The Shounen Club 8 April 2007 review

The first episode of a new season with a few big changes to the program.

In the introductions J-International finally get one, though under a different name but since I have seen J-International used in one of the official Junior calendars I am going to stick with it.

We no longer have producers for episodes and Koyama Keiichiro and Nakamaru Yuichi are still the main hosts. They introduce Yabu Kota, Yaotome Hikaru and Nakajima Yuto as special supporters though. They take some time going over some of the new segments, but I am going to wait until I get to them in the episode to go over them.

We still have the usual theme medley, with the theme of the episode being Start. And while all the usual Juniors got their turns singing a couple of Juniors that tend to only back dance got to sing, this included Iwamoto Hikaru.

The MC corner has Yabu, Hikaru and Nakajima talk about things they started recently. For Nakajima it is playing the drums, then for Yabu waking up early and I am not sure what Hikaru was talking about. But from the reactions I was not the only one. Also midway through they brought up a couple members of J.J.Express entering high school, Arioka Daiki being one of them.

Ya-Ya-Yah then get to perform their song START! And I do not think I care for their outfits here. I think it is mainly the shade of yellow they used.

The following talk segment introduces the guest of the episode, Kato Shigeaki. He and Koyama talk a bit about going to the beach together. When asked about something he has started recently Shige brings up photography.

Shige starts his performance with his solo Kakao, which I like and was happy to get on CD with the NEWS Best limited edition. The performance switches to the duet he has with Koyama, Chirarizumu, which is a fun performance with the fake mirrors though the song lyrics a bit perverted.

We then move to the game corner which is now being called Nekketsu! Junior League. The Juniors have two teams now, the Dream Bombers and Jonetsu Rainbow. The Juniors on each team are pretty much the set ones for the game segment, but with some changes from time to time but they will remain on the same teams as they debuted on.

They play a series of relays the first being jumping rope. For some reason Fujigaya Taisuke seems to have issues with this one.

The next is to solve multi-step math problems. Personally I am sure I would be terrible at this as me and math just do not go together.

The final deals with pumping air into a balloon. I do not think there is a set amount of pumps each have to give but whichever team pops their balloon first loses. And because Senga Kento bombed so badly with the last relay his team have him hold the balloon as a batsu game. It is worth watching everyone's reaction when the balloon pops.

The following MC segment has Yabu and Yaotome talking to Nakamaru who gets to plug a concert tour for KAT-TUN before the next act is introduced.

Kis-My-Ft2 perform Kis-My-Me-Mine next. This time around they have other Juniors onstage to be back dancers, but otherwise it is the usual solid performance from the group.

Yabu and Hikaru have their own corner now called, Shiroyagi to Kuroyagi no otegami itadakimasu. This corner is honestly boring. There is nothing really engaging about two people talking at a table about a topic even they do not seem fully engaged in. Thankfully I know this is not how latter installments of the segment go, so I hope that change happens sooner rather than later.

The next performance is a solo for Nakajima who performs the song Ai o Hitotsu. He has the rest of the Little Six be back dancers for him, and we get to see Chinen Yuri break out his spins, which is something he will be doing quite a bit of in future performances.

There is then the usual Junior ni Q segment with the theme being bento this episode. the only Junior brought over to talk still with the agency that I know of is Kyomoto Taiga who talks about a bento that his mother made for him.

Yabu Kota then gets to sing a solo song that he wrote the lyrics for, Asu e. I guess this could be considered Yabu's start at writing lyrics for songs, which he mainly does for Hey! Say! BEST songs now.

Then it is time for the end song and this episode has the song Va Ni La ~Burn It Up!~ that the older Juniors get to sing. I like this song, it is a fast paced, energetic song that I think fits Shounen Club well.


While it is nice to see the program try new things I guess it should be expected that not all of them are going to be winners. But that segment aside the show was still pretty enjoyable and I was happy to see Shige on the program once more. I really want to see NEWS return as guests but until then various members of the group will do.

Either way we are getting closer to the next debut which has me excited. I cannot believe it has been about a year since KAT-TUN debuted. It feels like a lot longer.