The Shounen Club 5 August 2007 review

The 2007 August episodes are a bit of a weird month as it is one of those times that most of the Juniors are busy doing something else, I believe there were Junior summer concerts for this, so the program has to focus on something else than the usual Juniors.

That something else, for this episode and most likely the next as well, is NEWS. The group finally makes their comeback to the program since Kusano Hironori's scandal. Of course they are now down to the six member unit that they will be for a few years, but they are back and because of the lack of the usual Juniors get to have this episode be a NEWS Special episode.

This is not a Shounen Club without any Juniors to note though as there is at least Yamashita Shoon and Ayukawa Taiyo from Ya-Ya-Yah there as well and FIVE. Then they brought over the older Kansai Junior groups, B.A.D., BOYS and OSSaN.

The episode does have a theme, Natsu (summer), as well as the usual medley that goes with it. Though the medley seems like it doubles as a Kansai medley as the Kanjuu groups are the ones performing in it and are eventually joined by Nishikido Ryo.

The first MC corner goes to Tegomass as they discuss the theme of the episode. They talk about being in Taiwan and of course Massu brings up a Taiwanese food that he loved having while there. They also bring up that NEWS will be performing in Taiwan later that year.

Tegomass then perform Kiss ~Kaerimichi no Love Song~, which is the title track of their latest single at that time.

The next MC is with Nakamaru Yuichi talking to B.A.D. about the theme. Nakama Junta talks about a incident from when he was four years old and in Hawaii for a vacation. Kiriyama Akito talks about getting shaved ice with three of his friends and winning a contest, which I am assuming was eating it. Nakamaru messes up Kiriyama's name and then makes it into a running gag for the rest of this segment.

NEWS then performs Sayaendo. I an happy that they broke out the concert outfits for the performance so we have pirate!NEWS. I also love how they have the skull and crossbones as a word in the lyrics as if it was just another kanji character. And of course I just love this song.

We have NEWS o Abake in place of a game segment. NEWS was always a great group for the Abake segments as they have no issue with trying to mess with each other. In fact the segment starts off with Koyama Keiichiro trying to mess with Yamashita Tomohisa.

I will not get too much into the segment as I know it has been fansubbed and it is well worth hunting it down to watch. But I do love how the tease each other and seem to know who is saying what, or seem to have a good idea, even with the blindfolds and voice changing.

Following this we get to see the Juniors again, this time Shoon and Taiyo get the stage as they both do solo performances before ending it as a duo. I loved seeing Shoon sing solo finally, as I find that he has the most pleasant sounding voice in Yax3.

There is then a VTR segment that officially introduces the Junior Hey! Say! 7. They show the music video of their single song, Hey! Say!.

During the music video there is a break where each member gets to talk about their summer, as well as have their basic information shown on the screen to continue the introduction of the group.

The final MC segment is with Yamapi. He talks about sunsets on beaches when it comes to summer.

Yamapi then performs a medley of his solo songs. And there are finally Juniors back dancing that I recognize. Not only Shoon and Taiyo though as there is a little Jesse as well, who even gets a mic to sing at parts in Fever to Future with a few other little Juniors.

NEWS of course close out the show by performing one of their songs, Kirameki no Kanata e. They start it off with Ryo, Shige, Tegoshi and Massu walking up to the stage from the audience area. Then finish with everyone on stage, ending the episode.


The show has gotten good enough with showcasing the Juniors overall that I am not too annoyed with having a debuted group be the focus. Of course a big part of that is also the fact that I know that most of the usual Juniors were unavailable anyway and the ones that were there were either not well known or too few to be able to guarantee the ratings the show needs.

Though if you are not a fan of NEWS or the Kansai Juniors you could probably skip this episode, unless you are a fan of the few Tokyo Juniors in it and you may want to skip around to the parts that they are featured in.