The Shounen Club 23 December 2007 review

This special is much like the past Christmas special episode last year, with it being longer than the usual Shounen Club episode and being part clip show.

The episode kicks off with a performance of Cinderella Christmas by the main groups of the show, A.B.C., Kis-My-Ft2, Question? and Hey! Say! JUMP.

After that it switches over to the stage where all the talk segments will be at with the usual hosts of Koyama Keiichiro and Nakamura Yuichi. The special guest of the episode, Takizawa Hideaki, makes a memorable entrance by playing with one of the studio cameras. He is there of course to finish unveiling his special project.

One of the VTR segments for this episode is that there are five big pieces of news that will be covered by the debuted groups. First up is KAT-TUN. I did not catch what their announcement is but they did bring up that everyone but Taguchi Junnosuke had been on SC in the past year as a guest.

When they go back they tease Yaotome Hikaru a bit as he was in one of the clips they showed of KAT-TUN from years back. Then they move on to the Christmas Song requests. Members of HSJ get to read the requests from fans throughout the show. Hikaru gets picked on again because when he began to read the request he did so without much emotion with it.

They then showed clips of past SC performances of Christmas songs. Then go back to talk about them a bit, pointing out how tiny Nakajima Yuto used to be.

Next VTR has Imai Tsubasa leaving a message alone as Tackey in on the program. What is the highlight of the VTR is that some of the clips shown are from the pre-NHK Hall episodes.

The following talk then focuses on Tackey as he talks about Tackey & Tsubasa. The next round of requests begin, this time for various Junior performances. What is interesting is that they have a Ya-Ya-Yah request and seem okay with airing it, so Johnny's must feel confident with HSJ being established.

The next event VTR is for NEWS, but only Yamashita Tomohisa and Nishikido Ryo are there to talk about it. But the news is the group's concert in Taiwan and we get clips from that.

After that Koyama then gets to talk about Taiwan a bit and shows a couple of photos taken of the group while they were there.

This is followed by the new unit Tackey created taking the stage. It is then revealed that this new unit will be called Budokan. The members of the group all give their introductions.

There is then some VTR for more making of for the PV for the group. Then we get to finally see the PV for the group's first original song, Now and Forever.

There is more talk after the VTR about Budokan. Both Senga Kento and Hamanaka Bunichi provide a good deal of laughs for the talk. Looking back at this even though back then I felt I would be okay if Budokan debuted I am glad they did not, as I am happy with the ways things turned out with Kisumai and Ebi. I cannot imagine what those groups would be like missing a member.

For the second round of requests for Junior performances get the members of the groups that are being requested to read them. And with that we get the next batch of VTR clips from the past year.

They fit in a Junior ni Q segment, with the theme being what you like about Christmas. HSJ members get called up for this, I assume because of how few Juniors they have there. The first being Nakajima who talks about Santa Claus and his younger brother.

It is Senga up next with a really long sentence on his card. He brings up that he is a romantic and plays out the scene he wrote about with Nakamaru playing the girlfriend.

Tackey then shows up bringing with him a couple of Juniors, Nakayama Yuma and Morimoto Shintaro. I can only assume it is because the drama, Battery, is going to start airing soon so the two are there for extra promotion, as they both have roles in it.

Since they have Shintaro there they cannot pass up bringing his older brother over to talk. They used to be so adorable, but now have grown up quite a bit since.

Then it is Ishigaki Daisuke up to talk about drinking champagne when going out to a restaurant.

Up next is Hikaru who has a story to tell about Christmas. He assures that it is non-fiction and that is about all I could follow.

With that segment over it goes back to the event VTR, this time with Kanjani8. They of course talk about their tour for the year as they had tour that had them performing in all 47 prefectures of Japan. We get to see some footage of that and of the fans that went.

We go back to fan requests, this time for the debuted groups that have been guests on the program. This leads to VTR of more Christmas song performances on the show.

The final big event of the year they cover is of course the debut of Hey! Say! JUMP. They bring the group on stage to talk about it. The VTR for them of course is a performance of Ultra Music Power, but they do mix in a clip of the Yokohama Arena concert that the group first debuted at.

Then it is time to start wrapping things up and they talk a little about next year before having Tackey plug a drama that he did at the start of 2008.

The program then closes out much like it began with the main groups singing a Christmas song, this time Can You Feel This Christmas?, a J-Friends song.


These Christmas special episodes are a nice way to round out the year for the program. It is a nice way to look back on what happened during the year. Plus with clip shows it can get rather boring when it is mainly just clips so this gives a good balance between new and old.

So with this 2007 is wrapped up and it is time to begin 2008. Outside of A.B.C-Z being formed I cannot remember much that really happened, I guess there is the formation of Hey! Say! 7 WEST as well but since the Kansai Juniors are stuck to a month's worth of episodes it is harder to appreciate the changes on SC as they are usually learned of through different means, like the magazines.