Shonen Club, July week 2, 2012
The biggest thing that happened for me this week was Travis Japan. I've never heard of them until this moment: 5 backdancers age 13-15, suddenly elevated to named-unit status. This got me googling and I discovered they've been waiting in the wings for at least a few weeks. Some fan mags in June did interviews, and there were more in July. One of the better ones, from July's Duet is translated by hakucchan here. They seem likable enough, with good personalities. I'm surprised by their confident attitudes as they don't seem nervous at all. Here are the names to remember: Aran Abe, Kaito Miyachika, Asahi Kajiyama, Kaito Nakamura, and Shizuya Yoshizawa. They actually weren't on Shokura for very long and I can't say they made a huge impression except for the fact that a unit getting a name these days seems to be a Big Deal. So I'll be eagerly looking forward to seeing what they do next.
The drama of the name thing is only heightened by the unnamed Bakaleya6. These guys are fan favorites, they've been shining in their TV series, they've made great use of Shonen Club exposure including this week. Taiga lives for ballads, Juri lives for hip hop, and this week we saw that back to back in the same strong medley. And at the end, I could visualize Shintaro with a real gun. Kinda scary. The fans have spoken, everyone calls them Bakaleya6, but Johnny calls them "___".
There was a lot of energy in this episode. Bouken Rider was a great start. Sexy Zone had an entertaining talk segment before they sang Suki Sugite, which is an okay song with 5 special messages within the lyrics from each group member, a lot better than giving Shori all the love. noon boyz, A.B.C-Z, and Yamapi dominated the second half. Jr. ni Q was not as good as usual, although Takahashi Fu, Yugo, and Jesse did pretty well in the spotlight. They wrapped up the show with an unusually energetic "bye bye" song, Ambitious Japan, which gave me the other big surprise: Anderson! I was thinking he'd retired months ago, not that I wanted that to happen, but he's hardly been seen all year. A nice finish.
This episode had some memorable moments for me as described above, but otherwise it was fairly average.
The drama of the name thing is only heightened by the unnamed Bakaleya6. These guys are fan favorites, they've been shining in their TV series, they've made great use of Shonen Club exposure including this week. Taiga lives for ballads, Juri lives for hip hop, and this week we saw that back to back in the same strong medley. And at the end, I could visualize Shintaro with a real gun. Kinda scary. The fans have spoken, everyone calls them Bakaleya6, but Johnny calls them "___".
There was a lot of energy in this episode. Bouken Rider was a great start. Sexy Zone had an entertaining talk segment before they sang Suki Sugite, which is an okay song with 5 special messages within the lyrics from each group member, a lot better than giving Shori all the love. noon boyz, A.B.C-Z, and Yamapi dominated the second half. Jr. ni Q was not as good as usual, although Takahashi Fu, Yugo, and Jesse did pretty well in the spotlight. They wrapped up the show with an unusually energetic "bye bye" song, Ambitious Japan, which gave me the other big surprise: Anderson! I was thinking he'd retired months ago, not that I wanted that to happen, but he's hardly been seen all year. A nice finish.
This episode had some memorable moments for me as described above, but otherwise it was fairly average.