The Shounen Club 7 January 2011 review

As a new year begins on the program we get a Shounen Club debut of a Johnny's most should recognize.

Starting off we have an introduction for the older Juniors and groups, with A.B.C-Z and Kis-My-Ft2 getting to perform group songs as a part of it. It ends though with the guests of the episode, Tackey & Tsubasa, performing one of their songs, Real DX.

The theme of the episode is Start. A good theme for the beginning of the year, but it is rather vague which I guess does give them free reign to decide on what performances to use. As Nakamaru Yuichi gives a spiel about the upcoming performance he trips over a word and Imai Tsubasa teases him a bit about it.

Next is a medley with mostly the younger Juniors performing and covering newer songs from the debuted groups. Such as Morimoto Shintaro and Snow Prince Gasshoudan performing TOKIO's advance.

And with the final song of this performance we get the debut of Sato Shori on Shounen Club. He is just back dancing for it, but with the other Fresh Juniors on stage with him he is easy to pick out and gets a bit of shared camera time.

And the following MC segment gives us an official introduction to these new Juniors that we should be seeing quite a bit of for a while. Honestly outside of Shori I either have no clue if the other Juniors are still in Johnny's or I know they have since left the agency. Either way it is easy to tell why Shori seems to get quite a bit of the spotlight at this point as he does seem like the most comfortable Junior there talking.

After that Kis-My-Ft2 is up to perform a new song on the program, My Love. Probably the most interesting thing about it is that Senga Kento gets solo lines, which was something I thought stopped happening once Tamamori Yuta started to get his big push. But it is a nice slow tempo song and one that has found its way on a CD since.

There is then a letter exchange segment between Nakajima Kento and Otsuka Yuya, who has since left the agency. They mainly just talk about their impressions of each other shortly after meeting and working in SUMMARY together.

B.I. Shadow perform after that and it is one of their group songs, Biribiri Dance. It is a nice upbeat song and we get to see all four members quite a bit, though Nakaken and Kikuchi Fuma are the only ones with solo lines.

A game segment is next and we get a new game in the form of a picture quiz. The first part has them look at a photo for seven seconds and then are asked questions about it. The next part basically had the Juniors get to see an extreme close up of someone and have to guess who it is. It was a pretty fun game segment overall, as the game was easy to follow along and you could also play along as well.

Following this is a performance by A.B.C-Z who did a medley. I was surprised that when they started it the first song was Fever to Future and not one of their group songs. The rest of the medley was with their group songs though.

Then it is a Kansai Junior ni Q segment with the theme being their dreams for 2011. Kaneuchi Toma is brought up as he explains his dream of going to Tokyo for work. And he talks about wanting to get a role in a drama. And he ended up being the only Kanjuu called up that I could recognize as still being with the agency.

T&T are brought out then for an MC segment and Tsubasa continues to pick on Nakamaru as when he sits down he puts his foot over his. They then move on to talk about T&T making their comeback as a duo after a long break from the last time they released something together.

They then perform Ai wa Takaramono, the song that was the A-side for the single they ended up releasing. I rather wish they moved around the stage more during the song instead of using the mic stands. At least there was Mis Snow Man in the back dancing for them to liven things up.

The end song is Jonetsu Jump and while the three from Hey! Say! JUMP do perform with the Juniors, it is not until about half way into the song. And after Kisumai and Ebi cover the song as groups. It will never stop feeling weird to see those two groups cover a HSJ song, even though HSJ did debut long before either of them.


I am so glad to have reached these 2011 episodes. As I have mentioned before there is a lot that happens in this year and we are already seeing some of that with Shori making his debut on the program. It should not be much longer until the other two members that will debut in the group Sexy Zone show up. That said in the closer future we have Kisumai's debut and the changing of the hosts as Koyama Keiichiro and Nakamaru finally take their leave. Then on a more somber note the change ups that happen in reaction to the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami.

We are also almost at the episodes I was reviewing as I waited for this laptop to be returned with most of the SC episodes I have. So soon I will be going back to two episodes a week for a few weeks as I just have to go through and see if I have to edit anything from those.