29 January 2014

The Shounen Club 7 February 2010 review

Hopefully things will start to get back more on schedule next month. I pray nothing major happens in the near future, unless it is good of course. But with my new job I get weekends off so that should help with that.

The episode kicks off with Nakajima Yuto starting a medley that will work as the introduction for the main Junior groups and individual Juniors.

Morimoto Shintaro is already starting to be separated from the other members of the Snow Prince Gasshoudan group. That group will become one for the young Juniors until it disbands as Shintaro gets to float around a bit until he gets paired up with Hip Hop Jump before the Shiritsu Bakaleya Koukou drama gives him a new grouping.

Talking of HHJ, it seems for now the group is a trio of Tanaka Juri, Hagiya Keigo and Jesse. Or at least for Shounen Club. The frustrating thing with this group was trying to figure out who was actually in it as who was on SC was not always the same as the magazines.

The theme for the episode is Love Song, as Valentine's Day was just around the corner. It is just the regular hosts of the episode, Koyama Keiichiro and Nakamaru Yuichi, with Yuto to introduce the theme instead of them bringing in a Junior to do it.

NYC boys are introduced as the guests of the episode and this time there are all three NYC members present. They do a medley of their songs starting off with just NYC performing then B.I. Shadow coming on stage to perform with them.

With the following MC though it is just NYC that participate. They talk about Valentine's Day and Nakayama Yuma brings up something about his older sister. His sister is also an idol (at this time she was with H!P under her real name Nakayama Nana, but would quit to audition for NMB48 under the stage name Yamada Nana) and I would love to see the two do something together someday.

Following this we get something new. Nakamura Reia is brought over to do an MC segment as well as show off his skateboarding skills. It is nice to see a younger Junior highlighted like this, especially as Reia is still around and even gets some spotlight in the more recent SC episodes.

Reia gets to introduce the next performance, a Kis-My-Ft2 medley. It starts off with Sennen no Love Song then Kitayama Hiromitsu gets a solo song, covering Domoto Koichi's Deep in your heart.

The final song of he medley is NEWS' Koi no ABO lead by Miyata Toshiya as he plays up his wota-character. Part way through Koyama comes out to "reprimand" him and show's him how the dance is really done. They all finish together for what was a fun performance.

Up next is a You no Otegami Yomitai Desu! segment with members of A.B.C-Z and Kisumai hosting it. It is a fairly Kisumai focused segment though as they are the ones answering the letters as Totsuka Shota and Kawai Fumito act as the MCs.

Nakamaru then gets to perform in this episode as he does his solo song, WHITE WORLD as well as a solo version of KAT-TUN's song Love yourself ~Kimi ga Kirai na Kimi ga Suki~. The former has a typo with the lyrics that I am pretty sure was not in the booklet of the album the song is off of.

Question? gets the o abake segment treatment with this episode. It seemed a bit awkward with the first question with most centering their answer for Goto Hiromi as being the biggest cry baby. I think it was just the fact that he had not been with the group for long so there was not enough of a feeling of ease between him and the rest. But the second topic about wanting to say something to another member was much more enjoyable as the long time members of the group got to kid around with each other.

The following performance has a mix of Juniors perform Ai no Katamari. Fujigaya Taisuke, Tamamori Yuta, Nakajima Kento, Sanada Yuma, Tottsu, Hashimoto Ryosuke and Ishigaki Daisuke are the Juniors that perform this song while Goto plays the violin for it.

B.I. Shadow get the chance to have their own MC segment next. They talk about learning how to tap dance. Being a regular on a variety program looks to have really helped Yugo Kochi as he speaks quite a bit during it and finally looks comfortable on stage.

This talk leads into the VTR of the episode, which is another learning segment. We get to see B.I. Shadow as they learn about tap dancing. They are told some of the history of the dance form before they move on to learning how to do it.

The group then gets to show off what they learned and are joined by Yuto, who does tap from time to time in his live performances. They sing the song You & You, which I am not sure where it comes from and there is no mention of it being a song from another Johnny's artist.

This then takes us to the final song of the episode. The old ending song, Love Letter, is performed with the main Juniors, both older and younger. The stage is definitely getting crowded with how many Juniors it has to fit when they do this. It is nice to hear this song being performed again though and I wish they would perform more of these SC end songs from time to time.


At this point it is easy to see that Kisumai are on track to their eventual debut. They may still have about a year to go to get the announcement but they have the strongest presence on the show and get highlighted consistently. I know back then I felt that they were being treated as the top Junior group and that was a good indication that they would be debuting eventually. So I am rather happy to have gotten that right.

I do not recall paying much attention to the little Juniors when these episodes came out but I will be now that some of the faces are still around. So I hope we get to see more of them in the coming episodes like we did with Reia in this one.

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