The Shounen Club 10 June 2007 review

It is a bit sad to realize that soon there are going to be some major changes to the Junior line ups in just a few episodes. Especially since it means losing groups and even a Junior.

This opening has the main Junior groups and groupings singing Kotoba Yori Taisetsu na Mono. And like usual no major changes in the line up, though J.J.Express does seem to be getting more attention then they have in the recent past.

This episode has the Morimoto brothers brought up to help introduce the theme. Have to say that Shintaro is looking much more relaxed on stage than he was in the first few months on the program. The theme is Kotoba (Word(s)).

The theme medley seems to be mainly songs that repeat a word a lot in their lyrics over anything else. And being a NEWS fan I loved that Koyama Keiichiro sung Kibou ~Yell~ with A.B.C. to start off the medley. It is nice if every once in a while the debuted hosts of SC perform, especially if it is with the Juniors.

There is a letter exchange this episode, which does seem very appropriate with the theme being words after all. The exchange is between Chinen Yuri and Senga Kento. I did catch that Chinen started off by saying that at first he thought that Senga had a scary face.

The Little Six then get to perform and Chinen was given some solo lines in PLEASE x3, which he did not have the last time it was performed.

And of course JJE performed right after them, as the group and the grouping still are rather attached to each other. I wonder if Inoo Kei was not feeling well or was tired as he did not have the same amount of energy as the rest of the group in this performance.

We get to the guest of the episode, which is the same as last episode, Ueda Tatsuya. I confess I was distracted by Ueda's arms through this, especially how they make Nakamaru Yuichi's look skinny.  IIRC, KAT-TUN should be touring soon which could explain the two months of guests from the group.

Ueda performs one of his solos that is not on a CD, Utai Tsuzikeru Toki. This is a ballad, which seems to mean for SC that they need to bring out the fog machine for the performance. Ueda does at least get some Junior back dancers with Takaki Yuya and Arioka Daiki. Though I do not think the performance needed it as Ueda did a good job at being able to express the emotion of the song so all the extra stuff seemed like distractions.

The Junior competition was basically Pictionary between the two teams. They had to draw out a scene to fill the blanks in a phrase they are given. I think the drawing battles are more fun when you have less talented drawers doing the drawing as it adds some extra humor to it.

That said I was impressed by the drawing ability of some of the Juniors. I had forgotten that Totsuka Shota had this as one of his strengths and it makes me wish he got the chance to show off his drawings more often.

Next is a solo performance by Nakamaru of his solo song Key of Life, which is on KAT-TUN's second album. We get the return of Arioka and Takaki as back dancers, another sign that they were getting some extra pushing at the time. Also no suit should be a shiny as Nakamaru's here.

This episode has the next segment of Takizawa Hideaki's Special Project. In this one we see that Tackey is trying to figure out which Juniors he wants to have in the group he wants to put together. After first just watching them practice he brings A.B.C. on board to help him out by being a part of his judges panel to have the Juniors audition.

We get to see some of the auditions, though some you can tell the guys are just goofing off, which is probably what Tackey asked them to. Hashimoto Ryosuke starts off serious but after stumbling on his words he ends things by saying that Tackey is cool. Which it probably funnier to watch the full thing to see the change in tone. But with that this portion of the special segment is over to be continued next month.

And randomly we have Kosaka Masato singing a solo song. I had no idea who he was and after a quick Google search it seems like he was just one of the random Juniors that got pushed a lot for a while but ended up quitting. The last news on him is that he is the lead vocalist in a band called PRISTAR.

There is a MC segment featuring Yabu Kota and Yaotome Hikaru about their favorite word(s). Of course it was easy to understand Hikaru's as he chose his favorite English word, promise.

This is followed by a A.B.C. and Question? collaboration for a song called Naked. It is strange to see these two groups paired up as I am just so used to seeing A.B.C. being paired off with Kis-My-Ft2.

Not sure if I just did not notice or not but we have more members of JJE being able to be a part of the Va Ni La ~Burn it up!~ ending song, which is the one for the older Juniors. I can only assume then the age cut off is sixteen then, as that would be what Arioka's age was then. I wonder if this means that when Shintaro and Matsushima So turn sixteen this year they will finally be in the end songs on SC.


And with this we close out June and only have three more months to Hey! Say! JUMP, with one of those months being the Kansai Junior episodes for the year. Of course after that it is a long wait for the next debut, depending on how you view the mess that was Nakayama Yuma w/B.I.Shadow/NYC boys/NYC. Personally I will look forward to the rest of the Bakaleya6 making their SC debuts as well as enjoying the time where Kis-My-Ft2 had their strongest presence on the show.