little Casey Anderson, who wrote his answer to the prompt in English. Koyama and Nakamaru bring him over to translate and it is him wanting to be on T.V. more so the two cannot avoid pointing out that he just managed to do that.

The final MC corner has Shoon doing most of the talking with a host of Juniors behind him. He just goes over why he chose the theme.

Shoon then gets to sing his solo song, BAD NICE. Shoon was one of my early favorite Juniors and honestly he still would be a favorite if he stayed with the agency.

His solo leads into a Ya-Ya-Yah performance of to the Freedom. I think the only thing I like about the song is that it involves all four members more than some of their other songs.

The final song is Sekai ga hitotsu ni naru made, which fittingly enough is lead by Yax3. It is times like this that one is reminded at just how many people can be fit on the stage at NHK Hall.


I do confess I found myself feeling a bit down watching this as I miss Shoon. Sure he still is working on a career in the entertainment industry but it just is not the same. Especially when it comes to finding new information on what he is doing. That and I thought that even though he did not debut he would still have a good career with Johnny's like Kazama Shunsuke or Hasegawa Jun. But I guess what is done is done and I will still support him as Yamashita Sean with his new career path.