The Shounen Club 20 November 2005 review

Onto the next November episode of Shounen Club and more NEWS + Juniors goodness.

J.J.Express actually all have matching outfits finally. And it seems like I miscounted as there are nine members here and not eight.

This episode is produced by Nishikido Ryo and the theme for it is pride.

The theme medley is title Otoko no Pride Medley (Man's Pride Medley) and starts with one of my all time favorite Johnny's songs, Mihari, sung as a solo by Ryo. I had such high hopes for this medley based off of this.

And honestly it did not disappoint except for one area, and the disappointment was huge. We had Jimmy Mackey and Uesato Ryota butcher Freddie Mercury's I was born to love you again. There are just some songs once you have heard the original it limits your enjoyment of covers for it, as in if they are not good then you just want them to burn. This is one of those songs.

Surprisingly enough I found Yamashita Tomohisa coming to my aide with the next song in the medley, Domoto Tsuyoshi's Hyakunen no Koi. He sounds good in this song and brings the right attitude for a rock song. It is also nice that he had Toshin Yoshikazu & A.B.C. joining him in singing it. So my hope and enjoyment was revived.

The medley ends up on a strong note then moves to have Yamapi talk about his pride before introducing the next song, over from 20th Century, which NEWS covers. It's a nice song and even has the word "pride" in the lyrics.

We then have a few of the JJE members talk about things they are proud of. Hashimoto Ryosuke already looks to be as tall as the older members of the group even though he is the same age as Nakajima Yuto.

For Nakajima Yuto he gets to show off his flexibility when it is his turn to speak.

JJE finally get to perform a song, something I do not think they have done in a while, or at least not in the past couple of episodes. They perform Love Me Baby.

And because I can here is a screen cap of Takaki Yuya, who is one of the few from the group to actually get solo lines in the song. And his voice is already sounding like it does nowadays so no surprises there.

The game segment is a versus battle between a team lead by Yamapi and one lead by Ryo. The first game is arm wrestling.

The next they bring out a device that has the contestant sit in a chair and have them press a button. Once the button is pressed it will work as a timer as the contestant has to try to guess when it hits 10 seconds.

I just want to mention that Yamapi has just been on for these episodes. He actually looks and acts like he is full of life for a change instead of just being there. I think his role as Akira in Nobuta no Produce must be rubbing off on him in a good way. This is the Yamapi we need to return.

Finally, after being told that none of the wins or loses from the earlier games matter, there is a tug-a-war. Masuda Takahisa shows an interesting anchor technique for it.

The losing team has to play a batsu game, which is that they have to say a phrase in baby talk. I will props to Ryo for trying to get out of it by pretending they were out of time. But the captain must go down with the ship.

Next we have Question? taking the stage to perform their song Precious Memories. I do not think I will stop feeling sad watching them perform seeing as they are no longer a group and most of the members have left the agency.

Ryo's pride gets tested as he is brought out by Tegoshi Yuya for a special report that shows off pictures/video of him from when he was younger and has him talk about it. We get to see one of his really early SC appearances (October 22nd, 2000).

NEWS then perform a song called Heaven and I am disappointed this was not on a CD. Even though with the rockish sound it seems like it would have been a better fit with KAT-TUN it could have fit with NEWS at this time as they had yet to really get a set style down for themselves yet. Of course the chances of it ever getting on a CD is next to nil.

Instead of Junior ni Q we get KAT-TUN ni Q, I guess they felt that they needed to find a way to get the group in the episode somehow. So they all talk about things they are proud of, except for Nakamaru Yuichi as he is the picked on member of the group right now.

Ryo talks about the theme of the episode before he performs a solo. The song is Ai Igai no Nande mo Nai, which I am not familiar with at all. It has the kind of sound I would place with Domoto Koichi's solo material if I had to. Ryo's voice is one that lends itself to enough various styles it is hard for his to go wrong with song selection so this song works for him no matter what.

This episode saves us from hearing Wonderful World again as NEWS with Ya-Ya-Yah sing SUMMARY ~Ending~ instead. Another way it seems like Yax3 is being set up to be the next big thing for the Juniors. Either way it is nice to hear another song end the show and SUMMARY is always a nice song to listen to and this mix of it has that nice finale feeling to it, plus some nice group mixing moments.


Another SC episode I really enjoyed. I cannot believe that I am almost done with 2005 already but I guess it should have been expected with the sped up schedule for reviewing these. There is so much in the near future to look forward to, a few things I would rather not as well though.

I just noticed but KAT-TUN has been ranking rather high on my blog tags list. Of course I expect other groups to eclipse them eventually the further along I get with SC episodes. So they can enjoy their time near the top for now. Soon they shall be surpassed, I am sure of it.

The Shounen Club 16 October 2005 review

This episode gives us a bit of a break from the norm and it is a welcome change.

The episode begins in a medley of English songs with Ya-Ya-Yah and Jimmy Mackey leading it. There are some group introductions and we see that Johnny's has figured that they just need to go with the outfits they usually give the groups of Junior back dancers to have at least J.J.Express have matching outfits.

The producers for this episode are Jimmy Mackey and Yabu Kota. The theme they have for the episode is Himitsu (secret). I am so glad that they are going to have other Juniors be producers, as that should help change things up a bit for the episodes.

As expected from an episode not produced by a KAT-TUN member there is a good mix of KAT-TUN and the other Juniors, primarily Yax3, in this medley.

Jimmy and Yabu of course as producers get to take over some of the hosting duties and get an MC segment to talk about the show's theme.

This is followed by a letter exchange between Tanaka Koki and Nakamaru Yuichi. One of the more entertaining letter exchanges as from Nakamaru's reaction Koki is reading lies about him.

Yax3 then sing Yuuki 100% and thankfully they have finally updated the backing track so it actually sounds like they boys have hit puberty.

And we get a Yamada Ryosuke spotting as the song has a dance break worked in to showcase each of the members of the group.

We get a different kind of game this episode titled, Nisemono wa Dare da?! The way this works is that they have a group, in this case A.B.C., all claim something, playing instruments, and the contestants have to guess which ones are telling the truth and which one is lying.

The members get to try to prove they are telling the truth by pretending to play the instruments on the stage. And after that the contestants make their guesses and the members show if they were lying or not.

This was a fun game, though if you were familiar with A.B.C. you would have known they have played instruments before on the show so it would be pretty easy to figure out who was lying. But the guys brought a lot of energy to it and I wish they would have brought that same energy and sense of fun with their ... o abake segment they were in for the January 2013 episodes.

Yabu then reads various letters that had suggestions for episode themes, ending on the one that suggested Himitsu.

KAT-TUN then perform the song Freeze, which is one of their Junior songs that eventually found its way onto a CD release. It is a rap heavy song so a lot of Koki in it and very much in the hip-pop style that the group switched back and forth with rock-pop for their sound around their debut.

We then have Junior ni Q. Unfortunately most of the Juniors in this segment have left the agency, but we do get to see a tiny Watanabe Shota who looks adorable. The topic is of course about secrets.

We then get performances for A.B.C. and Kis-My-Ft2. Looks like there will be no official introduction of Kisumai, but I am still happy that they exist finally and to see them perform.

Interesting to note is that only the older four have roller skates for this performance. I know a couple of the younger members have used roller skates in the past so I can only assume that they were considered not up to par or they wanted all of them to be able to roller skate before they could join the older four.

And we get to see that the pairing of Kisumai and A.B.C. is continuing on for the groups, which is something that will be a standard for years to come and bring forth the Ebikisu nickname for the two groups.

Imai Tsubasa keeps rolling out the songs that seem to be a good fit for him as he performs 1DAY 1NIGHT in this episode.

Yabu and Jimmy get one final MC segment before the show goes back to the standard of having KAT-TUN get the last two performances.

It starts with KAT-TUN covering SMAP's song Yozora no Mukou, which is one of the more popular songs. It is a nice ballad and KAT-TUN do sound good covering it.

They do at least bring Yabu and Jimmy in to perform Wonderful World with them. It is nice to see non-KAT-TUN members singing the song, as I think it is safe to say that KAT-TUN have gotten bored with the song (not that I blame them about that), so having someone who genuinely looks happy singing it is a nice change.



This is the kind of episode I have been waiting for with SC this season. One where KAT-TUN does not need to be taken out of just lessened their presence so other Juniors can get seen more. And honestly with KAT-TUN's debut coming up in a few months it would be a good time to start shifting focus a bit so when they leave the program the other Juniors would actually have the chance of being able to carry it.

That said I know there are still some things to come that will affect the show but I will wait until I get to those episodes before saying more.

Overall though I am liking these season better than the last, even though it sadly has to deal with some issues beyond its control.

The Shounen Club 10 April 2005 review

Onto the second episode of the new season that should help show what changes are here to stay and which are not.

This episode goes back to the usual opening introductions for groups. We get confirmation that J.J.Express is a five member group with their introduction.

This episode has Tanaka Koki as the producer with the theme of the episode being "style".

J.J.Express are asked about their style and we manage to see a smile for Arioka Daiki. Now this looks more like the Daiki I am familiar with and it is nice to see him not look so stiff on stage.

While the theme is supposed to be style the music all lends itself to the style that Koki is known for, hip hop, or as hip hop as Johnny's can get. Which means almost all songs in the opening medley have a rap to them, which lets Koki stay onstage for most of the medley. Thankfully a couple of other groups get to be a part of the medley but it is mainly Koki and KAT-TUN for it.

After the medley we have Kamenashi Kazuya and Akanishi Jin on stage talking about the theme to fill time before the next performance, which they introduce.

Ya-Ya-Yah perform the song Never Stop Music with JJE as back up singers for the chorus. It is a fun song that uses the younger Juniors energy well with the dance as there is a dance break in the middle of the song. It also is a nicely balanced song with all four members of Yax3 all getting turns to be center stage at one point or another.

It looks like Junior Hai~ School has carried over from the past season. I am kinda glad it did as these segments are usually enjoyable. This one had the contestants pick one of four answers to a scenario. Each answer would then correlate to a certain type of guy they where and then which type of girl they would be bested suited for. We also get Jin showing off his English skills here.

We get Taguchi Junnosuke's usual skit. If you like puns then it works but I guess for those who are not very familiar with Japanese it is a bit hard to follow.

We get a medley of sorts with Toshin Yoshikazu & A.B.C. doing the first song of it. Rather sad they did not get to show off their acrobatics with this as that usually always makes their performances worth watching.

Kis-My-Ft. also get to sing a song in the medley and they even break out the roller skates for it. Though in the end the most stand out thing about it is that Kitayama Hiromitsu is a part of the group that did a jacket change in the middle of the song but could only get the jacket half on and has to complete the performance with it just hanging off the one arm.

Since NEWS has for whatever reason disappeared for this second episode we get a VTR  of them instead. They go over style points for each member, a couple of the more memorable are Kato Shigeaki with his very shiny silver shoes and Masuda Takahisa with a belt that has the name "Johnny" on it.

This episode gives us another Naka Naka Ii Jyan segment with Koki, Nakajima Yuto and Nakamaru Yuichi. It is Nakamaru's turn to feel left out as the other two have custom hoodies and all he gets is a T-shirt.

This leads in to Koki doing his solo song Real 7 that eventually leads into KAT-TUN taking the stage to sing a group song.

We get a KAT-TUN break with Jimmy Mackey talking to Yax3 about their style. It is pretty clear that most of them are still too young to really have much of one of their own but even so are around the age that they are at least noticing things like that.

Question? getting to perform their song, Holy Heaven and we learn that Ishigaki Daisuke has now been added to the group which now gives them a keyboardist.

Koki gets to talk about the theme and I guess this is going to be a thing that the episode producers will do. Koki ends up talking for a long time though and you get a sense he is more trying to fill time than say anything all that meaningful.

KAT-TUN then takes the stage for yet another song. Because I guess there were not enough KAT-TUN performances in this episode. Or maybe they were trying to fix the balance that the last episode had. And yes I am going to be bitter and ragey about this now because I have reached my limit when it comes to this again.

And of course KAT-TUN is the only group to sing the end theme, yet again. Honestly this would not be such an issue for me if there was another song in between the two last songs or if they at least had some of the other Juniors join KAT-TUN for the end song. But there is not and I fail to see the point of anyone tuning in for the final ten minutes or so of this show if they are not KAT-TUN fans. Sure they are trying to work in the other Junior groups by giving them a brief dance segment in the song but I fail to see why they just cannot have them sing the song with KAT-TUN instead. I mean even when the program was Four Tops focused other Junior groups got to sing the end song so I do not see any reason that needed to change.

I have never hated the group before but right now I am just sick of them.


I keep clinging to the hope that it will not be much longer until SC is more general Junior focused instead of it being so focused on KAT-TUN. And yet every episode like this just ends up disappointing me. Especially since the episode before had a nice balance in comparison.