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 9 January 2005 review

As happy as I am to finally be on 2005 episodes now I still really feel like I want to catch up soon so I can comment on the more recent episodes. I guess I should at least feel good about getting back to two reviews a week as that should help with catching up though I still probably have months to go still.

We start off the episode with KAT-TUN on the stage before the curtain is raised. They give teases about what will be seen in the episode before it begins. There is nothing to really note of the introductions as there has been no group changes and everyone is accounted for.

The guests of the month is Kanjani8 which helps sets the bar for these episodes to have some pretty fun moments. The theme of the episode is Kibou (Hope) and the various Junior groups are asked about hopes they have while Yokoyama Yu camera bombs them all.

The first medley is one of the more KAT-TUN heavy ones with only the younger Junior groups, mostly Ya-Ya-Yah, getting some decent time even if most of it is shared.

There are two Juniors that are important to note that can be seen in this performance. The first being Hashimoto Ryosuke, who is going to eventually be joining J.J.Express and post-Hey! Say! JUMP debut be added to A.B.C. to form A.B.C-Z.

The next is another future JJE member, but he will debut with HSJ, Morimoto Ryutaro. Of course one of the important things to note about Ryutaro's appearance is the fact that he joined Johnny's with a group of Juniors that had their audition filmed for Yax3's TV program and that group also included Yamada Ryosuke. So if Ryutaro is around it should mean so is Yamada.

We get a dajyare (pun) segment with Taguchi Junnosuke who reads a postcard from a little girl that works in a pun about Ueda Tatsuya riding a bicycle in it.

With the segment over Ueda shows up on the stage riding a bicycle, and I can imagine making a little girl so very happy.

JJE peform Kibou ~Yell~ with A.B.C. Jr. backing them up for parts of the song. I rather like the performance as it has a lot of my favorites in it and Arioka Daiki actually does not look like he hates life while performing here, just kinda bored.

Yamada is so small and blurry.

And while I almost missed it there is a small glimpse of Yamada in this. It is sometimes hard to remember that Yamada did not start off as being promoted as one of the more promising Juniors. Ryutaro was the one that got the attention from his group and it took a while before Yamada started getting the breaks he needed to eventually break out. So I look forward to seeing him go through all this in the coming episodes.

Tanaka Koki and Yasuda Shota talk about traveling on the shinkensen (bullet train), as K8 has to do that when they come to Tokyo for work. It is rather nice to see other members other than Murakami Shingo and Yoko get to do these MC segments for a change.

The game segment of the episode is Junior Hai School with members of KAT-TUN and K8 competing in it. We also get some Junior helpers which include Takaki Yuya and Sanada Yuma.

They play a couple of word games, the first is giving reasons why they do not want to become adults. The second is that they have to come up with a phrase that is three lines long and use a character of the word kibou to begin each line. Needless to say this is the highlight of the episode as they all just try to out goofy each other with the answers, especially with the second game and using Ueda's name to begin the final line.

Junno leads a talk with a few of the members of K8 about their concert tour. It is nice to see Ohkura Tadayoshi be highlighted in something as at this point he seems to be one of the neglected members of the group.

K8 then perform a medley of their songs. I really do like the pants they have for this outfit. The "fins" on the outside leg of them just looks silly and out of place. Not to mention the fur lining on the tops really do not go with them.

Afterwards KAT-TUN does a rock medley. While I enjoy rock songs I am disappointed that this ends up being KAT-TUN performance without any real choreography. The songs lose some energy with the group mainly just standing around and it is the Juniors back dancing that have to make up for that.

Kis-My-Ft. get to have a MC segment to themselves as they talk about things they hope to do. This leads into a joint performance with the members of A.B.C. in what they call a "dance battle".

A.B.C. perform first and I find it quite hard to find a way to find a screen cap that can really give an idea of the performance. They are hitting the point that their acrobatics are looking impressive so their performances are fun to watch if just for that.

Kis-My-Ft. trade off with them and perform Midnight Shuffle, which seems to be their assigned song for now. The group remains energetic and you start to get the feeling that they are really starting to mesh now as a group.

Jimmy Mackey gets to give a riddle for KAT-TUN to solve before being able to go on stage. Junno ends up being the only member to get it without Jimmy practically giving the answer away.

The group then sings a song named FLY, and it is yet another forgettable song. It also does not help that it is yet another KAT-TUN performance with very little choreography.

We get to the end theme and I am just so ready for the new season of this show to start. It would be one thing if other groups than KAT-TUN performed it but since it is not it is getting pretty boring to watch. The only thing that caught any bit of my attention this time was that Akanishi Jin let Junno go through his legs this time around.


Even though it is a new year it is not a new season of the program so very little has changed. While being rather KAT-TUN heavy it was not so bad as there were a good amount of times to see some of the other Juniors and Kanjani8 always helps make things more enjoyable with their great sense of comedy. So overall a good episode and it is always nice to see more Juniors that go on to debut show up.

In any case only three more episodes before the end of season recap episode. I will probably go ahead and make that recap episode a Monday review so I can get to the new season, which will hopefully bring around some of the changes I have been waiting for.

Morimoto Ryutaro caught in underage smoking scandal

News has broken that Morimoto Ryutaro has been caught in an underage smoking scandal. A magazine printed photos that clearly showed him smoking when he was 15 and 14 years old.

Johnny's has made an official announcement on the matter stating that Ryutaro confirmed he smoked from time to time in the past. Because it accounts for breaking the law as he is now on indefinite hiatus from working in the entertainment industry.

Arama round up of reports. (English)

It is uncertain how this will affect him and Hey! Say! JUMP in the long term.

Honestly I just feel disappointed. I had thought that HSJ had a good chance of going scandal free for underage smoking/drinking with half of the group of legal age for those things now and the rest not too far behind. And I really can't imagine HSJ not being ten members but I can't see Ryutaro being able to get away with this without having to face some severe repercussions.

EDIT:

There's some new news about Ryutaro's punishment. According to Tokyo Graph's article a couple of things that will occur is that he's getting edited out of the covers of the new single (I'm assuming this must mean for any further printings of it as I got my notification of my order being sent out yesterday from CDJapan) and that he will not be a part of SUMMARY.

Tokyo Graph article. (English)