Question regarding Modern sasuke competitors

[shunsukenumber98]

Are the competitors too good in modern sasuke or is the current sasuke course too easy? Or is it both? Do let us all know

[dakohosu]

I'd probably go with a mix of both, as both intertwine with one another.

It's a simple matter of the course not evolving enough over the past decade, resulting in competitors becoming too adapted to the current setup. Everyone has replicas of existing obstacles, that always end up being the same in following tournaments, which contributes to the monotony in results.

I do agree that Stages 1 and 2 have become too easy, especially comparing them to the courses in Shin-Sasuke. Inui wants his mascot celebrities to do well which is why this has become the case. Comedians reaching the Dragon Glider, as well as the more athletic celebrities like ABC-Z and Iwamoto making Stage 2, are fundamentally good for ratings; bloodbaths like in Sasuke 19, are not. Poor results = celebrities doing worse, and less clears to digest and then show on the YouTube channel to drive continued interest in the show in the 12 months between tournaments. The issue being that to uphold Sasuke's reputation as one of the world's hardest obstacle courses, all of the difficulty then needs to be focussed on Stages 3 and 4, which leads to the stagnation that most competitors are experiencing, this being most evident with the Cliffhanger.

The Cliffhanger in and of itself is insanely tough, and combined with the fact that many competitors who would otherwise be eliminated by the first two stages had the course's difficulty evolved beyond that of Shin-Sasuke, accounts for the potential 10+ competitors currently who are deemed to become perennial "Cliffhanger fodder". This has resulted in many competitors becoming "too good" up to a certain point, but becoming completely out of their depth when the difficulty suddenly spikes in the latter part of the course, leading to said monotony in results. Said certain point being the Cliffhanger for majority of Stage 2/3 regulars, and the Vertical Limit or Final Stage for the remainder, bar Yusuke, of course.

I would also say competitors are "too good" with a pinch of salt. Because the course is always the same, the current cohort train far more specifically than they used to, on exact replicas and so forth, which means that they're very good at doing well on the specific Sasuke course, but at the expense of their adaptability. This is why Japan has historically done very poorly compared to internationals on foreign courses, because international shows' courses, especially ANW, change regularly and so their training is centred around adapting to the unknown on the fly, whereas the Japanese competitors always end up failing early because they've mostly lost their ability to tackle new obstacles with no prior training, given that 90% of their training is centred around the specific obstacles on their domestic course. Japan's course is also quite unlike many other Ninja courses; far more intricate and less dynamic/lache based, which is partially due to their smaller statures, but further serves to confirm that they aren't suited to the much bigger and badder international courses due to the way they train.