17 August 2013

The Shounen Club 14 September 2008 review

And we hit the second episode of the month, with next month set to bring us some changes.

We start off with a basic introduction of having group names or individual names for the Juniors not in groups called out and then some dancing. Nakayama Yuma gets included this time around unlike the previous episode.

As Koyama Keiichiro and Nakamaru Yuichi do the usual theme introduction Yabu Kota shows up with a fan letter in hand. He reads it as it requests for the show to do a certain theme, Koi (love).

This then leads into the theme medley and it is mostly the ungrouped Juniors with some of the grouped Juniors coming in to perform a song or two. Kikuchi Fuma gets his first close up shot and he seems like a complete natural in front of the camera already.

The first MC segment is given to a trio of little Juniors, Anderson Casey, Morimoto Shintaro and Jesse. They are to talk about what they want to do for their first date. Anderson talks about sky diving from a helicopter and ending up on a deserted island. Shintaro aims for Hawaii while Jesse simply wants to go to the beach.

After this the guests of the episode, Hey! Say! BEST perform their unit song Spicy. I do appreciate that even though most of the song is them as mic stands that they make sure to break away from them to move around as an upbeat song like this seems wasted on having the group stand in place.

The unit then gets to have their MC segment where they get to talk about what they think about the theme. And all five get a turn to talk and they all looked to have fun.

TOP3 then have a group performance of a song called INTO MIND. This should be the last time we get to see the grouping perform together as I am sure next month we will have A.B.C-Z. I remember that being a shock partly because the three were given a group name, TOP3, shortly before that and of course they fact that they had performances where they were to sole performers like this.

It is then time for the game segment and Nakamaru is the judge who gets to decide if the Juniors attempt at performing a prompt is good enough to earn points or not. The first prompt is a gourmet food reporter. This gets some rare participation from Tamamori Yuta who ends up being thoroughly embarrassed by his try.

There is also confessing to your first love then comforting someone who did not make the cut in an audition after you did. And really the members of A.B.C. really shine in this game segment  overall when it comes to being entertaining.

Up next is an MC with Butokan which starts out with Yara Tomoyuki comforting Senga Kento, as the former had messed up with his attempt in the game segment and was rather upset about it. But they move on and Senga is able to collect himself so they can even joke about him doing the imitation of a turtle laying eggs in the Osaka episodes.

The group perform their song, Now and Forever, and there is not much to say as the group is as on point as always. Though own thing I keep forgetting to mention is that I am surprised to note that Hamanaka Bunichi has a strong voice. I guess mainly this is because this is the only chance he has really gotten to show it off.

For the Heisei Post segment we have HSB with Nakamaru. They read letters and answer them, the first being about presents so they talk about gifts they have given. The second one is a question about the unit with which one is the strongest of them all. So they do an impromptu arm wrestling tournament.

Question? then perform their song Beautiful Mind. It is another performance that it is hard to say something about as they have performed this song a few times already and each time the performance has been solid.

It goes straight into the next performance, Kis-My-Ft2 performing Kaizoku for the first time. I love this song and I am so glad it finally was released on CD with Kis-My-Zero3. Of course watching the performance one cannot help but notice that someone stands out a bit, as Senga's jacket does not really match with the pink on it when everyone else's does not have that color on them anywhere. Not sure if this was a costuming mistake or not as it is this way at the start of the episode as well.

It is then time to wrap up the episode with the ending song, which this time is HSB performing Your Seed and Bouken Rider. Still don't care much for Your Seed being performed without most of the group but since it is only a part of the song it works out. And Inoo Kei actually gets a solo line to sing.

For Bouken Rider the Juniors come out to join in performing it with HSB. And surprisingly we get Yamashita Shoon next to Yaotome Hikaru. I guess at this point Johnny's felt confident that the backlash about breaking up Ya-Ya-Yah had cooled down that it would no longer be an issue. But it will still be at least over a year before uchiwa are again allowed in the program.


A nice solid Junior focused episode that give no hints of the changes that are about to come. Of course this was filmed around the time SUMMARY would have begun and the changes did not happen until near the end of that.

I feel sad all over with TOP3 hitting their end, I really thought they worked well as a unit and wanted to see them go far but Johnny's had other ideas.

And I do have B.I.Shadow to look forward to as they should be showing up soon.

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