Ninja Warrior v. American Ninja Warrior

The end of the fourth season of American Ninja Warrior (the first aired on NBC) ended a couple weeks ago and it couldn't have finished any lamer (spoiler alert - no one won).  I have also been watching reruns of the original Japanese show, Ninja Warrior, on G4 a lot lately and decided that we here at Brainfart should compare the two shows.  First off, we are going to just be using acronyms for the two shows from now on, ANW for the American version and NW for the Japanese show.

Alright, the first thing that should be compared are the two obstacle courses.  While both courses use basically the same obstacles, the NW course is built literally over a field of dirt.  The water that the contestants fall into when they fail an obstacle is nothing but watery mud.  The AWN course is Americanized and looks sleek and the water is extremely clean compared to the NW course.  For me, I like the NW course better because you can tell they don't have a huge budget (despite being in their 27th season) and it just has a more real feel to it.  Advantage - NW.

The length of the two shows is key.  NW is only 30 minutes long per episode and usually lasts 5 or 6 shows per season.  The reason each episode is so short is because they don't waste time with back stories for each contestant and generally concentrate on just showing the action.  AWN is one or two hours long and the most recent season had 18 episodes.  The reason it lasted so long is because they showed roughly 5 minutes of puff pieces for every minute of contestants competing and it couldn't have been more boring (thank god for DVR).  Obviously, the shorter episodes with more action makes better TV.  Advantage - NW.

The contestants for both shows couldn't have been more different.  AWN only had real athletes that could run a mile without falling over.  Meanwhile, NW allowed comedians, TV personalities (including the super hot Olivia Munn), old people, as well as contestants who would actually complete the course.  This is somewhat of a toss-up because while seeing the American version keep pumping out guys (and a couple girls) who could knock out the course on every try, you can't help but laugh when you saw an old guy bust his ass Wipeout-style in the Japanese version.  Advantage - NW.

In conclusion, NW won by a lot and the biggest reason is because AWN had 18 episodes (each at least an hour long) and built it up that someone was going to win $500,000.  But in the end, only one guy made it to Stage 3 (of 4) and he failed to finish that.  It felt like such a letdown after watching the whole season that it compelled me to write this post.  I felt like I was cheated out of a big chunk of my life.  Meanwhile, NW is shorter and while only three guys have ever won the whole thing, you don't feel like you wasted your time when the season is over.

"This is Makoto Nagano, he is almost 40 and he is a total badass at Ninja Warrior.  You should probably bow to him if you ever are graced with his presence."