It's so close we can taste it

Sasuke 31 starts taping in FIVE DAYS. That's in no time at all!

As if things weren't real enough, THEY ARE CONSTRUCTING THE STAGES NOW. Yesterday there was even a Nico Nico broadcast where they showed the assembly of Final Stage, but of course I totally missed out on that by sleeping through it. I thought the point of liking a Japanese show was that things would not air in the middle of the night??? Okay so it wasn't actually middle of the night, but who is awake at 6 am on a Saturday? Not me, that's for sure.

Oh, well, luckily there's a good recap of it over at Rambling Rican's, so I know what I missed, which wasn't much. Not many surprises there: I didn't expect Akiyama or Bunpei to show up, nor any of the other older competitors. I won't miss the Hedgehog or Long Jump too much either, and I'm glad that there's at least one Warped Wall! Now, if they could just bring back Half-Pipe Attack, aka the best First Stage obstacle ever, that would be awesome.

Anyway, we are not the only ones who are excited! I took to Twitter to see how our favourite competitors are preparing for the competion next week:

Source: https://twitter.com/urushiharayuuji/status/599150097469820929

Urushihara and a mysterious masked man took to the pool for some Backstream-training. Hmm, I wonder who THAT could be ...

Source: https://twitter.com/urushiharayuuji/status/599212985693773824

Nice, hooray! Yeah, I don't think anyone was surprised by that reveal. We all know this obstacle is their nemesis ...

Sorry, but this was the greatest moment in television history and no one can tell me differently.

Source: https://twitter.com/sasuke_tbs/status/599383415670976512

The start of the final stage construction! It's weird, because I know I read somewhere that Final Stage construction doesn't start until they're sure people will actually compete in it, but I always thought that sounded like total bullshit and now I know it's not true. It is finished in just a day though!

Source: https://twitter.com/inuimasato/status/599466549510975488

Words cannot describe how excited I am for the steel muscle festival!

Source: https://twitter.com/37Mistr/status/599801980173684736

Oh, and more great news: MR SASUKE IS NOW ON TWITTER. I haven't told Chriss this yet, because I wanted to dramatically reveal it on the blog. He's not competing, but the black tigers are and seems to be ready! I hope they do well, they have been a bit disappointing in the last Sasukes. I'm also kinda glad Mr Sasuke is not competing, because that means he won't be cut like last year.

Source: https://twitter.com/hiokimasashi/status/599595067536379904

Of course Urushihara is eating Shingo's wife's homemade cake, that guy tweets about food 90% of the time. I didn't screen print it but I'm pretty sure I also saw Kanno saying something about drinking beer for protein. The Sasuke diets are very interesting. Shingo himself seems to mostly be talking about the gym he's about to open and not preparing too much, but then again we all know that no amount of training is going to save him from Shingo'ing it up at some point...

Source: https://twitter.com/hitoshi_kanno/status/599729345742024704

I don't know what this means, but whatever. This is the amount of selfies we're already getting, and even though we won't know the results of Sasuke 31 for months I AM SO EXCITED FOR THE AMOUNT OF SELIFES THAT WILL BE TAKEN. I will be fucking pissed if no one brings their selfie stick to the competition to give us at least SOMETHING.

Source: https://twitter.com/sasuke_tbs/status/599816233177853952

Someone went to pray for a good Sasuke and safe competitors. Good idea, we do want to see spectacular fails and clears, but we don't want people to actually hurt themselves while they're at it. Except for Torisawa Katsuhide, of course, but hurting himself is kinda his thing.

Source: https://twitter.com/fujinosasuke/status/599854542235111424

The final adjustments! I'm not sure what the bathing is about, but Green Mountain of course means Midoiryama so I think we all know what they're preparing for. I think this is Kanno Hitoshi, Kishimoto Shinya (third stage in Sasuke 30), Kawaguchi Tomohiro (final stage in Sasuke 30) and Nagasaki Shunsuke (also third stage in Sasuke 30). Though why an earlier tweet from Nagasaki Shunsuke was in Chinese I don't know ...

Well, that's it for now, but I'm sure we'll all just be more and more psyched for the next few days. I'm extremely jealous of anyone who gets to go see it being taped, but you know ... next year I'll win Ninja Warrior SE and then I'll be there, so it's okay. For now let's just wish Rambling Rican a nice trip, and hope that Alexander Mars does GREAT in the competition as well. We're rooting for you, Alexander!! We're all rooting for you!

But until we know more ... Sayonara ninja lovers!

Sasuke 29: recap

Here's out first review of one of the Japanese broadcasts. Let's start with some general stats, for those looking for some quick info, that I compiled with information found on Wikipedia and Sasukepedia:

Air date: June 17 2013

Obstacles:

Bolded obstacles have no transition between them.

Results:

Notes: because of the SASUKE ASEAN OPEN CUP-thingy taking place later in 2013 only the person to finish third stage with the best time would have gone on to the final stage, although this never became an issue due to no one clearing third stage. Thank the gods BECAUSE THAT WAS A TERRIBLE IDEA since the best part about Sasuke is that everyone who clears a stage gets to go on to the next one.

________________________________________________________________

Chriss & Ell commentary:

Here we are, looking super-serious as we're embarking on yet another Sasuke adventure.

~*~

Torisawa Katsuhide starts strong by breaking a baseball bat on his neck.

Ell: "Just don't cut yourself like that guy did with a beer bottle."

Chriss: "Isn't this the same guy?"

Ell: "Yeah, you're right."

Ell: "You know, I think he did exactly this in Sasuke 24 as well."

~*~

Our friend Hanna kept texting us through-out this, since she was watching Sasuke for the first time with her husband. Made us feel like seasoned experts as she asked us questions about the show and the contestants, and - like us - wanting to get her hands on the USA vs Japan special. After she alerted us of the allegations of it being rigged Chriss did some research, and while we're not sure what to make of it, we're certainly in camp "it's fucking fishy that team Japan would lose so brutally as they did".

~*~

Then Hioki Masashi cleared first stage and we were all so happy for him:

So, um, happy we could cry apparently:

We can't decide what we love more: all the crying, or Matachi laughing at his crying friends. Not that he was fucking immune to it, though:

WIPING HIS EYES. He thought we wouldn't notice, but we did.

~*~

Chriss: "OH MY GOD, HE DROPPED HIS SHOE."

Ell: "WHAT!?"

Chriss: "Look!"

Ell: "It's still there, he's picking it up!"

~*~

WHY IS ASA WEARING A SCARF? WHAT IS UP WITH HIM AND SCARVES? I can't fucking deal with this anymore.

~*~

After Asa completely dominates first stage Matachi Ryo, Kanno Hitoshi and Urushihara Yuuji's attempts at first stage was completely cut, only showing them starting and finished. Naturally this was a bit upsetting.

Chriss: "They CUT him!? And we know he won't pass second stage! I can't believe this! I'm crying! ...oh, that's a cute baby!"

It is indeed a very cute baby. But not so cute that we'll forgive them for cutting out one of our faves like that.

~*~

Moving on to the second stage! Yamamoto Shingo times out during the water obstacle, giving us this shot:

Chriss: "There's an army of children again! They can't possibly all be his!"

This is basically brought up every time his army of children is shown, and we're still not sure what to make of it.

~*~

Looking at the water obstacle, a lot of people are struggling with it, not just Yamamoto Shingo (to our distress this includes Matachi Ryo).

Chriss: "Nagano would probably be great at this though, being a fisherman."

Ell: "Yeah, I hope he gets to try it sometime. He must be good at swimming if he works on a boat, right? Didn't we see him do situps on the side of his boat?
Chriss: Yeah."

Note: this is from the ANW special "25 reasons to watch Ninja Warrior"
also note I'm not 100% it is Nagano but you get the point

Ell: "You'd be insane to do that if you're not a good swimmer."

~*~

Chriss: "Did the announced just call Morimoto Yūsuke Sasuke-kun!? He's a tiny Sasuke boy."

~*~

After Morimoto fails third stage.

Chriss: "Where's Asa? Why isn't he crying!?"

~*~

If you're telling me you didn't cry when (what we're assuming is) Takahashi Kenji's daughter brought him a drawing of him achieving Kanzenseiha then get the fuck out of here, you grinch.

This is a show about ninjas and crying and we love it.

~*~

My last note just says "much crying :(" which I'm assuming is a reference to everyone failing third stage. My heart breaks just a little bit every time Asa fails the stupid Crazy Cliffhanger (okay, so it's not actually stupid, but I'm still upset about it!).

This concludes our Sasuke 29 recap, I hope you enjoyed it.

The clip that started it all

If you've been following our blog, you've probably already seen the famous clip from Ninja Warrior USA vs Japan, where Matachi Ryo takes on Stage 3. Since this clip is what started our obsession, we decided that we should take a closer look at it.

Haven't seen it before? No prob, here you go, feast your eyes!

In Stage 3 they had the following obstacles:

1. Roulette Cylinder

2. Doorknob Grasper

3. Floating Boards

4. Ultimate Cliffhanger

5. Bungee Rope Climb

6. Hang Climbing

7. Spider Flip

8. Flying Bar

(Can I just point out that Matachi Ryo's only ever done Ultimate Cliffhanger and Bungee Rope Climb in Sasuke before? At least according to my findings on Sasukepedia ...)

I mean, these obstacles are INSANE. Even Ezio has more to hold on to in Assassin's Creed II, for crying out loud!

Source: Gamespy

As we were watching it, I kept going "WHAT THAT'S IMPOSSIBLE" and I kinda looked like this:

So, yeah, it's amazing. And if you wanna know why we love this show, this is kinda it. Now, go watch the clip again!

Go home Aftonbladet, you're drunk

So, Swedish newspaper Aftonbladet tried their hands at writing an article about Sasuke, and, well, they didn't do very well. Luckily not too many people will read the article, because to access it you need their special "plus" subscription, which costs more and allows you to read pointless articles about what the actors in Dallas are doing today. And, of course, factually incorrect articles about Sasuke.

It kinda pisses me off even more that you'd have to pay for it and it's still competely wrong? I mean, yeah, it gets some things right: Sasuke started airing in 1997 in Japan, only three people have achieved Total Victory, and there is an American version of the show. They don't call it Sasuke though, only Ninja Warrior, which isn't technically incorrect, but would one mention of the original name kill them?

It gets worse when they try to present the only three people to ever achieve Total Victory, or Kanzenseiha as is the Japanese word for it. Sure, they get the basic stats on Akiyama Kazuhiko right, such as his age, height and which Sasuke he won. Well done. But then it gets a little iffy ...

Some are only small errors. Saying he "set a new record" when finishing final stage in Sasuke 4 is of course not wrong, but, er, of course he set a new record, no one else had ever finished it before him! It says he is now known as "Sasuke All-Star", but it isn't mentioned that this is a GROUP of people, not his personal nickname.

Then it says that "Galgfärden" in Sasuke 4 eliminated all other competitors. Galgfärden is the name they use for the Hang Glider in the Swedish competition, and that sure as fuck wasn't a part of Sasuke 4. I think they may mean the Pipe Slider, which no one but Akiyama finished in that one.

But it gets worse! They then inform us that he retired in "Sasuke 18", and isn't likely to return again. While he did retire in Sasuke 18, he has returned in Sasuke 20, 22, 24, 25 and 28. This isn't mentioned at all in the article though, leaving people to believe we haven't seen him since Sasuke 18. We have though, Aftonbladet, we have.

Then we get to the outright lie, stating that Akiyama usually has trouble with the Wall Lifting and the Spider Walk. Sure, he had trouble with the Wall Lifting the first two times he tried it, but never after that. In fact, looking at his stats at Sasukepedia, it is clear that the Warped Wall has brought him much more trouble. And the fucking Spider Walk??? Sasukepedia makes a point to say that he is the only All-Star to NEVER fail the Spider Walk. How can you credit that site as your source of information and then not read it??

As far as I can tell there are no factual errors in the text about Nagano, except he says he won on "the 17th try", which makes it sound like he personally tried seventeen times before winning and we know that's not how it went down.

The last thing is pretty hilarious though. I can see why they got it wrong, because it took me a while to find out what the truth was. However, if you can't find a fact, I don't think it counts as journalism to make some shit up instead of admitting you don't know it. So what is it that they did? They claim that Urushihara Yuuji is only 152 cm tall. At first I couldn't find a good source on this (it's not on Sasukepedia, and we know that is as far as Aftonbladet's research went), but even so THERE'S NO WAY IN HELL!?

If Urushihara is 152 cm, how short would that make Matachi Ryo?? And we know that he is 162, so unless that photo has been brutally manipulated then Urushihara is defintely taller than 152. Then I realized I should be able to find his height in Sasuke 27 where it was stated before everyone's performance, and sure enough, I was right on where I'd find the information, and I was right at guessing he's taller than Matachi Ryo. With one cm, but still:

But idk, actually taking the time to watch something you're writing an article about is clearly too much work, so I guess I'm being way too hard on the person who wrote the article. Making shit up when you don't know the facts is what true journalism is about, after all.

After this the article does have nice graphics of the Ninja Warrior SE stage, and hints as to what stage 2 will include, but given the factual errors we've seen so far I'm not gonna trust that to 100% until I see it on TV.

Should you happen to have Aftonbladet plus and wanna subject yourself to this inaccurate excuse for journalism you can read it here.