First post in General about SASUKE 41

[katoshiho]

About Twin Dia.
We know there's some competitors challenge it. But there's still few more competitors didn't challenge.
Can they clear Twin Dia?
1. Saikawa Koji
2. Isa Yoshinori
3. Kanno Hitoshi
4. Kane Kosugi
5. Sugeta Rinne

Competitors that are challenge the first time
6. Izumi Hikari
7. Ishikawa Sho
8. Hirayama (another tester like Miyaoka)
9. An Yujin (IVE member)
10. (Sakurasaka 46 member) Murai Yu

[katoshiho]

Can friends answer it?

[xelA197]

It's more probable that Yamada clears Stage 1 than Izumi or Ishikawa will compete in 42. (unfortunately)

[dakohosu]

Sept 14, 2024 11:54:40 GMT -5 xelA197 said:

It's more probable that Yamada clears Stage 1 than Izumi or Ishikawa will compete in 42. (unfortunately)

Izumi's repeatedly been snubbed and realistically Mai Watanabe will be the "second in command" female competitor at this point, factor in that we may get a couple more international female athletes in in due course, and Inui's penchant for inviting pro athletes (like Miki Ando, though for controversial reasons she's likely not returning, same with Fuwa Chan); agreed on this one.

Ishikawa has to run the trials, as he has done prior, where 3 out of 500 competitors get picked, and with the trials being general fitness based like pushup contests and tire runs it's unlikely he'll get picked. If it was a set of mini-versions of each Sasuke stage then it'd be a different story because he trains on replicas and is insanely strong, right now the "final" 10 run a heavily nerfed version of Stage 1 and that's it. If I'm not mistaken he got eliminated after like the first round of 40's trials because he didn't do enough pushups, as though doing loads of pushups is in any way analogous to the lower body-focussed Stage 1, or the grip focussed Stage 3, etc.

Surely the results of the 40/41 trials should be concrete proof that Inui needs to focus more on Sasuke-specific skills as a determinant for who gets picked; general fitness should be part of the screening process pre-trials, not the actual trials themselves. Alas based on what I've seen for pre-42 content it's going to be pretty much the same, oh well.

Compare that to 13's trials where the top five ended up being the last five men standing, or the Shin-Sasuke trials where the qualifiers ended up being some of today's most prominent competitors (i.e. Kawaguchi, Hioki, Ryo, Sato, Keitaro, a random dude called Yuuji, etc.). The fact that we got these guys qualifying and the more gruelling nature of those trials can't be a coincidence.

Mind you, most of them failed Stage 1 in their debuts, which in today's Sasuke means they'll never get invited again/blacklisted from competing. We all know the story with Goto, and he even cleared a couple of times.

[xelA197]

What happened to Ando and Fuwa Chan?

21 had an insane amount of strong rookies. Sato, Kawaguchi, Asa, Hashimoto, Ryo, Yuuji, all debuting in the same tournament is wild for me.

[dakohosu]

Sept 14, 2024 14:01:47 GMT -5 xelA197 said:

What happened to Ando and Fuwa Chan?

21 had an insane amount of strong rookies. Sato, Kawaguchi, Asa, Hashimoto, Ryo, Yuuji, all debuting in the same tournament is wild for me.

Ando was seen dating a 16 year old student, while Fuwa Chan made an offensive tweet against another famous comedian to which she had to publicly apologize for.

It's not like the JJ guys who had nothing to do with what ensued so could still compete albeit under different competitor profiles (i.e. not being profiled as a JJ member). Both of them were directly involved in doing questionable things so for the sake of ratings/avoiding controversy they're probably never competing again, which I'm personally cool with as I don't care for either of them, to be blunt.

I know right; and all of them failed Stage 1, three of which did so multiple times before they broke out, Kawaguchi in particular it took until Sasuke 30, 6 years later, for him to become a prominent figure. Yusuke also had several early fails before he finally cleared, granted he was like 15-16, but still. 

Mad to think that in today's Sasuke most of them would never be invited again after those initial fails. Inui's leaving too much potential on the table with his brutal approach to non-celebrity everyman competitors. Most competitors need time to show what they're made of, debut appearances are expected to be a bit rocky as the person gets into the swing of competing. 

It's also a double whammy in the sense that now even getting on the show to begin with is harder than ever. It took someone as talented as Miyaoka 10 years to get on to the show (he also failed the first round of 40's trials), Iwasaki is a national record holder in multiple feats and only got on after 15 years because Yusuke recommended him.

Imo allocate a few spots each year to the most dedicated competitors with interesting backstories who've displayed that they're capable of being serious forces to be reckoned with (i.e. beating Stage 3 in practice), and give them maybe 3 tournaments' or so leeway. Especially considering we've had competitors like Kazuki Kanno and Kota Sakuma get multiple tries who are nowhere near the potential of guys like Iwasaki.

[xelA197]

This is Inui, we have to accept this. He wants strong non-celebrities that are Stage 3 regulars, otherwise you will finish like 29-30 and 33-34 randos. Other places are guaranteed for his well known celebrities and rando athletes, with the very first numbers reserved for joke and unknown competitors, and the lasts to the elite competitors, and more others spread out (Hioki, Black Tigers, Kajihara, ecc). He considers the Stage 2 fodder as wasted spots. And if you fail Stage 1, you will be forgotten and then disappeared, this would have happened to Miyaoka, Gio and Yamashita if they failed in Stage 1 in 41. It seems that the new faces has only 1 chance to do well, otherwise say bye bye to SASUKE.

[dakohosu]

Sept 14, 2024 14:57:43 GMT -5 xelA197 said:

This is Inui, we have to accept this. He wants strong non-celebrities that are Stage 3 regulars, otherwise you will finish like 29-30 and 33-34 randos. Other places are guaranteed for his well known celebrities and rando athletes, with the very first numbers reserved for joke and unknown competitors, and the lasts to the elite competitors, and more others spread out (Hioki, Black Tigers, Kajihara, ecc). He considers the Stage 2 fodder as wasted spots. And if you fail Stage 1, you will be forgotten and then disappeared, this would have happened to Miyaoka, Gio and Yamashita if they failed in Stage 1 in 41. It seems that the new faces has only 1 chance to do well, otherwise say bye bye to SASUKE.

The thing is that we have a lot of people who could actually become Stage 3 regulars but are never given the chance. Most Stage 3 regulars we have today failed Stage 1 or 2 in their first couple of tournaments, guys like Mutou included. Suzuki failed Stage 1 four straight times before breaking out in 32, I'm actually shocked they kept him around that long, I guess him being a teacher helps. Inui either won't commit to them or will discard them after a single early fail, assuming they have zero potential when, shock horror(!!!!), not everyone achieves their potential in every situation, and even less likely in their debut.

I'm all for the spreading out of competitors, especially now that we have so many comedians/celebs/idols, we need a lot of strong runs in the early part of Stage 1 to break up that monotony. Imagine how rough it would be if Stage 1 was still 3+ hours, but all of the aforementioned were packed into the 1-70s with all of the stronger competitors after. It would be 2 hours of absolute hell. 

They do 100% need to sort out the 50s-60s though, because they do seem to cram a weird number of celebrities into that spot, and it is a major pace breaker between, say, Hioki, and the guys packed into the 70s like Jun etc. Even 20 mins of straight celeb runs are bad enough for me. It's my designated time to make a coffee and catch up on work.

I'm legit really impressed that the 41 breakouts actually didn't let pressure get to them; imagine knowing this could be your only shot and failing now means you'll never get another shot. I'm fairly convinced this is why Goto choked so hard in 41; he was well aware of the fact that this could've been his last shot, because he gets zero coverage on the YouTube and was possibly a very late invite when Kanno dropped out as he was behind Shunsuke where Kanno likely would've been as they've been grouped together perennially.

Somewhat of a hot take but I wasn't massively adverse to the culling of the Stage 2 fodder because they'd had a few shots and not really displayed that they were a major threat to do well. Igarashi, Takasu, Nakagawa etc. all had pretty early Stage 2 fails. Ugajin is the biggest shame because he did make it deep into Stage 2 in both of his attempts, and to think that he was one obstacle away from being a perennial invite yet is now forced to run trials is pretty rough. Consider that Araki and Tada both made Stage 3 in the same tournament and now get invited back no matter what, granted Tada's become a true force of nature since, but Araki in particular would've likely been dropped had this not been the case.

[xelA197]

Tada's trajectory is absolutely insane. Made his first two appearances as a kid, then returned after 10 years, clears Stage 1 in his probable last ever shot, and then become one of the strongest competitors of this era. Yuuji too was an early Iwasaki, who started to apply since SASUKE 13, finally competed in 21, but failed, then he was able to win the trials again for 22 and the rest is history. Unfortunately for Iwasaki the trials now are pretty baffling, unlike before. I'm convincted too that Keitaro career was saved because of his clear on SASUKE 35, if he had failed, he would have probably cut given his track record, considered by Inui good enough to drop him.

Instead I do my "coffee break" during Iwamoto's run, but his royal treatment is needed for the ratings so I can't blame Inui here.

[dakohosu]

Sept 15, 2024 8:22:49 GMT -5 xelA197 said:

Tada's trajectory is absolutely insane. Made his first two appearances as a kid, then returned after 10 years, clears Stage 1 in his probable last ever shot, and then become one of the strongest competitors of this era. Yuuji too was an early Iwasaki, who started to apply since SASUKE 13, finally competed in 21, but failed, then he was able to win the trials again for 22 and the rest is history. Unfortunately for Iwasaki the trials now are pretty baffling, unlike before. I'm convincted too that Keitaro career was saved because of his clear on SASUKE 35, if he had failed, he would have probably cut given his track record, considered by Inui good enough to drop him.

Instead I do my "coffee break" during Iwamoto's run, but his royal treatment is needed for the ratings so I can't blame Inui here.

Tada's doubly lucky because if I'm not mistaken he only got on Sasuke 34 because Harashima recommended him or something along those lines. He was often at training sessions during his hiatus so he must've applied repeatedly and got denied; I know he at least applied for 27. 

But yeah agreed, Tada's massively underrated. He often gets flack for "having no shot at Kanzen" or "choking on the Jugo Dan" but if you look at his track record from 36, I'd argue there's a strong case for him being in the Top 10 Sasuke competitors of all time, and probably Top 2-3 right now. 6 Stage 3s in a row and two Finals within that streak, and he's the only competitor bar Yusuke who can reliably get to at least the Vertical Limit, having done so every time bar 38 and that only happened because the ledges desynced. Yoshi has the edge on the Final but is a lot more inconsistent on the Cliffhanger and Keitaro's also fairly inconsistent as he's failed early on Stage 3 twice and also has had numerous troubles with Stage 2. 

Not to mention that Tada's proved a lot of people wrong. Fails the working Dimension in 38 which makes people believe his 37 run was a fluke/due to the nerfs but then beats the Dimension in 39 but fails VL which still makes people think the same thing; then beats the full Stage 3 in 40, and then proceeds to beat the RNG Dimension in 41 despite guys like Yoshi and Yuuji failing it. A lot of people say Jugo Dan fail in 40 signifies "no progress", but realistically the fact he made it as far as he did in 37 despite the rock wall being more taxing means he's improved. He only failed there because he spent too much energy on the rock wall so was gassed.

Re Keitaro you're probably right but for some reason I think the fact that he's an UnCli and his Stage 3 potential being quite well known might've saved him, though guys like Iwasaki and Ishikawa's capabilities haven't really helped as far as their chances of getting on the show are concerned so no idea. Him becoming a Morimoto Sedai defo did have a factor though because there's no way Inui would've put up with 5 straight Stage 2 fails when Goto's very likely out after 2.

Eh, I don't mind watching Iwamoto. I preferred it when Darvish was the "it" competitor as he was much more charismatic, but at least Iwamoto's genuinely dedicated to the show and is passionate about training and competing just like everyone else. Yeah, the way he's edited is piss-takey but he's a big shot in Japan so it's expected.

Where I draw the line of tolerance is when it's a comedian who's run lasts 10+ minutes because of how slow they go on the course, even more padded out by sideline reactions everytime they move a pixel, ads in between, multiple replays, and a long interview. None of which I care about; at least in Iwamoto's case it'll cut to like Hioki who's a good friend of his and genuinely wants him to do well, rather than different competitors just laughing at how bad the comedian is doing.