The Shounen Club 8 May 2005 review

Figured I should go for a week or two of three reviews a week to try to get through this season of Shounen Club as I was not so impressed with the first month of it. It is rather frustrating because I know I am not far off from the episode that I got to watch of the program first and those did not suffer from the issues I am currently having.

One thing that is probably really noticeable is the change in quality for the video I have for this and future episodes. There is still one episode in the quality of the recent past episodes but after that it is mostly all going to be like this episode. So say hello to bright colors.

There are a couple of changes to note with the group introductions at the start, J.J.Express is down to four members again and A.B.C. are their own group again with Toshin Yoshikazu missing for this taping I am assuming.

The producer of the episode is Taguchi Junnosuke (I can only assume they will do all of KAT-TUN first before letting anyone from other groups get a chance.) and the theme is Ao, which translates to blue/green and is often associated with youth. For this episode though they seem to be leaning towards blue and youth for the definition.

The theme medley is overrun by KAT-TUN minus one song, Stripe Blue, that is A.B.C. only. They seem to do well this episode when it comes to screen time, which I would hope they would seeing that their group has been around for almost as long as KAT-TUN.

After the medley KAT-TUN gets to talk about the theme of the episode and about Junno being the producer for it.

NEWS is introduced as the guests as the do a single medley, most likely to promote their debut album that came out a couple of weeks before the episode. The songs in the medley are all given jazzy renditions that I did not care for. One of the pluses though is that all the members of the group got chances to be spotlighted.

I will confess I was glad for lip-sync when Yamashita Tomohisa and Kato Shigeaki were paired up. As much as I love Shige he is no way a singer and Yamapi really did not work on his vocals until post-Daite Senorita so I doubt they would have sounded all that great live here.

Afterwards we get a letter exchange between Yaotome Hikaru and Ayukawa Taiyo. The letters fall more on the cute side but got some laughs as well. I was just amazed with how young Hikaru looked. Which was no surprise but I am no used to seeing him so young.

We have the debut of my favorite solo for Yabu Kota, Angel Come To Me. Of course I made a post recently about the lyrics to this song that you can check it out.

The rest of Ya-Ya-Yah join him after to continue singing songs in English, even covering some good old oldies, like A.B.C. 

We get another Junior Ha~i School segment with this one being a competition between KAT-TUN and A.B.C. Can you guess which group I was cheering for?

Overall a fun segment as it is easy to follow and you can tell both sides were into trying their best for the challenges. Of course I would say A.B.C. had the edge as they have to be in good physical condition to do all the acrobatics that they do.

One thing I have decided not to hold against KAT-TUN are these solos that lead into a group song. I figure they are more something special for the producer of the episode and the group they are attached to. Of course this is assuming that non-KAT-TUN episode producers will get the same treatment. That aside I felt disappointed with Junno's solo. Probably because I like his other solo songs and I found the shirt he is wearing in this to be ugly. It took a closer look to see that the purple print is actually purple floral print, which makes it even more hideous.

Thankfully he changes outfits for the group number though I am not so sure with all the fake fur used on these costumes. But it is one of those signature Johnny's things when it comes to costumes so it can get a bit of a pass based off of that.

Question? get to perform again, but it is yet again Holy Heaven. They need to do a new song or cover a song from any of the band groups Johnny's has had because I am getting tired of this song. Even though I do think it is a nice song but there is nothing all that stand out about it and I would not listen to it much if I had it in my music library.

Junior ni Q returns this episode. Notable appearances include Morimoto Ryutaro in his first chance to be clearly seen and focused on. He was such a cute kid, but it is odd to see him without his brother around though I guess that is something I have to get used to for the near future as Shintaro has yet to join the agency.

Nakajima Yuto also gets to be called over to explain how he lost to a cat. And he does so in an adorable fashion as he tries to act the event out.

Junno does the usual talk near the end about the theme for his episode. He ends it by introducing the next number, Baby Blue.

You have no idea how happy I was to see that it was NEWS with KAT-TUN for this performance. If it was any of the Junior groups I would have assumed they would be there to back dance for them but there is no way NEWS as a debuted group would be made to do that. And they are not as instead they are paired up with members of KAT-TUN to perform the song, which leads to some interesting combinations.

The end song has Kis-My-Ft. featured during the dance break with a couple of Juniors that have been connected with the group off and on. Not sure if Johnny's was thinking of actually adding them to the group or not and decided to later just merge Kis-My-Ft. and A.B.C. Jr instead or what.


Better episode than the last one for balancing things out. I think it helped that NEWS was there and had a new release to promote with their debut album being released at the end of April. Of course it makes me wonder how much control "producers" get with their episodes as I could see Junno making sure A.B.C. did more in his episode as he is the acrobatic member of KAT-TUN and probably could be considered close to the group as they would be his usual back dancers for him because of that. I think I would have to see more episodes in this format to make more guesses about this role before I can feel confident in my speculation.

I also want to marvel at the colors for this episode as I do not think I realized just how muted they were with the episodes I had been doing recently. It is like when you watch your first movie on DVD after only watching it in VHS for years and wondering how you could ever think of going back to VHS quality now that you know there is something better out there. Which makes me sad that the next episode is back to the old quality.

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.

The Shounen Club 3 April 2005 review

A new Shounen Club season begins which of course means that we are going to see some changes to the program. Of course since these changes for SC tend to just be tweaks here and there it will probably take a few months to figure out if some are here to stay or not. On the other hand there are some that are certain to be around for a while as the debut of a certain segment this episode will show.

Instead of introducing groups at the start the show just launches into a song, TOKIO's Jibun no Tame ni, to kick things off. We get a mix of groups performing the song as well, which makes me happy to see.

One of the first known changes to the show that we are introduced to is the "producer" role that a Junior will have for each episode. Honestly I never quite got what this position really was, but I assume the Junior would at least be given some say about the theme and the songs sung. Kamenashi Kazuya is the producer for this episode and introduces his theme of "tokidoki" which can be translated to a racing heart beat.

NEWS gets introduced as the guests and they talk about things that make one's heart race. Yamashita Tomohisa brings up that he was accepted into university for him and they take the time to bring up that Tanaka Koki was also accepted into university. The latter kinda surprised me as I had not really heard about it before, but seeing as there has never been a graduation announcement for Koki I think it is safe to assume he never got a degree in the end.

After the opening talk the first medley starts and it is a Shingakki Tokidoki Meldey (Heart-racing New School Term Medley) which Ya-Ya-Yah actually has a strong presence in since they get to do the opening and ending songs.

In the middle of the medley we get a skit with Nakamaru Yuichi playing the role of a new student at a school trying to figure out what club to join. My favorite part is Kame and Taguchi Junnosuke being members of the Friend Club and showing off the appeal of their club by playing a friendly game of tag.

The best part of course is Nakamaru rejecting their offer to join because it gives him a bad feeling and Junno's reaction face to it.

After the medley Nakajima Yuto reads a letter he wrote about an experience that made his heart race, his audition to enter into Johnny's.

After he is done KAT-TUN perform Kizuna with Kame starting it off solo. Perhaps because I fell in love with the song as a solo having it sung by a group just seems weird to me. But in any case I still do think it is a lovely song.

This episode marks the return of Matsumoto Kouhei and he is placed back in J.J.Express making the group a five member group. He gets to do a MC segment with Yabu Kota as they call over Yamapi and Koyama Keiichiro to give them advice for starting at a new school.

We then get a Yax3 medley which starts off with a solo for Yabu called Mayonaka no Answer. I like the song and would love to see Yabu revive it for a concert performance at least. Also he gets an interesting mix of back dancers with members of Kis-My-Ft. and A.B.C. Jr. there.

His solo is followed by one for Yaotome Hikaru, titled Atarashii Yoake. It is another song I would not mind to hear again from him. He has back up singers for it, as well as a couple of back dancers of the smaller Juniors, which included Morimoto Ryutaro.

For the back up singers the two most notable are Hashimoto Ryosuke and Sanada Yuma. Another to note is Fukusawa Tatsuya, who will join Hashimoto in becoming a J.J.Express member later but after it breaks up become a member of the Junior group Snow Man.

After the solos we get an actual group performance from the group of their song Start. I really like this song and look forward to seeing it performed more for a while at least. Also we get a funny typo in the lyrics for this performance.

There is a new game segment for the season, this one being called Jr. no Mirakuri Daisakusen. The game being played for this episode under the segment is called Mr. X wa Dare da! The game has a small group of Juniors try to guess who Mr. X, who is normally a guest, is by giving out little hints by asking questions. The audience gets to find out before the players and even get to be asked questions about him to help the contestants make their guesses. And it is fun to have the video screen to show Mr. X react to what is being said.

Jimmy Mackey gets to show up and remind us that he still is around, or at for now. He gets to talk to NEWS about their heart racing experiences before they go to perform.

Cherish was one of the songs that won me over to NEWS when I was first learning about them. It was one of my favorite songs from the group back then and still remains a favorite for me. So it is a highlight for me to see the group perform it, and with all eight members. Sadly it will not be much longer before the group starts losing members again but there should still be their first album they will come back to promote on the program as an right member group, IIRC.

This episode gives us the debut of a segment that current SC watchers should be very familiar with, Junior ni Q. I am happy to know that I can now look forward to this segment from now on. The best part about it is that it usually highlights younger Juniors that may not have a chance to be seen much on stage and lets the viewers learn a bit more about the various Juniors.

Koki and Nakamaru are our first hosts of this segment. Koki seems to have an interesting way on greeting the Juniors called over to explain what they wrote on the board.

So it should have come to no surprise that one of the Juniors, Nikaido Takashi, had written that Koki made his heart beat fast because he thinks he is scary. Which is something Koki does not take well to but plays with all the same.

Jimmy Mackey shows up to give KAT-TUN a puzzle they need to solve before being let to go on stage. Overall the group does better with half of them making it on stage before Jimmy has to give them an obvious hint for them to get the answer.

With that done KAT-TUN begins to perform SHAKE, which is always a rather fun song to see performed. In the middle of it the older groups get introduced, which just seems like a strange spot to do it.

After the introduction the other Junior groups join in on the song and it becomes a more fun performance with them all involved. Especially the little ones because they are just full of cute.

Kame spends some time talking about the theme of the episode after the performance to lead in to the finale of the episode.

The new ending song is called Wonderful World and sadly it is KAT-TUN again the only ones that get to sing it. It is rather annoying as all the Juniors that sang the previous song still have mics in their hands as they back dance so they could have easily sung with KAT-TUN instead.


While it is not the extent of change I would have loved to have seen the changes made are still good overall and if I have learned anything from past seasons is that there is still always a chance for the show to change things up a bit more as it goes on. If anything the fact that the other Junior groups get a good amount of screen time compared to KAT-TUN is good and I hope that will be more the standard going on.

The addition of the producer position for the Juniors gives hope that this will lead to more balanced episodes for when the producer is not a member of KAT-TUN. I know it happens as I can recall an episode that Yamada Ryosuke produces, but I think that is in the next season of the show.