The Shounen Club 14 March 2010 review

And on to the final episode of the 2009-2010 season of Shounen Club. And one that focuses mostly on the Juniors.

The episode starts off with Arioka Daiki kicking things off as the opening song, Sakura Sake, starts to introduce the main Juniors.

The guest of the episode, Uchi Hiroki, is introduced afterwards though it seems a bit awkward to do so as Juniors Morimoto Shintaro and Kikuchi Fuma come on stage shortly after to take over the talk with Arioka for the theme introduction. The theme of the episode is Sotsugyou (graduation) and as Fuma points out Shintaro will be graduating from grade school, Fuma from junior high and Daiki from high school.

There is then a graduation medley with some of the various graduates given the chance to say a few words in between the songs. Like Yasui Kentaro gets to say something real quick about his graduation from high school.

The first MC is with Uchi as he gets to promote the drama he was in with fellow Johnny's Kamenashi Kazuya and Tegoshi Yuya. He also gets to promote a musical he was in, a production of Guys and Dolls.

There is the usual guest performance after this which is a special medley of various songs Uchi has sung in musicals and concerts. He gets help singing the songs from various Juniors though so his voice is easier to listen to as it is not on its own.

This is followed up by a Gekkan Koyamaru segment. It is Koyama Keiichiro's turn this time so there are of course other Johnny's to see in the photos. The first had Tanaka Koki and Arioka in it as well so Arioka is called on stage to talk a bit about the photo with them. The next was Koyama with Goseki Koichi, who is a frequent Junior to be included in Koyama's photos.

There is then a Johnny's Junior medley so we get to see a good variety of the Juniors perform starting with Shintaro and the taller members of Snow Prince Gasshoudan performing Kono Hoshi de Umarete. I think at this point Shintaro is beginning to outgrow his position as a little Junior though Johnny's seems to want to hide it the best they can.

Closing out the number is the trio grouping of Takada Sho, Masuda Ryo and Kishi Tadayoshi. Of course I guess I need to be calling Masuda Ryo Shani from now on as it looks like that is what he will be going by. Shani is his middle name and is Pakistani, I believe that is his father's nationality. There is no official explanation out there that I know of but I guess it does make it much easier to talk about him as you no longer need to worry about confusing his name with the other Masudas or Ryos in the agency.

It is then time for the game segment of the program. Uchi is out on stage again as he gets to be the judge as the Juniors participating get to act out prompts. There are mostly the usual Juniors participating from the usual groups. And Uchi did annoy me in this as he seemed to just drag out all his decisions without really explaining them.

Kitayama Hiromitsu gets to sit down and talk with the hosts on his own. He ends up talking quite a bit about Miyata Toshiya though.

Kis-My-Ft2 get their performance for the episode in as they perform Sayonara no Jounetsu. This song is of course a Hikaru Genji song and is very 90s J-pop with its sound. But it lets the guys skate around which is probably a big part of why it was picked for them to do.

There is learning VTR segment for this episode and Nakajima Kento, Tanaka Juri and Hagiya Keigo get to learn about beat boxing. Of course they do not need to go far to find their teacher for this, Nakamaru Yuichi. It was nice to see and the Juniors really seemed into learning about it and it reminded me that Nakaken did like to beat box. He sadly does not seem to get the chance to do any with Sexy Zone which is a pity.

They all get to have a short MC segment where they talk about the lesson and what they learned with Nakamaru present of course. They also get to show off the beat boxing that they learned as well again.

There is another segment after the MC, a letter exchange between Kochi Yugo and Matsumura Hokuto. It is nice to see the two get some screen time where they are front and center as with B.I. Shadow that tends to go to Nakaken and Fuma instead. And I love how they had each other laughing throughout their letters.

BIS then perform their group song Lalalila. Or Nakaken and Fuma perform most of the song by themselves and Yugo and Hokuto do not show up until around the final minute of the song. This is going to become something of a normal thing for this group if my memory serves me right. So no real surprise about who got to debut from this group really.

It is then time for the final performance of the episode and it is of Kibou ~Yell~. Koyama gets to lead it, I guess to even out the screen time between him and Nakamaru after the beat box segment. The rest of the main Juniors join him shortly.


Another good episode despite my lack of caring for anything to do with Uchi. Not sure what exactly bugs me about him but something does and he is the only Johnny's I feel this way about.

Otherwise there were plenty of highlights spread throughout to make the episode enjoyable. Especially if like me you are mainly watching the show for the Juniors. But with this another season is finished and time to see what changes the next one will bring to the program, and of course moving closer to the next debut.