Nine reasons to watch Ninja Warrior

My family — certainly Karen and I, and to a lesser degree Jake — are addicted to G4TV’s Ninja Warrior. If you’ve avoided Ninja Warrior thinking that Japanese game shows are ridiculous confections wherein contestants have T-bone steaks strapped to their foreheads and are threatened by a hungry monitor lizard, or where they must demonstrate their proficiency at speed-eating a dozen linked sausages and inhaling spaghetti through their noses, then you’re doing yourself a disservice. Ninja Warrior is something altogether different; I would argue it’s the ultimate sport.

Here’s the setup: there are two Sasuke (Ninja Warrior) competitions per year. Each begins with 100 contestants, who progress through (or are eliminated by) four stages, with several obstacles per stage. The obstacles require varied physical skills, such as upper body strength, agility, balance, and speed. Even in Stage One, many of the obstacles are so insanely difficult that most of the 100 contestants are eliminated. It’s not uncommon for no contestant to proceed to Stage Four.

Now, this is a ninja warrior:

but unfortunately she’s not one of the competitors. (Women do compete, but sadly even most of the athletes are undone by the first stage. Many of Ninja Warrior’s obstacles favor brawn over agility and balance.) Here’s a real Ninja Warrior — rising star Yuuji Urushihara.

He’s not an Olympic athlete, although many have competed on Ninja Warrior. He’s not a rock climber or a weight-lifter or a runner, as far as I know. He’s a shoe salesman — and that’s one of the main reasons to watch Ninja Warrior. But I’m getting ahead of myself. First, watch a bit to get a better idea of what’s involved:

I defy you to watch the Pipe Slider (beginning at around 3:59) and not squirm.

Need more reasons to watch Ninja Warrior? Read on.

1. It’s a living testimony to the diabolical sadism of human imagination. That clip of Stage Three, above? That was from an earlier season. Even compared to last year’s Stage Three, those obstacles look easy. And this year, Stage Three stopped everyone.

The program’s creators have a problem. Competitors don’t simply work out with weights, run, and do their stair-masters between Sasukes. They’ve built models of the obstacles and they practice on them and they get better. The only way the creators can keep up with the competitors is buy changing the obstacles every year — not all of the obstacles, because that would be so cruel as to not be fun anymore. But enough that the competitors are always a bit off balance.

2. Gods walk among us, by which I mean the most unlikely competitors rise to the top. To my knowledge, not a single Olympic athlete has progressed to Stage Four, and many have tried. Some of the All Stars (folks who often do exceptionally well) come from athletic jobs; two are fishermen, one is a firefighter. But one is a gas station manager and one is a government office worker. Yuuji Urushihara, the fellow pictured above? Sells shoes for a living. Nuff said.

3. Gods, walk among us, and they are short. The best physique for Ninja Warrior seems to be 5′ 4″ or shorter, well muscled but not too well muscled, and skinny. Low body fat, that is. Some of the heavy hitters are muscle men, but this is by no means essential (or even, at times, particularly helpful). This contributes to the sense that anyone can do this, especially since . . .

4. Ninja Warriors are not necessarily youngsters. Some of the best competitors are in their thirties. Often, success has more to do with technique than youthful endurance.

5. It does the spirit good to see the impossible made possible. Several obstacles which appeared impassable at their debut proved in later seasons to be quite doable. Some competitors make these tasks look easy. “Impossible” feats include the Spider Walk, the Salmon Ladder, and the Spider Flip. The Cliff Hanger used to look impossible, but when the competitors mastered it, they made it tougher. And this year, they made it tougher still: the Ultimate Cliff Hanger, this year’s hope-killer. We’ll have to wait another six months to see if anyone’s home practice is enough to get them through the UCH.

6. A model of good sportsmanship. With so many American athletes running afoul of the media by being, well, dog-fighting, gambling, juicing, sex-addicted jerks, the Ninja Warriors are a good lot. They’re competing against the course, not one another, and they regularly call out encouragement and advice to whomever is suffering through an obstacle at the time. They train together, build courses for themselves and others to train on, and seem to be great friends with one another. Similarly,

7. There are no sore losers. Maybe it’s a Japanese thing: you know what’s the most common comment made by an athlete in the post-wipeout interview? I’m sorry I let everyone down. Competitors blame their own shortcomings but they never blame the show’s creators. Well, one time a competitor said after his wipeout, “They set the bar awfully high!” Which is pretty mild, considering most viewers were probably thinking, “Those creators are vicious bastards!”

8. Drama aplenty. There are All Stars who crash on Stage One, dark horse newcomers who sail through to Stage Three, comedians who are put into the initial lineup just for laughs who go on to Stage Two or even Three. There’s a fellow who’s losing his eyesight, another who has dislocated his shoulder three times but keeps coming back for more, another who broke up his marriage because training consumed his existence. Another fellow wanted to quit to spend more time with his kids, but his kids pleaded with him to stay in it for them.

The show’s producers know better than to spend tons of time on the human story, though. This is not the Olympics, which frankly I find boring as hell because of all their human interest crap. With Ninja Warrior, you’ll get maybe 15 to 30 seconds of the athlete’s history, and then it’s back to the action.

Finally,

9. You’ll get plenty of chances to laugh at the em cee’s distinctly Japanese sense of humor. Humdingers like “The gluttonous Cliff Hanger has consumed three warriors so far. Is it still hungry?” abound. We often have to replay segments because the first time, we’re watching the athlete, and the second time, we’re reading the subtitles.

There you go, my TV viewing recommendation for what’s left of your summer vacation.

D.