Growing up around the dawn of the age of widespread satellite
TV had many benefits; not having to go outside and the sacred ten minute
freeview being two positives that immediately spring to mind.
Another advantage was the sheer breadth of viewing options
covered for that vital period between waking up and going to school/college.
This wealth of viewing alternatives meant you were never short of something to
watch whilst you ate that retrospectively foolish chocolate-heavy cereal.
For the golden age of your childhood innocence, Cartoon
Network and Nickelodeon were all you need with their bright colours, jaunty
theme tunes and mild flirtatious banter between the presenters that largely
went over your innocent head.
However, come the age of 11 or 12, secondary school had
changed the way you saw the world. Laughing at other people’s misfortune became
far more fun and we hedonistically hunted for something to appease that particular
urge, a skill that would come in handy again around the age of 16 when another
urge began to strike.
Uniquely, Challenge TV and, less uniquely, Japan, provided
the solution to our morning schadenfreude craving; a man taking a football to a
place where objects travelling at a high velocity hurt (his tescticles) was the
perfect addition to our somewhat more adult, though still heavily-sugared,
cereal of choice.
I am indeed talking about Takeshi’s Castle, the show that (may have) saved the (probably)
floundering dental and chiropractor industries in late 80s Japan.
For those select few who are not familiar with niche,
Japanese game shows from nearly two and a half decades ago that were only ever broadcast
on satellite TV in the UK, here is the basic premise of the show; Japanese
sadists smiling, laughing and only occasionally screaming as they have pain
inflicted on them in a startling varied number of cruel, mad, ingenious ways.
The pretence for the biggest public display of
pain-infliction since last John Terry last took a penalty, was a fictional Count
Takeshi laying down a challenge; 100+ mad Japanese folk had to storm his ‘castle’
which was constructed out of what appeared
to be cardboard and firework remnants, defended by dignity-free guards
armed with water guns. These
water guns were later upgraded to rather sad and pathetic looking lasers,
presumably to match the sad and pathetic costumes.
To sort the wheat from the chaff and to prevent 100 very
1980s looking Japanese people breaking aforementioned cardboard castle through
sheer weight of numbers, a series of challenges had to be overcome by the
victims/contestants/ mental patients. These challenges often included the risk
of facial disfigurement, permanent limps or loss of ability to bear child. Loss
of dignity was never an issue however, as this was the 80s so uni-colour
jumpsuits and God-awful hair were par for the course.
What was quite remarkable about Takeshi’s Castle was the staggering number
of variations on challenges and games the producers managed to twist out of
the term ‘ritual humiliation’.
There was a game where people ran
through a maze of doors, being chased by men who looked as if they should have
been on a government-enforced register, before having their faces blackened
(for no discernible reason) or running through a door into some water. The
Benny Hill theme tune was thankfully absent.
Elsewhere, people lost teeth and broke ribs as they skipped along stones,
risked cranial damage by having
giant balls dropped on their heads, ran headlong into potentially
solid walls and received
footballs fired from cannons into their unwelcoming testicular zone. Sadly,
the challenge where contestants wrestled
Inevitably, more fails were shown than successes because, as
the internetz knows, fails equals fun. However, a handful of victims made it
through to the final showdown where leader of the assault on Takeshi’s Castle,
the suspiciously dark-haired and dangerously inept military leader, General Lee
led to them certain failure. Only nine contestants ever won the show, meaning
you probably had a better chance of winning the lottery, although the constant
hope-disappointment cycle of the lottery is less painful than a one off headlong dive into
some mud.
Probably the one real flaw of the show, aside from the Craig
Charles commentary, was that it eventually spawned in the UK Total Wipeout, 101 Ways to Leave a Gameshow and about a million other programmes
with the same basic premise but all without the certain special something Takeshi’s Castle had; most likely a
1980s Japanese woman in her 20s making the peace symbol before cheerfully
setting off at a brisk pace and the scene ending in her bouncing off of a wall
that looked like a door.
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