Why for something about 4 years there are all 5 members in the batsu game? It was always that one or two members were punishing the other members, now they are the whole group in the game. Why is that?
This would be speculation of my part, but I believe back then the batsu games, or punishment games, were really a punishment.
They either placed a bet or a competition, and the loser suffered the punishment. The directors and the channel saw that those segments got crazy audience ratings and decided they should step further, and placed all of them at once, on a "punishment" for losing nothing.
It got out of Downtown’s hands, most probably. That’s my opinion, of course.
Well it started with the Hospital batsu, I think that one was very well-received (even outside Japan) and set a standard. For the press conference of the Hospital batsu Matsumoto simply said he wanted to "beat Kouhaku" (their big rival show on New Years) so I guess he was confident with the changes
Maybe viewers like to see the reactions of each and every one of the cast, everyone has their favourites right? Plus the charm of them all being forced to sit in a room together which leads to banter and pranks. But that’s a personal opinion of course…
I don’t know if Downtown ever described specifically what they had in mind for the concept of the batsu series but I did recently read a interview from Hosei. When asked about the innovation behind the No Laughing series I think he said "It was always the case that in all variety shows the comedians amused people" , other types of entertainers or celebrities would never be seen on them. But with the No Laughing Series, people from all categories of entertainment join and work together making the comedians laugh, the tables turned! I think Hosei said "Many years ago back then when Matsumoto-san muttered it, it was eye-opening for everyone who was there".
Here’s the article: http://www.oricon.co.jp/news/2032210/full/
It’s funny because from our perspective, the celebrities or other entertainers aren’t a big thing. But I think it’s different in Japan, the interviewer mentioned it’s a particular attraction of the show. To be honest it is pretty unique… I can’t really think of a similar show where well-known non-comedians work hard to make comedians laugh, or rather a country where I think it’d work as well as it seems to of done in Japan! I suppose in the UK here we have things like Comic Relief which gets celebrities out of their comfort zone, but there’s nothing like the Gaki Specials of course.
I don’t know most the guests in the batsu but I love seeing the reactions of each of the 5 Gaki members to those guests and of course the "timeout" of all 5 of them in the break room which is often worse than whatever the guests can dish out since they know how to press eachothers buttons.
Out of interest here’s the audience ratings over the years (Kanto region - Tokyo etc., Kansai region - Osaka etc.)
[quote:14x69xbp]Hot Springs Inn - 12.8%~16.2%
Yugawara Hot Springs - 16.9% (Kanto) 20.8% (Kansai)
High School - 15.2% (Kanto) 19.4% (Kansai)
Police - 10.2% (Kanto) 17.2% (Kansai)
Hospital - 12.4% (Kanto) 17.1% (Kansai)
Newspaper - 15.4% (Kanto) 20.2% (Kansai)
Hotel - 15.4~16.4% (Kanto) 18.4%~22.2% (Kansai)
Spy - 14.3%~15.3% (Kanto) 20.6%~23.3% (Kansai)
Airport - 16.6%~18.7% (Kanto) 21.2%~23.1% (Kansai)
Teachers - 16.5%~16.8% (Kanto) 22.3% (Kansai)[/quote:14x69xbp]
From: http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E7%AC%91% … C%E3%82%BA
(No ratings for the latest one, but I guess it seems to average around 17%~ for Kanto in recent years and in the 20s for Kansai)
Whoa, I would have never guessed the ratings were that high. If anything I thought they would have been dropping.
Yay it’s still popular in Japan! More Batsu games!
[quote="desukarhu":3usnpozw]Whoa, I would have never guessed the ratings were that high. If anything I thought they would have been dropping.
Yay it’s still popular in Japan! More Batsu games![/quote:3usnpozw]
Yeah its holding its own! Woo! Also they’ve mentioned sales of the DVDs/Blurays of the batsus in Japan account for a big chunk of the Gaki series profits I think.
Good news, the Kanto region (Tokyo etc.) audience viewer rating was announced for the Earth Defence Force batsu. The article heading says:
"Highest ever audience rating recorded for the Gaki no Tsukai New Year’s Eve SP - topping at 19.8%"
Overall it ranged from 17.2% ~ 19.8%. The rest of the article seems to say it beats their previous record and that last year they won the top-spot in viewer ratings, only being beat by their big rival show on a different channel, Kouhaku, a big celebrity singing contest show ([url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C5%8Dhaku_Uta_Gassen:3usnpozw]described here[/url:3usnpozw]). It gets monster ratings, this year it peaked at 44．5％!! Celebrities sure are popular! But then it’s the same in the UK here, lots of celebrity shows of which I never watch …
The show producer gave a message saying something along the lines of:
"We hope to continue to grow as a special program loved by audiences in the living room on New Years. Considering the long duration of 6 hours, thank you everyone for watching."
Article here: http://woman.infoseek.co.jp/news/entert … on_2032662
Thanks for clearing this out for me guys!
I think Batsu game is way more popular than Kouhaku outside japan. we are all here the 31 december (or the day after to download it without the ad break), but since years this forum exist, they still don’t find a way to make profit of the hype. I guess it could reach up the announcer price with a international audience.
They could put all gaki videos every weeks on a youtube channel with paid subscription open only for people living outside japan, most of us would pay (well, not overpriced!) for see it.
I don’t know why they don’t… Some exclusive right reason? they don’t know about us? they don’t want bother with this and let us share their works for free here?
have anyone of you read something about a growing international audience on web in a interview or something?
[quote="andylau-fr":1iv3gr9d]…[/quote:1iv3gr9d]
Well the thing is, that east-placed asian country are really closed to themselevs, they are just stand-alone world. Even when they are popular, they keep making shows more for their native fans, because they don’t have many opportunites to visit foreign fans.
[quote="andylau-fr":163vdgev]have anyone of you read something about a growing international audience on web in a interview or something?[/quote:163vdgev]
I have seen articles in Japan mentioning how things like Silent Library and such got popular overseas via Youtube and how spinoff copy-cat shows were made in America, Britiain etc… But they fail to note how much we think those native-region shows suck.
I can get a 24/7 jewelry shopping channel but I can’t get a 24/7 Japanese shows channel. There’s something wrong with the world!
[quote="soudou":27t3m7t6][quote="andylau-fr":27t3m7t6]have anyone of you read something about a growing international audience on web in a interview or something?[/quote:27t3m7t6]
I have seen articles in Japan mentioning how things like Silent Library and such got popular overseas via Youtube and how spinoff copy-cat shows were made in America, Britiain etc… But they fail to note how much we think those native-region shows suck.
I can get a 24/7 jewelry shopping channel but I can’t get a 24/7 Japanese shows channel. There’s something wrong with the world![/quote:27t3m7t6]
I remember I saw ‘‘Fist Of Zen’’ 6 years ago, the show was fun because it kinda resembled the Silent Library series (This show went out of the libraries to various church and other places). The show was OK, but it wasn’t like SL (Had lighter challenges)
[quote="VideogameDC":1ilsbtok]I remember I saw ‘‘Fist Of Zen’’ 6 years ago, the show was fun because it kinda resembled the Silent Library series (This show went out of the libraries to various church and other places). The show was OK, but it wasn’t like SL (Had lighter challenges)[/quote:1ilsbtok]
There was one in America and Britiain both called by the same name "Silent Library". In America it was on MTV and in the UK here Channel 5. I didn’t actually watch it… though I was kinda interested with Adam Buxton being the commentator - I like him, but I wasn’t interested in the people being given the batsus which included teams of 6:
[list:1ilsbtok]
[:1ilsbtok] Random university friends.[/
1ilsbtok]
[:1ilsbtok] Random school friends.[/1ilsbtok]
[:1ilsbtok] School friends (again).[/1ilsbtok]
[:1ilsbtok] I.T. people[/1ilsbtok]
[:1ilsbtok] Members from some London football team[/1ilsbtok]
[:1ilsbtok] Some people from reality show Big Brother[/1ilsbtok][/list:u:1ilsbtok]
Yeah… Definitely not up to the standard of Downtown, Cocorico and Hosei…
I think the American version used celebrities or band members and such. But I don’t see that being much different to shows like "I’m A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here" in the UK here where they dump bugs on celebrities to watch them squirm… I never watch it. Likewise there was a Japanese gameshow "Brain Wall" which used comedians but in the UK the copy "Hole in the Wall" used celebrities which got a bit dull for me.
I once came across this article that explains how rookie Yoshimoto comedians in Japan are trained:
http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/11/ ... games/all/It mentions that shows like Takeshi’s Castle featuring random members of the public going through crazy obstacle courses died out because people got bored of average people with average reactions. Though personally I can’t really think of many British comedians I’d enjoy seeing in such shows anyway… So I’d rather they just quit trying and spent the time subtitling the original Japanese comedians that made it internationally popular on Youtube in the first place.
I came across that article before…it does explain some things about the japanese variety scene