The Shounen Club 8 March 2009 review

And we come to the end of the season with this episode.

I guess with how excited I was to have Mis Snow Man and Matsumura Hokuto appearing on the program I overlooked the fact that A.B.C-Z is down one member this month. Totsuka Shota is missing for reasons I cannot remember. But the group looks odd to only be four and not five as I have gotten so used to them being by now.

While the season is ending the theme is one to make it end on a high note with it being Challenge. We go right into the theme medley. I love that they really tried to mix the Juniors up in it like with the cover of weeeek having a mix of both the older and younger Juniors featured.

The first MC segment has B.I.Shadow talking with Koyama Keiichiro about things they want to challenge. They end up talking about sushi.

KAT-TUN are guests for this episode as well. They only perform RESCUE this time around for their performance for the episode. I am rather glad to have Kis-My-Ft2 and A.B.C-Z dancing in the background for this as they add some much needed energy to the performance.

KAT-TUN then get to have their MC segment afterwards. They bring up the upcoming concerts for KAT-TUN, as it would a record breaking week of performances at the Tokyo Dome.

Butokan then perform their song, Grateful World. They have all five members for the performance and honestly while I do not dislike the song I prefer some of their others to it. And at some point it looks like Senga Kento loses a scarf that was a part of his outfit so it is interesting to see how that is dealt with as the performance is dance heavy so it is a danger. And even Yamamoto Ryosuke throwing it to the side does not completely get it out of the way.

Tsukada Ryuichi is said to be positive, Senga gets called a gorilla, which he denies. Yara says that Yamamoto is like a little brother and Hamanaka Bunichi is like a mystery, which Bunichi is perfectly fine with. Though most of it is picking on Senga.

Up next is the game segment, the final one for the season and thus the one that decides who wins for the season. The first two games are set up all the same, with Koyama calling out one of four emotions they have to express. The ones with the best expressions or do not make a mistake are the winners. So once you figure out what the four emotions are it is easy to follow along.

The final game is an imitation game, but it has to be new imitations so Kawai Fumito cannot pull out his usual ones. He gets pretty bold with deciding to imitate Kamenashi Kazuya.

Though Goseki Koichi gives him a good run for his money as he impersonates Nakamaru Yuichi waving at concerts. This one is definitely one to watch, especially since it is so spot on. This is two rounds but the first round is the better of the two, IMHO.

Being the final game of the season the members of the winning team get to perform a song, Daybreaker, as the members of the losing team sit on the stage and watch them.

The Junior ni Q segment is for the Kansai Juniors. It is the same group as last month so I assume they filmed these all in one go. This time the theme is revealing secrets of other Juniors. It is labeled as a 'part 2' though it is not the same topic as last time. I do recall the topic being done months ago so I can only assume that was 'part 1'. Nakama Junta is up first and talks about Kiriyama Akito. It is something that he does with his voice, I believe before he goes on stage.

Nakayama Yuma talks about Shigeoka Daiki, though I could not really catch what it was, though Shigeoka tries to play it cool about it.

I am not sure if it my lack of Japanese skills or the fact that the Kansai Juniors tend to talk fast but most I did not get. Though Akito brings up a story about Hamada Takahiro that if I got Hamada offered Akito his arm and told him in English "Go with me" which baffled him. But it ended up with getting bread.

In Heisei Post Kis-My-Ft2 guest and they get to do a arm wrestling tournament to figure out which member was the strongest. Going off of this there are only two members of the group with any muscles to speak of.

A.B.C-Z get to perform next, and they perform InaZuma Venus, which is probably a good song to perform with them missing Tottsu as it is one of the newer ones so it does not seem as off to have him missing as he has been one of the main vocalists of the group for a good while now. Like with Kisumai in the last episode it starts off with an accent dance before going into the song.

After that we are at the end of the episode and we have all the Juniors singing Ambitious Japan! And it looks like for whatever reason they decided to tape this ending earlier and just put it at the end of the second episode instead the first like they usually do with the ones with the younger Juniors. I can only assume so that way they can end the season with all the Juniors performing something.


I am now one season closer to catching up to the new episodes of the show. In a way I do not want to be closing in as it is nice to have the retrospective of knowing what is going to happen to the Juniors in the years to come but on the other hand I would love to write about the new episodes when they are new.