The Shounen Club 10 January 2010 review

And we finally reach the 2010 episodes of the show. Of course I do not recall any major changes happening this year, instead I believe it is mainly just build up to the debuts of 2011.

The episode starts off with NYC boys (minus Nakayama Yuma) singing NYC. During the dance break in the song the main Junior groups show up for their introductions. They join the performance to help finish it off.

For the introduction talk the guest of the episode is brought out, Hey! Say! JUMP. The theme of the episode is JUMP, in honor of them.

The performance that follows this is for the group as they perform Romeo & Juliet, which is a B-side for their single Hitomi no Screen. It is one of their cute songs and they started selling gloves at the Johnny's Store with the group's name on them around this time. In fact the girls on the stage are all wearing them.

HSJ is not done yet as they then have an MC segment after the performance. Each member gets to talk though which is nice, and each get to talk about something that they want to try in the coming year.

Things then switch over to the Juniors as Kis-My-Ft2 perform a medley of Hikaru Genji songs. As both groups had roller skates as their gimmick the performance makes use of that by using the special ramps Kisumai have.

It is then back to HSJ as they do the You no Otegami Yomitai Desu! segment. Though to the show's credit they do use some of the members of the group that do not get a lot of screen time usually. The first letter asks about who in HSJ is the most stylish.

There are more Juniors after this as Snow Prince Gasshoudan get to perform Snow Prince. It is the basic performance for the song so not much different from the last episode.

It is then time for the game segment, where the only HSJ presence is Yamada Ryosuke and Yaotome Hikaru there as judges. It is the game where a prompt is given and the guys have to try to do it the best they can. The judges then decide on who did it the best. The first prompt is for poses for photos. Then they have to give ideas for a date during winter. Then I believe it is a story that you tell when late coming into work. The last is impersonations but they had to be new ones, so Kawai Fumito could not do his usual.

This is followed by a letter exchange with Question? members Igo Akun and Fujiie Kazuyori. Both are no longer with the agency and I cannot help but feel that things should have gone differently. But they happened as they did and I will just continue to miss this group.

The group then performs Beautiful Mind and I am given another reason to miss the group. Once they added Goto Hiromi to the group they had some of my favorite songs from them. Not to mention a way to stand out from the other band groups.

NYC boys get an MC corner. It is really just Yamada and Chinen Yuri talking during this and the topic is on their Kohaku performance. This was probably an odd MC to film as they would not have done the performance yet as the episodes are filmed a month in advance.

Because Shounen Club and Kohaku Uta Gassen are aired by the same network, NHK, we get treated to some special footage of the preparation of NYC boys' Kohaku performance. Most of the focus is on the NYC members but B.I.Shadow gets some moments as well.

Morimoto Shintaro gets some screen time in this as well with Snow Prince Gasshoudan appearing on Kohaku that year in the special children's corner of the program.

There is then a NYC boys performance for the SC recording after the VTR ends with a medley of songs from their single. It is a bit strange to have Yamada and Chinen perform Akuma na Koi, as that is the one song they are not a part of on the single.

The show then closes out with HSJ performing their debut song, Ultra Music Power. All the Juniors join in with the song, but mostly as back dancers. It was always weird to see EbiKisu back dancing for HSJ, but this is a rather rare occurrence.


It was interesting watching this episode before the first episode of the program for 2014. If only to see that both had Kohaku footage to show. I enjoy that kind of stuff though as I love learning about what happens backstage and these do give little glimpses of that.

Other than that seeing HSJ perform Romeo & Juliet made me happy. Even though it was years ago I still recall the joy I felt when the group finally released their fourth single, which of course featured Romeo & Juliet as a B-side. So this means we are not far off from that release and Hitomi no Screen performances. So while nothing major happens in 2010 there is still all those little things to look forward to.