D-BOYS

'D-BOYS' is a group of television, cinema and theatre young actors managed by Japanese talent agency Watanabe Entertainment. The ''D'' in the group's name stands for "Drama" (acting work), "Dream", "Debut", "Discovery" and "Development" (growth and advancement).
Although the D-BOYS are promoted as a group and members occasionally work together on the same projects, each actor develops his career independently from his fellow members. New D-BOYS members are regularly selected through public audition events with participation of the group's fans.

Contents

Members

Current

Former

History

Group Projects

DD-BOYS

Stage Works

Fanclub Events

Other

Media

References

Footnotes

External links

See also

Members

Current

★ Hirofumi Araki

★ Yuya Endo

★ Shunji Igarashi

★ Masaki Kaji

★ Kohei Kumai

★ Tetsuya Makita

★ Shingo Nakagawa

★ Masaya Nakamura

★ Yuichi Nakamura

★ Koji Seto

★ Yuu Shirota

★ Hiroki Suzuki

★ Masato Wada

★ Kotaro Yanagi

★ Tomo Yanagishita

Former

★ Osamu Adachi

★ Yuma Minakawa

★ Katsuki Nakamura

★ Shintaro Tetsu

★ Ichitaro Yamazaki

History

D-BOYS was originally formed in early 2004 with Kotaro Yanagi, Ichitaro Yamazaki and Yuya Endo, co-stars in the Musical Tennis no Ohjisama (Tenimyu) stage series.
The first D-BOYS open audition was held on July 27 2004, where Yuichi Nakamura, Shunji Igarashi, and Katsuki Nakamura were selected to join the group. Runner-up contestants Masato Wada, Osamu Adachi, Masaki Kaji, Yuma Minakawa, Shintaro Tetsu, Hirofumi Araki and Hiroki Suzuki joined through August-December 2004. Actor Yuu Shirota also joined in October 2004.
Ichitaro Yamazaki left the group to pursue solo representation in March 2005. He was shortly followed by Katsuki Nakamura and Shintaro Tetsu, who have since left the entertainment business. Kohei Kumai, Koji Seto, and Shingo Nakagawa then joined D-BOYS through the second open audition, held on July 31 2005.
Tomo Yanagishita joined the group through the third open audition, held in 2006. Osamu Adachi and Yuma Minakawa withdrew from the group on January 2007, although they are still represented by Watanabe Entertainment. Tetsuya Makita, second place winner of the third audition, and Masaya Nakamura joined in July 2007.
The fourth open audition was held in May 28 2007, with Masahiro Usui and Masashi Mikami as winners^[1]. They have not yet been announced as official members^[2] at the D-BOYS website.

Group Projects

In addition to their individual careers, the D-BOYS are also involved in collective projects, as part of the group promotion work.

DD-BOYS

DD-BOYS was a drama-documentary variety series, featuring the D-BOYS members as themselves. Each episode had a short staged section following the plot of the members living in the fictional ''D-House'' and seeking ways to raise money for rent, followed by a documentary section showing the members undertaking tasks or challenges to raise that money. Some tasks were inspired by the actor's own personality -e.g., a member who was known to enjoy singing or dancing would have a task related to that hobby, etc. The show was 23 episodes long and aired from April 10th 2006 to September 25th 2006 on TV Asahi.

Stage Works

★ ''D-Live 2005'' (March 2005) - live entertainment show, featuring all members.

★ ''D-Live 2006'' (May 2006) - live entertainment show, featuring all members.

★ ''Out of Order'' (March 2007) - live entertainment show, featuring Yuya Endo, Masaki Kaji and Kohei Kumai as regular performers, with guest performances by all other members.

★ ''D-BOYS STAGE'' (June 2007) - musical theatre, featuring all members, with Yuu Shirota, Masato Wada, Shunji Igarashi, Hiroki Suzuki and Hirofumi Araki as guest performers.

Fanclub Events

The D-BOYS hold special events where fanclub members have the opportunity to meet the actors in person and interact with them in camp activities and games such as cook-offs, tug-of-war, etc, in which the members are split into teams, leading groups of fans to compete with each other.

★ Official Fanclub Day Camp Bus Tour (November 13th, 2005)

★ Official Fanclub Limited Bus Tour (August 25th to August 27th, 2006)

Other

★ Marvelous Radio Vibration (May 5th, 2005 - April 1st, 2006) - weekly radio show hosted by Yuu Shirota, Kotaro Yanagi and Yukki.

★ 43rd Secret New Years' Performance Tournament "Young Man Colosseum" (January 1st, 2006) - television guest appearance, performed by Masaki Kaji and Hiroki Suzuki.

★ 44th Secret New Years' Performance Tournament "Chinese Lion Dance" (January 1st, 2007) - television guest appearance, performed by Yuya Endo, Masaki Kaji, Hiroki Suzuki, Masato Wada and Yuma Minakawa.

Media

D-BOYS members have released merchandise in the form of photobooks, DVDs and CDs individually, or in relation to a work project (eg. character image CDs/photobooks). As a group, they have released the following items:

★ ''D-BOYS'' photobook (Tokyo News Agency, April 2005, ISBN 4-924566-42-X)

★ ''START!'' photobook (Gakken Co., Ltd., March 2006, ISBN 4-05-403035-1)

★ ''Prince Series'' photobook collection (April 19th, 2007) featuring Hiroki Suzuki, Hirofumi Araki, and Koji Seto

★ ''Prince Series D-BOYS Collection'' DVD collection (May 16th, 2007) featuring Hiroki Suzuki, Hirofumi Araki, and Koji Seto

References

★ Wikipedia Japanese article on D-Boys

Footnotes

1. 4th Audition Winners announcement as of May 29 2007
2. Official D-BOYS members list as of July 16 2007

External links

★ D-BOYS Official Website

★ DD-BOYS Official Website

★ Watanabe Entertainment Official Website

See also

★ Musical Tennis no Ohjisama (Tenimyu)

★ Live Action Tennis no Ohjisama Movie