So apparently Kis-My-Ft2 will be embarking on a grand World National Tour this fall that will take them to 9 venues throughout Japan where they will play a total of 13 concerts. The tour will kick off on October 3 in Ooita (one of the smaller venues with app. 1,600 seats) and it will end with two concerts at Yokohama Arena (capacity 15,000) on December 19 and 20. Provided they’ll sell out all 13 concerts they’ll play to a total audience of app. 66,000 (US$4.4million in ticket sales). That’s great and exciting for a non-debuted group, but just to put it in perspective: once it’s over Hey!Say!JUMP‘s Tengoku concert tour will have been attended by some 270,000 people. That’s a whole different world. Kis-My-Ft2 may be popular enough to earn Johnny a little extra cash with ticket sales, but I don’t see how they could translate that into record sales that rival those of HSJ or NYwBIS, not to mention other debuted groups like KAT-TUN or NEWS. So yeah, national concert tour no problem, but a debut… I don’t think so.
In other news, and I’m not quite sure how this passed me by for so long (probably because of all the excitement about the NYwBIS debut), there are one or two things in the September Shonen Clubs that I’m rather looking forward to. The theme of the first Shonen Club on September 6 will be WORLD, and according to the official SC website the theme will be announced at the beginning of the show by B.I.Shadow‘s own Nakajima Kento. Yay, NAKAKEEEEENNNNN!!!! But well, it’s probably not gonna be a big deal. Koyama will say “Hey, Kento, come over here and tell us what today’s theme will be” and Nakaken will say “World”. And that’s it. Add to that his participation in the Junior Colosseum segment and it’ll be more attention for him than he got during the whole Volleyball Grand Prix, so I guess that’s good.
Later in the show Kawai, Totsuka and Fujigaya will read viewers’ letters, and the exciting thing is that these letters will be from foreign fans. Correct me if I’m wrong, but I think that’s quite unprecedented. I never wrote a letter to Shonen Club, but I’m sure a lot of foreign fans do that all the time. It’s a great thing that JE is finally beginning to recognize all those foreign fans. JE world domination yo~! So yeah, three thumbs up for that.
The things I’m most looking forward to in the September 13 Shonen Club will the love letter exchange between Shintaro and Tanaka Juri, and the Junior Colosseum segment where the participants will play a “Junior Yamanote Line game”. Oh how I love the Yamanote line. My favourite means of transport in all of Tokyo. I hope this game is gonna be fun. And finally Morimoto Shintaro and the Snow Prince Choir will perform a Bitter Moon / LOVE together medley. That should be fun as well.
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