Borrowing Japanese Game Shows

Having lived in Hong Kong, I've seen my share of Japanese game shows on TV. I find the Japanese culture to be very strange. In a sense they are very repressed and pressured; You always to be so proper and perfect and everything is a competition and you always have to follow order. That's probably why the suicide rate is so high. But I do admire the perfection they try to accomplish, the high level customer service, the crazy artistic gift wrapping skills, the animations, the food and all the other good stuff. They DO do it better than anyone else I've seen.

But with all the stress for perfection comes with strange ways to release these stress. There's a higher rate of suicide, a higher rate of sadomasochistic relationships, you can pretty much tell how messed up people are by watching their porn and things that they get off on, hence all the urban legends. Ultraman and Power Rangers, Pokemons, Harajuku Girls, they are all a little bit off-centered but it's not necessarily bad. Growing up, I enjoyed watching the Japanese game shows where different people compete on who can stand the spiciest food, who can sweat the most, or who can eat the most. (They always have something to do with food) Watching people eating sushi with huge wads of wasabi in it is as much fun as watching the Japanese traveling program showing every pristine little towns and the local eateries.

Well, I'm usually out learning Kung Fu Tuesday nights, but I felt like taking two weeks off, so that's what I'm doing right now. So I finally got a glimpse of Wipeout and I Survived A Japanese Game Show. Wipeout is basically Spike channel's MXC with American players. The show is a bit athletic, you have to go through a muddy track, walking on rolling logs, swing through a water way and all. They slow-mo it when the contestant fall to make people laugh. I Survived a Japanese Game Show pitched 10 contestants against each other and turn those regular Japanese game shows into a reality show (Does everything have to be one?), each week those contestants have to participate in some version of Japanese game shows and one loser get kicked off the show, the ultimate winner get half a million or something like that. In the summer when the regular shows are off-air, these shows are not so bad. It's kinda like those brainless comedies.


Wipeout