Takeda's Farewell Run

[darthvaderlim]

What if Takeda didn't have a heart surgery, but decided to have one final run in Sasuke like Nagano in 32? Try to create a possible best scenario for him regardless where he fails

[zoran]

Takeda's heart surgery is the primary reason he's retiring so we'll say he has a child in 2021, maybe a relative of his becomes severely ill and requires care and lets say he sets up a business, maybe another injury too so he decides to do 1 final run in 40 with intensive training.

The best case scenario would be Inui giving him the coverage he deserves and full in-depth retrospective of his career. Results wise he clears stage 1 and due to the morale boost of Shinto being there and training, beats stage 2. In stage 3, he makes it to the first jump of the cliffhanger, and finally before the final runs, he is given the opportunity to run the stage he never got too and makes it pretty far, timing out midway up the salmon ladder in high spirits. He finally gives a speech to close out the show.

[dakohosu]

Realistically I think he'd still be competing today had it not been for his heart surgery, because he put in a s*** load of effort into working his way back up fitness wise before 38, and him effectively clearing would've instilled further passion for continuing. He also competed regularly in his hay day despite having two young children so I can't see him retiring because he recently had a new child, especially with the fact that as a gym owner he probably has a better work schedule so he could assign more time to both training as well as family time. For what it's worth, Shingo was setting hiumself up for retirement come 28, and Takeda was the only one who wanted to continue competing; obviously that was a decade a go but it does go to show Takeda's sustained passion for Sasuke as like Shingo he'd basically been competing for half of his life, and Shingo is still competing today.

The only thing I could see stopping him would be further relapses in his shoulder, which wouldn't be unlikely given how problematic it had been (I believe that's what kept him out of 37) and obviously as you get older there's a higher risk of stuff like that becoming chronic (I mean look at Kanno).