Johnny's 2013 Jr. calendars: not his best
I’m sorry to say I’m a little disappointed with this year’s Junior’s calendars. As always, I was excited when the big package arrived and first impressions were great: it all comes in a hard plastic carrying case which slides out of a slick colorful paperboard wrap. But the carrying case holds a lot of air: unnecessary cardboard inserts to hold 4 calendars.
They’re all about 4 by 6 inches, about the size of a DVD case. I would like this if they had a page a week, but no. Three of the calendars only have a page a month, so if I’m going to use it as an actual calendar I’m going to display the same picture for a whole month. They do have some extra pages but you wouldn’t use them like a calendar. If I just want pinup pictures, I could get nice and bigger pictures in any Myojo. And “bigger” is the key word here. Most of these pictures are very small: group shots or collages with the result that each member’s head shot is about an inch big.
Sexy Zone’s calendar consists of 16 cards, printed on both sides, and a nice clear plastic frame/stand to hold them. I’m a little perturbed by the lack of togetherness. Only 5 of the 32 pictures show the group together. The rest are solo shots or random pairings. Coming after some Shonen Clubs where we hardly saw Sexy Zone together, these calendar pictures continue that trend. Again, how do I display these? One picture for a month? Am I going to put a page of interview Q&A’s in the frame for a couple of weeks? It’s too much like a magazine photo shoot for my taste, and I’ve seen a lot better magazine shoots. Some of these pictures are below-average quality in poses, originality, hairstyles, and variety.
Johnny’s Jr. Calendar has a spiral binding and (yay) more pages. Each month is broken into two halves so it’s better for displaying as a changing calendar. But there’s no stand, no pinup punch-hole, not really any way to display it except to open it up on a table. I thought this calendar had the best variety of nice pictures, some relatively big head shots, interesting group shots, mostly with a school theme, and the feature I like the most at the back of the calendar where you see birthdays, Kanji-character names, and other vital stats next to small pictures of each important Junior. There are 40 of them this year and I remember when they had many more Juniors and bigger pictures so this feature is a little bit of a let-down, too. There are quite a few Sexy Boyz pictures, and I wish there were more Bakaleya6 pictures but there are some good ones. I wish more were identified because many Jr’s are not household names and the calendar should help them become better known. I would gladly trade pages from the upcoming calendars for more pages in this book!
A.B.C-Z has a spiral binding calendar too but this has a folding cardboard stand that I’ll never figure out. It’s very similar to the Sexy Zone calendar with 16 heavy-stock pages, one-month calendar views, and a lot of solo and duo shots. Each member gets a profile page complete with some complex “capability” graph, whatever that means. And if you get tired of the one-month calendars, there are other pages with two-month calendars to choose from.
Yuma Nakayama’s calendar is the most useful as an actual calendar. I like the pictures better than any of the other calendars, with a lot of bigger head shots and a real variety of themes. Plus, the calendar pages actually give you some room to write something on important dates, only one page for a month but still, something. There’s a page of Q&A’s - I’d really like to know the translation of the Q&A where his answer was “Sexy Zone”.
So, when it’s all been checked out, what would I do differently? At least one of the calendars would have pages as big as a magazine. They’re all too tiny. At least one calendar would have a 52 week display. How about the Jr’s calendar - they certainly have enough members to spread their pictures throughout 52+ pages. I’d go back to having about 100 Jr’s profiled, and use head-shots, not tiny full-body shots for their profile pictures. And I’d sell them differently: how about bundling Yuma with Hey! Say! JUMP and A.B.C-Z with Kis-My-Ft2? Neither artist has much in common with Sexy Zone/Boyz and Bakaleya6. I’d make sure the pictures had a lot of variety, not just a lazy couple of sessions. And finally I’d take that exquisite elaborate packaging and make it more useful. I’m sorry to say that after about 8 years of collecting Johnny’s calendars, the fancy plastic carrying case is likely to be the first element that will end up in the recycling bin.
By the way, anybody want to buy my A.B.C-Z or Yuma calendars? I’ll sell ‘em, $5US each plus shipping.
They’re all about 4 by 6 inches, about the size of a DVD case. I would like this if they had a page a week, but no. Three of the calendars only have a page a month, so if I’m going to use it as an actual calendar I’m going to display the same picture for a whole month. They do have some extra pages but you wouldn’t use them like a calendar. If I just want pinup pictures, I could get nice and bigger pictures in any Myojo. And “bigger” is the key word here. Most of these pictures are very small: group shots or collages with the result that each member’s head shot is about an inch big.
Sexy Zone’s calendar consists of 16 cards, printed on both sides, and a nice clear plastic frame/stand to hold them. I’m a little perturbed by the lack of togetherness. Only 5 of the 32 pictures show the group together. The rest are solo shots or random pairings. Coming after some Shonen Clubs where we hardly saw Sexy Zone together, these calendar pictures continue that trend. Again, how do I display these? One picture for a month? Am I going to put a page of interview Q&A’s in the frame for a couple of weeks? It’s too much like a magazine photo shoot for my taste, and I’ve seen a lot better magazine shoots. Some of these pictures are below-average quality in poses, originality, hairstyles, and variety.
Johnny’s Jr. Calendar has a spiral binding and (yay) more pages. Each month is broken into two halves so it’s better for displaying as a changing calendar. But there’s no stand, no pinup punch-hole, not really any way to display it except to open it up on a table. I thought this calendar had the best variety of nice pictures, some relatively big head shots, interesting group shots, mostly with a school theme, and the feature I like the most at the back of the calendar where you see birthdays, Kanji-character names, and other vital stats next to small pictures of each important Junior. There are 40 of them this year and I remember when they had many more Juniors and bigger pictures so this feature is a little bit of a let-down, too. There are quite a few Sexy Boyz pictures, and I wish there were more Bakaleya6 pictures but there are some good ones. I wish more were identified because many Jr’s are not household names and the calendar should help them become better known. I would gladly trade pages from the upcoming calendars for more pages in this book!
A.B.C-Z has a spiral binding calendar too but this has a folding cardboard stand that I’ll never figure out. It’s very similar to the Sexy Zone calendar with 16 heavy-stock pages, one-month calendar views, and a lot of solo and duo shots. Each member gets a profile page complete with some complex “capability” graph, whatever that means. And if you get tired of the one-month calendars, there are other pages with two-month calendars to choose from.
Yuma Nakayama’s calendar is the most useful as an actual calendar. I like the pictures better than any of the other calendars, with a lot of bigger head shots and a real variety of themes. Plus, the calendar pages actually give you some room to write something on important dates, only one page for a month but still, something. There’s a page of Q&A’s - I’d really like to know the translation of the Q&A where his answer was “Sexy Zone”.
So, when it’s all been checked out, what would I do differently? At least one of the calendars would have pages as big as a magazine. They’re all too tiny. At least one calendar would have a 52 week display. How about the Jr’s calendar - they certainly have enough members to spread their pictures throughout 52+ pages. I’d go back to having about 100 Jr’s profiled, and use head-shots, not tiny full-body shots for their profile pictures. And I’d sell them differently: how about bundling Yuma with Hey! Say! JUMP and A.B.C-Z with Kis-My-Ft2? Neither artist has much in common with Sexy Zone/Boyz and Bakaleya6. I’d make sure the pictures had a lot of variety, not just a lazy couple of sessions. And finally I’d take that exquisite elaborate packaging and make it more useful. I’m sorry to say that after about 8 years of collecting Johnny’s calendars, the fancy plastic carrying case is likely to be the first element that will end up in the recycling bin.
By the way, anybody want to buy my A.B.C-Z or Yuma calendars? I’ll sell ‘em, $5US each plus shipping.