Your Journey Through Sasuke

[supremekai]

Hey guys, I saw the discussion in randomness thread, but I was curious to know how your first viewing lead you to Sasuke Maniac Forums, as well as your favourite moments from that journey.


For me:

I saw Sasuke first on a UK channel in late 2009 (Virgin 1 or something). The only obstacle I remember clearly was the crooked wall and Nagano with black hair so I'm guessing it was 14. My first thought on the show was "wtf only 10 people cleared stage 1 and there are 4 stages??".

I saw the show a few more times and in April 2010 when I was on holiday in the Caribbean, I saw the 23 final and also G4 announcements that a new tournament "presumably 24" was on the way. Note that I only saw the Nagano-Kanno showdown, didn't see any of stage 3.

Later, I used to spend ages on the Sasuke wikipedia page, and it had the whole summary of who went the farthest in each tournament. YOU CAN NOT IMAGINE how curious I felt looking at these weird new obstacles (I had watched early tournaments to death but had never seen beyond 17, apart from the 23 final). Seeing all these names like "Heavenly Ladder" "Shin-Cliff Hanger" "Spider flip" and "Ascending Climb" just made my imagination run WILD. Shin sasuke was without a doubt the best for me, purely for that nostalgia moment.

Anyway, through youtube and challenge broadcasting 18-26, I caught up on sasuke and got the see these strange new obstacles in action and they did not disappoint. 18's stage 1 still feels like the best in history to me, one of the most jawdropping moments in sasuke.

Now with 27 not in sight, I started searching for information, which led me to Arsenette's blog! I used to check that page to death lol, like 3 times a day back in the summer of 2011. I was always curious whenever she mentioned "the kids on the forums" and once she hyperlinked this, which led me to SMF of all places!

My best moments on SMF were definitely trawling through old threads. Even though I already knew the shin Sasuke final stage, it was still amazing looking at all the early versions of it and the rampant spectulation of David Campbells photos (and circling of obscure photo details lol).
Also the speculation on the original sending climber and stuff was cool!

Also, I hated those kids who spamposted non stop for 2 weeks and then disappeared -_- kids and their low attention spans nowadays 
Dat's my journey/nostalgia through sasuke! 

[LusitaniaAngel313]

I'll share my story next.

It was 2006 when I was introduced to Ninja Warrior. My dad was watching something on G4 but failed to turn off the cable box. The next day I turned on the TV and Ninja Warrior was on. 16 to be exact. It was the exact same day that Ninja Warrior 17 was showcased to USA audiences for the first time. That moment spurred me to continue watching. A Marathon happened and helped me to catch up on past seasons until SASUKE 18 finally came round. I slowed down on watching after Yuuji's first win because of other interests and I stopped watching from there.
Fast forward to April 2014 I get a spur of the moment and I decided to watch Ninja Warrior again on a trip down memory lane. I truly forgotten how amazing the show was. I finally caught up to SASUKE 27 but was left hanging on how to watch SASUKE 28 or 29. That answer came when I discovered the SMF. I was VERY hesitant to sign on mostly due to so many rules and how to follow them correctly but I did sign on. Good timing too because it was a little more than a month before SASUKE 30 would air. So finally I caught up and watched SASUKE 30 with everyone! And 31 the next year. SHame to see Shingo go down so fast...
My favorite moment has to be when I was introduced to the PROTO SASUKE community which is probably the closest thing to actually competing in the show. Mind you I haven't passed obstacle 4 yet so I'm not that good but, meh. Anyways there's my story.

[EDIT] during the 2014 revival I actually went to see if I can find any of the SASUKE competitors Facebooks if they had such. You don't have to ask to find out how successful I was. I mean one had to take the plunge (the first SASUKE competitor I found and neither of us had any mutual friends between us) and I'm still thankful Shingo was the first. ^^

[Deleted]

Well before I saw Ninja Warrior for the first time I was a big fan of Japanese gameshow Takeshi's Castle (MXC in the US) on Challenge (British equivalent of GSN/Buzzr) and a lot of other british gameshows. Then I discovered Ninja Warrior (with the illfated Stuart Hall as announcer) and I was hooked. Then in 2011 I discovered SASUKE Maniac Forums and that introduced me to the bigger picture of the community and now I feel like one of the biggest contributors to the fandom!

[Deleted]

I saw Ninja Warrior in 2006 (I was flipping through channels) and the first one I saw was SASUKE 9. I ended up seeing it from start to finish and remember wondering if there were more so I became a regular watcher eventually (though I never saw the TBS broadcast until 2010 (back when I was a total noob and had just started on SMF). Now I not only know my way around the forum, but have also seen every SASUKE from start to finish.

[Philip]

This is gonna be a VERY long stream of consciousness thing probably so bear with me lol. This is mainly about my journey with how I discovered the show + my training journey. I might leave out some things that have been well documented by my post history

I was 10 years old when I first saw Sasuke, 9 years ago. I remember I used to see "Ninja Warrior" on the cable guide and I thought it was some Bruce Lee thing or something. Then one day I decided to see what it was about, and I was in for quite the surprise. It was like a real life video game lol. I think my first tournament was either 8 or 9, I am not sure which because the 1st stages were the same in both tournaments and I only watched it briefly. Then I watched some more and more and then me being my aspie self I NEEDED to learn anything and everything about it. I lurked the G4 forums regularly, I never joined there or joined SMF early on because I've always been the lurker type (Ask RC about my Reddit super-lurking). I would draw obstacles and stuff, and I would always want to climb on everything even though in middle school I was a total weak a** who couldn't hang on to monkey bars. Over the next few years I would slowly get into going up to playgrounds and trying to do things like monkey bars and makeshift obstacles. I remember reading Ube's live blog of Sasuke 20 and being so excited that Levi, a guy from my home state, made it the farthest. Despite his, uh, showmanship, I was his biggest fan, and I had the pleasure of meeting him at a freerunning competition in 2011 in Detroit. I sort of didn't watch much Sasuke around 22-24. Looking back I think it might have had to do with the fact I was going through a really bad time in my life. I am quite open about my problems lol, but to keep it short I was having severe OCD and anxiety issues. I was also having a very hard time with aspergers and the social issues that come with it. I had just left a middle school that was full of bullies and bigots. I started to get back into Sasuke around 25. I read about it on Levi's website. 2010 is also when I started to be able to do monkey bars after lots of practice. It was a big deal for me then lol. In early 2011, after hearing all about SMF I decided to join under some account called parkour9. I never did anything on it because I forgot the damn password! Even at this point I had been a big fan of Arsenette's blog, and I was very intrigued by the Sasuke 25 concept sketches in the Navi, so I messaged her on Youtube if she knew where to find a video of the Navi. She told me to PM a mod here, and thus I joined for real in May 2011. I apologize for all my obstacle threads back then, I was a noob lol. Anyways, in June 2011 I built my very first obstacle in my backyard, a Sasuke 4 style Cliffhanger. I was total horseshit at it but through determination, by the time I moved from that house (December 2012), I became pretty good at it. In January 2012 I drove 12 hours all the way to Chris Wilczewski's gym in New Jersey. For the days leading up to going I had a bad stomach bug. Thankfully I felt 100% good when I woke up to drive to New Jersey. I remember walking into his gym and being sort of starstruck. These were all the guys I look up to so much (and to this day still do)! That was the last time I ever got starstruck because since then they have all been my friends. That day was the best day of my life. On that day I learned that there is a group of people that won't judge me (I was still having PTSD of sorts from getting bullied before I was homeschooled) and are happy to talk to me, and share my same passions. That weekend was the most I have ever matured. Despite failing the steps in the last day competition I learned a bunch. I went back there later that year, and the next year as well. Over time I got progressively better and better, but something was never "there". About a year ago it finally clicked. I realized that I did not have enough muscle mass to justify being 200 lbs at 6'2". I finally built some stuff in my NEW backyard that April. I started to eat less crap and train more. Slowly but surely I gained more and more endurance and got better. June last year, I went to the doctor's office and I got weighed for the first time in nearly 6 months. The scale said 170 lbs! I was so happy that all my hard work paid off. However, I wanted to get better and better, and as my eating habits improved, in August the scale said 155. Since then I've been about the same, this morning it said 152. My performance has improved a bunch, and I am starting to do GOOD at gym competitions! Every day I train very hard in the hopes that one day I can even have a CHANCE at being on Sasuke. I get the whole no-gaijin rule, but one day, it'll happen, I just know it. ANW is nice and all but nothing compares to Sasuke. It's the show I love.

[arsenette]

I adore reading all of these stories.. I'm proud and honored that some of you found your way to this community through me or my site. It's amazing how much this journey has brought people from all corners in life to one place. ♥

My story is well documented and every few years we get a thread like this going.

[OwlRTA]

I'm a bit of a noob here, so my story begins in 2012 while I was on vacation. I was travelling the North part of California (starting in San Francisco) with my older brother and dad. We went to the hotel room, and we turned on the TV, and the 4th season of American Ninja Warrior was on. I watched the final the next week back in Canada, and I loved Brent's performance (of course I never knew that Brent should've timed out ). Then I forgot about it and I didn't watch season 5.
Then, I had an accidental encounter with ANW: USA vs. Japan, and I suddenly remembered ANW. This time, I found out when season 6 was and I became a fanboy of ANW (no hate please, and I'm not that big of a fanboy now ).
During season 7, I decided to look at Sasuke tournaments on YouTube, and I loved them a bit more than ANW. So I started looking around, and I came upon this forum!

[RiderLeangle]

Well, Mom was looking for something to watch and saw "Ninja Warrior" listed on G4 (a channel none of us were familiar with at the time) and turned it on thinking it was actually about Ninja, She then immediately told me to turn it on since it was like a video game come to life, it was and I got hooked . It was a Kunoichi marathon so the first tournament I saw was Kunoichi 4 and then 5 later that night, G4 had the Women of Ninja Warrior episodes in rotation so the next time it was on they were showing older episodes of Kunoichi as well. Eventually they finally got back to Sasuke in rotation so first I saw was Sasuke 15, eventually saw all of the ones G4 had shown. I tried to find out if there were any more episodes and saw a video of Sasuke 18's Third Stage on Veoh (Yes... Veoh... Shut up...) and I was like "Woah what's this, the course is so different, what's going on here?" and somehow stumbled upon G4's forums, lurked a bit then joined when I wanted to say something and then became a member of that community, when everyone got sick of how G4 wouldn't let us talk about the new tournaments until they aired on G4 which was months after they aired it and some people there decided to make their own place to freely talk about the new tournaments, I assume most of you guys have heard of the new site that was made, since you're on it, you're reading a post on it right now .

I really don't think I need to give a whole long list of s*** that went on between 2007 and now in regards to NW stuff and it's pretty much documented if you want to read through all my posts (Be warned, until last year I was the highest posting member on this site, you'll probably need another 9 years just to read all that )

[thatoneuser]

watched Viking first, found out through Wikipedia

[Deleted]

I never saw VIKING until around 2012-ish. They're hard to find and the only one I saw fully was 2 (I saw a glimpse of 3 and a little bit of 6).

[peytonblitz]

I wasn't going to post in this, but I guess I could go into more detail of how I ended up watching it. My dad is sometimes annoying and would put on random movies and watch them for five minutes and change it. One day he did it and saw something called Ninja Warrior he turned that on, and something about it entranced me. I don't know exactly much after that, I know it was probably 23 (furthest memory of Sasuke is the curtain slider). I was 10, and now almost 5 years later almost 15 still here. There have been times where I got bored with the show and practicing it, but it always came back one way or another. I hope it keeps doing that for a very long time.

[SolitudeSeeker.]

I just lost the entire post, lol.

Well, I first viewed ANW Two, then Yuuji's run from Sasuke Twenty Seven, joined Sasuke Maniac Forum sometime in early Fall 2011, made mistakes on the forum, started training, went through a time in life that was a bit trialing, and, now, I'm hoping to pursue a degree in psychology .

[FallRisk911]

Two words: (((MIDNIGHT SPANK)))!!

[FallRisk911]

But seriously, yeah, I'm pretty sure I was up late after work watching G4's "Cinematech" or an "Anime Unleashed" block, or something, and Ninja Warrior either came on before whatever I was watching, or after. Some time in 2007.

Like I said in my panel thingie, I'd been a gaming geek and Japanophile since junior high or so, and now here was this unbelievably epic real-life japanese action-platformer game on my TV! I caught re-runs of it a couple times before seeing an announcement for the first ANC contest (the Colin Bell\Brett Simms one), which sent me in a B-line for my computer to check out the G4 website, and see what I had to do to GET A TRIP TO MAGICAL AND MYSTICAL JAPAN TO PLAY THIS GAME WITH MY GAIJIN BODY! After watching the submissions on the site though (and being introduced to both parkour athletes and rock climbers for the first time), it became pretty clear to me that I had no chance in hell of winning what was then strictly a "holy s***!" video voting contest. No one was going to vote for a video of me punching tires and carrying hoses up stadium stairs when there were guys chucking flips between rooftops, clinging to gymnasium rafters with their fingertips, and doing pullups on 40 foot high billboards (I'm looking at YOU, NixSeraph...). I still was hooked, though, and watched every episode they had available over the next year or so, all the while learning and attempting to emulate movements like Spider Walking and Body Propping into my regular, mundane firefighter training.

I stopped watching for most of 2009, after I had already seen every episode about 20 times, and was busy with work, school, and attempting to get the hell out of Cleveland, OH. And how pissed do you think I was when I randomly flipped back to G4 one night in December 2009 to see that I had COMPLETELY MISSED THE FIRST OPEN TRYOUTS (ANW 1)! I ran back for G4.com, and dove into the forums, which rapidly led me to sasukemaniacs. WHEN'S THE NEXT ONE GONNA BE? HOW DO I MAKE A VIDEO?! WHAT KIND OF SHOES DO I NEED, THE WEIRD ONES WITH THE TOES ON EM? AND WHO HE HELL IS THIS GUMP-a** FOOL RYAN STRATIS? If *HE* can get on this thing, so can I!

[SolitudeSeeker.]

Woah .

[Lachie]

My story started in late 2009-early 2010 when I saw an advert on SBS 2 (Australian channel), in which it aired every Sunday at 7.30 PM, with Banzuke airing immediately after at 8. The first actual episode I saw was around March 2010, I think it was one of the earlier competitions (8-12 I believe) and was AMAZED at what I saw (same went for Banzuke, also remember I was 10 at the time). I watched every episode until it stopped airing it temporarly around mid 2012, and I kind of lost interest in it, until Late 2012 when it started airing earlier (6 PM) and was on evey weeknight.

This is where ROBLOX comes into it, and takes us to Mid 2013 where I just randomly find the ROBLOX ninja warrior community out of nowhere (I actually still have no idea how I found this group), ninja warrior was still on, but was on much less regularly, and stopped airing completely around early-mid 2014.

I also found this forum, like, just over a week before 29 aired and have been here ever since.

I currently watching the airing of ANW 7, on pay TV on Saturday nights.

[Amber]

My journey started in 2010. I was sick and stayed home from school, and was channel surfing when my dad pointed out X-Play. I watched an episode, and two episodes of Ninja Warrior followed it (First 2 episodes of Sasuke 17) I thought it was cool but knew I'd likely never watch it again lol
Randomly like 3 weeks later, I decided to look up Ninja Warrior on YouTube, and eventually found SASUKE (which I thought was a person, not the show name LOL) So I started watching Ninja Warrior more often on G4 and saw ads for ANW 2. I was a normie casual of the show and it wasn't until 2011 that I grew an obsession, around the time of ANW 3. I eventually made an account on this forum and worked my way up to a 99% warning level before making this acc (not to mention I was too young for the site at the time lol. s/o to striker my old acc)
In 2012, during the 'dark times' when M9 went bankrupt and there was no sign of a 28 coming, I somewhat branched off from Sasuke, with it being a side interest. I started playing Roblox that April (over 1/2 a year before Logan's RNW started, and a year before NWoR started) btw and there was a small ninja warrior community based around 1 ninja warrior course, and only 4 people were in the community (2 of which are active today) along with me. We always wanted to host competitions like ANW/Sasuke but we could never get the numbers, but that's wayy off topic.
By 2013, I was friends with some people in the Sasuke community and had a skype call of friends and we watched 29 together (which was their first live tournament, my 2nd)
By 2014 my friends lost interest in Sasuke so I got new friends from the Sasuke community so that was fun, we watched 30 together, 2015 we watched 31 together. 2016 will likely be the same, so yeah I look forward to the future of both ANW and Sasuke

[green]

First time i watched Sasuke.

Season: Sasuke 14.
Channel: G4
Stage: Third Stage
Competitor: Takeda Toshihiro.
Date: Between April/May 2013.

[Deleted]

SASUKE 9 in 2007 back when Challenge first aired the show. It's probably the only channel in the world outside Japan that still airs SASUKE. Cmon NBC get your act together...

[terrellnelson16]

SASUKE 2 in 2008 on G4 on demand