Throwback Thursday

Ahh, a year ago ... when  I first watched Ninja Warrior Sweden and then convinced Chriss that watching three hours of a japanese game show would be a good way to spend our time. My Timehop actually informed me that February 2nd was the day when we watched Sasuke for the first time.

Good times @Chrisstheninja pic.twitter.com/wRMUQmQk0B

— Ell Eastwood-Solo (@Ellociraptor) February 2, 2016

Back then we didn't know anyone's name of course, so we had to come up with creative nicknames, like The Hat Man (Shingo), The Tree Cutter (Asa), Angry Trainer (Mr. Sasuke) or The Guy Who's Father Wasn't Dead (Kawaguchi Tomohiro) ... funny, we never had a nickname for Nagano, except maybe That Guy. We could tell he was special even before we knew who he was!

Tonight the first episode of Ninja Warrios SE season 2 airs and we could not be more excited. Sort of. I'd be more excited if I were in it, ehehehe! But it's gonna be great, spring truly is the Ninja Warrior/Sasuke season so we'll pop out of the snow, like daisies, and hopefully blog more. I know you've been dying to read our most excellent recaps.

Anyway, Chriss is staying with me this weekend, so we'll get caught up on Ninja Warrior SE and watch USA vs The World (no spoilers, please! Though I think I already know how it went because Drew Drechsel spammed my entire twitter account with praise during the broadcast. Drew, you're still the only American we like but that's pushing it, dude!). Except some recaps and general fangirling after the weekend.

Until then ...

Sayonara ninja lovers!!

The reports of our death have been greatly exaggerated ...

Okay, so I realize that having the last post be "we're not dead" and then not posting for six months is a bit ... I don't know what. Ironic? It's not great. To be fair, I broke my ankle not long after that post and moved back with my parents, so it's not like I could gif anything for quite a while, not having access to my computer and stuff.

Also I was not choosen to be on season 2 of Ninja Warrior SE. Sad face. Though apparently it wasn't filmed until September (I really thought it would be earlier in the summer), so I couldn't have been there even if I had been, with the broken ankle and all. Thank you, universe, for making sure that wasn't gonna happen.

I guess there's always next year.

Anyway, I don't know when exactly season 2 airs, but this blog will be back to recapping it by then, I promise. Before that, we've got USA vs The World to look forward to on January 31 2016. Our very own Alexander Mars will be on team Europe, so you bet we're gonna be watching and covering that. Though I'm not sure which team we'll be rooting for - are we forever team Japan, or do we have to get our patriotism on and root for the Europeans this time?

Well, however it turns out, I'm sure will be screaming about cheating and how we will never trust NBC. That's what usually happens.

Until then - sayonara ninja lovers. Oh, and merry christmas!

Our apologies

We do apologize for the lack of updates during the past weeks. Ninja Warrior UK didn't really appeal to us, and we haven't heard much about Sasuke Vietnam (except it finished taping and will air in October?). Sasuke 31 will be shooting in a few weeks and we obviously can't wait for that, and then there's American Ninja Warrior 7, which I'll definitely force Chriss to watch despite how we feel about it...

And I hear UK is moving on to stage 2/semis next week, which definitely will be worth giving a chance. Yeah, there are plenty of things on the Sasuke horizon.

Until then: sayonara ninja lovers!

Audition! :D

Hej, remember that awesome audition video I made for Ninja Warrior Sweden? Well, it must've impressed more people than just us hipsters, because I'm set to audition for the new season!

I first heard back from them a couple of weeks ago and was asked to submit a lot more information about myself, how much I work out and why I wanna do this (so I can go to Japan and compete in Sasuke, duuh) and while it did say "you'll be asked to go to an audition in a few weeks" I didn't dare assume I would get one... why get my hopes up, you know?

But today it was confirmed I'll be auditioning during the first week of June! I don't know where, when or how it'll happen, but I least I know that it will and that's good enough for me.

It's been a terrible week, so these were the kind of news I really needed. Now remember to send good thoughts out into the universe and hope I get to go on the show!

A hipster never forgets

Well, you know what they say about hipsters - we never forget. No. Wait. That's elephants. And the internet. We don't have any elephants, so I guess I'll have to post this on the internet to make sure it isn't forgotten.

Yeah, that's right, our good friends behind Multicon Sverige, we're gonna hold you to this:

Now, this "panel" will probably just be me and Chriss sitting in a corner watching The Clip That Started It All and singing Taylor Swift songs on our own, but it will definitely count as their having been a Sasuke panel at Multicon.

Maybe we'll see you there. Until then: sayonara ninja lovers!

Ninja Warrior SE audition

I promised we'd show you my Ninja Warrior SE audition video if this blog reached 1,000 page views today, and it did! I'm so proud of us, that's quite a lot views for a blog that's only been around for a few weeks and that we honestly only expected ourselves to read. We hope you like this blog as much as we do!

First I wasn't sure if showing the video was a good idea after I'd sent it in to Kanal5, but you can also apply by posting your video to social media and using the hashtag #NinjaWarriorSE, so I'm assuming it's okay to post this even though I sent it in the "normal" way. Maybe you can hype it a lot so they'll have no choice but to let me compete. ;)

Anyway, you're not allowed to watch this without sound. I'm sorry, but those are the rules: without the sound the video is ... not much to look at, but with the added sound effects, we feel the whole thing is taken to another amazing level.

Well, at least we laughed at lot while making it. That slowmo-effect at the end is what really sells it, if you ask me.

Sayonara ninja lovers! (Yeah, we're adopting this phrase. Are you honestly surprised?)

A sad day for the Sasuke Hipsters

One thing that allowed us to became so utterly obsessed with this show is that Chriss have been staying with me for the past six months, and therefore we've been watching TV together every night. Other friends, who are not sharing this tiny apartment with me, can probably never get into Sasuke the way we did when we spent all our evenings watching the show together.

Well, today Chriss officially moved back home to her parents. She'll obviously be back to hang out with me, but we'll be living 600 kms apart, and it won't be the same. 

Don't worry about the blog though. There's Skype for when we wanna watch Ninja Warrior SE, and I've already got plenty of notes for recaps of the Sasuke episodes we have watched. Worry more about us: we have a pact saying neither can watch a new episode of Sasuke without the other, so from now on we can only go back and rewatch stuff we've already seen.

We had a good last night though. It was my birthday, and while I did not get a Ninja Warrior party, we did have cake and watched Sasuke 27, with our friend who spent most of her time side-eyeing us when were fangirling a liiiittle too hard. But that's just how we roll.

In their quest to become champion

Yes, I always work out with perfect hair and make-up, don't you?

Sooo, today was the day. Me and Chriss took her camera, my skills and went out to shoot my audition video for the next season of Ninja Warrior SE. We've been talking about it since, eh, we first saw Ninja Warrior, but I'm pretty sure most people thought we were just joking.

We were not.

We're not gonna show the video, but we can assure you it's amazing. Not because I'm amazing (although I kinda am), but because of the sound effects we added that took the entire thing to whole other (amazing) level. We'll publish it here someday and you will see why we've been laughing for two hours.

Until then, just wish me good luck!

Sasuke Hipsters vs the world

After staying up all night to watch the Oscars (terrible idea, don't do it), we're now watching the American Ninja Warrior USA vs the world special before we get to go to bed again (I mean, we have slept, some five hours after the Oscars ended at 6 in the morning here, but we have been more or less dead all day).

Not a good idea. We're obviously only in it for team Japan and they're not doing very well. In our tired state we're reacting worse than Asa whenever our faves fail. And saying not so nice things when the Americans succeed (which we won't repeat here: this is a hate-free blog).

Hmpf. This is why having it as a competition rather than a challenge is a bad idea. 

When watching Sasuke you can cheer anyone on because their success will not affect yours (or, if you're watching rather than competing, your faves) at all, and that's the beauty of it. You never have to wish for someone to fail so that someone else can succeed, but watching this it's hard not to, and that bothers me even more than the failures of team Japan.

Deep thoughts from a tired mind.

Oh, and when Team Sweden eventually is formed and I get to be on it, I'll be known as the #sasukehipster. You know were you heard it first. ;)

Ninja Warrior Party

As I was browsing Pinterest, I stumbled upon (okay, I searched for "Sasuke, Ninja Warrior") pictures of these amazing Ninja Warrior Party decorations. And since Ell's birthday is coming up, I know what theme we'll have ...

Click on the picture to see it on Pinterest!
I tried to find the source for it, but no luck :(

Source: Swishprintables.com

You can also buy the printable version for these decoration at SwishPrintables Etsy store!

Now all I have to do is try to bake a cake, hmm ...

Why Sasuke hipsters?

So why did we decide on this name? Well ...

Neither of us had watched a second of Sasuke before the Ninja Warrior SE first aired. We'd barely heard about it: I had seen some American Ninja Warrior gifs (like the streaker guy) on tumblr, but that was basically it. However, it seemed cool enough and about two weeks ago I watched the first episode.

The day after that I kept talking to Chriss about how much I'd enjoyed it: you either got to see amazing athletic feats, or you got people completely messing up and you could laugh about it. Perfect show to watch for entertainment.

How exactly the idea to watch Sasuke 30 came to be after that I'm not sure about, but for some reason it seemed like a reasonable thing to do: to watch three hours of a game show in a language we didn't understand at all. And this from the girls who put of watching Boyhood for several months because "it's two hours and forty-five minutes, that's so looong" (we have since watched Boyhood, and we can assure you that Sasuke is better).

So watched it, and we loved it. Quite early on we started to see what we refer to as our "hipster" tendencies: that we would in every instance prefer the unsubbed japanese episodes to anything else. We watched some Ninja Warrior (japanese Sasuke broadcasted in USA, not to be confused with American Ninja Warrior) and found that even with the benefit of subtitles we didn't like them shortening down the episodes with several hours.

This was after seeing our first Sasuke ep.

Then we watched the second episode of the Ninja Warrior SE and realized how easy that first stage was compared to the current Sasuke first stage and at that point the "this is why the japanese original is so much better" was our standard phrase whenever watching something that wasn't unsubbed Sasuke eps:

And keep in mind that this was less than week after we first heard of the show, and just three days after we'd seen our first ever Sasuke episode.

So naming ourselves the Sasuke hipsters when starting this blog? Yeah, it seemed like the most obvious thing to do.