You see, When I started out in the Johnny’s fandom shortly after the French Revolution we didn’t have such a thing as HD. Many of the Shonen Club and Ya-Ya-yah videos I used to watch in the olden days were of such poor quality that it was sometimes difficult if not outright impossible to see who was actually singing and backdancing. We’ve come a long way since then, and nowadays we get really great quality videos more and more often, and that’s great. However, I don’t really mind watching poor quality Hyakushiki episodes in 320×240 resolution with a 500kb bitrate. I grew up in a time when shops were still selling black-and-white TV sets so people could watch one of only three TV channels that were available, so to think that today I’m able to watch anything that airs anywhere in the world if I just know where to look still amazes me, and even if the quality isn’t all that great it’s still a whole lot better than some of the grainy b/w TV I used to watch as a child.
So yeah, I don’t really need very good or even HD quality, but hey, if I can get it I really enjoy it because let’s face it, there are a lot of details to be seen in HQ or HD that you’d simply miss in poor quality videos. Like, how good 1980 make-up artists were at covering up Matchy’s acne. And many other things.
The other day I was watching last week’s Shonen Club in HD, and I noticed something that I hadn’t been able to notice in the YouTube version. There was something on Chinen’s arm that… doesn’t look good. Click on the thumbnail for the big picture.
May I be so bold as to ask what exactly happened here? Did Hikaru beat him up? Did Ryutaro put out his cigarette butts on Chinen’s arm? Kinki love play gone wrong? Or is it really just an unfortunate case of acne? I don’t know, I’ve had acne in a lot of places, but never on the inside of my forearm. But maybe that’s just me.
Poor baby.
EDIT: I wrote the above section before I started watching today’s Shonen Club. It’s obsolete now because they explained what happened to Chinen’s arm. However, I didn’t feel like deleting what I had already written, so…
Aaaanyway, moving on.
No HD version of today’s Shonen Club for now, so for now YouTube rips will have to suffice.
The show got off to a great start with all of the Juniors performing Seishun Amigo. The complex dance moves seemed to be quite a challenge for Yugo, and he was somewhat struggling. But that’s okay. I can’t get these damn moves right either. >_>
After a short introduction by Nakamaru, Koyama (who was wearing a bath robe that was a bit short, what’sですよ！) and Akun of today’s theme 仲間 everybody cleared the stage for today’s guests Hey!Say!7. They performed a medley of Nounai Dance and the ever so awesome Mayonaka no Shadow Boy.
Download: SC 2009-10-11 HS7 Medley.avi – SC 2009-10-11 HS7 Medley.mp3
I don’t really care much for Nounai Dance, but man, it was so great to see Yuto and Ryutaro sing and dance. Of course it was great to see Keito too, but since he’s a regular on Hyakushiki I didn’t feel quite as deprived of him as I did of the other two in recent months. So yeah, that was great fun to watch, and I couldn’t help but notice that Yuto and Keito seem to be the only HS7 members who have developed noticeable armpit hair so far. (HD please!!!) I’m not sure about Yamada. He was more chastely clad than the others and didn’t rip his clothes off his body for a change.
After the medley it was HSJ talk with Koyama and Nakamaru. They talked about their recent concert at Tokyo Dome. At first it looked like it would be the usual Yamada/Chinen talk with Keito, Yuto and Ryutaro just standing there pretending to be interested, but lo and behold, Yuto was allowed to say a few words, and it turns out that Chinen fell during the concert, hence the injuries on his arm. Lucky boy that he didn’t fall on his beautiful face. D:
Next it was for something completely different. And I mean completely different. Three Juniors (Kishi Takayoshi, Sugihara Saeki, Ishigaki Daisuke) played three classical pieces on their not quite so classical pianos as Hey!Say!7 looked on in awe. And then Goto Hiromi came out and started torturing his violin as Kishimoto Shintaro and Jesse Luis danced to it. I have never seen anything like it on Shonen Club before (or anywhere else for that matter) but I must say I found it strangely entertaining.
Download: SC 2009-10-11 Classical Medley & Bitter Moon.avi – SC 2009-10-11 Classical Medley & Bitter Moon.mp3
Aww, Ootsuka. ♥ Cuteness on a stick.
As you can see for his Bitter Moon performance Shintaro wore the same awesome outfit as last week, which is great. And for some strange reason I find it comforting to know that neither Shintaro nor anyone of Snow Prince Gasshoudan will have to deal with acne or armpit hair for quite a while.
Next up, Question?’s Ishigaki and Yodogawa read their love letters to each other, but they took it all back in the following song (”Don’t touch me, don’t love me”) which also saw more fiddling by Goto, yay! But Goto wasn’t only fiddling, he was also singing, and my god, he has a beatiful voice. I’m not the biggest fan of Question?, but that was an awesome performance.
Kis-Fy-Ft.2 wo abake was pretty funny, but I guess it’s even funnier if one understands that damn language. =/ They went on to perform Inori, and I enjoyed that quite a lot as well. Great song, nice performance.
Kansai Jr Dengonban was funny because they mentioned me! 
Or somebody else with the name Kamichan. After all those years of hard work they finally recognized me, yay! I’m so happy. XD
After that A.B.C-Z read a fan letter, made a couple of funny poses and then performed Ashita no tame ni boku ga iru, which was very beautiful. I didn’t get the guitar thing though. I mean, when you hear half a dozen instruments but see only a single guitar and nothing else it just looks kinda… weird.
And that was about it. A great Shonen Club (probably my favourite this year) came to a great ending with a Can Do ! Can Go !～REAL DX medley. The absence of HS7 in the final medley was a bit of a let down, but that’s really the only sour grape I could find in this show.
So yeah, that was a lot of fun to watch, but it was alwo very exhausting because I kept going back and forth between watching it and writing this post, and the whole operation ended up taking almost 4 hours. >_>
That’s why I’m gonna sign off for today now and have my boyfriend massage my head while I watch Merlin.
Jaa~
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