Even I'm surprised that I'm actually writing a whole post on this but I felt like it so whatever. Ya-ya-yah is really old and ridiculous and features very young kids. But I saw these kids as grown-ups so it was interesting to see how they got molded.
Note: That's a ToraShige. There were 10 different animals but...
The show started in January 2003 so at this point there was no NEWS, only the K.K.K. team. Tegomass joined by Autumn and Koyama went to become a co-host which was only natural since he was way too old to participate anyway. The show went for 4 years ending in 2007 but all of the episodes I was able to get except one are from 2003-2004. A lot of it was lame and I didn't really like most of the kids there but it provided great insight into early character development and some parts were really amusing. Like Massu's AiQ which was very pointless but super-adorable.
I have to say Tegoshi was kind of amazing even back then. There was the episode where they paranked him setting up a series of really unfortunate and embarrassing events but he didn't even waver. He was just a kid and a newbie but he didn't look lost at all, with a firm resolve he just kept saying that he did all he could and it wasn't his fault.
Also I could understand why Shige was talking about feeling 'elite' and then crushed. K.K.Kity existed for 2 years ending up with just 3 members with Koyama as the leader, they got on well and seemed to have some privileges as Koichi's special unit. Though they were secondary participants they still looked very confident. Then they were thrown together with Tegomass and 4 others and got lost behind the cool Senpais Pi and Ryo and the vocal prowess of the kid who just got there.
I did research and found out that Ya-ya-yah didn't really work out. Initially there were 8 members, but by the time the show began they were down to six. As the show was closed in 2007 two of those debuted as Hey! Say! Jump! while Taiyou left JE. Eventually in 2010 Shoon also left JE so the band was officially over. I quite liked the two latter boys, they were really cute as kids but didn't really grow up well.