How did everyone discover SASUKE?

[ekkerb11]

This has probably been discussed before but I've only been on the boards for a year. Anyway, beyond just "I saw it on G4" or "ANW brought me to it," how specifically do you remember finding out about Sasuke.


I remember vividly it was a school night in 2006. I always liked G4 for their video game shows like X-Play, but I remember on multuple occasions flipping through to G4 and Sasuke was on, but I for some reason thought it was like a Cops ripoff (blame middle school me!) cause G4 was either video games, Attack of the Show (didn't care for either), or Cop-type marathon shows. Anyway, I was sick this night and decided to watch a show. I saw "Ninja Warrior" was on and decided I was too lazy to find anything else to watch. I believe it was Sasuke 13 or 14 in the second stage, and Shingo was doing the spider walk (maybe a different tourney). Anyway, from then on the rest was history!

[sasukeisthebest]

When I was watching ANW on my computer, i found a video titled "Sasuke 1", and I clicked it. Then I began watching the whole tournaments.

[Paragus]

I (for the most part) discovered SASUKE after watching ANW: USA vs. Japan a little after ANW6 ended. However, I do have a few really foggy memories of the G4 days since I always watched it way back when, and Ninja Warrior always seemed somewhat familiar to me.

[OwlRTA]

I watched ANW 4 on TV during a road trip through Northern California, and I liked it, but forgot about it for ANW 5. I only remembered it when I accidentally saw the Stage 3 portion of USA vs. Japan a while later. I found Sasuke through that and I've been hooked ever since

[LusitaniaAngel313]

Midnight Spank. arsenette knows the story. I really don't need to repeat it. XD

[blah123]

I worked an internship in the summer of 2009 during which the people I was working for housed me in this apartment complex. It was the first place I had lived that had cable/dish/etc., hence I had never seen / heard of G4 before that. Once I saw it, was instantly hooked. One of my roommates at the time was somewhat familiar with it already, and he kept going on about this fisherman dude that was said to be the greatest. The marathon on G4 was right in the height of the Levi era. I remember like it was yesterday seeing Shingo's hilarious fall in Sasuke 22. I watched the remainder of the marathon, which if I recall correctly capped off with Sasuke 23 -- an epic tournament in its own right. Needless to say, I haven't looked back since. I've always been into "alternative" sports -- skateboarding, parkour, ultimate frisbee, etc. -- and Ninja just seemed to gel with that sort of thing. I immediately started training for it and the rest is history

EDIT: Summer of 2009... marathon must have ended with 22, not 23.

[TCM]

A G4 marathon on a Saturday morning when I was in elementary school in 2006. Back when they just played 14-16 on a loop. I know 17 was around during the initial look of Ninja Warrior but I never got to see that specific episode, or I just don't remember it. It wasn't until 2007 with the graphics upgrade that most know as their foray into Ninja Warrior that I got to see a translated form of 17 -- every other time was online before one of the many TBS copyright purges.

[VenusHeadTrap]

G4

[matt723894]

It was 2008ish and I was in 1st grade. I was on Comcast's On-Demand and saw an add for sasuke. I really liked wipeout at the time so I decided to watch it and ever since I've been hooked.

[DonalM]

Trying to find ninja warrior videos to watch after I realized all the ANW7 footage was blocked in Canada, got to Sasuke mere days after tournament 31 had ended.

[Eclipse]

I'm not even entirely sure what I was looking up, but it ended up being a "Suggested Video" on Youtube (I think probably just searching for music). I saw the thumbnail and was confused, and interested, and I ended up clicking on it, and ended up watching all of Sasuke 27 in one spot because i thought it was super cool.

[DacTracked]

G4.

[BobbyG11]

I had just discovered Asian cinema and had been draining the local video store of every Japanese and Chinese movie they had. One night I was super bored and started scanning thru my DirectTv listings for anything at all. There it was:

G4: Ninja Warrior

OMG! A ninja tv show from Japan! Episodic!! Sweet!

Wait...what the hell is this? This announcer is super excited...wait...that octopus is alive....is that a Japanese Superman? Did that guy just die? This....this is so cool.....

The rest is history.

[Philip]

Flipping through the channels 10 years ago.

[Hlav]

I think it was because my brother used to watch G4 on TV. (Got a lot of video games back then). He watched it too. I tried to search ninja warrior on youtube at the time but just got ANW 1 crap which I didnt really like. Eventually just waited for it to air again.

[wrestlingfan55]

My friend introduced me to Ninja Warrior about 10 years ago and the Jump Hang had me in awe. Maybe 2 or 3 years later I found Ninja Warrior again on Challenge. A fluff piece was shown of this fisherman with the wind blowing through his glorious hair (probably too detailed) and I thought it was a rather pretentious fluff piece (I think it was Sasuke 14 or 15). To my knowledge he had never won before so I wondered why he got so much coverage. Anyway I searched for Ninja Warrior on Youtube and the first video I saw was the well-known one of Nagano's run in 17. When I watched it on TV afterwards I realised that this fisherman was that Nagano guy in the Youtube video. Everytime I watched NW on TV I kept wondering if this tournament would be the one that Nagano ended up winning. I was let down often.

[PsychoDelusion]

TV. Sorry I don't have an amusing story.

[yamfriend]

Like many here, I found it on G4 (nearly 10 years ago, man time flies!). I was checking out the channel for video game news (might have been around the time of E3 2007) and one day happened to stumble upon a show called "Ninja Warrior". I'm pretty sure the first tournament I saw a part of was the end of SASUKE 8 (Jordan and Kane were on Stage 3 and the Final Stage), and was immediately amazed at the seemingly-superhuman abilities of those who were attempting the course. I began to watch it on G4 whenever I had a chance, going so far as to start DVRing episodes I hadn't seen yet (started doing that around the time that 19 and 20 first aired). It wasn't until I did a little research online later on that I learned Ninja Warrior was a edited/translated version of SASUKE, which I came to appreciate the more and more I found out about it. I eventually found this forum in 2009, which I joined that October, and my interest in SASUKE and similar Japanese programs has continued to grow since then.

[ArbuthnotBlob]

I was listening to the Chicken Run soundtrack on YouTube.


(No, really. I'm an animation student. And British.)


Then, I saw comments talking about Shingo's theme and thought 'I know Japan has different copyright laws, but did an anime really nick this song?'

Curious, I ended up browsing YouTube, went 'who is this guy in the cap?' and found a bunch of clips from different tournaments of this obstacle course show. That led me to VenusHeadTrap's Sasuke 29 commentary, which in turn led me to Arsenette's blog.

Which turned Sasuke from a passing curiosity into a show in which I was deeply invested.



Shingo is still my favourite competitor.

[skythenewark]

Video surfing through YouTube until I saw Koji Yamada Sasuke 16 for Stage 3. Literally remember how bad I wanted to skip because I thought it's boring but I was in awe especially how tough it was back then. Then I saw Brian Arnold's Stage 3 run in ANW 5, and then I've started watching NW since then.