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Post by casuallystranded on Sept 5, 2022 10:13:16 GMT -5
on the official SASUKE Instagram account's story, the ran a little reel of old Trials results (Yuuji, Kawaguchi, Rio, etc), then they had a solid image of what looks like the old ANW hotseat area (with 8 seats) with a caption saying something along the lines of "For more information about the recruitment of new competitors, go to the TBS website".
So it looks like we'll be getting new trials for the first time since (I think) 29!
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Post by subtleagent on Sept 5, 2022 11:18:00 GMT -5
They've sort of had trials, but tbh it's really just Quad Steps and jumping for a bar. It's no wonder we get a lot of joke competitors on the show these days. If they do have the trials again please let it be something more entertaining than whatever the hell they've got now. They don't need to be complete overkill like ANW's, but please revamp them.
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Post by Ninja Relaxer on Sept 5, 2022 12:30:25 GMT -5
I was really hoping for an earlier broadcast date this year, but if they haven't even run the Trials yet... Sigh.
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Post by dakohosu on Sept 5, 2022 13:58:16 GMT -5
To add some context to this discussion, from what I recall the Quad Steps+bar grab thing prior to Sasuke 39 was for the celebrity auditions only, which sort of explains why we got the amount of fodder that we did as it wasn't challenging by any means. I don't even know why they had said auditions as for the most part celebrities are picked for their fame/contribution to the ratings and to a certain degree how spectacularly badly they do rather than their athleticism, regulars like Darvish etc. notwithstanding obviously. I mean there is no way HIKAKIN did better than majority of the celebrities who partook, which included Mori and Iketani who both got declined from what I gather.
The actual auditions for regular guys was a push-up contest where you have to do a pushup everytime a voice cue occurs, up to 100, and whoever lasts the longest before failing I think got selected. There was also an interview, like the one Isa was shown doing with Inui (the video which made everyone realise he'd left the Black Tigers). Between the pushups and interview, I'm not sure which way round the process was, but that seemed to be it. I'm assuming perennial competitors were exempt from any of these trials, though year by year they're becoming more shameless in terms of flat out declining former Stage 2 regulars, and now even Iketani who carried the Golden Era along with the All-Stars. The Inui Gundan is becoming smaller and smaller.
Either way, I think we can all agree that a simple push-up test and interview isn't a particularly thorough indicator of one's ability to do well at Sasuke, which should be the point of the 'regular guy' allocation, to give those who have dedicated themselves to training the chance to actually bring their dreams to life etc. etc. We already have enough joke competitors in the form of comedians and celebrities to fill the void of funny fails, and the same veterans clearing gets boring and predictable af, so we need some new blood who can actually deliver some Ragivaru Anastase-level breakout performances. The way things are we get basically no clears from rookies who aren't celebrities or internationals these days, whereas in the older days it was a fairly regular occurrence.
I am excited to see what these trials will consist of especially in conjunction with the competitors themselves having a say in terms of who gets past the first audition round, which means we could get our best cohort of rookies for a very long time. I am obviously going into this with a bit of skepticism (like everything Sasuke-related these days) but I figured they wouldn't hype up the trials with a teaser if it wasn't something different from the usual.
On the topic of the potential air date, yeah it sucks, especially when they opened the applications a good 4 months earlier than last year. I would've loved for them to have aired it on September 27 as that would be the literal 25th anniversary since Sasuke 1, but I feel as though it's looking like another late December tournament again.... Sasuke is way more popular now than it was in 33-35, when they were doing two tournaments a year, so I don't know why Inui's gone with this recent trend of once a year in late December, especially when the pioneers of the trend (36-37) had the two worst ratings out of any tournament.
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New Trials
Sept 9, 2022 10:17:29 GMT -5
via mobile
Post by subtleagent on Sept 9, 2022 10:17:29 GMT -5
Maybe he's scared ratings will dip again if he does too many tournaments.
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Post by dakohosu on Sept 9, 2022 14:58:08 GMT -5
Maybe he's scared ratings will dip again if he does too many tournaments. Historically ratings only really took a massive hit when they took the piss, like Sasuke 23-25 which were all aired within the space of 6 months, or even 14-16. Two tournaments a year has never caused any issues, even when you consider the popularity decline compared to the Golden Era (like 33-35 were about the same ratings-wise compared to 31 or 32). Besides, you can tell that apart from all the Sasuke 40 audition videos, they've really been running out of ideas on the YouTube channel recently, like just replaying loads of snippets from old tournaments; my only assumption is that Inui doesn't have the 'budget' to do two tournaments in a year, as despite the lack of innovation in terms of course changes, the whole setting up and maintenance of the course must be eye wateringly expensive. Then again doing all of these festivals and kids park events to keep fans interested in between tournaments can't be cheap either. Either way, it's still really disappointing that they announced 40/opened auditions in April and it's looking to be another December tournament, it was almost a false sense of hope like how they bigged up the new Final before 39 and then it didn't even get revealed or attempted. I just hope the elongated auditions process means we get a much stronger set of rookies, which seems to be the case given the recent material
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