Why has Shunsuke Nagasaki become a meme?

[tns8597]

I feel like across the Ninja community, Shunsuke Nagasaki has recently become a meme.

From people posting the clear rush theme and more recently the digest fail theme as ‘Shunsuke Nagasaki’s theme’ (which was pretty funny) as well as a lot of people making fun of his decline (eg The Sasuke Nerds), it seems that he’s become the laughing stock of the ‘high-profile’ competitors at this point.

I’m interested as to what made people specifically target Shunsuke as opposed to competitors like Ryo who arguably had a worse decline (not going to mention Kanno given that the injury-based nature of his decline was pretty sad)? I feel like there’s a load of competitors who’ve had worse and much funnier fails, like Kishimoto failing the first obstacle twice etc.

[PizzaKing57]

Shunsuke's decline is the one I'm mostly upset about, since he's the most nostalgic challenger out of the dying stars and his third consecutive 1st Stage failure in this tournament was the second most heartbreaking for me, as I so wanted him to exit his mental blocks and at least clear the 1st Stage this time.

There's no way his three 1st Stage fails were funny at all and I now have to worry if he will ever return to form again or decide to call it quits before it even happens. He also didn't deserve to be digested this time, as his brother Takamasa fell into a poor stroke about a month after the competition took place and should've been given a fluff-piece of that incident to show respect for the guy.

P.S. I hated it when somebody during the live broadcast of the tournament called him "Nagasucki", just because he yet again sadly failed the 1st Stage and is barely ever shown that much.

[tns8597]

I think some of his fails were funny but certainly nowhere near the level of Shingo who he’s often compared to; 36 I did laugh at tbh because it was a really dumb move. 34 I also think people found quite funny but I think it was a freak accident. His recent fails (37-38) haven’t been that laughable but rather signify how his head really isn’t in the game anymore, which is understandable with his brother and family.

I’m still interested though as to why he’s often compared to Shingo, given that the latter’s got a much more goofy personality and has had a much wider repertoire of hilarious/dumb retires.

[Ninja Relaxer]

I haven't heard anything about this, because I don't engage in the Ninja community at all outside of this forum. That said, this sounds pretty mean-spirited to me. Shunsuke seems like a serious guy, and I don't think he would appreciate this kind of attention.

Shingo? Yeah, he has a sense of humor, so he'd probably laugh about it -- and so would I. Outside of the joke competitors, he has had more funny and dismaying fails than any other competitor. But he's probably the only one (aside from the joke competitors themselves) who could be the target of this sort of thing without it coming across as mean.

[m4tt3r0x]

Well the FF fail Shunsuke theme got a good laugh out of me

[Kane-Not-Kosugi]

At least Ryo has cleared Stage 1 2 of the last 3 tournaments. Shunsuke barely does that lol.

I also think the fact that Shunsuke was around for a long time attributes to his meme status. He's (kind of) an OG, so like Shingo, he's getting the "old man" trratment

[tns8597]

Yeah Shingo I understand because his personality goes hand in hand with the nature of his fails, and he's been making us laugh for years, like in Sasuke 20, 22, 25, 27, 31, 33, 34, and 37 (37 in particular made me laugh out loud but also shout at the screen because I thought he had a genuine chance of clearing). I'm pretty sure he's also in on the joke as well because he always laughs at himself whenever he fails in a stupid manner; I guess that's a function of him more recently competing for fun and not actually trying to achieve Kanzenseiha anymore lol.

The reason I don't understand the targeting of Nagasaki is that for every reason he's been made fun of, other competitors are arguably more deserving. Firstly, unlike Shingo, he's never really had the most screen-worthy personality; even when he was younger he was pretty clinical and reserved. The digest theme thing was hilarious but again we've seen a load of other competitors get their clears or fails digested; Drew and Sato arguably had it worse lol. And in terms of the dumb fails, none of his fails were really THAT funny, certainly nowhere near meme-worthy. 34 and 36 were the main ones that people tend to bring up, but it's not like either of them were Shingo or Honma Takashi-level.

One thing I do find interesting though is how his decline was among the most gradual of any competitor. Most declines are quite sudden in that the competitor does well for a bit and then enters a (sometimes unrecoverable) streak of Stage 1 failures with maybe one Stage 2/3 run left in the bag before continuing to fail Stage 1 (kind of like Nagano). Shunsuke went from 2 Stage 3 fails, to 2 Stage 2 fails, to 3 Stage 1 fails; definitely a function of how his prioritisation and interest in Sasuke is waning in favour of family commitments, and you can see that on his Instagram. He barely ever mentions anything Sasuke-related anymore. Again though, imo this is a shame but 100% fair enough, yet some people find this gradual decline quite funny which it really isn't when you consider that competitors aren't bound to Sasuke and have their own personal lives; not everyone is Katsumi Yamada.