The Shounen Club 2 July 2010 review

We get the return of  frequent guests for the program as the season continues on.

The show starts off with the Juniors taking turns performing the KAT-TUN song Real Face and Nakajima Yuto does the introductions for the main ones.

Near the end of the medley the guests for the episode come out, and it is KAT-TUN. We sure seem to be getting a lot of them in recent months. Checking out the events around this time they are still supposed to officially be a sextet but Akanishi Jin is doing his solo concerts which we all know now will lead to him officially leaving the group. So perhaps these frequent appearances are to keep the members of the group busy during this time.

We have the usual opening talk next where the other two members of Hey! Say! JUMP, Arioka Daiki and Takaki Yuya, show up to be introduced as supporters with Yuto. They introduce the theme of the episode, Mokuhyou (objective, target), and start the conversation with that, which is rather easy as KAT-TUN seemed to be more than ready to get into things.

This is followed by a B.I. Shadow medley, which has the group sing both covers and their original songs. If I am not mistaken we have the shortest wait for Matsumura Hokuto and Kochi Yugo to show up on stage after it starts with just Nakajima Kento and Kikuchi Fuma. That is rather nice though I know this pattern is not going to change up until the group is broken up for the latter two to debut.

The following MC is with A.B.C-Z who get to talk about the concerts they got to produce at Theatre Crea. As they talk about them we get to see some VTR footage from the concerts which is nice.

The performance after is a medley for both Mis Snow Man and Ebi. It is nice to see MSM get a chance to perform as a group, even for a short period, as there has been little of that. When Ebi get their turn MSM stay on stage to back dance for them.

Up next is a You no Otegami Yomitai Desu! segment with Kitayama Hiromitsu, Kawai Fumito, Miyata Toshiya and Nakajima Kento being the MCs this time around. The first letter asks for advice about getting a present. Kento brings up that for his 20th birthday he would like a car. The next letter asks about "call and response", which is when on stage a performer calls something out that the audience responds to. Miyata gets to show off one that Kis-My-Ft2 has. Kawai demonstrates the lack of any he and his group has while he gets to make one up for Kento.

Morimoto Shintaro gets his own medley, and of course he has members of Snow Prince Gasshoudan and Hip Hop Jump backing him up for it. It is a fun and lively medley full of energy and the kind of performance I would like to see more often on the program nowadays.

The game segment is a gesture quiz, where teams of three Juniors compete in guessing the right answer to a prompt that one of them has to mime. This a rather fun game to watch as even though it usually sticks to Johnny's songs like with this game one of the rounds has them having to mime fellow Johnny's.

Kis-My-Ft2 then get to do have the usual one performance an episode. They perform Kis-My-Calling, which is one of those songs that is best enjoyed live. But it is also one of those songs that works as a group introduction as each members gets time in the spotlight and the repetition of the group name in the lyrics.

The Kansai Juniors get a segment with the Kansai Junior ni Q segment. They get to talk about special skills that they have. First up is Kiriyama Akito who claims that talking fast is his special talent, which of course he is asked to prove.

Then Kotaki Nozomu is next for someone still in Johnny's. He put down that he could impersonate fellow Kanjuu Hamanaka Bunichi.

Nakama Junta is called over to talk about his answer which deals with animals in some way. He is not up there long before they move on.

Following him is Shigeoka Daiki. I could not get what he was talking about for his answer though except it mentions something about a tree. And he is the last up for the segment.

Then KAT-TUN get their MC segment with Koyama Keiichiro. They talk about their goals as a group, which leads them to talk about their upcoming world tour, though "world" is quite the stretch to label it as they never went out of Asia.

KAT-TUN finally get their turn to perform and they do a special medley which is of their more recent songs. I forgot this was the era for the group where they abused autotune, which made it hard for me to enjoy their songs.

For the end song Hey! Say! JUMP suddenly appears to perform a medley of their songs. It feels rather off to have a guest come in for just the final performance but other than that it is a solid one. Not only do they do group songs but each of the two sub-units get to perform a song.


A good solid episode until the end where it just was a bit confusing. What is the point of having a debuted group show up just to sing the final song? I can only assume that HSJ will be the guests for the next episode, or this will just continue to baffle me.

But it was nice not to see a good mix of the Juniors with all the performances and the guests did not dominate the episode. It just felt lopsided with most of the guest appearances being all at the end.