Celebrities on SASUKE 39

[kate🤍]

I have made this rant or explanation elsewhere, but I thought I'd post it here.
 - Feel free to share your thoughts, I'm curious what others have to say as I'm very passionate on this topic and Japanese pop-culture in general and I think I give good insight.


The term "idol" and "celebrity" is very loose.
                 - There are over 5 branches of idols subcategories and 95% of the people this time on 39 are "talents", NOT celebrities. The term celebrity does not apply to most competing on SASUKE.


I find talents "タレント/tarento/talento" most appropriate because nowadays if you're on SASUKE you're pretty much that, except for a small margin of people this time.

• Celebrity in American/Japanese terms is completely different because America has like A-list, B-list blah blah, while Japanese celebrity is such a smaller scale term reserved for only like a few select people who live a front page magazine type life or who are at the epicenter of controversy or notoriety, - Think of like Paris Hilton or any American/British Socialite: They don't capitalize on TV or public appearances like talents but rather are just talked about.
  

• While foreigners, "primarly American" say celebrity because they think it is someone popular on TV, that is not the case in Japan and not really for SASUKE either

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• On an official Japanese news source, out of Japan's top 100 celebrities - Only 1 is competing of 100 (Toshiaki Kasuga #19 from the comedy duo, Audrey) 
• #6 out of Japan's top ranked celebrities is Akko (Wada Akiko) And people wonder why we have the Akko Gundan, she's #6 ranked out of the entire country for influential/celebrity ranking. She has been doing Inui's shows since 2005 and even had her own "Akko Gundan" on DOORS.

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If you are watching pretty much any Japanese show that we like here [i.e Sasuke, Kunoichi, Banzuke, Chronos, Run For Money, Ochiruna, uhh literally anything you name it] then you're watching pretty much only talents



Out of 100 people competing there is only 1 actual celebrity competing (here on SASUKE 39) and they are ranked 92 of 100


Usually production has a celebrity as a main featurette on a show to get all of Japan to be able to recognize a familiar face (Akko in Sasuke's case here) and then grow a fanbase through being entertained by talents or having seen them elsewhere



^ Here is a list of all 100 competitors and their specific talent category

• Some competitors should fit in multiple categories [i.e. Ando Miki should be in variety AND sports talent etc]

While so many complain about talents being on SASUKE, if they didn't exist the show would lose many degrees of popularity and loss of funding for it. Many talents are also mistaken for having absolutely no physical ability or desire to clear. All talents who got on this time had to pass through the talent examination and would need to show some sort of prowess to get on, in addition to completing a standardized push ups test. All of these people have been physically scouted on their dedication and desire to compete.


#28 Higashimura Mei (Meimei/Meichan) of Hinatazaka46 has been trying to get on for 3 years and is a legitimate fan. Her video has almost a million views and all Hinatazaka fans pretty much know Mei as she's one of the most well known members from the group, also know that she's been trying to get on for years because she brings it up almost every episode of their tv show (That Kasuga from Audrey hosts) She's been a star on Taiiku Kai for being the final runner on "Masked Runner" and has won track championships at a wide level. Choose a case for any talent and there is some skill that the producers have sought them for.

[kate🤍]

In addition, I've seen a lot of speculation about there being 0 foreigners on SASUKE this time

#43 Tatsumasa Murasame is from Sweden and is jacked, he's appeared on NHK's fitness programs
#54 Michael Keida is American and fitness model/actor.
#64 Gabby is the first latino american woman on SASUKE and has been training advanced free climbing and weightlifting.

[anime boy]

Dec 23, 2021 14:47:16 GMT -5 kate🤍 said:

In addition, I've seen a lot of speculation about there being 0 foreigners on SASUKE this time

#43 Tatsumasa Murasame is from Sweden and is jacked, he's appeared on NHK's fitness programs
#54 Michael Keida is American and fitness model/actor.
#64 Gabby is the first latino american woman on SASUKE and has been training advanced free climbing and weightlifting.

People wonder why I bet on Tasumasa Murasame doing so well, but for me all it took was a glance. The dude is a 6 foot jacked giant. A total powerhouse. So that's all it took to convince me he'd go far LOL

[dragstar]

I just remembered that Hikakin is in this competition. I wonder if this would help the ratings...

[dakohosu]

I’m just waiting for CustomGaming57 to comment how much he hates celebrities .....

While I understand that celebrities are there to help the ratings I think recent tournaments have gone quite overkill especially with the proportion of said celebrities who are ‘joke’ competitors as Rolling Hill fails get old quite quickly. This time though I’m actually looking forward to it because of how many athletic backgrounds we’ve got. I feel like we could get a fair few rookies clearing Stage 1.

[TCM]

Dec 24, 2021 8:42:35 GMT -5 dakohosu said:

I’m just waiting for CustomGaming57 to comment how much he hates celebrities .....

While I understand that celebrities are there to help the ratings I think recent tournaments have gone quite overkill especially with the proportion of said celebrities who are ‘joke’ competitors as Rolling Hill fails get old quite quickly. This time though I’m actually looking forward to it because of how many athletic backgrounds we’ve got. I feel like we could get a fair few rookies clearing Stage 1.

You just will have to lose the perception of what's a "joke" talent because almost none of them are. If someone happens to fail Rolling Hill, maybe it's just because Rolling Hill isn't a gimmie obstacle regardless of skill level. #13 Takashi Honma is one of the few that actually would fit that label and even he legitimately tries to replicate obstacles as training at work with his team. This feels like it just completely ignored the point of the post.  It's not just that talents are necessary it's that they don't just exist to be joke fodder due to how they train and how they were recruited.  The show has always based its ratings appeal on famous faces competing, the G4 edits just never relayed that. 

[dakohosu]

I don’t base who I regard as a joke competitor on whether they’re merely celebrities or not. It’s more how they appear on the start line and in a lot of the past few tournaments we’ve seen a load of weird and funny antics and they don’t do particularly well so that’s what I consider to be a joke competitor.

My point was more that a much higher proportion of celebrities this time round have athletic backgrounds and thus a far fewer proportion could be considered as joke competitors. Again I’m not classing every celebrity that I don’t know as a joke competitor, I always look at their backgrounds and bios prior to every tournament.

It really depends on what you define as a joke competitor; for me it’s someone who displays comedic acts on the start line and doesn’t have a great shot at doing particularly well and/or competitors with no athletic background who obvs know they’re not going to clear. Based on that definition a lot of the past tournaments, especially Shin-Sasuke, have had lots of joke competitors.

And Takashi Honma actually isn’t a joke competitor, he just happened to have a funny fail in 38. He trains for the show so i don’t class him as a joke. Mind you, watching that footage again, a part of me thinks he fell that way on purpose as he fell over way before the water and basically crawled past the trampoline. Defo looked fabricated imo.

[kate🤍]

Dec 24, 2021 10:59:04 GMT -5 dakohosu said:

I don’t base who I regard as a joke competitor on whether they’re merely celebrities or not. It’s more how they appear on the start line and in a lot of the past few tournaments we’ve seen a load of weird and funny antics and they don’t do particularly well so that’s what I consider to be a joke competitor.

My point was more that a much higher proportion of celebrities this time round have athletic backgrounds and thus a far fewer proportion could be considered as joke competitors. Again I’m not classing every celebrity that I don’t know as a joke competitor, I always look at their backgrounds and bios prior to every tournament.

It really depends on what you define as a joke competitor; for me it’s someone who displays comedic acts on the start line and doesn’t have a great shot at doing particularly well and/or competitors with no athletic background who obvs know they’re not going to clear. Based on that definition a lot of the past tournaments, especially Shin-Sasuke, have had lots of joke competitors.

And Takashi Honma actually isn’t a joke competitor, he just happened to have a funny fail in 38. He trains for the show so i don’t class him as a joke. Mind you, watching that footage again, a part of me thinks he fell that way on purpose as he fell over way before the water and basically crawled past the trampoline. Defo looked fabricated imo.

Well that is not that a joke competitor is. Most of these people here have their own gimmick or shtick that the public knows them for aside from their athletic ability.

In addition, I thought I made clear but the only celebrity competing here is Toshiaki Kasuga #19.

Yamada Katsumi is as much a talent as a wide range of the field here.

[penguincatfish]

I was wondering a bit about Gabby because she just kind of has that look, but I wasn't curious enough to look into it. She didn't jump out to me the way it did with Kaito Streets.

So that makes 4 depending on how you look at Kaito, who could also be considered Sports since he's an Olympic Fencer.

Kaito was born in Japan but grew up in the US. His mom is Japanese. Don't know about his dad besides being American, but we know Kaito is Half-Japanese in terms of ethnicity.

I posted about Sweden, Michael, and Kaito in the other thread.

sasukemaniac.proboards.com/thread/8557/sasuke-39-competitors-list