The Shounen Club 24 March 2011 review

We get the return of the clip show this month as only one episode of the program aired which was this 10th anniversary special. This is of course mainly because on March 11th of 2011 the Tohoku earthquake and subsequent tsunami occurred. The disaster threw programing off for the month as coverage of the disaster and aid for the victims rightfully was made the priority.

That said there is a lot of text on the top of the screen throughout the program as that is all warning information about aftershocks still being felt in the Tohoku region.

This special looks to have been filmed before March 11th and like the clip shows from years ago focus on showing footage of older episodes.

Koyama Keiichiro and Nakamaru Yuichi are hosts for the episode, which will be the last time the duo host for the program. They are joined by Kitayama Hiromitsu, Fujigaya Taisuke, Kawai Fumito and Totsuka Shota to provide the in studio talk between the clips.

They start off with clips from the first episode of the series which uses some creative editing techniques to avoid showing Jimmy Mackey's face in the video.

There is some VTR with Yamashita Tomohisa who says some words about the program, which is pretty fitting as he played a big role in the early years of the program.

One of the features of this recap is that there is a quiz for the Juniors, and Nakamaru, to participate in that goes over various tidbits of the show. Such as the first question asking who showed up during the first ending song performance for the program.

When we return to the old footage we get to see clips of the early guest performances, which is basically just Tackey & Tsubasa and Arashi.

I find the Arashi performances a bit more interesting as they have guested on the program less and when they were they were still such a young group.

The program seems to be interested in visiting the early era of Arashi as the next batch of clips focus on PVs for the group and the behind the scenes footage that they did for the program with Ikuta Toma or Kamenashi Kazuya visiting the group to do behind the scenes reports.

The next set of clips feature Junior performances when the show was still at the studio they used to film at before moving to the NHK Hall. Most of the focus is on Yamapi, various members of Kanjani8 and KAT-TUN. There is a J-Support/K.K.Kity performance thrown in to show Koyama and Kato Shigeaki but it is obviously edited to cut a close up of Kusano Hironori out as the one for Koyama is "frozen" where that footage should have been.

After that set they move on to footage from after the move to NHK Hall. There are clips for all the debuted groups up to KAT-TUN, which makes me wonder why Hey! Say! JUMP was skipped over as they have not lost a member yet so there really was no reason for it. Unlike NEWS who only got to have their appearances as a six member unit shown without a trace of their previous performances on the program to be seen.

They then show clips from the Toma Scoop segments where Toma interviewed various sempai groups. I kinda miss these segments as the sempai groups seem to always be ready to have fun with them.

This is followed by a review of the comedy duos and skits that the show used to have, mostly from KAT-TUN and Kanjani8. This is also something I miss as it gave a chance for the Juniors doing them to really stand out as well as round themselves out as idols.

While the next set of clips is still focused on the debuted Johnny's it switches things out a bit with having the performances be from their pre-debut days. So we get to see proto-Tegomass as well as an eight member K8, though no shot clear enough to really see Uchi Hiroki's face.

Finally we get clips of the HSJ members during their Junior days. So lots of little Juniors to be seen and be amazed by how much they have grown since.

Interestingly enough A.B.C-Z and Kis-My-Ft2 are also lumped in with this set of VTRs. I guess this might be lumping the groups together by "generation", which might explain why HSJ has been missing from the debut acts VTRs until now.

And we get the first mention of Kisumai's debut as they are congratulated on it as Koyama and Nakamaru lead the final discussion to wrap up the special.

The discussion ends as Koyama and Nakamaru are given flowers by the members of NYC as part of their send off as hosts of the program as this is the final episode they will be hosting Shounen Club. They also announce that HSJ will be taking over as hosts.

The final video is not a clip but a performance by NYC of their song Yumetamago. Which seems like a weird way to end a show that was to celebrate the 10th anniversary of its airing. But I guess showing cute kids performing a cute song is not the worst way to end something.


It is nice to get one of these episodes after so much time has now passed since the last. Especially as this gives us clips of the older episodes in good quality. And picking the Juniors they did for this was good as the four have been around for so long they would have memories from most of the episodes of the program.

It is also interesting to see how they decide to deal with footage with ex-Johnny's in it. It looks like for the most part they just made sure to cut the frames to edit members out or not just air footage, like any of the earlier NEWS performances.