The Shounen Club 6 April 2008 review

First episode of a new season and this has to be one of the highest quality files I have seen yet for the older episodes of Shounen Club.

We get quite a few ungrouped Juniors introduced at the start of the episode as they sing various songs. One thing to note is that Kamei Taku is no longer with the Hasshi-trio and Nozawa Yuki has taken his place. So this should mean he has had his dating scandal and is no longer with Johnny's. Since the trio is Hashimoto Ryosuke, Sanada Yuma and Nozawa now I will be calling them by the group name they had briefly before being split up, TOP3.

The introductions end as the guest of the episode, Takizawa Hideaki, comes out to sing with the Juniors.

Tackey stays on stage for the opening talk that gives us the theme of the episode, Deai (a meeting). And then it moves to the usual medley. It has the same break down as the past couple of months with the usual Junior groupings singing the songs and at the end all singing the last song of the medley together.

We have a new letter reading corner for the season, Heisei Post, that has members of Hey! Say! JUMP up for its debut. They each read a fan letter from a fan of the member and that is about it. This will not be a favorite segment but it is bearable as it moves along more briskly than Shiroyagi to Kuroyagi did.

The segment is followed by HSJ performing a new song, Chance to Change, which is a B-side on their second single, Dreams come true. There are only nine members of the group performing though as Takaki Yuya is missing. He should be busy with filming for the Gokusen 3 drama at this time.

We get the first MC segment with Butokan and Tackey. This is Butokan's first time performing live on SC, something that gets mentioned near the start.

Butokan then perform their song Now and Forever. Most of my love from this group came from my love for Senga Kento and Hamanaka Bunichi. Looking back I have to wonder if this group really worked. Performance-wise they are solid but the ages are rather scattered and I just cannot imagine what they would like as a debuted group.

Following this is the game segment, which remains unchanged from the last season. The two teams have a fresh start for their overall score though. The first game of the season is Takizawa Mania, in honor of the guest for the episode.

It may not be the easiest game to play along with as it is just questions about Tackey, like his favorite food and what he eats before going to bed. Unless you are a Tackey fan you will be stuck randomly guessing, but from the answers from the guys most of them are just guessing as well. I do think Nikaido Takashi should get special points for having his answer be "Imai Tsubasa" for the two food questions.

After the game segment Question? perform. They perform one of their songs, Parallel World, which is a favorite song of mine from the group. Unfortunately I doubt the songs from the band are going to be used by the newer Juniors seeing as they are meant for a band group and Johnny's seems to have given up on those.

In Junior ni Q the topic is about the meanings behind names. There is only one Junior that I recognize to still be in Johnny's and that of course is Goseki Koichi. His name came from his mother wanting to use kanji from the names of other people in his family but for the first character in his given name she dropped a radical.

Then there is an MC segment with Kitayama Hiromitsu and Fujigaya Taisuke. Kitayama talks about meeting Tsubasa and topic derails to Kitayama somehow being added to Tackey & Tsubasa to make it Tackey, Kita & Tsubasa.

Fujigaya brings up that at his audition when he was eleven he met Tsubasa, and brings up that Nakamaru Yuichi was at the same audition as well. Nakamaru brings out a photo of Fujigaya from when he had entered the agency.

Then one gets pulled out for Nakamaru by Koyama Keiichiro to even the score for them. I always love seeing these kinds of comparisons so I thought this was great.

A.B.C. then perform Sayonara no Box with it being followed up immediately by Kis-My-Ft2 performing Brand New Season. Since they do not have a lot of time to clear the stage for Kisumai you can still see the box from Ebi's performance in the background during Kisumai's.

The ending song of the episode is T&T's Crazy Rainbow performed by Tackey and the Juniors. It was a great way to end the episode as the performance is fun to watch with seeing a whole stage full of Juniors going back and forth across it.


It is a pretty good start for a new season. The Juniors are back to being the focus of the show and Tackey usually makes for a fun guest as the Juniors are less intimidated by him compared to other senpai.

I loved TOP3. They may not have lasted long but I remember being a big fan of theirs. I think the trio worked out well and I was sad to see Hasshi be moved to A.B.C-Z as I really liked him with Sanada and Nozawa. But I think he worked out well with Ebi in the end and I hope Sanada and Nozawa get to debut as well someday.