Why Kunoichi isn't as good as Sasuke?

[Steven π]

Back to the 1-8 season, Kunoichi still based almost like Sasuke. (Only) I rated Kunoichi insanely bad lol. Despite of its Sasuke-based, many factors destroyed the show. The too much balance course, triple Kanzenseiha by Ayane, very few people beat Stage 1... those made Kunoichi bad and eventually, season 8 almost is the last season.
Now, the 9th season come, goods and bads still make Kunoichi like earlier days Kunoichi. I will not spoiler anything here tho...
So what do you think? What factors made Kunoichi isn't as popular as Sasuke?

[ArbuthnotBlob]

I will preface this by saying I have never seen a full Kunoichi tournament, so if I'm talking rubbish, feel free to correct me!


First of all, Kunoichi being 'worse' than SASUKE is an entirely subjective point of view, but it would probably be true to say it hasn't garnered the same attention/popularity.

I'd say a large part of this is down to the fact Kunoichi has less than a third of the number of tournaments Sasuke has had, as the long-running nature of Sasuke has created its greatest strength - our investment in the stand-out competitors. This is somewhat paradoxical, as the early Sasuke tournaments would have suffered the same problem back in 1997.

However, the big difference is that none of us really started watching until the Shin-Sasuke era at least, so we view the early tournaments through a completely different lens than if we had seen the entire series chronologically. In Japan, early Sasuke had the big celebrity presence (Kane) and Banzuke connections to sustain it until the charisma of the All-Stars came into play, but Kunoichi (to the best of my knowledge) hasn't really had the same level of engagement with its competitors and audience.


Yes, there are stand-out returning athletes, like the 3-time champion, but not as many (due to the reduced competitor pool of 50?) and certainly not quite as noticeably as in Sasuke. I can safely say that without the investment in the people, I wouldn't be watching Sasuke, just like I don't watch any of the Ninja Warrior competitions (The UK one in particular made a complete mess of this - very little consistency in returning athletes).

I do also think the obstacle composition plays a part as well, balance is just as much of a discipline as strength, but it never seems quite as thrilling to watch somehow. It's completely understandable that the obstacles are what they are, I'm no athlete but I know there's no way I would clear something like Wall Lifting even if I was fit. There's just something raw about the power required to clear a lot of the distinctive Sasuke obstacles which doesn't quite carry over to Kunoichi, but that's entirely my opinion.


This isn't to say that I dislike Kunoichi, quite the opposite, I love that there is a version of Sasuke tailored towards female competitors, and I did really enjoy watching Kunoichi 9.

I would say that, rather like the international shows, it suffers from a lack of engagement and identity, rather than any fundamental problems. If the reboot continues to run successfully from 10 onwards, hopefully some real competitor personalities will start to emerge, and create the same feeling which Sasuke has managed to create.

[moonlightwalker]

from what i've seen kunoichi just isn't as developed as sasuke yet, which is to be expected since sasuke has three times the history, in a way. i think it's just a matter of time and persistence from the producer's part until it becomes bigger, though it will probably never catch up to sasuke unless sasuke enters serious decline...

[VenusHeadTrap]

That's a very good question army man. I think it's down to the challenge and scale of both programs. SSK has been around for a lot longer and has gentlemen like Yamamoto who has been there since the beginning, people that we've seen grow and change. Kunoichi doesn't have as many stars like that who we can follow as personally. There are some beautiful women on Kunoichi though, but I prefer men & women running the same obstacles.

[arsenette]

Kunoichi only really had the girls from Muscle Musical as it's main lineup next to a crapton of idol girls that all failed the first stage. Once Monster 9 had problems with Muscle Musical and half the crew bailed to form a rival team Padma, TBS had no way to fill out their main show since their defending champion and half the Kunoichi All-Stars left with them. The show went on hiatus after the disastrous Kunoichi 8 which was their version of trying to move on with who was left in Muscle Musical. Then M9 folded and Kunoichi wasn't renewed. Kunoichi never had an audition process and their applications were never open to the public. It was always filled within using some of Sasuke's list but the majority being celebs. Celebs didn't want to keep doing Kunoichi since they always fell in the first 2 obstacles so they decided to not participate anymore. A compromise was reached when they halved the team down from 100 to 50 and gave them more opportunity to promote themselves. Gone were the familiar names though as most either retired, moved on and the influx of gravure idols was there to fill out the rest of the void that the major celebs created. The final set were people who applied (first time ever they had an open application).

The show itself was never made to be a "female" version of Sasuke despite what they told us for years. It was always a vehicle to pimp out the cute girls (hell.. straight up porn stars appeared in Kunoichi in the past). It was never really serious and we all knew that. Japan is backwards still with it's misogyny and women are just objects to fawn over. Problem is, the rest of the world (particularly the USA) is showing how much of an athlete the women can actually be so the contrast between ANW and Kunoichi (and by extension Sasuke) is a chasm larger than the Grand Canyon. I was hoping the change in the course to slowly become harder to match Sasuke is something that people like in Japan. It will take a while until the women train up to the level of the rest of the American women. If this were a sports team - think of Kunoichi still being in the rebuilding stage.

[TCM]

May 15, 2017 22:54:38 GMT -5 arsenette said:

If this were a sports team - think of Kunoichi still being in the rebuilding stage.

And things like Pipe Hold would be the sports rebuild equivalent to the owners still holding antiquated thinking about what makes a team successful

[arsenette]

May 15, 2017 23:02:18 GMT -5 TCM said:

May 15, 2017 22:54:38 GMT -5 arsenette said:

If this were a sports team - think of Kunoichi still being in the rebuilding stage.

And things like Pipe Hold would be the sports rebuild equivalent to the owners still holding antiquated thinking about what makes a team successful

It's still Inui. I haven't been on board with a few things he's done though I did enjoy the direction he took Kunoichi. I just wished there were more athletes. He is just interested in the jiggle physics and given how many gifs were made of the gravure idols.. he might not be that far off the mark sadly. Japan has a looooooooooong way to go in actually respecting women.

[Philip]

For me, the main reason is the lack of relatability. Regardless of gender, you see obstacles differently when you become a competitor. While K10's course was a vast improvement, it's still obvious Stage 1 is made for the pleasure of the producers (Pipe Hold, the packing peanuts). If they truly want it to be female Sasuke, then stop inviting the gravure idols please... they are taking spots from real athletes. Globally, Sasuke is a legitimate athletic event now and having those types of competitors in the shows in the country the format originated from makes the whole damn thing look bad... Inui should go watch a JAV if he's so damn horny, don't force it on an obstacle course show. I f***ing cringed every time they did the Pipe Hold zoom in camera... what if they zoomed in on guys' junk on a specific obstacle on Sasuke lol. It'd be disrespectful, wouldn't it?

I wonder if TBS has ever seen the women on ANW... Jessie Graff, who has made it to the SECOND STAGE IN VEGAS, something only like 15 others did (all men) last year, would absolutely shred the Kunoichi course a new one. I'm sure all the other top American women would too. TBS should take a f***ing hint.

[Steven π]

May 16, 2017 10:11:55 GMT -5 Philip said:

For me, the main reason is the lack of relatability. Regardless of gender, you see obstacles differently when you become a competitor. While K10's course was a vast improvement, it's still obvious Stage 1 is made for the pleasure of the producers (Pipe Hold, the packing peanuts). If they truly want it to be female Sasuke, then stop inviting the gravure idols please... they are taking spots from real athletes. Globally, Sasuke is a legitimate athletic event now and having those types of competitors in the shows in the country the format originated from makes the whole damn thing look bad... Inui should go watch a JAV if he's so damn horny, don't force it on an obstacle course show. I f***ing cringed every time they did the Pipe Hold zoom in camera... what if they zoomed in on guys' junk on a specific obstacle on Sasuke lol. It'd be disrespectful, wouldn't it?

I wonder if TBS has ever seen the women on ANW... Jessie Graff, who has made it to the SECOND STAGE IN VEGAS, something only like 15 others did (all men) last year, would absolutely shred the Kunoichi course a new one. I'm sure all the other top American women would too. TBS should take a f***ing hint.

lol calm down man

[nevada84]

Well, to add to this conversation (Which should not be dead) Another reason why Kunoichi is not as good as Sasuke is because the ratings are always worse than the Sasuke tournaments. KUNOICHI 3 was the highest-rated tournament, at 17.2%, which is just a little bit above the SASUKE average. One thing that KUNOICHI has in its favor is the relative lack of fluctuation as opposed to SASUKE. SASUKE's best rating was 25.8% in SASUKE 8. The worst was SASUKE 25's 7.0%. That's a discrepancy of 18.8%. KUNOICHI's best rating was 17.2%, as I said before. The worst rating was KUNOICHI 9's 9.1%. That's only an 8.1% discrepancy.

[arsenette]

Jun 16, 2017 17:06:59 GMT -5 nevada84 said:

Well, to add to this conversation (Which should not be dead) Another reason why Kunoichi is not as good as Sasuke is because the ratings are always worse than the Sasuke tournaments. KUNOICHI 3 was the highest-rated tournament, at 17.2%, which is just a little bit above the SASUKE average. One thing that KUNOICHI has in its favor is the relative lack of fluctuation as opposed to SASUKE. SASUKE's best rating was 25.8% in SASUKE 8. The worst was SASUKE 25's 7.0%. That's a discrepancy of 18.8%. KUNOICHI's best rating was 17.2%, as I said before. The worst rating was KUNOICHI 9's 9.1%. That's only an 8.1% discrepancy.

Complete apples and oranges. Kunoichi was canceled for a long time and now under it's new reboot. Comparing Monster 9 stuff to current stuff is like comparing Spartan to ANW both on NBC.

[nevada84]

So if M9 was still around, what would the rating of KUNOICHI 9 have been?

[arsenette]

Jun 16, 2017 18:33:05 GMT -5 nevada84 said:

So if M9 was still around, what would the rating of KUNOICHI 9 have been?

Kunoichi historically did better ratings wise than Sasuke. Even the disaster that was Kunoichi 8 still rated better than Sasuke at it's time. It's meant for a completely different audience. I can't stand the misogyny but it's not meant for me. I'm not the target demographic. The problem now is that it's almost 10 years removed from the last one so it's rebuilding as a completely different franchise and honestly.. still rating better than Sasuke in it's current form.

[SuperTiger]

I apologize in advance if this comes across as a bump, but as a longtime Kunoichi fan who prefers it over Sasuke I felt the need to explain why crazies like me feel this way about it. [Note: This love is centered around the first seven tournaments, nothing after]

I will preface this post by agreeing with a major point stated above. The big thing about Kunoichi pre-Kunoichi 9 is the difference in demographic which has been mentioned. Kunoichi is fundamentally different than Sasuke for this reason and that's a reason why I love it so much. To drive this point home, let's step back a few years so we can have some r/context. When I first became interested in Sasuke/Kunoichi I was a 14 year old boy. Oh hey I'm going through puberty. As cool as Sasuke is, I think I'd rather be looking at cute girls running a course. (Sorry if this comes across as sexist)

ANYWHO, even with that, Kunoichi stuck with me throughout the years. Whenever I come back from a long hiatus or whatnot, I still find myself wanting to watch it. There are a handful of things that contribute this for me. The tl;dr of that is that Kunoichi took the things I personally disliked about Sasuke, and fixed them to my liking. Obviously that is just my POV and not everyone will agree with my feelings on that, but it is the driving force behind my love for the show. I'm sure I'll leave some things out but here are the three big things that appeal for me most.

Course Consistency: One of my favorite things about Kunoichi was how consistent the course was. After Mizuno got close and Miyake won, they didn't feel the need to overhaul and completely redesign the thing. Did they make it more difficult? Of course they did, but something I dislike about Sasuke was following a Kanzenseiha, they felt the need to completely overhaul a course and make it extremely difficult. While this was fine the first two times a Kanzenseiha happened, it set a precedent that it should always happen for every single total victory. As a result when they stopped doing complete course overhauls it was disappointing from my POV. Some of the newer courses aren't as appealing due to that precedent that was set earlier throughout the course of the series. While I understand there are reasons for that, it made me appreciate how much more simplistic Kunoichi was, while still being difficult following a Kanzenseiha. To build upon this point, there is at least one SASUKE winner that has won and been put down because people say the course was made easier in the tournament they won. That never happened in Kunoichi or for Miyake. Nobody ever said the course was too easy when she won, because she was good and the producers still kept the course balanced enough to show it was challenging.

Competitor Focus: I know we love the All Stars in Sasuke, but what sucked about them is how much the show was about them. Don't get me wrong, I love them as much as we all do, but they were the focus of Sasuke. They were the face. It got to a point that during their golden years they were the body of Sasuke and took up soo much of the show. While I understand this was how TBS/M9 had to sell the show, it was not something that personally appealed to me. On the flip side of the coin in Kunoichi, yes they had their top competitors, but TBS/M9 wasn't above focusing on other faces based on how the competition was going. Every competition was not about the same five/six people. Rie Komiya is widely considered an All Star and was cut in Kunoichi 6. That's because the show was focused on the competitors that made it to the later stages and the internationals. Every tournament focused on the competitors who made it far, and success in one tournament didn't necessarily translate to screen-time in the next. Screen-time had to be earned in this case and not given for becoming the brand of the show. While there were some exceptions to this, (mainly Mizuno) one person being in a tournament and getting screen-time based on reputation is a lot different than taking five/six people and making them a brand of the show.

Under-saturation of Competitions: Surprisingly I don't mean this in a bad way. Something I loved about Kunoichi is that it was once a year. While that may sound crazy, I felt it made the tournaments more special. Sasuke got to a point where they aired three competitions within one calendar year or something like that. While I can't really complain about more Sasuke tournaments, there have been so many now there are tournaments in Sasuke that just blend together for me. Having not watched a great amount of tournaments in a while, S10 and S11 feel like the same tournament. S8 and S9 would as well if it weren't for S8 having such a strong ending to it. The point I'm trying to make with this is that each Kunoichi tournament felt like it had it's own identity while each Sasuke tournament doesn't feel that way for me. I think the over-saturation of SASUKE tournaments actually contributed to the decline of the show and is why ratings weren't super great at times. Having one KUNOICHI a year made them more special, something to really appreciate, and not something you were going to see happen again in the near future. [Just look at how much more hyped we got when Sasuke was once a year]

I feel like I just wrote a novel typing this up, but while it has been stated SASUKE/KUNOICHI are so different their basic similarity allowed me to love Kunoichi more than Sasuke. Kunoichi for me took all the things I dislike about Sasuke and fixed them. While I have not gotten around to watching the new KUNOICHI yet, I can say the first seven seasons were truly special for me and they all have their own unique touch to them that is absent for me in SASUKE.

[arsenette]

Tiger I think you will love Kunoichi 9. I think you saw 8.. but if you didn't.. just skip it. LOL As for the other points.. well said! You've been the hardest of hardcore fan of Kunoichi since the board began. I'm happy you contributed your story on it! ♥

[TCM]

Jun 25, 2017 22:05:01 GMT -5 arsenette said:

Tiger I think you will love Kunoichi 9. I think you saw 8.. but if you didn't.. just skip it. LOL As for the other points.. well said! You've been the hardest of hardcore fan of Kunoichi since the board began. I'm happy you contributed your story on it! ♥

The one thing missing from the K9 hype was Tiger's input.  Now it really feels like Kunoichi season once Tiger's around.  

There's a refreshing straightforwardness that the Kunoichi reboot has that neither Sasuke nor ANW have right now (the latter especially).  K9 was just a few months ago, but yet it still feels much longer and is a welcome addition.  Compare that to someting like ANW which has had some form of its brand on virtually all year and won't stop until the fall.

[Shuberb674]

Kunoichi isn't as good as Sasuke because it build up an artificial bubble of female athleticism to me.

Ayako Miyake won 3 times consecutively, "WOW SHE IS NAGANO WITH BOOBS BEST COMPETITOR EVER, I BET SHE'S BETTER THAN MOST MEN"

Then she competed in Sasuke TWICE and................ performed pretty badly. Bubble popped.

[Steven π]

Jun 26, 2017 8:43:39 GMT -5 Shuberb674 said:

Kunoichi isn't as good as Sasuke because it build up an artificial bubble of female athleticism to me.

Ayako Miyake won 3 times consecutively, "WOW SHE IS NAGANO WITH BOOBS BEST COMPETITOR EVER, I BET SHE'S BETTER THAN MOST MEN"

Then she competed in Sasuke TWICE and................ performed pretty badly. Bubble popped.

So for you Kunoichi is bad because of Ayako?

[zocom7]

Kunoichi would change a bit if Mighty Kacy (you know who) was in it.

[Steven π]

Jun 27, 2017 13:56:32 GMT -5 zocom7 said:

Kunoichi would change a bit if Mighty Kacy (you know who) was in it.

Actually fun fact: Kacy was invited in K9 but declined.