The Shounen Club 12 October 2008 review

And we have an episode that Yabu Kota is not one of the guests in.

Did not mention it with the last episode but Sanada Yuma and Nozawa Yuki still are treated as prominent Juniors and get individual introductions. Eventually they will be put in a group, which is made of a few of the Juniors from the Jr. Boys group that gets introduced in this episode, but until then they just float as a duo.

At the end of the introductions the guest of the episode comes on stage, Taguchi Junnosuke. He performs a snippet of his solo song, Samurai Love Attack, to end the starting segment.

After that Nakamaru Yuichi reads a fan postcard asking for the theme of Himitsu (secret) and is a Yamashita Shoon fan. They have Shoon come over to say a few words before the theme medley is kicked off.

The medley takes a bit of a break from the usual pattern it has had in the past few months and has the more prominent Junior groups', Kis-My-Ft2 and A.B.C-Z, members lead the songs in the medley with the other Juniors backing them up or singing with them.

After that the first MC segment has Koyama Keiichiro and Nakamaru talking to some of the little Juniors. Out of the three that had turns talking Kyomoto Taiga and Morimoto Shintaro are of course still with Johnny's. They had to tell a secret and Kyomoto talked about something related to sleeping while Shintaro claimed to be a genius a coin games, which is a kind of arcade game.

Of course whenever there are little Juniors in black suits it usually means that there will be a performance of Secret Agent Man, and for this episode it holds true.

The little ones are not the only ones performing the song as about half way through they are joined by four other Juniors, Takada Sho, Nakajima Kento, Kikuchi Fuma and Takahata Misaki, the last one being the only one not with Johnny's anymore. But all four are involved in dramas in 2008, which is why I am assuming they were placed to perform in this song.

Next is an MC segment with Junno. When asked about a secret he just says something goofy, which is nothing new for him. He then talks about playing an internet game and teases about the name he uses to play it.

He performs his solo song Natsu no Basho, which is a nice summer pop song. Listening to it I am amazed at how much he has improved his vocals over the years as he sounds so much better in his latest solo, FLASH. But what Junno lacks in vocal skills he always tried to make up with energy and he has a dance break in the middle of the song where he shows off his dance moves as well as acrobatics.

The game segment portion of the show comes after that and this time there is quite a change up to it. Though it is more going back to some of their old games. This one has each team captain, Fujigaya Taisuke for Dream Bombers and Kawai Fumito for Jonetsu Rainbows, call out a Junior to showcase a talent. Junno then as judge has to pick which one did better. What is great with this is that they make sure to use some of the Fresh Juniors, which includes Nakaken, who does an impersonation. 

Another Fresh Junior showcased is Tanaka Juri, who with Nakamaru revive the TaNaka comedy duo that Nakamaru used to do with Juri's older brother, Tanaka Koki. They even make it a point to point out Juri and Koki are brothers in one of their routines.

Next performance is Kis-My-Ft2 performing Smile again. There is not much different from their previous performance of the song but it is still miles better than what comes after it...

This episode has what to my knowledge is the first and only foreign guest act on the program. It is a boy band from Europe called US 5 and I was not impressed watching them perform back in 2008 and less so watching them in 2013. I have no clue why they were on the program but I am not sad that we never see or hear from them again.

Thankfully there is Kansai Junior ni Q next to bring us back to what the show is really about. The theme seems to be exposing others' secrets. While the first Kanjuu up, Muro Tatsuki, is no longer with Johnny's his brothers, which include Muro Ryuta, are and as Tatsuki's secret includes his brother Ryuta gets called over.

A familiar face camera bombs them though and focus shifts to the culprit, Mukai Koji, for a bit before moving back to the brothers.

Nakayama Yuma is called up next, as there was indeed a time he was with the other Kansai Juniors, and his secret is about Fujii Ryusei. So when they have Fujii up there they talk about his answer which involves Yuma and another Kanjuu.

Then it is Shigeoka Daiki up next and he talks about Fugal Shawn Goku and how he listed something wrong in his profile. And the final Kanjuu they bring up is about those not with the agency anymore.

There is then an MC with A.B.C-Z and they talk about a secret and Kawai brings up Hashimoto Ryosuke as the topic bringing up that even though Hasshi looks like the cool type his personality does not match up at all. They also help correct Koyama's pronunciation of their group name at the end as 'z' tends to be pronounced as 'zed' in Japan instead of the American variation of 'zee'. 

They perform their first group song as this unit, Ashita no Tame ni Boku ga Iru. The song is a ballad, which at this point for the group is probably the best thing as Hasshi really has no acrobatic experience that I can recall at this point so he would stick out quite a bit if the group do their usual song types.

And we get a rare performance of the season's ending song, OH! MY DREAM. I think by now it is safe to say having assigned ending songs for the show is on its way out. Which is a bit of a pity as they have been ensuring that Juniors are a part of the final performance and tend to give us cute moments like this.

A Shounen Club episode with Junno as a guest will always be a joy for me. The biggest downside to the episode is the US 5 appearance, as there seems to be little point to having them there as they are not Johnny's and do not really interact with the Juniors, just do their performance and leave. If I take that oddness out though I easily rate this episode rather highly as it has a good mix of everything I like from the program.