The Shounen Club 2 July 2006 review

Well I am back on schedule for Shounen Club reviews at least with this. And this is one of the episodes I have been looking forward to reviewing.

We have some group members missing this month. Ya-Ya-Yah is without Yaotome Hikaru.

And Kis-My-Ft2 is missing Kitayama Hiromitsu. So that gives us two Junior groups missing one of their lead vocalists.

So I guess I jumped the gun a bit with Nakamaru Yuichi on as host for the program as he is nowhere to be seen this episode, instead Koyama Keiichiro has Tanaka Koki joining him as co-host for the program.

Fujigaya Taisuke is the producer for this episode and his chosen theme is message. This is one theme I would not mind see being used again on SC instead of the ones they keep overusing.

The Message Medley features Koyama reading letters/postcards from fans requesting songs that the Juniors perform.

J.J.Express still has Yamada Ryosuke with the group and seems to be on its way to the eventual split with the younger looking members, Nakajima Yuto and Morimoto Ryutaro, getting outfits that are not even trying to match the rest.

Of course that is not the only thing pointing to changes happening with JJE as Kyomoto Taiga is wearing a matching outfit to the little ones and unless I am horribly mistaken that is Sanada Yuma with a matching outfit for the older looking members of the group.

After the medley there is a MC break that has a few of the Juniors holding signboards that they insert words to try to make something clear. The easiest to follow is Fujigaya's who talks about how the kanji of his given name is read Taisuke not Daisuke, which would be the more common way to read it.

Before moving on just want to point out that there is a tiny Casey Anderson in between Yuto and Fujigaya here. He is adorable and I almost failed to recognize him because he is not really tall yet.

And then it looks like the talk segment is cut short as suddenly a curtain is dropped to reveal Arashi are guests for the episode. The group perform Kitto Daijobu.

While I am not an Arashi fan I do like some of their songs which is mostly everything from around this era until around 2009. So I was happy to see them appear in this episode, partly because I do remember watching them perform in the next one so I do know that we get them as guests for both episodes this month. IIRC, this is the final time the group is on SC, as they were on the rise when they showed up for this and it was a great surprise they even were on the program back in 2006 since it had been so long since they were on.

After the performance the group stays on stage so Koyama and Tanaka can talk to them. I know I catch them talking about when they were Juniors the program was called Idol On Stage. Plus there is some Aiba Masaki teasing. And they eventually get asked about giving a message to the fans to keep with the theme of the episode.

After Arashi leave the stage the shows moves on to the game segment. For this episode the Juniors are giving a card with a prompt on it that they either have to act out or draw with the others having to guess what it is.

I was pretty amused how Yokoo Wataru needed only to draw the bangs for the others to guess that the person in his drawing was supposed to be Fujigaya.

This is followed by a Question? medley that has the little Juniors back dancing for them. But it does give us Igo Akun being named on the screen for the first time.

We then have Junior ni Q and get to see at least one Junior that is still around that I have not noticed before, probably because he is most likely stuck in the back, Sakuma Daisuke.

Kis-My-Ft2 is called over during it and we get to see Miyata Toshiya doing an impersonation of a gorilla.

Back at NHK Hall Kis-My-Ft2 do a medley of their songs. Without Kitayama there Fujigaya takes over most of the vocals but the younger four members get to help with some of that and generally just get more screen time than before.

There is a letter reading exchange between Yabu Kota and Yokoo. The two seem to have fun and it stands as a reminder that the two probably do go a long way back with Yax3 being a group that has been around for some time and Yokoo having been in K.K.Kity back when that group was new.

This is followed up with a Yax3 singing Summer x Summer x Summer!. Without Hikaru it ends up with Yamashita Shoon having to cover his lines. It seems rather sad that the only time Shoon and Ayukawa Taiyo have had to shine in a performance is with this without Hikaru being around. I feel the two had a good deal of potential that went no where as Johnny's focused so much on Yabu and Hikaru at their expense.

In the next MC break Fujigaya gets to talk about how Koki is someone that he admires and shows off something Koki gave him. Koki of course gets shy about all the praise and tries his best to play it off.

Koki then gets to sing a medley of his solo songs with Fujigaya getting to join him in the first song. I personally do not care much for Koki's solo rap songs so I have little to say about this performance.

The only interesting part of the end song is Koki acting like a complete goofball for it. In part because it is a complete 180 from the performance he did right before it.


As I mentioned earlier the episodes for July 2006 should be the last time Arashi is on the program. They seem to follow Kinki Kids in the sense that they got too big for the program to be regular guests, especially after the VTR segments with Juniors talking to the debuted groups were dropped. Yet like Kinki they were a big part of early SC so it was great to see them return at least once more after so long.