BAD BOYS J first episode impressions

I believe I remember being pretty excited for this drama. It had some of the same team as Shiritsu Bakaleya Koukou working on it and the cast list looked promising to me with Nakajima Kento having his first go as the lead in a drama. After watching the first episode I am glad I did not watch it as it was airing or I would probably be much more disappointed than I was.

Though it is still a drama that is miles better than Sprout and definitely not confusing like Shinryochu ~in the room~ so it is easier to enjoy but I was just expecting much more from it. As mentioned though I learned that I should not have had my hopes so high before actually watching it, but still I wanted more from it than what I got with the first episode.

I feel sorry for Nakaken who got saddled with a character like Kiriki Tsukasa. Tsukasa is either a pathetic weakling or tough bad ass with almost nothing in between. In fact he comes off as potentially having a multiple personality disorder with how different and sudden the change is. For a "secretly a badass" character to work you have to get a sense the character knows that he can kick all the asses of those around him but for whatever reason chooses not to. This really does not seem to be a part of Tsukasa's character so far and if it never is then it is going to be hard to reconcile how he can be both a wimp and badass.

It was not all bad though as I did like the main Gokurakucho trio, Kawanaka Yoji (Fukusawa Tatsuya), Iwami Eiji (Iwamoto Hikaru) and Nakamura Misao (Watanabe Shota). They are the main bulk of the interesting parts of this episode and I would much rather watch a drama about those three without having Tsukasa around.

Of course there is still a lot of the cast that only got the briefest of introductions in this episode to look forward to. I am very happy to have Hashimoto Ryosuke in this, as he was the highlight of Sprout for me and I do want to see what he will do with a different kind of role. And the rest I am at least curious about so I do want to still watch this drama.


Since I have an idea of what I am getting into here I know not to hold my breath for it to get much better. Some of it sounds like fun though but I can see myself just putting on the fujoshi vision and pretending that this is really a story about Tsukasa and Yoji being secretly in love. Because it already feels like the two have more chemistry between them than Tsukasa and his love interest in the drama, Yoshimoto Kumi (Hashimoto Nanami).

The Shounen Club 11 January 2009 review

And with this episode we have an official introduction to Hip Hop Jump and see that Hey! Say! 7 West has made some big changes since we last saw them.

The introduction at the start has a minor change with each group or grouping announced getting to dance to the music of a debuted group's song. It seems a bit weird since they have not done it before. But Hip Hop Jump get to be introduced without Morimoto Shintaro being attached to them.

The theme of the episode is Favorite Song and they do a special version of the usual theme medley. What sets it apart is that the songs each get an introduction by the Junior that chose them as their favorite song. I will go ahead and highlight them all because I am sure something like this will interest quite a few. The first song is Amagasa by TOKIO selected by Totsuka Shota.

Then Kitayama Hiromitsu gets his pick of Otokogumi's Mihari. We get to see him play the guitar for this and I wish Kis-My-Ft2 had more songs that let the members who can play instruments do so.

Kawai Fumito is up next and his pick is V6's Can do! Can go!, which he explains was the song he danced to at his audition. This song is actually known to have been used for quite some time at auditions for the Juniors so it is something Juniors are expected to know the dance routine for.

Senga Kento gets to pick a song and goes with Bonnie Butterfly, a Kinki Kids song. He is paired up with Tamamori Yuta for the performance as Tamamori is starting to get pushed in the group, as I believe it has been announced by then he would be making his drama debut with the Gokusen 3 SP.

Then Miyata Toshiya performs his song choice, FRIENDS, another Kinki Kids song. This uses the remainder of Kisumai who have yet to perform minus one, who gets to perform the final song of the medley.

Fujigaya Taisuke's song is Hoshikuzo no Spangle, which he performs with Morimoto Shintaro and Nakajima Kento. The song is originally a Shonentai song but it has been covered by quite a few newer groups and even Sexy Zone performed it at their debut concert, IIRC.

The medley is followed by a Heisei Post segment that focuses on Hip Hop Jump, or mainly Tanaka Juri as the postcard from a fan asks about siblings and of course Juri can then talk about his older brother Tanaka Koki. But with this for the first time the names of all the members of the original line up for the group can be seen. And all but Camu Cade are with Johnny's. In fact all those four, Juri, Jesse (still going by Lewis Jesse at this point), Hagiya Keigo and Morita Myuto, have all been in the late night NTV dramas and are a part of the current older Juniors groupings.

It is then a Fresh Junior medley, which means most of the ungrouped Juniors will be featured as the label 'fresh' can be extended for a long time for some. It is mostly Sanada Yuma, Nozawa Yuki, Jr Boys, and Hip Hop Jump with some others mixed in for the medley.

Afterwords Koyama Keiichiro and Nakamaru Yuichi get to talk about their favorite songs. For Nakamaru is it Cinderella Christmas and for Koyama it is Believe Your Smile by V6.

Question? then gets to perform their favorite song, their own song Parallel World. When they finish the song the performance is not over though as the guest of the episode comes out, Uchi Hiroki. This episode is the return of Uchi to the program after he was promoted from trainee to Junior. He performs Ima, Koko ni with Question? and I guess this could be thought of the beginning of the decline of the band for reasons I will probably get into later, like another episode review.

The game segment is next and Uchi is there as a judge for it. Being one of the games that needs to have an actual judge it is the one where the teams are given prompts that they have to pick a member to act out and compete against a member of the other team. It also means it is one of the games that it helps a great deal if you know Japanese.The highlight of the game is Kawai Fumito pulling out the Matsumoto Jun impersonation but adding another layer to it with making it also a Kimura Takuya impersonation with the dance being Matsujun but the singing Kimutaku. And now that I have been a Johnny's fan for some time I actually got the "Cho Matte yo" at the end.

Then there is an MC with Uchi, I kinda wish they broke these segments up a bit. But Uchi talks about his favorite song which was All the Way, a song from the Playzone musical he was in that was his trial for getting his Junior status returned. At the end he and Koyama traded cute nicknames for each other before Nakamaru broke it up.

Then it is a full performance from Uchi, as he performs a song called Crave It. Again I wish we did not have this huge block of Uchi in the episode. But that is part my personal bias against him. I will give this performance this, the song suits his voice much better than the one he sung earlier and he brought energy to it.

It is then a special Kansai Junior ni Q, where there is only B.A.D., BOYS and Hey! Say! 7 WEST w/Yuma. The latter group is now larger so it actually has seven members, counting Yuma of course. And I will go ahead and go over the answers for each Kanjuu that is still with the agency. First up is Hamada Takahiro with TOKIO's Jibun no Tame ni.

Then it is Nakayama Yuma with Akanishi Jin's solo song Murasaki. He explains that when he first heard it he thought it was cool.

Kiriyama Akito goes with a song from his unit, Sakamichi. I do not think this has ever been performed on Shounen Club but in this segment they play the songs being discussed in the background so it can be heard.

Shigeoka Daiki is next and he picked Kanjani8's Sukiyanen, Osaka. which he explains was the song that he danced to for his audition.

Then it is Nakama Junta's turn and he shares his choice, Moments. I do not think it is mentioned anywhere who has this song and I do not recognize it.

Fujii Ryusei picked a solo song of Kanjani8's Okura Tadayoshi which has only been performed at concerts. The song is called Butterfly I Loved and from what could be heard of it in the background it makes me wish it would make its way unto a CD someday.

Kotaki Nozomi is next and he chose a KAT-TUN song, Never Again. It seems like after he passed his audition he was a part of a KAT-TUN concert as one of the background dancers and came to like the song through that.

Then the last Kanjuu that is still with the agency to answer is Kamiyama Tomohiro who answers with a song from the HS7W unit, Nijiiro no Uta. It is another song that has never been performed on the program to my knowledge though I wish it would be.

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When we go back from that segment Kis-My-Ft2 have an MC segment. Of course since most had already had their say on what their favorite song was and why from the earlier medley it focuses on one of the members that did not, Tamamori. The song he picked was Kinki Kids' Diamond Story. Of course like I mentioned earlier Tamamori should be seeing the beginning of his push that will eventually place in the front of the group about this time.

The group then performs a medley of songs starting with a Hikaru Genji song, BRAVO! Nippon ~Setsu to Koori no Fantasy~ then moving onto their own unit song SMILE. And Tamamori actually got a solo line in the fist song, another sign that his star is on the rise.

This leads us to the ending song which being the second episode of the month is only for the older Juniors to perform. The song is Ki Se Ki, one of Takizawa Hideaki's solo songs.


If I have to name a least favorite Junior it would be Uchi. And it has nothing to do with his scandal but it was an opinion formed of him after his return to active Junior status. I was okay with him at first but over time he just got on my nerves for reasons I cannot fully figure out. I do still think it is cute how happy Koyama is to have him there on the program with him, but Koyama is always happy when a group member is on the program, and I guess that it extends to ex-group members as well. But Uchi grates on my nerves so it is hard to enjoy it much.

But outside of my dislike for Uchi I did enjoy the episode and honestly this is one of his better guesting appearances on the show so unless you actively hate on the guy you will probably also enjoy it.

Scrap Teacher ~Kyoushi Saisei~ final impressions

Yes I know this is an old drama and it seems like I am missing reviews for it. But the other reviews for it do exist, as I did them when this drama was still fairly new. You can find them here and here. I never finished the drama mainly because subs only exist for the first six episodes and left the final three unsubbed. I figured that I had reviewed things without subs before so I might as well finish this series.

Honestly it did not take long to get back into the series even though I am picking it up after a few years. This is mainly due to the fact that it is a simple drama that uses a lot of the familiar tropes of school dramas. That and none of the characters are all that developed which makes it easy to jump in on just about any episode and not feel terribly lost.

For some reason I thought I remembered the B.I.Shadow members in this, Takahata Misaki, Nakajima Kento and Kikuchi Fuma, having bigger roles but it must have been more me just focusing on them more. As while they did get an episode, or more exactly Takahata had an episode that focused on him, they mostly hung out in the background until they had something to say to antagonize someone.

While I did not care much for the super junior high students at first Takasugi Toichi (Yamada Ryosuke) has grown on me. Mainly because while he is supposed to be the super cool character type he ends up failing at it as no one treats him as such. In fact all the girls like the other two and Takasugi is stuck with a train obsessed fanboy. And I think with a character like Takasugi having him fail like this is a good way to get the audience to like him, as otherwise he would just be intolerable.

And for the other two there just was so little to go off of to figure out anything about them though it did seem like Arioka Daiki tried his best with the little he had. Chinen Yuri on the other hand was mainly just there to be cute.

And then Nakajima Yuto's character seemed to exist to mainly prop up the main teacher, Sugi Toranosuke (Kamiji Yusuke), and set events in motion. So he too came off as bland as there just was nothing to go with outside of good natured.

I do wonder what the original planned episode count was as the final episode is just a mess and it seemed like the first story line it rushed through was meant to be its own episode. Then there are characters all over the place acting out of character just so things can happen and things go from cheesy to just plain sappy as it tries too hard to make you feel emotional about what is going on. But honestly if they just told a good story they would not need to try so hard.


Unless you are a big fan of the actors in this drama I would skip it. While some of the concepts are interesting they are not handled well. And there is so much that is left unexplained and many scenes that seem to exist because the writers thought it would look good instead of whether or not it made any sense. And I think I understand why I did not bother to finish this years ago.

Johnny's Under 100: Tsukada Ryoichi

Tsukada Ryoichi

Group: A.B.C-Z

Birthdate: December 10, 1986

I never paid too much attention to A.B.C-Z before but their J’s Journey trip to Australia left an impression on me. Tsukada was easily stood out, as he was one of the most active members on the journey and brought a lot of life and fun to the trip.

Now watching older Shounen Club episodes I can see hints of this even back then but for whatever reason he never got the chance to shine as a mood maker like he did in J’s Journey. I would not mind to see more of him now.

Ataru SP first impressions

With the movie of the series hitting theatres in Japan this is probably not a bad time for me to finally get to the SP.

Honestly the first half of the special can probably be skipped for anyone who has seen the show. Most of it is recaps of it with only bits of new scenes mixed in, and most of the new scenes suffer from the writers trying much too hard to be funny. It is really only when Inoguchi Ataru (Nakai Masahiro) finally shows up in the second half do things feel like they are going somewhere and the story begins to truly move forward.

Nakai is great as Ataru, which is no shocker considering how he did in the series. And he continues to show that he has more agency than before as he chooses to return to Japan to deal with the murder case and refuses to leave when Inoue Larry (Murakami Hiroaki) wants him to.

If any characters are stuck where we last left them it is Ebina Maiko (Kuriyama Chiaki) and Sawa Shunichi (Kitamura Kazuki). Even though there has been a change to Maiko's life, as she has quit the force to start up her own detective agency there seems to be no progress with her as a character. Since it is difficult to figure out what is going to happen with her the character just seems lost and it is hard to get behind her. And it does not help that her failures are played up for laughs. But she is still good to have to play off of Sawa and is really the character that gets things to happen with how she plunges into things head first.

The story is mainly on Ataru and his family, namely his younger brother Inoguchi Tasuku (Okada Masaki), who gets wrapped up in the murder mystery of the special. This is probably one of the stronger parts of the special as we never did learn much of anything about Tasuku in the series other than that he existed and his parents decided that with another child on the way it would be better for them to hand Ataru over to Larry. So taking a look at how that affected Tasuku and how the family is to move forward with Ataru wanting to be a family again was great.

Shimazaki Haruka is added to the cast to be the replacement for Mitsumune Kaoru, who suffered from illness for a while which lead to her having to leave AKB48. Paruru was probably not the best choice for this as her acting is no where on the same level as Kaoru's and she brought no life to her character, which in a drama full of characters with big personalities made her seem very out of place.

That said it made me happy to see that the writers/director must have really loved Kaoru as even though she did not have a single scene in the film they managed to work her in by having her be the new face of the department, Maiko's old role at the station. And when they had Atsumi Reiji (Tanaka Tetsushi) tell her to come back I felt it was meant to be a meta moment. Most likely as I too was wanting her to return.

I guess if I am on minor characters that are/were idols I should mention Tamamori Yuta as well. His part is quite small in this as the case really does not involve the Ebina family. He does get some small moments though, the biggest being searching Wikkypedia (I guess the did not want to spend the money to actually use Wikipedia).

While most of the case is tied up in the SP there are loose ends that tie-in to the movie that recently came out in Japan brought out, leaving those unsolved. I think it may not be a bad idea to wait to watch this until the movie can be viewed shortly afterwards if you want to avoid feeling like you need to rewatch the SP at least. But if they ditch trying to tack on a recap like they did with the SP then the movie should be good as from the little tease about it from this that we get definitely has my interest.

And on side note I do want to praise the series for knowing what a cracker is and that it is different than a hacker. I cannot recall any other time I have seen a series make this distinction so it gets kudos from me for it.


If you liked the series you will probably like the SP as it is much of the same. You may want to just skip the recaps in the first half though. But it looks like if you want to watch the movie you should at least watch the second half of the SP.

The Shounen Club 4 January 2009 review

And now we begin the 2009 episodes, where not much has changed from the finish of the 2008 episodes.

The show opens up with a performance where we get the usual introductions. The song is Hatsu Uta, which should be familiar with those who have watched Johnny's Countdown before. A few of notable things with the introduction is that Sanada Yuma and Nozawa Yuki seem to be getting more and more connected with the Jr Boys group. This will eventually have them be officially merged to create Mis Snow Man later in the year.

Morimoto Shintaro is back after being missing from the Christmas special. Also Takahata Misaki is missing from this episode. I am pretty sure he has not left Johnny's yet as I do recall the initial four member B.I.Shadow line-up had him in it but shortly after he was gone and Kochi Yugo was added.

There is the usual opening talk to introduce the theme which is Mirai (future). And of course this leads directly to the usual theme medley. It now seems like the new norm for it is to have the older Juniors be mixed in with the younger ones for the songs. But some of the Jr Boys members get the chance to have their names on the screen during one of the songs which is a step up for those few.

The first MC segment gives Nakajima Kento and Kikuchi Fuma a chance to be highlighted as they talk. I could not really follow what they were saying though but it sounded like Fuma was saying something about water.

The Juniors then perform a medley of songs starting with Morimoto Shintaro leading a performance of Tackey & Tsubasa's song Diamond. I actually like the song and it makes me miss hearing Shintaro's singing voice, which is fairing through puberty well from the snippets of it I have been able to hear of it.

Then it is Nakaken and Fuma singing Arashi's Hadashi no Mirai with the Junior grouping of those their age, like Takada Sho and Masuda Ryo.

Then Butokan, with all five members for a change, are brought out for a talk segment. Yara Tomoyuki does most of the talking as he brings up dancing for what he thinks about the future then talks about the new song the group will be performing which is a ballad.

The song is called Yuki no Furu Hi and you better believe they found a way to dance to this. I am still trying to figure out how I missed that Hamanaka Bunichi had a strong presence when it came to the vocals of the group. I guess I must have been focusing too much on Senga Kento of something to miss something that is so obvious to me now.

I dare anyone who has not watched the episode before to
guess what Fujigaya was supposed to be drawing.

Then it is time for the game segment which brings Yara on to be a judge. The game this time is a drawing competition where contestants are only given the prompt as a word then have to draw it. The best drawing of course wins. This is really mostly fun to see which Juniors fail at drawing. And it was rather easy to guess who would win each round by just looking at the results.

This episode not only has a guest but also a special guest with Takizawa Hideaki being the main guest and Yamashita Tomohisa. Tackey is there to promote his first solo CD release which was tied to the debut of his Takizawa Kakumei butai. In the MC it is brought up that Yamapi was on one of the coupling tracks for the CD with Tackey and a few other Johnny's and he gets to talk about that.

Tackey then performs the title track of his solo debut, Ai Kakumei. I have never cared much for the song and still do not. And this whole era for T&T seemed like a mess as someone seemed to really want Tackey as a soloist even though he really did not seem to care much for that for the long run.

Following this is time for Junior ni Q with the return of the topic about nabe (pot) foods. Tanaka Juri gets called over to explain his answer of oyster nabe.

Anderson Casey also gets a turn as he talks about a Korean stew dish called chige. Koyama kinda takes over with talking about it as he brings up that Korean food is delicious.

Then Takada Sho is brought over to talk about his answer which is for a dish that uses tofu. He seems to really love the dish. And he is the last of the Juniors in the segment that is still with the agency.

The segment is followed by a letter exchange between Kawai Fumito and Goseki Koichi. This is definitely one of these segments I wished I had subtitles for as it seemed like it was a lot of fun from all the cheers they got while reading their letters.

A.B.C-Z then performs Crazy Accel, which of course has had some changes made to the performance to fit Hashimoto Ryosuke into it. But he is not sticking out as much as he has been with a performance like this as he does do some acrobatics as well and does not come off as too shaky this time around but it probably helped it was nothing complicated on his end.

The show ends with A.B.C-Z and Kis-My-Ft2 leading a performance of Daybreaker. It really makes a good end song to be performed as it is upbeat and gives plenty of opportunity for the guys to have fun with it as it has very simple choreography to go with it.



There are hints of changes to come when it comes to the Junior line up with things getting set up for B.I.Shadow and Mis Snow Man. It feels rather exciting as my memories from being in the Junior fandom as these things happened come back. It makes me wonder how I will view the episodes of this current year when I get to them and they are at least a year old by then.