When I woke up this morning I thought I had dreamed that Yamada would produce the next Shonen Club. Except it wasn’t a dream. It’s true and I found out yesterday.
JE never ceases to surprise me.
Now, one thing about “producing”. It sounds like a lot, but it really isn’t. It’s not that you have to come up with a concept of a show and do all the MCing and carry ALL the responsibily, and if you mess up the whole show will be messed up. It’s nothing like that. If you’re producing Shonen Club it simply means that you get to say (and possibly sing) a few more lines than usual. But there have been people who got to say more on Jr.ni Q than Yuto during the SC he produced, so producing isn’t that big a deal really.
But it’s interesting to see who gets to produce because, let’s face it, it’s one of the many interesting ways JE is pimping people. So let’s have a look at who produced SC since November 2005:
Masuda Takahisa
Nishikido Ryo
Kato Shigeaki
NEWS
Kusano Hironori
Tegoshi Yuya
Yamashita Tomohisa & Yabu Kota
ＫＡＴ－ＴＵＮ
Kamenashi Kazuya
ＫＡＴ－ＴＵＮ
Yokoyama Yuu
Yaotome Hikaru
Nakajima Yuto
Kitayama Hiromitsu
Fujigaya Taisuke
Ueda Tatsuya
B.A.D. BOYS
Inoo Kei
Yamada Ryosuke (2006.10.01)
Totsuka Shota (2006.10.08)
Interesting. From November 2005 through January 2006 ALL members of NEWS got to produce SC (except Yamapi, who co-produced 2006.03.05 with Yabu, and Koyama who was MCing all these shows). So JE were really really pimping them. And then Kusano got drunk and NEWS were suspended. That was in February. Just a couple of weeks before the KAT-TUN debut.
I’ve been thinking about this a lot, and here’s my theory (and it’s just that, a theory, so don’t kill me over it, because I know some of you might want to):
KAT-TUN debuted in March. I don’t run a record company so I don’t know for sure, but I think it’s safe to say that you don’t come up with an idea like that only a few weeks in advance. You need some time to produce songs and an album and videos and all that. So I think JE decided that KAT-TUN would debut maybe in the late summer of 2005, just after the Uchi drinking scandal. I think that the fate of NEWS was sealed the very moment Uchi got suspended. I think JE wasn’t happy with how NEWS had developed since their debut in 2003. One of the original members (Moriuchi Takahiro) had already dropped out, maybe record sales weren’t that great either, and now a drinking scandal. So JE just called it a day and decided to drop NEWS and pimp KAT-TUN instead. So in the next couple of months every single NEWS member got to produce SC, as a farewell gift to the members (who don’t know of their fate yet) and their fans (who were still quite a few). And the next thing you know is that Kusano gets caught drinking too, NEWS is suspended, and the next day they announce KAT-TUN’s debut.
I think Kusano was set up. I think he was drinking, like Uchi had been drinking, and maybe like many of the older Johnny’s are drinking on a regular basis, except no one ever notices because JE is in total control of their artist’s lives. So taking a pic of Kusano drinking and selling it to the tabloids just at the right time is the easiest thing in the world.
JE killed NEWS so they (and thousands of fans) could concentrate on the KAT-TUN debut.
So, back to Shonen Club. With NEWS and KAT-TUN gone the young ones have the playground for themselves now. As of next month, 4 out of the last 10 SCs were produced by someone aged 15 or younger (Hikaru, Yuto, Inoo, Yamada). Which is great, because they’re great kids with great potential.
Hearing that Yamada would produce the next Shonen Club was a big surprise for me, and I have a feeling it wasn’t the last one…
Ryokou: Oh yeah, I forgot to mention: the theme of Yamada’s Shonen Club will be: “sexy”. Go figure…
