The Past Era

Over at tackey-tsubasa.net they have been so kind to upload concerts and other Junior events from the late 1990's and early 2000's. These are either from VHS tapes or recordings (which was most likely on a VHS tape) so I'm really amazed that there was somebody willing to do that as I know the equipment is costly and the process time consuming. The files they have are in DAT format but should have no problem being played in VLC.

These are amazing to me as I'm only coming up on my first anniversary of becoming a Johnny's fan at the end of this month. So I've completely missed out on this era when Takizawa Hideaki was the head Junior and Yamapi and Ryo were chibis themselves. Looking back I can't help but be amazed at how much has changed and how much has stayed the same since then.

One thing that I noticed that really stood out to me was that there really weren't Junior groups back then, just prominent Juniors. From what I know about the Juniors it seemed like back then the groups came about from special projects that senior Johnny's made, like Koichi Domoto creating J-Support which later became K.K.K.ity and then later created KAT-TUN. Out of all the current Junior groups the only one that shares such a beginning is Butoukan which Takki put together. The rest were put together, by what I can only assume was management, about the mid 2000's and while there has been shuffling have mostly stayed the same or been broken apart with debuts of only a portion of their group. This makes me wonder that if the current nameless Junior groups are perhaps a bit of a return back to the Takki Juniors era.

I've only downloaded Sugao 2, which are Junior concerts with various clips of the Juniors mixed in, but I plan on getting the rest of the Sugao and the TV recordings once I have the time and my internet connection stabilizes again.

For now I've taken a performance of Yamapi and Ikuto Toma singing Seigi no Mikata wa Ate ni Naranai. I chose this performance because I just love the WTH face Yamapi makes when Takki glomps him from behind as well as the fact they sing it all on roller blades which just amuses me so. And the plaid suits serve as a good reminder that as horrible as some of the current Junior outfits are, they could be worse. There's also clips from the radio show Yamapi and Ikuto Toma did back then together with another Junior (Hasegawa Jun?), spliced in with the performance.

Seigi no Mikata wa Ate ni Naranai - Yamapi & Ikuto Toma mp3

I'll probably share a couple more clips with mp3 rips from Sugao 2, but I highly encourage you to go to tackey-tsubasa.net to get the full thing and make sure to thank them for doing this as they are true rarities with the VHS tapes being out of print and the TV recordings never being officially released. I'll also be making a few clips off the other recordings I know I'll be downloading but they won't be many as I would rather people go to the source of these.