I give to you, my friends, my absolute bestest favoritest thing.

[Whackjob]

Time to delve into the RL side of things briefly. I want to give you a present. It's a pretty present, and I like it quite a lot, but I know not everyone is going to like this present. But I'm going to give it to you anyway, so those that enjoy it get some merriment, and those that don't can feel bad for a while. ...because if you don't find this funny, you should absolutely feel bad.

General premise: I want to introduce you to a think called the Batsu Game. It's a kind of a televised thing in Japan, where people make a wager, and whoever loses has to do something terrible. The terrible doings is the actual part called the batsu game. Batsu means "Punishment".

Specific premise: The show is called "Downtown's Gaki no Tsukai ya Arahende!" and I am of the opinion that is rates amongst the most impressive works ever done by man. They're a variety show of sorts. In Japan, obviously. The two main guys are Hamada Masatoshi and Matsumoto Hitoshi. They're a comedy duo group called "Downtown". A Boke/Tsukkomi group. Or more literally, a fool and a straight man. Or more accurately, a Laurel and Hardy. They didn't pioneer this genre, but they altered it severely through their interpretation of it. Prior to them, a Boke/Tsukkomi would always do things a certain way. The boke would dress like a kid, playing the fool, and the straight man would dress sharp and act like an adult. Downtown changed that. Matsumoto, the boke, dresses very sharp but plays the fool. Hamada is the straight man and dresses casual. It was a kind of metaphorical rude-gesture towards the authoritarian types in their earlier days. Needless to say, they became very popular early. They share the show with semipermanent co-hosts Tanaka Naoki, Endo Shozo, and Yamazaki Hosei. Tanaka and Endo are another boke/tsukkomi group, but I haven't seen much of their standup, so I can't really tell you how they work. Yamazaki? He's a solo man... and does a unique form of comedy. Basically, he's funny because he tries hard to be funny and fails, therefore being funny. Think of him as a Japanese version of Will Farrel who is actually good at it and doesn't make you cringe.

Anyways, this show is a variety show. They don't do batsu games all the time. They can't. Bodies need time to heal. In between, they do a myriad of strange and esoteric things that are fun to watch. They range from "Let's put everyone in god-awful costumes nobody would want to be caught dead in, get on a bus, play a version of simon says, and whoever loses has to get out and walk back to the studio in very public and humiliating shame." and "Let's do a cooking show where we try to invent delicious new dishes, but instead come up with something obscenely vile and try to get Hamada to eat it."

Long story short, you have to see this show. Lucky for you, clip follows.

More specific: This is the first half of the infamous "High School Batsu Game." Four men lost the challenge, and one won. Hamada wins, so he gets to design, run, and interfere with the game. His word is stone. Unfortunately for the four, one of Hamada's knicknames is "The Super Sadist" and you're going to see why haha!

The rules are simple.

1.) Do not laugh.

2.) If you do laugh, you will be punished immediately.

But it's easy to not laugh for a whole day, right? Well... what if people who have known you for twenty years all conspire against you? And set trap after trap after trap after trap to force you to laugh? What hope do you have?

Enjoy with Vigor.

#EDIT: In case you're wondering, that inset window in the top right? That's them in the studio, watching the film with the studio audience. They provide a running commentary.

http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xnyz0v_eng-sub-gaki-no-tsukai-highschool-part-1_fun

~Whack

Edited July 4, 2014 by Whackjob

[lajoswinkler]

Oh, I love these. There are some damn good TV shows in Japan. Hilarious stuff.

Check out these, if you haven't already.

Dero

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=byFXxi7v2Bc

Takeshi's castle

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PGuYojcmZpI

[Kinglet]

I love takeshi's castle. The traps in that show are just brilliant I especially love that massive free-for-all tank battle at the end.