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What's Wrong With American Ninja Warrior?
Reader Thom Stark (thomst) writes with a pointed review of this year's Americanized version of (awesome) Japanese TV show "Sasuke." "I've been a fan of the program the G4 channel calls "Ninja Warrior" since I first encountered it in mid-2005. For those who are unfamiliar with the show, it's a re-edited-for-American-TV version of a Japanese show called "Sasuke," with often-snarky English commentary and graphics overlaid on the Japanese original. "Ninja Warrior" is a fast-paced, wildly-entertaining program in which 100 contestants of varying skill levels pit themselves against a 4-stage obstacle course that grows ever more fiendishly difficult with each passing season. There've been 27 such seasons to date, and the most current incarnation has become so incredibly taxing that Batman himself would have trouble completing it. Now G4 has teamed up with its corporate parent, NBCUniversal, to bring the world's toughest obstacle course to America, and the resulting show, "American Ninja Warrior" turns out to be distinctly inferior to its Japanese progenitor. The final broadcast in a series that has run for six previous weekly installments appeared on July 9, with segments on both G4 and NBC, and I thought it was fitting that I mark the occasion with a critique of what I believe to be "American Ninja Warrior"'s fatal philosophical and production missteps, and contrast them with the original pitch-perfect product." (Read on below.)
First, it's important to understand that the Japanese program's name has nothing to do with either ninjas or warriors. "Sasuke" means something like "excellence" in Japanese. It has much the same flavor as the Greek concept of arete, the pursuit of excellence as a defining life goal. G4's marketeers clearly decided that their ADHD-addled core audience of video gamers was unlikely to find a show called "Excellence" compelling enough to warrant paying attention, so they decided to jazz it up by invoking ninjas, instead. Oh, and warriors, too, to make it more appealing to the World of Warcraft fanatics. And that was fine, as far as it went, because G4 had the good sense not to mess with the program content itself (other than to poorly translate much of the Japanese-language commentary, again in an apparent attempt to inject some good ol' American zazz).
As a side note, commentary is not the only translational sin of which G4 is guilty. The competition takes place at Midoriyama, a Japanese place name that G4 insists on referring to as "Mount Midoriyama." The problem with that is that "yama" is a Japanese suffix meaning "mountain." Thus, "Fujiyama" means "Mount Fuji" and "Midoriyama" means "Mount Midori" — which, in turn, means that G4's translation is not only redundant, with its repeating of the word "mountain" in both English and Japanese, it's wildly inaccurate, because the Japanese word means "Mount Midori."
But I digress.
"American Ninja Warrior" — the strictly-domestic production — suffers badly from human interest bloat. The Japanese program (at least as it is presented on G4) frequently features mini-portraits of the competitors, but these segments are very short — typically under 20 seconds — and they help to put a human face on the often-superhuman efforts of the program's contenders. In "American Ninja Warrior," the corresponding segments too often are near-epic mini-documentaries that run a minute or longer, and they seriously impair the program's flow — especially because there are so flinkin' many of them. The producers badly need to rein in their out-of-control bathos machinery and reduce both the number and the running time of their athlete portraiture.
But the worst mistake that the brainiacs behind "American Ninja Warrior" have made is to Americanize the competition. The most endearing philosophical quality of "Sasuke" is that the participants compete, not against each other, but individually against the course itself. There is no zero-sum in the game of Sasuke. Should more than one contestant complete the nigh-impossible series of obstacles (an outcome that has never yet occurred on "Sasuke"), both would be equally celebrated, both would be equally entitled to claim the title of "winner," and the accomplishment of one would in no way diminish the glory of the other. To the contrary, such an event would be cause for national celebration, since winners of "Sasuke" are considered national heroes in Japan.
By contrast, not only have the American producers chosen to have the participants compete against each other in regional qualifying events for a spot in the "finals" competition in Las Vegas (not an unreasonable choice, given that they needed to whittle the field down to a manageable number of contestants for the trials at the actual Mount Midori course), but they've made it a zero-sum game. Like the Highlander, there can be only one American Ninja Warrior — which reduces the exalted pursuit of excellence to just another athletic competition, with the top prize of half-a-million dollars going to the one contestant who not only completes the course, but does so in the fastest time. Anyone else who makes it to the top of Mount Midori is, basically, just another chump. An also-ran. A footnote.
And that's what's really wrong with "American Ninja Warrior."
First, it's important to understand that the Japanese program's name has nothing to do with either ninjas or warriors. "Sasuke" means something like "excellence" in Japanese. It has much the same flavor as the Greek concept of arete, the pursuit of excellence as a defining life goal. G4's marketeers clearly decided that their ADHD-addled core audience of video gamers was unlikely to find a show called "Excellence" compelling enough to warrant paying attention, so they decided to jazz it up by invoking ninjas, instead. Oh, and warriors, too, to make it more appealing to the World of Warcraft fanatics. And that was fine, as far as it went, because G4 had the good sense not to mess with the program content itself (other than to poorly translate much of the Japanese-language commentary, again in an apparent attempt to inject some good ol' American zazz).
As a side note, commentary is not the only translational sin of which G4 is guilty. The competition takes place at Midoriyama, a Japanese place name that G4 insists on referring to as "Mount Midoriyama." The problem with that is that "yama" is a Japanese suffix meaning "mountain." Thus, "Fujiyama" means "Mount Fuji" and "Midoriyama" means "Mount Midori" — which, in turn, means that G4's translation is not only redundant, with its repeating of the word "mountain" in both English and Japanese, it's wildly inaccurate, because the Japanese word means "Mount Midori."
But I digress.
"American Ninja Warrior" — the strictly-domestic production — suffers badly from human interest bloat. The Japanese program (at least as it is presented on G4) frequently features mini-portraits of the competitors, but these segments are very short — typically under 20 seconds — and they help to put a human face on the often-superhuman efforts of the program's contenders. In "American Ninja Warrior," the corresponding segments too often are near-epic mini-documentaries that run a minute or longer, and they seriously impair the program's flow — especially because there are so flinkin' many of them. The producers badly need to rein in their out-of-control bathos machinery and reduce both the number and the running time of their athlete portraiture.
But the worst mistake that the brainiacs behind "American Ninja Warrior" have made is to Americanize the competition. The most endearing philosophical quality of "Sasuke" is that the participants compete, not against each other, but individually against the course itself. There is no zero-sum in the game of Sasuke. Should more than one contestant complete the nigh-impossible series of obstacles (an outcome that has never yet occurred on "Sasuke"), both would be equally celebrated, both would be equally entitled to claim the title of "winner," and the accomplishment of one would in no way diminish the glory of the other. To the contrary, such an event would be cause for national celebration, since winners of "Sasuke" are considered national heroes in Japan.
By contrast, not only have the American producers chosen to have the participants compete against each other in regional qualifying events for a spot in the "finals" competition in Las Vegas (not an unreasonable choice, given that they needed to whittle the field down to a manageable number of contestants for the trials at the actual Mount Midori course), but they've made it a zero-sum game. Like the Highlander, there can be only one American Ninja Warrior — which reduces the exalted pursuit of excellence to just another athletic competition, with the top prize of half-a-million dollars going to the one contestant who not only completes the course, but does so in the fastest time. Anyone else who makes it to the top of Mount Midori is, basically, just another chump. An also-ran. A footnote.
And that's what's really wrong with "American Ninja Warrior."
In Japan, people are praised for trying their best. In most seasons, no one wins the final obstacle. In America, there has to be a winner to celebrate, everyone else is a failure. I much prefer the Japanese way of looking at things.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
Or rather, don't. Seriously, don't.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
~800 word reviews about "American Ninja Warrior".
This is mostly a disturbingly obsessive whine over details that do not matter, with an actual critique only making up a fraction of the last couple paragraphs. It uses 500 words to lodge exactly two valid complaints:
1. Making a competition out of a challenge, which are fundamentally different.
and
2. Slightly increasing the proportion of the show that is human interest.
If there were some sort of news that made this arbitrary blob of complaining relevant, it would just be badly written, instead of bizarrely atopical and badly written. There's not, and it just seems like completely off the wall "nerd-rage" over nothing in particular. Shameful editorial standards at work here.
I've not seen American Ninja Warrior, but the vast majority of American remakes of popular import shows get the same treatment. First, you start of with something that's popular. Then you assume that Americans are too stupid to understand any culture other than the perfectly homogenised average of the USA as portrayed by Hollywood. Then you remove everything that doesn't conform to this. And then you end up with something that even the target audience thinks is dumb.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
I prefer the clearly dubbed versions of Godzilla to anything made to "resemble" Godzilla. G4s version of Ninja Warrior holds onto the same cheezy camp that makes a Godzilla Dub intriguing. The "American" Ninja Warrior doesn't hold the same level of camp that only can be done via a dub. Maybe if they took American Ninja Warrior and dubbed it in Japanese they would be able to enjoy the same level of camp we do with Sasuke.
>> ""American Ninja Warrior" — the strictly-domestic production — suffers badly from human interest bloat. The Japanese program (at least as it is presented on G4) frequently features mini-portraits of the competitors, but these segments are very short — typically under 20 seconds — and they help to put a human face on the often-superhuman efforts of the program's contenders. "
Oh, just wait until the Olympics. They will do lengthy segments that try to ferret out the most painful moments in every athlete's life (with soft piano music) so the audience can have a little Rocky moment when an athlete wins an event.
His hair was perfect.
The Japanese version does not insult the viewers intelligence. The American version does.
There are two more episods in the July 9th episode, they only did the first stage of Mount Midoriyama.
I do agree that the American show emphasizes competition against each other with the line "who will be the first" instead of "will anyone".
But I do have to ask, how on-point can a review be if the reviewer didn't even watch the show enough to notice it didn't actually go to the end?
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
In England there's a hill called Torpenhow Hill. The first mapmakers asked the locals what they called it, and the locals said "Tor", which meant "hill" in the old language. The newcomers spoke a different language, and so they named it "Tor Pen," adding a suffix which meant hill in their own tongue. Few centuries go by, new mapmakers come around speaking Old English, which uses the word "How" for "hill." "Tor Pen, you say? Okay Torpen How it is!"
Finally modern English maps are made and this time they contract "Torpen How" into "Torpenhow" and add "Hill".
So the name of the place, translated into English, is "Hill-hill-hill hill." How's that for silliness?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Chef
And then they bought it to the USA, with William Shatner, and it completely and utterly sucked:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Chef_USA
The point is, the TONE was off, it was like drunk golf buddies who stumbled on a casual cooking competition, no reverence for the food, no care for the technique. Much like American Ninja warrior: wrong tone, just as you say.
Luckily, the Food Network made another stab at Iron Chef, and this time it worked, with Alton Brown and the "nephew" of the original Chairman Kaga (Hawaiian Fillipino martial artist Mark Dacascos), and other cross overs like Iron Chef Morimoto:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iron_Chef_America
Not as delightful as the original, but it works, it is enjoyable to watch, because the TONE is the same: they really care about the food, and they really pay attention to the cooking and technique.
If something works, don't mess with it!
I am certain some useless Hollywood suit said you need to change Sasuke to suit American audiences. Rightfully, that suit should be fired. If the formula works, don't mess with it, or you have some stillborn mess no one wants to watch.
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I was going to post about the American Top Gear too.
It seems that the USA excels at finding good shows from other countries, bringing them here, and then completely missing the point. It's classic Cargo Cult mentality: the superficial form is there, but they entirely fail to understand why it was good to begin with.
"American Ninja Warrior" ... suffers badly from human interest bloat.
It's endemic in US TV coverage of any individual sport, it seems. The Olympics have been unwatchable for years, because you get 2 minutes of sprinting or swimming or tumbling, and a half-hour sob story about the life struggles of one of the American athletes. Great, she was orphaned at age 2 and raised in abject poverty by her quadrapeligic great-aunt in the basement of a pig slaughterhouse; it's amazing that she overcame that to become a world champion gymnast. Now can we PLEASE turn off the sad music and cut to cycling or equestrian jumping, or javelin-throwing, or archery, or any one of the other dozen events you've been ignoring all week because there's not a photogenic American with a compelling life story in the top 5 contenders?
0 1 - just my two bits
America and Japan, are two very different countries, with a much different culture.
While we have similarities, there are also big differences.
For example back when I was a Kid, in Boy Scouts I was Hiking in New Mexico (Philmont a big Boy Scout Camp, where people come from around the world) There was a Japanese Troop that was taking a similar route that we had, and we met up from time to time. At the Trading Posts there was what was called a Swap Box. Where after we get our Rations of food (usually for 2 or 3 days) we can go threw them, drop food we didn't like, and pickup food that we did like. We actually loved it when the Japanese troop was there the same day. They would trade Oat Meal Packets which we really liked, with some energy bars we found to be disgusting. Because Americans Like Sweet food more then Japanese do.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
Mr. Stark apparently doesn't know much about Japanese culture. "Sasuke" is a rather straightfroward reference to Sarutobi Sasuke, and the name has been used to invoke the idea of ninjas since at least the 1920's.
The worst part is definitely the little bio bits. Boring, and I just don't care. Reminds me of Olympic broadcasts here in the U.S. Twenty minutes of giving the life story of every American athlete, then thirty seconds of those athletes failing miserably. If there's time left between commercials, they might show the top three or four foreign competitors. Yuck. Drop the "human interest", just give me the goddamn events - as many as you can cram into however much time you have. I would much rather be watching the last place pole vaulter from New Guinea than some shitty story about how American Athlete #3 is bravely competing through the pain of a stubbed toe and their mother's recent diagnosis of a hang nail.
Same with Ninja Warrior - I enjoy the Japanese version from time to time, because 90% of the show is someone actually trying to complete the course. You know, the interesting part that got me to turn on the channel. Minimal time is spent on building up each individual competitor, and the brief sketches they do occasionally give are more than enough to establish who the person is. American version, approximately 60-70% seems to be build-up for athletes who end up eating it on the first obstacle.
Your critique of the show turning winning contestants into losers is dead on. Kamerion Wimbley took and completed the preliminary course. Watching a man of his size complete the course was amazing to see. Then we got to see him get knocked out due to other contestants coming in with faster times. And then watched an added insult in the finals when they bring in 'wild card' contestants--many of whom did not even complete the preliminary course. And of course all the wildcards were turned into 'human interest' stories. Thankfully the grandfather wildcard actually did complete the course.
My biggest issue with the show was that they end up giving only summaries of the runs to half of the contestants--even after having 2/3rds of the contestants competing on the G4 show. The original show packed the same amount of content into 30 minutes that NBC is trying to stretch to 2 hours.
Now, with sports, you'd expect a much easier crossover, but I can see the submitter's points, for sure. But in the case of most other shows that get imported to the States, most notably (IMHO) British comedy, they just don't translate well due to cultural differences. IT Crowd was a fantastic show in the UK... did the US version ever make it past the pilot (almost a scene for scene reproduction which, for whatever reason, was just weak and didn't work?)
The Office is another example people use, although I must admit I've never spent any considerable time watching either. How is the US version of Shameless compared to the UK version?
I'm going way off topic here, but I feel like ranting, so mod me as you will. It seems like ever since the Sonic the Hedgehog commercials of the mid-90s hit the airwaves, America has this obsession with being loud, irreverent, and in-your-face. TV shows and movies largely eschew complicated or subtle humor in favor of lets-see-how-much-we-can-get-away-with. That's what turned me off to Family Guy after the first few seasons. Alright, McFarlane, we get it... you're really pushing the envelope there with your three identical shows. Sadly, most "average citizens" seem to eat this garbage up. I often think of the scene in Idiocracy with the TV show "Ow My Balls".
Honestly, I have Comcast at my apartment solely for the Internet (it costs you more if you don't get TV through them also)... I have about a dozen channels, 8 of which son en Espanol... but I have an XBox360 and Netflix, and far more quality programming to watch than I'll ever get to, thanks to those.
Allow me to digress one more time, though... and slightly back on topic. One Japanese obstacle course show that was aired by Spike was altered to the point of parody, and THAT worked... in the US it was called "MXC" or "Most Extreme Elimination Challenge", and the ridiculous voice overs were done, IIRC, by comedians, and were genuinely funny. I miss that show.
Funny, but I guess it probably isn't really true ...
http://www.thefreelibrary.com/The+debunking+of+Torpenhow+Hill-a098250320
I got that link from the Wikipedia article on the subject.
Clovis
^ Clovis, look! It's that guy you are!
You should be cancelling cable because it's $165.
Fans of the original simply should not have gotten their hopes up.
Fans of the original never had hopes for this version - as you said, the core group that loved the original knew from the start that the american version would be an abortion. Late comers, God bless them, might like the new, watered down version, because ignorance is bliss.
I find it absolutely entertaining to see how poorly a marketer or television guru can do when given enough time and money. Hell, I could rip off a show from another country and do it terribly. Where's my paycheck?
And I LOVED the "most extreme elimination challenge" version of Takeshi's Castle. I don't care how far off it was. I fucking loved that show. Guy LeDouche was my favorite 'character' of any show, ever.
PIN number
Crappy remake
""Sasuke" means something like "excellence" in Japanese."
No, Sasuke has no translatable definition. To say excellence in Japanese, it's shuuitsu, shun, or shunei.
Sasuke is the name of a revered warrior, Sarutobi Sasuke.
Go figure neither editors nor article writer have any real fucking clue about the Japanese language, and thus would have NO clue about the origins of the name of a 'ninja-based' show.
Still waiting on Serviscope_minor to wake up to fucking reality and realize that Jessica Price isn't going to fuck him.
First, you start of with something that's popular. Then you assume that Americans are too stupid to understand any culture other than the perfectly homogenised average of the USA as portrayed by Hollywood.
And I think that the crazy part of it is that they take something popular, and then they go, "Well American audiences would never go for that! We have to change it." No, American audiences *would* go for that. They did go for that. You know they did, because it was popular enough that you wanted to copy it.
I don't think the problem is necessarily that the producers think the American audience is dumb (though I'm sure it's part of it), but that the producers themselves are dumb. Their job is to make television shows that people want to watch, and they're not very good at it.