Some of the funniest and most disturbing TV from Japan involves Batsu Games which means “Penalty Games” where the people involves are painfully penalized based on random events or by breaking the rules set out at the beginning of the game. In the latter type, the game is designed to try to make the players break the rules as often as possible.
In this clip, players are given a tongue twister, with a short period of time to complete it without mistakes…Or else…
There’s plenty more after the jump:
You will often see the same contestants, and there is one group of comedians (Downtown’s Gaki No Tsukai) that does an annual game lasting several hours, and I’m surprised that any of them can manage to sit down afterward. They usually start with a simple game to determine which players will be in the long game.
The closest thing I can think of, as far as an American counterpart, would be the “Jackass” TV show.
Some of the shows below run a couple of hours or more, in those cases, I’ve put the first part, you should have little trouble finding the rest from there. Some have subtitles some do not.
Let the pain begin!!!
No Laughing Hospital
No Laughing High School
No Laughing Spa
24 Hour Tag
Silent Library
No Laughing Police Station
No Reaction Pie Hell
Karaoke Batsu
and here’s a Downtown history of the batsu games:
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August 12, 2009 at 8:57 pm
tokyo5
People in the West are often shocked by Japanese “game shows” where the penalty for wrong answers often involves pain.
But those aren’t “game shows” in the American sense…where normal people try to win cash or prizes.
These shows are just comedy sketches. The “contestants” are all professional comedians trying to get laughs.
There are “regular” game shows in Japan too.
August 12, 2009 at 9:30 pm
becomingjapanese
Yes, that’s what I was trying to get across, Although there have been some more traditional game shows in other countries that had a pain aspect along with a typical game show format
For example:
I spend waaaaayyy to much time on youtube…