Black Gaki

[Update] Damn you and you law, Murphy!

2010-05-06T18:00:00.002-04:00

For those of you unfamiliar with Murphy's Law, it states:

"Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong."

Well, it has. Two weeks before graduation, my computer is fried. My AC adapter made a popping noise and subsequently, my computer died. I think it was a power surge or something. Motherboard might be fried. Work on Gaki has halted currently, until I can either get a cable to get all my stuff from my hard drive and/or get a new computer.

Still currently working on translating a full episode.

Just to stop baiting you with suspense, it's the baseball episode that someone requested earlier.

Hopefully, I'll get this resolved soon. >___<

Also: I just widened out the text area, so that they videos don't get cut off on the edges. (Yay for learning basic CSS!)

Oyassan!

2010-04-25T23:30:00.000-04:00

Hello.

Been a while since a video post around here, huh?

Well, I feel a little bit rusty, but I'll try and shake it off. Anyways, I'm working on something coming soon.

Hopefully, you'll keep today's BBB in mind the next time you go to get your hair cut.

The scene starts off in the barber shop, with Kouji Imada playing "Kou-chan" who we can assume is either the student or even son of Oyassan, played by Matsumoto. Hamada has come in for a haircut after a long time. Hamada, trying to make small talk, tries to get Oyassan to complement Kou-chan. This sets off Oyassan into a flurry of insults and other outrage at the disappointment that is Kou-chan.

Also, some more translator's notes:

"Oyassan" is like a contraction of the word "Oyaji-san", which means something like "shopkeeper". In this case, I figured they were using like a nickname so I figured I wouldn't change it.

"sparta" is a word sometimes used in Japanese to describe extremely strict education practices, like they did for children that were destined to be warriors back in Sparta. So, when Oyassan says "You have to be strict with him, he only responds to tough training", he's more literally saying "You have to strict with him because this is SPARTA!"

The "What's the bread you can't eat, even though it's bread?" joke is hard to explain because it's wordplay, but I'll try. The word "pan" means bread in Japanese. So the joke is really: What's the "pan" you can't eat even though it's "pan"?

This is one of those jokes with many answers, but some of the most popular are: frying pan, Peter Pan, Ja-pan, etc. Basically, any word that ends with "pan" that is not a type of bread will work.

I like the dark humor in this skit because at the beginning you never see it coming. You just think, "Oh, a barber shop. Maybe some odd gossip or something will happen here". And then it's a complete beatdown. The gushing part was by far the funniest for me, for several reasons. First, the sheer look that Imada had on his face. His goofiness had been on display the entire skit, but it just shines there. Second, the sheer amount of blood. It got EVERYWHERE! Third, and one of the reasons I love Gottsu Ee Kanji so much, is YOU in the background laughing her ass off. You can tell that's her and it just makes you laugh even more.

I was a little disappointed though at the ending. It is true that a lot of Gottsu skits only have the main premise defined and its up to the actors to bring it to some form of closure, but this one should have had a better ending. The last minute or so just wasn't that great (except for maybe the uncooperative animal actor in the back). The problem is, that I can't think of any better way to end the skit. It's really hard to say "It could/should have been better" when you can't really define what "better" would be.

So! My challenge to you out there is: How would you end the scene? Comment away!

A Bunch of Catch-up!

2010-04-21T18:00:00.001-04:00

Oh my, it's been a while since my last post... Anyone still out there? *knocks on your computer screens*

Given my graduation from college in about a month, I've been all absorbed in job searches, senior projects, etc. Still haven't gotten a job locked in, but I have interviews, which is a good thing. Damned down market. Why couldn't it wait until AFTER I got a job to go into recession? For fear of starting some sort of political debate, I'm just going to jump off of the subject right there.

Anyway, first up. The results of the License Poll show that most people (57% of them) would like to see License take up some roles in limited capacity on GnT. Most others (37%) feel they should probably either start bringing the funny in immense portion or get their own show or just go somewhere and sit in a corner. I feel kinda sad for them in a way, and somewhat not. I think we can all live without them, but some would like to give them some chance to shine.

Secondly, sometime while I was away, my YouTube channel passed on...
*quick eulogy*
It was a good YouTube channel...
It loved to make people laugh...
*breakdown*
TAKE ME, TOO!!!
*jumps onto casket*

I planned on updating most of the subtitles for my earlier works after I reviewed them and found a bunch of things to change. So, I may start replenishing them once I get the chance.

As for progress and anything coming down the pipe, I have one BBB done and one episode is about 60% done, I guess. At least it's better than nothing.

I just want to go over the BBB a few more times. I watched it through once or twice, and it just seemed... off. I don't know how to explain it. Maybe I've lost my flair? Maybe it's just rust? Either way, quality of work must remain high. It will be out soon though, so there will be more than just text posts here shortly.

Stay tuned.

License Poll!

2010-03-05T12:00:00.000-05:00

It's March! February flew by quickly, didn't it? Anyways, that means that it's the end of the "Label formatting" poll. Judging from the results, only one person thought the previous formatting was better, and the rest of you either don't care, don't use the labels, or like the current format better. Most said that you didn't really care, so I guess I won't worry about formatting too much.

Just to give a quick update, I've got a few things I had been slowly but surely toiling away on. I decided that I should just buckle down and get one of them done, and I'll just devote all of my free blogging time to finishing that up and getting it out the door.

Now with all that taken care of, on to the topic of this month's new poll: License!

License is a comedy team under Yoshimoto, the same agency which manages Downtown. They've sometimes appear on Gaki no Tsukai as hosts, and have appeared in the latest Batsu game as announcers for the "Heipo Channel". They've made a few appearances also during some of the Oogiri and Gaki vs. Tenso episodes as title card flippers, usually wearing short-shorts, as seen below.

One of them has also made a character named "Vacuum Fujiwara" who is an amateur competitive eater. This character comes from the big boom that Japan had revolving around competitive eating and eating massive amounts of food. For a while they have been doing the warm-up act for the crowd before Downtown comes on and does their thing, which is rarely seen on TV, but if you've ever been in the audience for the show, they aren't unfamiliar faces.

As of late, it seems that they are being prepped and preened to have a larger role on Gaki no Tsukai. Perhaps something along the lines of a more frequent semi-regular role or even the big step to a regular, every-week appearance. I guess you could call them semi-regulars by now. So, this month, my question to you is:
"Would you like License to join the Gaki members?"

I personally am a little torn on the subject and I don't think that I myself am ready to give a decision. So, I'll list off my reasoning, and maybe it'll give you some food-for-thought to help you cast your vote.

In support of Regular Appearances: New Opportunities
In support of License being joining full-time, it creates some opportunities for some new characters and new situations. Like I mentioned above, the Vacuum Fujiwara character could become more developed, but it would be hard to imagine how something like that would play out especially considering that the brunt of the competitive eating boom in Japan is over. Maybe they could make him homeless and eat anything for money.

Another reason would be for the sake of Cocorico. I guess mainly for Endou's sake. In the his time on Gaki, Endou has always been the "new guy" in the business, and therefore had to show respect to everyone. However, he's the tsukkomi (straightman) in his group. I imagine it's hard for him to really show his prowess in comedic correction when he's bound by etiquette. It's the difference between "Excuse me, but don't you think that is a little foolish?" and "ARE YOU A COMPLETE MORON?!" All of his breakthrough moments on the show have been in stooge positions (Dynamite Shikoku, his Beat Takeshi impersonations, "Hohohoi", etc.) because he can't be as blunt as he'd probably like to be with maybe the exception of Tanaka. License joining would give him someone to bully around. I know it's kinda mean suggesting that they let License in only to be Endou's punching bag, but they would probably get picked on by Downtown anyways so I don't see what the difference is.

In support of Semi-Regular Appearances: Testing the Waters
Like I said above, License probably isn't new to people who have come out to the shows. They do the warm-ups before Downtown comes on to give their talks. But even so, we don't know just how well they'll be taken by home viewers. The episodes that have featured them so far haven't shown much of their personalities. They are usually just there as tag-alongs, but they do have their moments and they don't ruin the mood, per se. I think it might be best to give them spotty appearances until they can develop a fan base beyond the girls who think Fujiwara is cute.

(I think he bears a slight resemblance to Takashi Fujii, if you ask me.)

In opposition to their appearance: There are better
Until they really earn the right to be on the show every week, I don't think they should just get that privilege just because Yoshimoto likes them. I do understand that in the business there are a lot of things that the agency says, and they may be the ones forcing them to play a bigger role in the show. However, Yoshimoto has a HUGE stable of entertainers, and most of them could bring a ton of personality, wit, and popularity to the show. I mean, try to imagine the five current Gaki members plus Itao and Hosshan. Or even another comedy team like Ame Agari Kesshintai. I would personally throw in Summers, but they have their own shows and are very busy. These would probably destroy the argument I made earlier about putting in some people younger than Cocorico so they can have punching bags, but... meh.

A Salute to Itao's Wife!!!

2010-02-22T22:00:00.002-05:00

(I meant to save this for some episode featuring Itao's Wife, but as there's been a lot of Itao here already and I haven't even had a moment to even start anything, I thought I'd just go ahead and throw this out there for your enjoyment and perusal. Please enjoy.)

In comedy as a whole, lots of famous comedians have a running gag. Comedian Itsuji Itao's running gag, at least for the purpose of his appearances on Gaki no Tsukai is his "wife". Almost every time he appears on the show he has a different wife that appears to not be a native Japanese, and usually a different child. This usually sends the entire crew into giggles.

However, it's rare that a running gag has it's own running gag. In this case, Itao's Wife has a weapon that has been passed down from generation to generation of Wife. That weapon is the "もちろんそうよ！！！"　bomb, which is essentially the trademark of being Itao's Wife. It's just not an Itao Wife without it.

However, there is more than one face that has helped add gems on the legacy that is "Itao's Wife-dom". Today, I would like to pay homage to these brave women, and serve as a historian of sorts.

Itsuji Itao has worked with Downtown on several comedy shows in the past but has gained a lot of popularity for his appearances in Gaki no Tsukai where he tries to weasel money out of Downtown and/or Nihon TV. The concept of "Itao's Wife" comes from a joke that Itao once made with Downtown, saying that he got paid so well when he did an appearance on one of their shows that he should bring his wife and have her perform so they could get double the money. While none of them are Itao's real wife, who doesn't want much attention, the common speculation is that Itao finds them from talent agencies or picks them out on the street. As the joke has progressed, the wives started to take a trend towards foreigners. If there's one thing we know thus far about Japanese comedy, it is that "Foreigner = Instant funny". This is compounded by the fact that the Wife only repeated the same phrase over and over again.

Over the course of a years, these women helped build the long-lasting legacy that is Itao's Wife:

Wife One: (a.k.a.: Kazumi (和実))

Debut date: July 18, 1999
Last appearance: June 11, 2000

Other repeat phrases: (None, really)

Notable Distinctions:

She was the first.

Made several appearances on Gaki as a standalone character.

Has overlap with successor.

In the beginning, there was a car crash. This is the first time that the Gaki members meet with the fictional Wife. They had recently gone to Itao's wedding, and noticed that the "wife" getting out of the car was most definitely a different person.

Not much is known about "Kazumi" as she was the first wife, and most people didn't care enough about the joke at that point to pay her much attention. She is the most "asian-looking" of Itao's wives, but it is not clear whether she is a native Japanese or an immigrant. One might assume that she is a native Japanese because she was given Japanese name, but this assumption may be false as we will see later, as some of the obviously foreign wives also have Japanese names assigned to them.

This wife makes not only makes appearances in an Itao-centered episodes, but comes on the show again to help with other episodes like the "High-Tension" episodes as somewhat of a decoration. She just stands by the entrance door. Nothing really there to note. She does clap from time to time.

One of the earlier wife-focused episodes involves a series of acting challenges, where Itao and Wife came and challenge the Gaki members to act out scenes from famous movies. One scene is from a famous seventies movie where the main protagonist is shot. The acting scene was supposed to feature a fake gun, but was actually a "real" one. This mistake on the part of the crew would "kill" Itao's Wife (again). But she's okay, because she comes back for more episodes.

What makes Kazumi-1 so odd is that she has overlap with Itao's second Wife. Kazumi-1's last appearance on Gaki is about six months AFTER the debut of Kazumi-2. However, Hamada seems to be the only one that notices that the wife isn't the same, when they make the initial switch and only makes a passing comment that the others didn't seem to hear.

Wife Two: (also a.k.a. Kazumi)

Debut date: December 26, 1999
Last appearance: September 15, 2002

Other repeat phrases:

さすがにだめよ！　("Truly, that's no good")

Notable Distinctions:

Again, overlaps her successor.

Loses her face concealment after a few episodes.

Has a more developed personal story with Itao.

The second Kazumi is Itao's second show wife. It's believed that she's from Brazil　because Itao made statements to that in the show. There is some evidence to confirm this, but it's usually taken as fact due to Itao's forthrightness about his wives and their history　(with exception to the fact that they aren't really his wife).

She makes her appearance on Gaki No Tsukai during a Year-end party, helping Itao make off with gifts that were meant to be be prizes for the Bingo games being held throughout the night. By this time, the Gaki members figured that they could trigger the wife to agree with them by trying to get her to speak since she only said "Of course". Itao being as clever as we all know he is, he taught her a counter phrase of "That's really no good". However, with his wife being as unable to understand what everyone is saying, she needed manual prodding to say it. This kinda ruined the gag, but he would try it again later on.

Itao's second wife is one of the few wives who starts out with her face blurred but eventually loses it in favor of her natural face.

Wife 2 in her first appearance, with face concealment.

Kazumi-2 has another distinction of having the most developed backstory with Itao. Besides the usual story of marrying Itao and bringing her kid along, Kazumi also has storyline angle in which she gets pregnant by Itao. Also their older daughter (Itao's stepdaughter) is a prodigy of sorts. This kind of development allowed Itao to give her more lines, but she winds up flubbing most of those anyway.

Also, much like the relationship between Kazumis 1 and 2, Kazumi 2's final appearance date is after the debut of wife 3. However, as I will explain, there might be a reason behind it.

Wife Three:

Debut date: October 28, 2001
Last appearance: October 28, 2001

Other repeat phrases:

１００度のお湯だよ　("It's 100 degree hot　water!")

毒針だよ　("It's a poisoned needle!")

毒ヘビだよ　("It's a poisonous snake!")

Notable Distinctions:

One-hitter Quitter?

A complete accident?

Wife 3 hails from France and, other than that, very little is known about her. Her debut appearance is also her final appearance. She comes to assist Itao in proving to Gaki and Producer Suga that him battling with his wife would draw far higher ratings than the "Yamazaki vs Moriman" episodes that they do.

I have absolutely no solid facts as to the reason, but I would speculate that she was a last-minute replacement for Kazumi-2.

Reason 1: Kazumi-2 comes back later.

Reason 2: Eye concealment and hair color. Wife 3 has her eyes conceal behind the blur effect, which Kazumi-2 had removed. All other Wives have had the blur removed at some point, and most after this would never even opt for the blur. On the topic of hair color, you will notice that Wife 3 has blond hair. But if you notice the placards and posters made for the battle, you will see that the Wife has brown hair in them.

I assume that if Itao had known that she was going to be playing the role of his Wife for this episode, he would have had this fixed before the time came.

One thing that stands out if you listen to her given lines during the episode, she does have some understanding of Japanese, and it causes her to flub her given lines once or twice, as she substitutes words that are close, but incorrect. For example, during the "Hot Water Flinging Match", her given line is １００度のお湯だよ, meaning "This is 100 degree hot water". At first, she says １００度の水だよ, meaning "This is 100 degree water". When water is heated, the correct word for it becomes お湯, and I believe she realizes this about halfway through the first time she says it and starts over.

The one thing that is very odd is that I kinda miss her. She still stood out to me even though she only appeared for one episode. Luckily Itao's Fourth Wife has a made an impression that no one will ever forget.

Wife Four: ("Sherry")

Debut date:　February 8, 2004
Last appearance: July 1, 2007

Other repeat phrases:

です！

その発想はなかったわ ("That's not the point"/"That's not the idea")

ひじき！　(A type of seaweed)

Notable Distinctions:

Most popular!

Signature Dancing!

Batsu Game Appearances.

Appearances without Itao.

By far the most well-known of Itao's wives, the fourth wife is known as Sherry. Keep in mind, that I don't know if that's the way her name is spelled. Her name is spelled in katakana as シェリー, and that's the only indication I have to go on. So, her name could either be Sheri, Sherri, Sherry, the Cheri that sounds like the other three listed, or anything else for that matter.

Sherry is originally from India, and this fact is kept consistent with the storyline that Itao portrays to the Gaki no Tsukai members.

A young Sheri, in traditional Indian apparel

This fact results in several jokes involving her and usually naan (Indian-style bread). One such episode involves Itao informing everyone that due to the differences in laws between Japan and India, he and Sherry aren't technically married as far as Japan is concerned. So, Itao and Sherry invite the Gaki members to a wedding reception rehearsal where there are many of the "family members" are Indian. To appease his new "relatives", Itao does a bunch of stereotypical things like set out curry-flavored rice crackers on the tables for them to eat. As wedding entertainment, Itao manages to book the "Indian Version" of all Japan's hot stars. (They're really just Indians who look a lot like the celebrities.) It all winds down as they unveil the wedding "cake": a big pile of naan.

It is unknown just how long Sherry had been in Japan, but she seemed to have the most understanding of the Japanese language. This lead to an expansion of her vocabulary to counter some of the Gaki members. In the case of some other wives, the Gaki members figured out that anything what was obviously directed solely at the Wife would be responded to with the signature "Of course!" This had been abused by Matsumoto and Hamada, as they could get the Wife to contradict some of the reasons for Itao wanting money. Sherry started frequenting the line "That's not what is meant" when she thought it was a trap. Of course, her Japanese was still very limited, and she sometimes still fell for the traps or would use her counter line in the wrong situations.

The one thing which she is probably most famous for is her dancing. Sherry used to be a professional dancer, and you can see that her love of movement really shows. She tended to dance to Madonna during Gaki episodes, but was not limited to that. In the episode mentioned above, she breaks out in the middle of reading a loving letter to her parents and jams to "Crazy In Love" by Beyonce. It seems that Sherry will jam out to practically anything. She lists some of her favorite artists as Madonna, Michael Jackson, Phil Collins, Kazumasa Oda, Boney M., and Santana. This love of dance has been used by Itao and others, especially during the two Batsu games in which Sherry has appeared. Not only are her completely wholehearted attempts at sexy dancing funny, but she tends to add Indian dance elements which send the Gaki members into huge fits of laughter. To date, Sherry is the only Wife to appear in a Batsu game.

Over her three-year stint as Itao's Wife, Sherry's popularity really became something of its own. Sherry soon made appearances and did a few shows without Itao. She even got to host a radio show. Here's some pictures of Sherry at work! :D

I don't know if I still have it or not, but I think I remember hearing a radio clip of Sherry on show with other guest. While she wasn't a native speaker, and some things tended to go over her head, she knew enough Japanese to put a few good points and jokes forward. I probably seem to be obsessed with learning just how much Japanese these ladies know, huh?

In 2007, Itao came back to Gaki and gave an episode about Sherry's life (fictional, of course), then the aforementioned wedding episode and that would be the last episode in which Sherry was featured. She later stated that she had returned to India to take care of some personal matters. However, she has promised that she has not given up show business and will one day make her return to the stage, even if not with Itao.

For anyone who might want to keep up with Sherry, feel free to visit her blog and leave her a kind word of encouragement!

Wife Five:

Debut date:　June 29, 2008
Last appearance: June 29, 2008
Other repeat phrases:

もうエロイことしか考えられへんわぁ ("I can't think of anything but dirty things!")

Notable Distinctions:

Another attempt at dancing!

Dialect! Whoo!

For Wife Five, Itao gets another catch from Europe, namely Sweden. I believe that her name is "Helen" or "Ellen" or something along those lines. She's been on some show before. I know it, but I just can't remember which one. When I do, I'll go verify the name. Wife Five helped Itao out when he was trying to sell his "Erection King" cream. Another dancer, Wife Five tried to pick up where Sherry left off. While she didn't dance in the solo way that Sherry did, she looks like she dances a lot. I mean first of all, she's wearing those odd, sheer pants. Definitely a fashion no-no. Second of all, she's got the well-built legs of a dancer or fitness instructor.

Probably to honor the memory of Sherry, Wife Five did not dance to Madonna, but to "Girls Just Wanna Have Fun" by Cyndi Lauper. The dance doesn't have the same punch as Sherry's does, probably because Sherry's main point on the dance was to be sexy. Wive Five was more of an aerobics style. That's another point that makes me think she might be an exercise instructor.

While she's got very funny facial expression and such, she's overall very plain and a little disappointing and such. One thing that she has going for her though is the use of dialect in her speech. Her repeat line for this episode, もうエロイことしか考えられへんわぁ, is in Kansai dialect. I believe this is a first for the wives. I would assume that the wife knows just what she's saying, but it makes you wonder if she happens to be able to speak it naturally.

Wife Six:

Debut date:　February 1, 2009
Last appearance: (still active)
Other repeat phrases:

汗ばむわぁ！　("I'm dripping sweat!")

Notable Distinctions:

Spoke English.

Does not know where her mic is. -___-

Not too much is known about Wife Six yet. A lot of information about these wives surface after they leave Gaki and get work other places. As so, there's a lot of speculation as to the origins of Wife Six. In her most recent episode with Itao, she had to speak to Itao. She spoke back to him in English, leaving many to speculate that she is from a primarily English-speaking country. I personally don't believe it, just because of the awkwardness of it.

The situation in question involves Itao and Wife acting as bodyguards to the Gaki members using only blowdarts. In a routine communication check, Itao speaks into his receiver to verify signal with his wife, but she does not respond. Eventually, she comes through a door and Itao asks her if she could hear him. Wife responds with "I did not listen." I would assume that a native English speaker would say "I didn't hear you" or even "I was not listening".

In her two appearances so far as a "Wife", Wife Six has had some good moments. Especially in her first appearance during the "No Getting Excited Elementary School" episode, where Itao proposes a new format to the yearly Batsu game. We find out that she has a very wide mouth as she deep-throats a roll of makizushi in an attempt to "excite" the Gaki members. She then takes it over the top again as she's supposed to lead the students in a call after eating. She proceeds to do a porn-esque moan for about two minutes in extreme proximity to Matsumoto and Hamada. Very funny standout moments in the episode.

One thing that I noticed is the slight resemblance to Sherry a little bit. Is it just me? At some points she also kinda reminds me of Jennifer Lopez. Just me? Really? I know I'm on cold medicine but I can't be only person seeing it. <_<

One thing that she really needs to work on is her knowledge of microphone placement. The two great moments above required her to not need a microphone or operate a hand-held microphone. During many of her other jokes, she overacts and hits her microphone with her hand, making a big "BOOM BOOM WHIFFWHIFF" sound. This not only drowns out what she was saying, but it kinda ruins the feeling that the viewers are watching a private moment that wasn't meant for TV audiences. Why would she be wearing a microphone if this wasn't staged for us to hear? She wouldn't.

That's about the extent of the knowledge I have to report! I hope this has helped you feel more enlightened and perhaps piqued your interest in Itao's Wife. Plus now you can impress all of your less-knowledgeable friends with your super high IWQ (Itao's Wife Quotient). I will keep an eye out for new developments as well as any new information I can find. Thank you for taking the time to read this... monster... post.

In the Spirit of Kill Bill!

2010-02-15T21:00:00.000-05:00

*climbs out from under a pile of work and papers*

Well, hello there, everyone.

It's been quite some time since I've posted anything video around here. Well, I managed to get some free time, and worked hard enough to squeeze out this BBB for ya!

Today's BBB comes from Cocorico Miracle Type, which was a very good show. The show mainly features Cocorico, Norito Yashima and three female actresses. They also tend to have special guests on the show.

The format of the show itself is fairly mixed, which is one of the things that I liked about it. Sometimes, it would be a mainly "talk-based" show, and sometimes they would break out comedy sketches left and right, and sometimes they would do longer dramatic pieces that might span a few episodes.

As the title states, today's BBB is done in the spirit of the popular movie "Kill Bill". Tanaka plays the role of "Uma", someone who becomes inspired to take revenge on people who have done her wrong, who are played by Norito Yashima as the counterpart to the cycloptic Elle Driver and the stunning Manami Konishi as the fake O-ren Ishii.

As we you know if you watch a lot of Japanese comedy, a good foreigner mockery = instant funny, and this is no real exception. All the characteristics are there: the fake noses, the staccato speech, the abuse of dialect when they seem to be struggling with standard Japanese.

If you've seen the real Kill Bill, you will be surprised at just how good Yashima does as Elle. Her incessant whistling and strutting really made me dislike her character. As for Manami, she's showing why she's managed to be such a big name. I will say that she seems to go in and out of her accent a little bit as the story goes, but she's really pretty. The clip also features Hiroshi Shinagawa, from comedy group Shinagawa Shouji as the angry Chinese man who smacks the "Gogo" wannabe for swinging around a mandarin orange. And who can forget Tanaka. Tanaka's "DAMARE, AHO!" will ring in my ears for days.

*dons slick, teacher's outfit*
The hardest thing about translating this episode is the... I guess you can call it "wordplay". It's not really wordplay so much as it is ambiguity and irony. As some of you may know, the verb "yaru" means to do. On top of that, "yaru" (殺る) is like the Mafia-esque way of saying to "bump someone", to "rub someone out", to "do someone in". You get the deal. It is basically a slang way of saying "to kill". You can hear the passive form of the verb "yaru", "yarareru", in here several times. We're lead to believe, given the context of Kill Bill, that the "yaru" they are using is referring to "killing". However, we later learn that is not the case.

*removes teacher's outfit and makes a quick change into a theater-attendant outfit*

Without further adieu, please enjoy this parody!

*dons nerd glasses, suspenders and breathes heavily*
You may not have noticed, but there's a plot hole in this video. During the yard fight scene, it's implied that "Uma" has a broom made by the legendary blacksmith Hanzo Hattori, and "O-Ren" doesn't know until then. That plotline was feasible in the real movie "Kill Bill" as Uma has her sword crafted, but it's not here. Why, you ask? Because the broom is in "O-Ren"'s house! It's sitting in the corner next to the door, and "Uma" picks it up after entering. HOW DO YOU NOT KNOW THAT A LEGENDARY BROOM IS SITTING IN THE CORNER OF YOUR HOUSE?!

Tanaka, reaching for the broom in the corner.
Also, admire my Paint arrow-drawing skillz.

I usually post some sort of "conversation-starter" related to the video at the end of these to sponsor interaction, but I've been so busy that my brain is now fried, and I can't think of one. Doesn't matter. Much conversation doesn't happen at the end of these things anyways. Feel free to have some convo and get to know your fellow readers if you'd like.

See you later.

*climbs back under pile of work, papers, and costumes, possibly never to be seen for a while*

Viewing Habits Poll Results and New Poll!

2010-02-02T18:00:00.000-05:00

When I started this blog, I was pretty cynical about the "typical" Gaki fan. I thought they were "fair-weather" fans who only cared about Gaki when they had a New Year's Special and such.

So, in order to get to know you guys better, I decided to put a new poll up at the end of the year asking you your viewing habits.

A little bit after posting the poll, I realized that I didn't state some of the options the way that I wanted to. I meant to make the "A few clips here and there" into some category along the lines of "Any subtitled clip" or "Subtitled clips only". However, by the time I realized my mistake, it was too late to change the poll. I didn't want to just erase the poll because it would then discard the few votes that were already cast.

The results are as follows:
"I watch every week!" - 32 votes (21%)
"Just the Batsu Games." - 11 votes (7%)
"Whatever anyone puts online." - 99 votes (66%)
"A few clips here and there." - 6 votes (4%)
"Gaki? What's that?" - 1 vote (0%)

After looking at the results, my cynicism is pretty much broken. While there are some who just really care about the specials and such, there are plenty who try to enjoy Gaki for what it is.

In the form which I allowed the poll to run, this makes sense to me. I really wanted to get a feel of how many people needed subtitling before they even attempted to watch the shows vs. how many tried to understand what they could without subtitles vs. how many people don't really have much of a problem because they have sufficient Japanese skill to understand it all.

I could make another poll asking just that, but... meh. Why bother?

As you may have noticed already, I'm trying out a new scheme with the labellings, where I break up the labels into categories instead of one honkin' huge list. Also, to get your feedback on it, I've also created a new poll. Looking forward to hearing how I can better organize around here.

I know that by now most people have looked through everything around here and only have interest in the newer posts, but I wanted to make it more navigable from a new visitor's point of view.

Thanks for reading and participating!

[Update] After the dust settles...

2010-01-29T00:00:00.002-05:00

Well, I've had a few days to think about it, and I realize that I've acted a little childish. Quitting is for quitters. While I would say that I might fall into the quitter category, I figure that some douchebag should ruin all our fun. So, I'd like to apologize for any worry I've caused (because honestly, if you're TRULY worried because one person on the internet as universally insignificant as me is angry, then you might have a little too much free time on your hands) and will not give up on subtitling episodes.

However, as much as I've cooled down since last week, some of the facts of my situation still haven't changed. So I there will be some small tweaks made on my part, and I have a few requests of you out there as well.

So, seeing as I'm still a college student, and will be putting forth my utmost attention in the following months to finishing my education, and trying to land a full-time job, I probably won't have much time for subtitling. My schedule will probably be sporadic, at best. However, most of you have come to expect that. *glances quickly at all the breaks between posts* I appreciate your patience with me as I might be too busy to keep this poor little blog all spiffy.

Secondly, as I really want to make headway into my personal spreadsheet which was the reason for me starting this whole blog, some episodes will be reviewed only. Even though it's Gaki No Tsukai and all, there are some episodes that will generally need no translation or are just a little too boring to translate entirely (like the fishing episodes). While most work recent things will probably be reviews as I still have little to no time, I'll do my best to keep the standout stuff translated, though.

Third, I have some requests for you, the fans. First... DON'T STEAL MY STUFF AND CLAIM IT AS YOUR OWN. Secondly, I ask that you don't take the captions for a while after I publish them. As I'm not a native Japanese speaker, generally type too fast for my own good, and don't proofread most captions before I put them up, initial postings more than likely will have errors in it. After a while, I usually go back and make changes to them, and sometimes I'll put that information in my "housekeeping" that usually occurs at the beginning of some posts, but sometimes not. So, for those of you who just rip the things, call it good and pass them around, you probably don't have the corrected versions. I'd say maybe, a month before you start copying? I dunno, that's kind of a long time, but remember I don't have much time to take second looks at things.

Fourth, don't take this shit so seriously. For those of you who think I'd really go up to Yamazaki and stab him in the face or something if I ever saw him, come back to Earth. While I don't care much for Yamazaki's style of comedy, and like him near the least of Gaki members (he's actually neck-and-neck with Endou in that regard), he's a nice guy and is one of the better family men among the Gaki members. What I say about wanting him to be run over by a truck is HYPERBOLE, people. Sheesh. It's used for greater affect. So before you go posting some sort of "OMG YOU DON'T LIKE YAMACHAN I HATE YOU /wrist /wrist /wrist" comment, please think. Judging by the amount of confusion Endou's Hollywood Audition caused, I've come to realize that people have a hard time distinguishing the real from the fake.

So, that's about all that I can think of for now. So from here on, let's just to have some fun, just with less thievery, okay?

Thanks.

[Update] Honor Among Thieves!

2010-01-18T13:00:00.000-05:00

So, it had been some time since I'd last posted a video here, and was pretty excited to get back into the swing of things. After finishing off the release, writing up a quick review that turned out longer than I'd originally planned, and uploading/updating everything, I was feeling pretty accomplished and energized!

I didn't think it would be this quickly that something would come along and burst my bubble.

A few days ago, a friend of mine came over (read as: barged in) and inquired as to what I was doing (read as: was nosy and stood over my shoulder while I did stuff, breathing heavily) and I think I managed to turn him on to Gaki and things like that.

This morning, I went over his house (read as: barged in) and he showed me some of his favorite websites. Most of them were the usual "funny video" sites. However one of them was a video page from a website where user seems to be uploading subtitled Gaki videos. It seemed this user was trying running their own subtitling operation and putting up quite a few videos. They seemed to be enjoying themselves, and really wanted to get noticed for their work. Then, I soon realized that some of them were my subtitles word-for-word, timecode-for-timecode, taken and uploaded with their name on it without credit. (And no, I wasn't just looking at my own page. It was a completely different website, and the subtitles were hard-coded.)

While I managed to keep my mouth quite, my mind was screaming profanities. Like I said, this is essentially a matter of "honor among thieves", so take this all with a grain of salt. I essentially post copyrighted material, so to claim a "holier than thou" attitude would be arrogant, no? However, taking several of my files, and possibly others since not all of the videos uploaded were from me, and then claiming is just generally wrong.

As I may have mentioned before, I never intended or wanted to be a "subtitler" or anything of the sort. I always thought there'd be too much, umm, notoriety (can't really think of the word I'm looking for) involved. As such, I had my reservations to people copying and distributing my subtitles, even with credit given. I figured that was a given, though. I mean, we are pirates here, right?

For a while now, I've been debating whether I should keep at it or to just stick to reviewing as I originally intended. I think this experience pretty much cements my leaning decision to just stick to reviewing. I would rather my work be boring, ignored, and not appreciated than shamelessly stolen. So I'll just be sticking to general review of episodes for a while. It's a lot faster for me to do, and a lot less stressful. It also doesn't give someone something that they can just re-post and take credit for. (Well, I guess it does but the reviews are pretty boring so I don't know why anyone would want to take credit for them.)

So, I'd like to thank my readers up until now (unless you were stealing my stuff and re-posting it with your name on it, in which case you can go get run over several times by a bus), and would like to apologize for any inconvenience. Hopefully, you'll continue to visit despite this change in formatting.

Thank you.

Matsumoto and Eri, II

2010-01-15T14:15:00.001-05:00

Ha! Free time! Whoo!

For today, we have "Matsumoto and Eri, II" which is the second chapter in a fake love story between our ever loved Matsumoto and Eri, his girlfriend. In the first episode, we find that Matsumoto has a "girlfriend" that he brings to the set, and the two of them go on a spree of shirking their duties and making the audience laugh in the process. The episode ends with Matsumoto having a small argument with Eri, but eventually "reconciling". Today's episode occurs about six months after that point, while the Gaki members are preparing for a contest against another group of comedians.

But first, housekeeping on this old dusty blog!

From one "Eri" to another, I've done some updating on one of my non-Gaki related posts regarding Eri Hiramatsu, and the song of hers which I am entranced with.

If you haven't noticed, there's a new poll up. I'm just curious to see what the viewing habits of this blogs readers are. Being cynical, I kind of stereotyped other Gaki viewers, but I decided to use the polling feature to get to know you all more.

Fixed subtitle files and provided some insight to clear some confusion regarding the end of Itao's Car Crash, regarding the removal of the wife's facial blurring. Matsumoto asks "You aren't Itao's wife, are you?" to which she replies "Of course." This "of course" meaning along the lines of "of course not". Since she's not really Itao's wife there's not need to protect her identity and they remove her face censoring.

Cleaned up the General Request Post, and updated the status of my "scheduling" basically to "whatever happens, happens". Also, I know you're probably bubbling to find some subtitles to the new Batsu game, but they won't be coming from me. I have hardly any time, recently.

Well, now that all the maintenance is done, on with the show!

The show starts like most others. The whole Gaki team is lounging in their dressing room, making smalltalk and just generally joking with each other before taping. The staff gives a debriefing of the plan to do their third "Breath-Holding" episode, which usually feature the Gaki members taking on a group of their comedian friends.

However, mid-preparation, Matsumoto gets a phone call. The flirtation begins and suddenly Eri reveals that the just happens to be in the neighborhood, and she wanted to come talk to Matsumoto. Given that they still had some time before filming, the staff and crew allow it, and seconds later Eri pops into the dressing room.

Expecting another adventure after taping, Matsumoto's mood brightens up. However, Eri drops the "We have to talk" bomb. It's from there that she drops the "We have to talk because we're breaking up" bomb. In an effort to stop his personal life from being shown to the entire viewing public, he scrambles to get the cameramen to stop filming. They keep filming, of course, or else it wouldn't be much of an episode, now would it?

Seeking explanation, Eri drops the "I've found someone else" bomb, which from scientific reports is about eight times more devastating than the "I'd like to be single" bomb. Eri lists of reasons why she's decided that it's time to move on, which Matsumoto tries to get Endou to strike down as complete crap. Endou, wanting absolutely no part in this lover's quarrel, smartly just keeps his mouth shut.

However, the part that's killing Matsumoto is Eri's refusal to answer if it's someone that he knows. Therefore, he just generally assumes that he knows the person. Suddenly, the ever timid director Akihiro Oonuma interrupts and tries to get Eri to spill the beans. Connecting the dots, Hamada figures out the reason why Eri refused to say if Matsumoto knew the other man and why Oonuma is referring to Eri in an close, affectionate way. (If he had no relation to her besides the show she filmed 6 months ago, I probably would have attached some sort of polite form of verb when commanding her to talk and/or attached a respect-showing suffix to her name.)

Enthralled by the juicy gossip, Hamada proceeds to extract all the details of the affair from the two in the guilty party. Apparently the whole thing started when Eri came to the show. Damn, Oonuma, you're a player. Apparently after the little spat Hitoshi and Eri had, Oonuma managed to work his way into the little crack in the relationship and started to push Eri away from Matsumoto. As Endou points out, they are even wearing matching necklaces.

Producer Suga, wanting a generally happy work environment, feels it is his job to step in and keep the "expendable" staff from pissing off the stars, so he confronts Oonuma, and scolds him for messing with a taken woman. Oonuma responds with a polite version of "I don't give a damn". Matsumoto, still reeling from the blow, wants to see if there's any chance of reconciliation but cannot put any words together. Hamada, probably sensing his partner's distress leaps in, and prods Eri to get her to give a status on how she really feels about Matsumoto, and how deep the relationship with Oonuma really is. Luckily for Matsumoto, she's still got a place in her heart for him, and could possibly be won back.

It's around this point that I started to think that in his younger days, Hamada might have been "the other man" a few times. He seems to know just what to say, like he's used to this situation. When Yamazaki and Tanaka try to force Eri back over to Matsumoto with a guilt trip, Hamada just tells them to shut up because this is Eri's decision to make, not theirs. Suga, sensing that Eri can generally go either way, gives Matsumoto a way to win Eri over by suggesting that they compete in the Breath Holding event for Eri's love. Since Matsumoto has experience in it, he probably figured he'd have the advantage. Both men agree, but just to get a grip on the magnitude of the situation, Matsumoto asks how far the two have gone in their scandal. Refusing to give up that information, everyone assumes that Oonuma's managed to hit a "home run" and score. However, Endou tries to pry the info out with "If you did it, you should just be a man about it and say so."

irony - (n.) When a man who would later get kicked to the curb for his wandering eye and general refusal to admit the details to his wife, tells another man that he should just admit it when he's having sexual encounters with someone he shouldn't be.

Now that both competitors are ready for battle we move on to the competition itself. Eri takes over as host of the segment, and has me laughing at her mannerisms. The arm flailing when she tells "Hiro-kun" to "STAAAAA~TO" just cracks me up. However, something unfortunate happens, and Oonuma is no longer to compete, and has to be pulled out of the water. Eri, finding that she truly loves Oonuma, performs mouth-to-mouth on her true love.

We then cut to a montage of how Eri and Akihiro's love for each other blossomed, accompanied by "Itoshi no ELLIE" by the Southern All-Stars. The song is a pretty special song in Japan because it was later covered by the great Ray Charles. It's praised as one of the few songs from Japan, along with the likes of "Sukiyaki" by Kyu Sakamoto and "Shima Uta" by The Boom, to get worldwide recognition in more than the niche "Otaku" market. This song helped set off a boom of Japanese naming that with names that were both common to Japanese and other languages, usually English or Chinese. Names like Eri (Ellie), Erika, Dan, Jun, and Reina which were also names in languages like English, Chinese and French, gave parents that "Hey, my child's name is now acceptable worldwide!" feeling.

Anyway, by the end of the montage, the audience as well as Matsumoto realize that there's no way for Hitoshi to win back Eri's heart. Endou and Hamada try the usual "You can do better" and "Those two nuts belong together" bits, but Hitoshi's little heart is still broken.

This episode hadn't yet been put in my big chart of Gaki episode summaries and rankings. If I had to choose, I'd give it 4 stars on my wonky rating system. It's not the greatest episode, but some parts are non-intentionally pretty funny, like Oonuma's Rapist Face when he meets Eri during the montage. I'd say it's only slightly less funny than the first episode, which I'd have to find and dig out of the pile of episodes. Unfortunately, there are some videos on my hard drive that aren't named correctly to let my find them quickly, so I'd have to wade through most of them to find it. So, I probably won't be putting that up anytime soon, sadly.

As a general conversation sparker, have any of you out there ever been "the other man/woman"? In middle school, I was, in a way. While the relationship between myself and this girl was strictly platonic in my eyes (partners for a school project. Nothing more.), she viewed it as more, and essentially left her boyfriend for me. After being confronted by her huge, jock boyfriend, the girl and I had a little talk about what the word "platonic" means. She generally lost all feelings for me after that, but I don't think the two of them ever got back together. Oh well.

The general request post and schedule!

2010-01-15T14:00:00.000-05:00

(Updated 1/15/2010)

Hello, you readers out there!

I've had a hard time coming up with specific episodes to review, so I thought I would open up a general　request　thread. Go ahead and leave a comment if you think if something you want reviewed and chronicled here.

NOTE: Due to their length and availability with subtitles, I'm not going to subtitle the longer Batsu episodes. Thanks in advance.

List of upcoming reviews after the jump...

As I don't have much free time, and am trying to avoid burnout on Gaki, I'm generally subbing anything that I feel like for a while, instead of my "set schedule" approach. There are some likely candidates but feel free to suggest others:

- Tanaka's 500 Item Quiz
- Tanaka's Shichihenge
- Absolutely Tasty: Pizza
- Matsumoto's Challenge: Fire Limbo
- Which Shouhei is the Victim?
- Itao's Mobile Salestruck
- Katsu-Curry Limit Check (Genkai)
- Yama-quest 1
- Shouji Murakami's Ninja School
- Aya Yamazaki's 500 Item Quiz

I'll try to keep updating this page, so you can come here and see what's going to be on the menu! Happy reading!

Happy Birthday, Blog!

2009-12-25T23:59:00.005-05:00

Wow, it's been a whole year already and despite some long unannounced breaks on my part due to family emergencies and school (Sorry about that. I'm a college student, who is also working to try and pay his tuition. I have very little time anymore.) this blog has been more successful than I could have ever imagined. Since I started this blog a year ago, to December 15, I've gotten over 12,000 visits. That's about 11,990 more than I ever planned on getting. Ha.

This site may be a uniting factor for Gaki fans all over the globe. We've seen visitors from every corner of the world (except for Antartica) and over 85 countries big and small, including (but not limited to):

USA
Japan
Dominican Republic
Panama
Canada
Iceland
Egypt
South Africa
Spain
Poland
Ukraine
China
Finland
Thailand
Australia
The Phillipines
Bosnia and Herzegovinia
And MANY more!

If there was any kind of statement that could show the shows producer's how much potential for global dominance lies withing Gaki No Tsukai, the map I'm looking at now would be a great one. Thanks you all for coming and reading/watching/whatever it is you do here.

Looking back at the year, I finally took the time to look through Google Analytics and the keyword information that they provide for the traffic to this blog. Let's just say some of the results were... interesting, to say the least. Let's review them, shall we?

*returns wearing a nice tuxedo, and stands behind a podium*
Life itself is full of riddles. One of the many riddles that has been asked since near the emergence of man on the Earth is "OMGWTF was he/she thinking?!" (Note that this is probably not the exact phrasing, but you get the idea.) One of the places where this question has been asked is the Black Gaki keyword list... and so, nominees for OMGWTF Keyword of the Year are...

THE OMGWTF KEYWORDS OF THE YEAR:

"Moriman"/"Super Moriman" - At first, this didn't seem like an OMGWTF keyword, until I noticed that it was getting so popular. If you were like me, you knew Moriman to be the chubby female entertainer known for putting a hurting on Yamazaki during their sparring matches. However, the phenomenon known as "moriman" is also a fetish of sexual sorts. I'll leave you to do the Google assuming you're of proper age to be looking at those types of things. If you're not, then Moriman is a name of a candy, don't look it up, just take my word for it.

"Matsumoto Bondage" - Damn, son. I knew people liked Matsumoto, but... damn. Are we having sexual fantasies about him too? Okay, I guess there's a company with that name (More porn. Don't look, kiddies.) but I wonder how far down the list I have to be to get show up on that search. Okay... I did the Google (yes, I "do the Google") and I am at the bottom of the first page due to my repeated references to Matsumoto, who won the earlier poll to become Black Gaki readers' favorite member and the BBB that I posted entitled "Bondage Angels". So I guess that makes some sense. Hopefully, I'll give the lonely something better to do with their hands than what they were planning on doing. <_<
"Stethoscope Down Her Shirt" - More porn keywords. Sheesh. Soon I'm bound to be listed as an adult site. However, I instantly recognized that this linked to my site because of Tetsuo's Shichihenge, where he plays a perverted doctor who harasses a patient. Well, is it harassment? She just sits there and takes it, plus you can see a little smirk on her face. Just remember people... no matter what people say, the internet is not for porn. Okay, not ONLY porn. There's other things.

"What Number Repeats Constantly in Episode 4 of Gaki No Tsukai?" - ... What? Was there some sort of scavenger hunt or something? I have the first few episodes of Gaki No Tsukai. I think I've only watched the first one. If I had my hard drive with me for the holiday, I'd look it up and post the answer. It's probably one of those numbers that also has an alternate meaning like 4 ("Shi", also meaning "Death") or something along those lines. Should I remember, I shall update you.

"Does Anyone Find Yamazaki Housei Funny?" - Okay, this isn't really a OMGWTF keywords, but I would like to take this time to say that half of the things that I say that I wish would happen to Yamazaki are exaggeration. This explanation is not aimed at those who would say "Maybe you should go easier on Yamazaki", but at those who have little Yamazaki fangirl fits and go "YOUMUSTLOVEYAMACHANNOW! *rage*", and the sort. I will admit that I do find him slightly funny, but not as a comedian. It's kind of how I feel about Paris Hilton. She's beautiful, yes. She could definitely work as a model, and probably would be quite good at it. Does that qualify her to be a celebrity? No.

"Ass of Grannies" - ... *facepalm*

"Gaki No Tsukai Gay Fanfiction"/"Cocorico Slash Fanfiction"/"Downtown Gay Fanfiction" - ... *keeps face in palm* Damn you, Rule 34. Really?! REALLY?! I mean, come on! I do remember mentioning things about fanfiction in an earlier post when Endou and Hamada were getting all snuggly and close and such, but I didn't think that someone would actually input some keyword that would lead here. *sigh*

"How to Get A Producer In Hollywood to Notice You" - Answer: Boobs. You're welcome, whoever wanted to know. This is obviously something that linked to Endou's (fake) Hollywood Audition, so there's little surprise about what it linked to.

"Skinny Weak Males in Bondage" - I sense a theme in the WTF keywords here. I probably should re-title that BBB to something that won't attract the fwappers. From the looks of them, I wouldn't really label any of the Gaki members as weak, but Tanaka is pretty skinny and if I had to choose one member, I'd say he's probably the weakest as much as it pains me to admit that Tanaka might be the worst at something. Okay, we all know he's the worst at eating Nattou.

With that the nominees are lined up, and it's time to present the award. And the winner of the first-ever Black Gaki OMGWTF Keyword of the Year goes to...

*drum roll*

...

...

"Ass of Grannies"!!!

I mean, seriously, what in the world possesses you to look that up? I tried to Google it and then find how far back my page is. I got at least 5 pages in and not the slightest glint of my blog in there. How far back did they go in the search? I mean, was 5 pages worth of geriatric tail not enough to satisfy you so you lurked into the quagmire that is page 15 or something? If you have some sort of thing for extremely saggy things or people who you can share intimate moments with that will only forget you moments later, then I guess that's one thing, but needing more than 5 pages of it is ridiculous. Really, it is. If you come back Mr. or Ms. Ass of Grannies, please, get some help.

That's all I've got for this update. I would like to take this opportunity to give a big, huge, enormous, gigantic, mammoth "Thank you" to all of my blog's followers, readers, browsers, skimmers, and horny people who wind up here from their Google searches for porn.

With much love for your holidays, and a happy New Year!
~David

The Great Debate!

2009-12-25T23:58:00.001-05:00

Okay, I guess it's not a debate. It's more of a "stream of thought" type of thing where I just gab on for a long time. If you're looking for a video or something, just turn on back now. No one will blame you. I even made a new tag called "David's Whining" just for this post. There's the "Back" button... You've still got time.

For a while, I've been thinking about how this whole blog is going to turn out. There's two different ways that this can go. This post will probably be my ever-growing rant about the life of an overwhelmed subtitler.

I've been trying to upload whole episodes, and that worked fine during the summer and while I was on internships, when I didn't have school to be worried about almost constantly. But as many of you have seen by my long absences, I have little to no time. I have been thinking about this lately and it brings up an interesting points on many levels. When I started subtitling videos, I didn't intend to become some sort of Subtitled-Gaki-Download-Central; I'll leave that to DTFS or any other "professional" fansubbers. I didn't have the energy or will to keep up with download links and constantly making sure that subtitle files were uploaded and dealing with the different questions and tasks that would certainly arise. What I intended to do was to create a catalog of all the Gaki Episodes and quick summaries of all of them, with maybe a few pictures scattered about. What came of that idea is a pretty lame, but gets the job done as seen here. However, as I said above, that's pretty lame, and wouldn't be of any interest to anyone except maybe people who want clues to find that one episode that they really want to download or something. What makes it worse is that someone will undoubtedly then come up and go "UPLOAD PLZ" or something to that affect, only to be turned away thus feeling that my blog is that much crappier. So, what is better: a complete yet completely boring blog, or a blog that will only be updated once every blue moon (and if you think the updating is sporadic now, I can't think of what it's going to look like in the future) with something that may be fun for a few hours or so? I'm still very undecided on the issue.

As for videos nowadays, there's little safe haven. The BooTube has been, doing their little copyright window thing and I have earned 2 strikes against my account. Luckily, my uploading has pretty much ground to a halt, so there's little risk of new strikes any time soon. Veoh and even Viddler have gone on a mad file-removing/account-deleting spree lately. I looked at Veoh for uploading, but I don't believe they support just using a subtitle file over the video like YouTube does, do they? I didn't see any opton for it. I like looking at my own videos, but don't like subtitles on them, so YouTube's subtitling feature really appeals to me. Some of you might be thinking "Well, you have the raw file, just watch that and gimme some subbed Gaki, you jerk," to which I say " :( You're mean." If I do it that way, I would need to keep the raw file for me, the subtitle text file, and the subtitled video file for you. The current way, I just need the first two. Yet another example of my expense vs. your pleasure.

Enough whining from me, for now. Anything else, I should be thinking about? Input? Opinions? Questions? Internet hugs?

[Update] Doctor, Doctor!

2009-08-19T01:05:00.010-04:00

Goodday all.

I've spent the last week or so trying to get something completed. Namely the "Waraimeshi's Hero Show" episode. However while trying to translate it, I found myself just not being able to get through it. This is probably due to the amount of times I had to watch it while I was struggling through my software setup. I'm pretty sure I wound up watching the episode 10-15 times while trying to get both video, audio and the subtitles to work right. I wound up getting maybe 15-20% of the way into it before I just couldn't go on anymore. (Yes, that's only about 5 minutes) I just couldn't even watch it again. Maybe it just really isn't as epic as I thought I was when I put it on the forecast.

So I put on my imaginary doctor's outfit and tried to figure out why I can't get through it. The diagnosis: a minor case of Gaki Burnout! *Dun dun DUNNN!*

Okay, it's not just Gaki Burnout. It's life burnout.

{Beginning of long, boring story/excuse, which you can hit the "Read More!" button if you want to read}

This entire Spring and Summer, I'd been working an internship with a company, and near the end was told that I'd have to train an international team over in India as one of the projects I was working on was moved over there for maintenance. So, I'd been scrambling frantically, trying to create lesson plans and make sure that I explain everything clearly in the 2 hours a day where we can hold teleconferences together with them. So that's been quite the time-consumer and mind-wracker.

Some of you may remember that I mentioned a Japanese exchange student moving in down the hall from me. Well, at the end of Summer, they had to move everyone into different buildings for the new year so they can let new incoming students have spots in the dorms. Well, the exchange student wasn't assigned a new housing assignment. So they started sending him a long chain of correspondence containing an absurd amount words that were too long for him to understand when they just could have said "Go to building A on date B and talk to C." Not understanding what the letters said, he came over to my room, handed me the letter and said "Does this mean I will be homeless?" My person-in-need sensors, which I have a hard time ignoring, went off and I offered to help him sort out whether he would be without place of residence. Luckily it didn't, but it said that he had to go talk to all sorts of staff and faculty and take papers around to each one. So, I had to accompany him to quite a few of these meetings with faculty to serve as a horrible translator. (When I started learning Japanese, I thought that one day I might want to be a translator. At the moment, this experience has convinced me that I probably don't.)

After all that he was placed in a university-owned building off-campus about 4 miles away, much to his disliking as he would have rather stayed on-campus and doesn't have a car. However, luckily for him, I got assigned to the same building, so we spent Saturday packing, and Sunday renting a moving van to get to where we needed to go. Then I spent Monday on a flights back to my hometown for two weeks before classes start again, and then spent Tuesday unpacking and adjusting to jet-lag.

On the plane ride and downtime at the airport, I skipped ahead to the next video on the list "Matsumoto and Eri, II". I actually managed to start subbing it and am already nearly halfway through it. It looks like my Gaki Burnout was caused a lot by stress of just having to get through that lame episode.

{end of long, boring story/excuse}

So, due to some upcoming free time, I'm going to sub videos that come "naturally" to me instead of forcing through the ones that I no longer care for. I will probably also get around to putting up the manzai talk segments that I always say I'm going to put up but never have. You know, my usual "I'm going to wait until I put up the talk before I rate the episode" or my "I'll put up the talk portion soon" crap. Yeah, I'll get those up when I can.

However due to limited, slow, internet access where I'm at, these postings probably won't be on the "Wednesday-Sunday" schedule that I try to achieve. They'll probably go up whenever I get the time to hop over to the local coffee shop and bum off of their wireless for a while. Here's hoping I can shake off this case of GB! This is either going to help it or just make it worse. Anyways, thanks for reading and see you soon!

~David

Poll Results and Update!

2009-08-05T23:30:00.000-04:00

Your votes have been cast, and we've found a winner for your favorite recurring episode theme! (Well, kinda. Not all the recurring themes were listed, and I'm pretty sure the real fan favorite would be the big New Year Batsu games.)

The results were surprising, to me at least, and I'll talk more about them after the jump, but first I'll talk about the updates! Whoo! Updating!

Posted this week's BBB, Bondage Angels, and last Sunday's episode that I forgot to post up, Kiki Nattou. Sorry about the neglect. Poor blog. *pets blogs softly to assuage the deep emotional scars*

Fixed my "Heya to Y-shatsu to Watashi" translation in my Everyone has a Song!" post to be more. . . um. . . translated. "Y-shirts" isn't actually a real word. It's more of a slang term or abbreviation for "white shirts". The "whi" part of "white" sounds like the letter "Y". So, I've changed that part of the translation, since that may not be common knowledge. Yeah.

Answered some neglected comments and did some clean up on the General Request Post.

Cleaned up the "Labels" section of the blog by removing labels for individual Gottsu Ee Kanji players. At least for now. I may add them back once they get some more substantial articles about them written here.

Fixed the subtitles and review for Ice Coffee Limit Check YET AGAIN to correct a misspelling of Vivian Hsu's name. It's correctly romanized as "Hsu", and not "Su" like I had it.

Got off my butt once again to actually create a review for the Ittsuji Shopping! episode.

Without further adieu, Ill get down to the result of the poll and my general reaction.

So over 200 people voted, and the results are in!

Your favorite recurring episode theme is: The Absolutely Tasty Series!

Here's a full list of the results and their vote count:

1.) Absolutely Tasty Series - 105 votes (47%)
2.) Matusmoto's Challenge - 83 votes (37%)
3.) Matsumoto Team vs Hamada Team - 67 votes (30%)
4.) Kiki series - 65 votes (29%)
5.) Shichihenge - 59 votes (26%)
6.) Cosplay Bus Tours - 47 votes (21%)
7.) Heipo's Dates - 38 votes (17%)
8.) Gaki Team vs Tennensouzai Team - 36 votes (16%)
9.) Genkai Series - 35 votes (15%)
10.) Itao's interruptions - 34 votes (14%)
11.) Goodbye, Yamazaki! series - 29 votes (13%)
12.) Regular Cast Member Auditions - 25 votes (11%)
13.) Yamazaki Vs. Moriman series - 21 votes (9%)
14.) Suga's Nostalgia series - 19 votes (8%)
15.) High Tension Series - 18 votes (8%)
16.) Yamaquest - 11 votes (5%)
17.) Member Chases - 7 votes (3%)
17.) Fishing Competitions - 7 votes (3%)
19.) Celebrity Baseball - 6 votes (2%)
20.) Picadilly Umeda series - 4 votes (1%)

I was fairly surprised at some of the results, but for the most part, I think there's not a lot to be shocked at here. The five I thought would make up the top five were the "Matsumoto Team vs Hamada Team", "Gaki Team vs Tennensouzai Team", "Shichihenge", "Yamazaki Vs. Moriman series" and the "Kiki series", since they are what brought Gaki to widespread internet fame. I was right on three of them, and ones I was wrong about weren't too bad.

Another bright spot, was the relatively low ranking of Yamaquest. At least I know that you guys don't see the something pertaining to Yamazaki and jump all over it. Although, I will admit that I do like these episodes. Although they are branded with Yamazaki's name, there's very little Yamazaki in them. "Try new Diet Gaki No Tsukai - Now with less Yama-chan!"

As far as surprises go, the biggest for me was the difference between the "Matsumoto Team vs Hamada Team" and "Gaki Team vs Tennensouzai Team" episodes in the poll. I mean, they are practically the same thing. They both use the same 10 people and they do pretty much similar evernts each time. The only real difference between the two is the arrangement of teams. I don't see what would be so different to make around 31 people vote for one but not the other.

Another mild surpise was. . . the winner. The Absolutely Tasty series? Really? I'm sure it belonged in the top half somewhere, but first place? What is it about it that makes it so good? I know it is pretty funny, I agree with that wholeheartedly. Watching them make foods that they know no one will ever want to eat and then having to choke it down themselves is hilarious. But I'd think things like "Yamazaki vs Moriman" or the "Cosplay Bus Tours" would be above it on the list. Is it because it's fairly easy to understand without subtitling?

As for the one in last place, Picadilly Umeda's shows, I would have thought it would have been above the absolutely boring episodes like the fishing and baseball episodes. Is it because you haven't seen an episode of it yet? Picadilly's really cool despite being really creepy when he takes his dentures out. He just walks up to ladies and starts fondling them. I think I've got an episode of Picadilly coming up on the list. I'd be interested in hearing your feelings and reactions after the episode goes up.

Overall, I might use this when preparing my episode plans. I wonder if some of these results are because of lack of exposure to some types of episodes. I might do this again later once I've had some of all of these episodes up. Other than that, if you'd like to enlighten me on your reasoning behind your choices, feel free. Thanks for participating in the poll and thanks for reading.

Kiki Nattou!

2009-08-05T21:30:00.002-04:00

Well, it's time for another BB-- Wait. . . this is a whole episode.

Ah, right. This is the episode I'd planned on putting up on Sunday, but was still getting used all the buttons and stuff on my new video editing and subtitling programs. Okay, I won't call them my "new" ones, since I'm so not impressed that I'm undoubtedly going back to my previous methods due to sheer ease.

Anyways, this episode is Gaki's 23rd entry in the Kiki series. This time's subject of taste-testing is nattou. For those of you who know what the Kiki series is all about, just skip ahead to the videos. For those that don't know, the Kiki series is a long running series on Gaki No Tsukai, where each member is assigned a brand of product, chosen by the other 4 members. They then have to try that brand blindfolded, and then go through the table full of various brands and try to find their mystery brand. You can only choose one at a time, and if you think it's not the one, you throw it in the trash. If you think it's right, you come to the center stage and say that you think you've found it! If you get say the wrong brand is correct, or you throw away the correct brand, you get a penalty. Penalties on Gaki No Tsukai will almost always involve pain. Today it's in the scrotal area.

We open up the episode with the usual introduction of the rules of Kiki, and the introduction of the topic. Today, it's nattou. Nattou is definitely an odd-looking food. It's fermented soybeans, so they start to make a little juice and it gets all sticky and stringy. Tanaka doesn't eat nattou much and doesn't care for it, so he's at a huge disadvantage. Which is exactly why they make him go first. Poor Tanaka.

And let me take this time to say: "DAAA~MN, son! That punisment is messed up!"

Next is Yamazaki, who does the usual "I know what I'm doing" act, and generally overdoes all the lame jokes that aren't getting laughs. If anyone out there doesn't understand why I don't like Yamazaki, please take a look at this episode. He was the reason I had trouble dividing the episode. I couldn't find a good place to cut the video, because he's constantly being lame and/or screaming. So yes, this section ends in a fairly odd place. Blame Yamazaki for that.

Then we pick up right were we left off. Yamazaki is confused. I want to kill him, and speed up translation. You guys have no idea how hard it was for me to get through his section because he's just that lame. The only part I care about is him getting hit in the nuts. Hopefully he will never contribute to the gene pool ever again.

Next up is Hamada. Hamada does a Tanaka and gets out on the first brand. After that is Endou's turn. I really feel sorry for Endou, being in the social position that he is. His role in his comedy duo is the tsukkomi, who pretty much puts down stupid people in his presence. However as far as Gaki No Tsukai goes, he's one of the youngest and least experienced in the industry, so he has to be polite with everyone, except Tanaka. You can see that he REALLY wanted to sling some insults during this episode, but had to hold himself back due to social order. Poor Endou.

Anyway, he finds out that the one that he's been assigned is not one that he normally eats so he goes by process of elimination. Can I take a moment to say that his hair looks good and bad at the same time? Anyone else feel that way? Those little feathered parts in the back make it look like he's got a mini-mullet that hasn't grown into a big-boy mullet yet. Anyways, enough of the follicle-check. After he's done, we're on to Matsumoto's attempt.

Matsumoto does bring the funny this entire episode, getting a good crack in at pretty much everybody and making funny observations ("We don't know what you're imagining", "you slow mudtortoise", "You think a girl likes it when you fondle her? Well you're wrong.", and "This explains the drop in birth rates") so it's nice to see him in the hotseat at times like these. And boy, does Matsumoto put on a show taking it down to the last two brands. Will Matsumoto be the only one to get his badge for the Kiki Nattou?! *cliffhanger and suspenseful music*

As usual for the Kiki episode, there's lots of suspense and lots of good points. However, there were a lot of bad parts (read as "Yamazaki's there"). I'd give this one a 6. It should probably only get a 5 but Matsumoto REALLY saves this episode with his wit. Tanaka was reeling too bad from getting knocked out on the first brand, Yamazaki's just annoying, I couldn't take my eyes off of Endou's magically disappearing and reappearing mullet, and Hamada didn't really seem to be on his A-game. Congrats Matsumoto. We'll credit you with a "save" on this one. Of course points and stats don't really matter.

The Bondage Angels!

2009-08-05T20:00:00.000-04:00

Ah, espionage. What a beautiful word.

Ever since there's been great amounts of mistrust between countries, there's been spies. The most ever since there's been Hollywood to exploit concepts, there's been the "Secret Agent". And since Hollywood found out the T&A sell, we've had vixens in skimpy outfits running around on our movies screens.

This week's BBB is from the Dream Match that happens pretty much every year. It's a competition/special where the hottest comedy groups switch and work with different people. It's kinda similar to the All-Star basketball game, for people here in the States. You get to see all the big stars all playing on the same court, some working together, some against each other.

In this episode of the Dream Match, the comedy groups were broken into Boke and Tsukkomi teams. The all-female group, Harisenbon (which means "puffer fish"/"porcupine fish"/"balloon fish"/"whatever-the-hell-you-call-it-in-your-area fish"), doesn't have strongly designated Boke or Tsukkomi, so they were placed as a group on the Tsukkomi team. Most times it is Haruna, the chubby one, playing the role of tsukkomi and Haruka, the skinny one, as the boke. This mean that whoever was selected to team with them would be part of the Dream Match's first ever trio. Teams for that year were formed "Feeling Couple" style, meaning that everybody chose one person from the other team that they wanted to work with, and if they felt the same way back, you're a new team. Harisenbon and Ryou Tamura coupled up pretty quickly to bring you this BBB!

I was kinda sad that they didn't win that year's competition. Most of the other acts were pretty "meh...". But in things like this, if you don't really put on a much better performance than the veteran performers, they give the prize to them.

You guys may remember Harisenbon for their role as the two hospital patrons in the Hospital Batsu game. Haruka, the skinny one, and Haruna, the chubby one, play all sorts of games with the Gaki Nurses since they decided to enter their room as they pleased.

I must say, that I loves me some Harisenbon. They are just so awkward looking that you know they are funny beyond all belief. If Japanese students are anywhere as mean as they can be here, you need a good sense of humor to come out with your head held high sometimes. The photo below shows pretty much why I love them so much. Despite their little gut and their crooked teeth, Harisenbon isn't afraid to get out there and show themselves off. Haruna, the chubby one, even proudly proclaims that she's a virgin because she's just too fat to get laid. I mean she's not THAT bad-looking. *shrug* It's okay. She's only 26. Maybe she's waiting. I dunno, but I'd hit either one of those two. *pushes male instincts back under the bed* Ahem, sorry about that.

It's come to my attention recently that Haruka, the member of Harisenbon on the right, had been diagnosed with tuberculosis in April. She was forced into the hospital where she was supposed to stay for two months. I haven't heard anything about them after that. Here's hoping they are both okay, since it can spread with repeated, close contact which I assume they have being comedy partners and all.

Haruna, you should know better than to take a picture of you about to eat ice cream. c.c

The Friendly Being 1 and 3

2009-07-25T14:50:00.005-04:00

Hello, again.

It is time once again for your BBB. Yes, BBB on a Saturday. I wanted to put them up on Wednesday like usual, but YouTube was performing maintenance Wednesday and I could not upload videos. My Thursday and Friday were all booked, and I didn't have a chance to upload it then either if I wanted this little thing called "sleep". I went in to work on Friday on about an hour of sleep. I was pretty much a zombie.

So, houskeeping　as per usual.

Cleaned up old comments on the General Request Post, and moved it up some to be more visible on the first page.
Changed some post tags to properly spell Itao's name correctly: It's "Itsuji", not "Ittsuji". Sorry 'bout that.

Anyways, I'm just going to put the videos and let you enjoy them this week, since there shouldn't by much to talk about.

And if you haven't yet seen the second, it can be seen here.

I must say, that I love the little preview picture for this second video. XD

Endou's Hollywood Audition!

2009-07-19T23:00:00.001-04:00

(Original Airdate: 4/18/2004)

Okay. So I've finally managed to get another Sunday release out. *sweatwipe* I'll probably do my usual "housekeeping" on Wednesday, for the BBB. I've got big things under my sleeve. *shifty eyes*

In today's episode, we get to see what it's like to be on the end of a prank. Endou has long wanted to appear in some sort of worldwide entertainment project, but has only been able to land a few roles in some Japanese dramas and appears on many Japanese TV shows. So when a famous Hollywood producer comes to Tokyo to look for new stars for his latest film, it should come as no surprise that Endou jumps on the invitation he gets.

Endou is lead into a room and is told that a producer saw him on television and was interested in making him a star. This immediately gets Endou's attention. Apparently, he has a soft spot for flattery. He's then led into the fake audition site, where three other people are waiting. If you look carefully, you can see that the man sitting next to Shin-Onii from recent episodes and batsu games. It looks like NTV's had him on their employed list for almost 5 years, I guess.

The fake announcer reveals the fake title of the fake movie, which is "The Last Hohohoi". The Hohohoi is pretty much Endou's signature move, and when he doesn't react, the audience pretty much should have been tipped off that this whole thing was a prank on them. The fake announce then calls in the fake producer, fake translator, fake assistant, and fake cast. All of them are Gaki members wearing the stereotypical "I'm really a foreigner" noses. Notice the hot stems on Tanaka, playing the role of a half-Chinese woman:

The fake audition continues with lots of fanfare and such. They don't really have announcers are such small auditions, do they? I could understand if it was something like an open casting call, but this is a closed session. Maybe this is how they do it in Japan. *shrug*

After formal introductions, the translator tells the Hohohopefuls *dodges rotten tomatoes* about the money to be made on this production: a whopping two million dollars!

In order to prepare and get ready, the producer has an assistant pass out the necessary supplies for completing the Samurai Hohohoi's look: hair gel and white briefs. Endou happens to be wearing his own briefs and will be using those for the audition. The other three go and change.

Then Yamazaki does what he always does on Saturday nights:

Dresses up as a woman
Bends over
Shows his panties in hopes that it will catch a man's eye
Clean up any spilled fluids off of the floor afterwards

I can only assume that the role given to him for this prank comes naturally to him.

With Yamazaki's obligatory "I'm an idiot" moment out of the picture, we can start the audition and see if Endou's going to be a star. The first two old geezers try to do the Hohohoi, and get rejected. Gotta love Matsumoto's "GET OUT!" after the first one. Even though he tends to say less than others when he does speak, his English pronunciation is probably the best out of the Gaki members.

The third auditioner, The Artist Later Known as Shin-Onii, tries his hand at the hohohoi. Apparently, he didn't know what he was supposed to be saying, so he kept saying "Hahaha". That's probably why they kept him around. Unfortunately, even he was eliminated.

With only Endou left, he's sure he's got this in the bag. Between being a Hohohoi master and being in on the knowledge that the producer seemed quite taken with him, his confidence was at its peak.

In an abbreviated remix of the Hohohoi, Endou impresses the production team and comes one step closer to the two million dollars that comes with the role of the Samurai Hohohoi. The producer decides to put Endou through a few more acting challenges.

The first challenge is using a toy light gun to act out an action scene. Basically Endou just looks back and forth and pulls the trigger. Good enough for a laugh. Challenge Number Two is the timeless pillow reaction. I heard that one acting coach does something similar to this. You get something incredibly lame done to you, and you have to overcome the lameness and act like it was seriously life-threatening. Of course, you don't want to overact either.

The third challenge is another HUGE clue that this actually a prank on the audience. Everyone who knows Endou knows that his prized impression is that of the somewhat spastic comedian/producer/actor Takeshi Kitano, who is also known as Beat Takeshi. Endou does the movements quite well, but for some reason the voice just sounds off here. Perhaps the acoustics in the room? He usually does a great impression of him.

Challenge Four is getting Endou to tapdance. He has to do so on the feathers that were just spilled everywhere by the pillow reaction challenge. Hopefully those are the feathers that have that little middle hard tube part taken out. Wouldn't want anyone getting hurt for the sake of my laughter (except Yamazaki). While Endou's tapping away, Hamada, playing the part of the American Hohohoi, loses his nose for a few seconds.

Challenge Five brings us to "Brokeback Hohohoi". The American Hohohoi turns out to be gay and makes moves on Endou. It's these types of moments that inspire homely, adolescents/post-adolescents to write horrible fanfiction about how these types of situation work out later on in the dressing room. Perhaps poorly written, generally Too Much Information, slash fanfiction doesn't hit the Japanese internet anywhere as hard as it does in English-speaking countries? If so, I've decided that I'm moving. (On a sidenote, I saw some SkiFree fanfiction the other day. Yes, SkiFree. That game you used to play on the old Macs with the little Yeti that comes out from the side of the screen and chases you down the slope as you try to avoid trees. Yeah. Gay SkiFree fanfiction. The skier falls in love with the Yeti. *passes out barf bags*)

Anyways, this prank comes to a conclusion as Hamada leaves after being rejected by the Samurai Hohohoi, and comes back with a bazooka. We are treated to the campy "ZOMG IT'S A PRANK, ENDOU!" when we really know it should be a "ZOMG IT'S A PRANK, AUDIENCE!". But we get one last picture of Endou and the rest.

I'll upload the talk for this episode soon. It's pretty funny. I'll hold out for that and then rate the episode.

[Non-Gaki Related] Everyone's Got A Song!

2009-07-17T23:59:00.007-04:00

Everyone has at least one song that will forever be in their hearts. Whether it brings back childhood memories or it's just a song that's just incredibly catchy, when you hear the intro, your eyes just light up and your foot gets ready to tap along.

If you're with others, you might be that person that exclaims, "OH! THIS IS MY SONG RIGHT HERE!" If so, you might be my dad. He does that for practically every song that comes on the oldies R&B station. If you feel that the person or people that you are with maybe unfamiliar with the song or generally not enthusiastic enough, you can then follow up with "You don't know about this song here. This is the jam!"

I've got a song like that, but it's been more "my song" lately, for nearly no apparent reason. Nothing important, just figured it deserved a spot on my blog. (Note: after I finished the post, I noticed that it's hecka huge. So if you don't have a lot of time, but are one of those people that can't stop reading anything midway, TURN BA~CK!)

Some of my self-proclaimed "Japan-ophile" friends find out that I'm into Japanese comedy, we start playing this little game every week or so. The rules are fairly simple: They ask if I've heard the latest song by (insert popular Japanese artist here), and I say "No". Despite my love for Gaki, comedy, and Japan in general, I don't keep up with things like Japanese music, manga, anime, dramas, and things of that nature. There are very few Japanese artists that I listen to, and about 75% of the ones I do listen to have stopped making new music.

The Japanese artist that gets major playtime on my mp3 player is Eri Hiramatsu. Back in '93, I believe, Eri released a double platinum single that would become her signature song: "Heya to Y-shatsu to Watashi" (Rooms, Y shirts, and me). She wasn't a one-hit wonder or anything. She also release some other lesser hits like "Mou Waraushikanai" and "Girlfriend" as well some cover version of other songs. I listen to those some, but for me, HtYStW gets major play. Here's a recent snapshot from my iTunes library:

When you look at this keep in mind several things. I have switched computers around November/December '08, and did not export my iTunes library. I'm am sure that on my old library file, I had over 2500 plays for the song, but I believe the number when I erased that data was around 3300 plays. So add that that as well. Also take into consideration that I'm a "fidget-fingers" listener. I often rewind mid-song or will restart the song as it's fading out instead of waiting the extra 8 seconds for it to move on. ITunes only counts it as a play if the track ends completely, so I'm going to say add in about more 750 plays to that at the very least. And this is all in a span of probably less than a year.

I've also gone to great lengths to try and learn the melody, since I couldn't seem to find any sheet music for it. So after many toilsome months trying to play-by-ear, a skill that I suck at, on my violin (Oh yes, BlackGaki has musical talent... minus the talent) I have successfully managed to create my own score for the song. Well, the melody at least, since I'm fairly n00bish at my violin and can't manage chords along with the melody. It's a prized piece of my collection. \o/

As you can also see, I have not one, but THREE versions of the same song. The one with the 1000+ plays is the original version. The first one on the list is a version that has a different drum track and a lot of the . . . I don't know what instrument that is. . . the instrument that sounds like an accordion, removed. The third version of the song, along with "You Are Mine" may warrant some explanation into their importance.

A few years after the success of Heya to Y-Shatsu to Watashi, Eri got married and decided to put her solo career on hold to focus on her family. She had a daughter with her new husband somewhere around 1995/1996, and began a family. In March of 2002, Eri was diagnosed with breast cancer, and put her career on hold for medical reasons. Media seemed to swarm around her, and she pretty much withdrew from the public eye. After a few years hiatus, Eri jumped back onto the music scene incognito, writing songs for other musicians and participating in a small band called "Hi-Hats" which performed only a few times in small venues. When asked why she didn't go back to her solo career, she simply answered "I can't sing Eri Hiramatsu songs anymore". I believe Hi-Hats fell through in about Summer 2003 (fact check anyone?) and Eri took another short break from music. In 2004, Eri created the song "You Are Mine" for her husband and released as a single with a remake of her signature song. The chorus of the song translates to "You are mine\You are mine\Whether you or I should die\You are mine\You are mine\These memories will live on". Obviously what she was talking about, eh? Anyway, I bought the single. (Ya! I supported! Feels good.) "Heya to Y-Shatsu to Watashi 2004" doesn't change as far as the words go, but the whole track is re-arranged. The main track is mainly xylophones and glockenspiels, with some other instruments as well. It's a very "tropical" version of the song, probably to go with the Tropical version of "You Are Mine" that's also on the single.

I love all three and the one that I listen to usually depends on my mood, I guess. It's a song about basically wanting the simple life with her soon-to-be husband. (Note: It was revealed later, that she wrote the song to be singable from both the male and female viewpoint.) There's also a pun hidden in the wording too. The verb to polish/scrub something also means to improve. So when she's saying that she wants to be cleaning house, it also works in meaning that she wants to be a better person. I didn't know what would be the best way to express the wordplay in English, so I just told you here. I was just going to link to the music video, but I figured I might as well provide some translation too, since it gives me more excuses to listen to it several times. :P

Heya to Y-Shatsu to Watashi

お願いがあるのよ　あなたの苗字になる私
I, who will have your last name, have a few requests.

大事に思うならば　ちゃんと聞いてほしい
If there's something I think is important, I want you to listen.

飲みすぎて帰っても　３日酔いまでは許すけど
If you drink too much, I'll forgive a three-day hangover...

４日目つぶれた夜　恐れて実家に帰らないで
But the fourth wasted night, be afraid and don't come home.

部屋とYシャツと私　愛するあなたのため
Rooms, white shirts, and I. All for the sake of loving you

毎日磨いていたいから　時々服を買ってね
Because I want to be shining everyday. Like buying clothes from time to time,

愛するあなたのため　きれいでいさせて
All for the sake of loving you, in order to be beautiful.

いつわらないでいて女の勘は鋭いもの
And don't try to lie. A woman's intuition is sharp.

あなたは嘘つくとき右の眉が上がる
Whenever you tell a lie, your right eyebrow raises.

あなた浮気したらうちでの食事に気をつけて
If you should ever cheat on me, be careful of the food at home.

私は知恵をしぼって毒入りスープで一緒にいこう
I'll gather up all my knowledge and we'll both die by the poisoned soup.

部屋とＹシャツと私愛するあなたのため
Rooms, white shirts, and I. All for the sake of loving you

毎日磨いていたいから
Because I want to be shining everyday.

友達の誘うパーティー愛するあなたのため
At your friend's party, all for the sake of loving you,

おしゃれに行かせて
I want to go in fashion.

大地をはうようなあなたのいびきも歯ぎしりも
Your snoring and teeth grinding sounds like you're scraping dirt

もう暗闇に独りじゃないと安心できて好き
But I love how you can comfort me with "You're not alone in the darkness anymore"

だけどもし寝言で他の娘の名を呼ばぬように
If while talking in your sleep, you should call me an other girl's name

気にいった女の子は私と同じ名前で呼んで
Call me the same name as the girl you really love.

ロマンスグレーになって
Should you get all romantic

冒険の人生突然選びたくなったら
And suddenly choose to live the adventurous life,

最初に相談してね私はあなたとならどこでも大丈夫
Talk to me first, okay? As long as I'm with you, anywhere is fine.

もし私が先立てばオレも死ぬと言ってね
Should I be the first to pass away, say "I'll die, too"

私はその言葉を胸に天国へと旅立つわ
And I'll keep those words in my heart as I travel to heaven,

あなたの右の眉看とどけたあとで
because I checked your eyebrow afterward.

部屋とＹシャツと私愛するあなたのため
Rooms, white shirts, and I. All for the sake of loving you

毎日磨いていたいから
Because I want to be shining everyday.

人生の記念日には君は綺麗といって
And the days when you remember my life, say "You are beautiful."

その気でいさせて
And just leave it like that.

Pretty sad, romantic, strange, and cute at the same time, isn't it? When the song came out, Eri never performed some of the odder parts, like the whole "poisoned soup" part. The part about the cat photo in the video just kills me, though. According to the comment, it's getting a lot of other people to tear up too.

This song also came back into the spotlight in recent years for several reasons. First, in a comeback, Eri on several music nostalgia TV programs. She still looks so pretty, but I think I liked her longer hair better.

And then we get into dangerous territory in my opinion: covers. I'm one of the people that believe that if you're going to cover a song, you should be as good as, if not better than the original. It just goes along with the word "cover". If the original song is an elephant, in order to cover said elephant you will need a sheet as big as, if not bigger than the elephant. I came across a video a while ago of the group MihimaruGT 'covering' the song. I knew about MihimaruGT because I did like one of their original songs, but was then turned off by their cover of Kylie Minogue's "I Should Be So Lucky". Let's just say that when it comes to covers MihimaruGT is just throwing single sheets of toilet paper on an elephant's back. It seems like the singer forgets the words about 1:58 below, and scrambles things together that she things sounds nice. "Should you ever cheat, I want you to call my name. I'll wring your arm, and we'll die by the poison soup"? Srsly? I will admit that I do love the jazzy chords in this arrangement.

Then I find ANOTHER version of MihimaruGT with some others singing the song on their show. I really have nothing against the Mihimaru's singer's voice, and she got the words right so I'll forgive her. There was another singer who did a very nice job as well. However, they invited two "singers" who just sounded like cats on chalkboards. I'll spare you the agony.

Most recently, a singer named Reina Tanaka from a girl group that I used to care about, Morning Musume, would be covering the song. The song is being featured on a love song cover album for the big umbrella group that Morning Musume belongs to, called Hello! Project. I don't really care for the overdone drum sampling in the chorus.

I'd say it's an okay cover. She could have held some of the notes longer when it was called for. The music track sounds damn near exactly like the original version of the song mixed with some of 2004 version of the song, with a little R&B drum sampling and water droplets mixed in. You can still see the elephant's feet sticking out from under the sheet, but it's a good attempt. Good enough to make me buy the album, or make me care about Hello! Project or Morning Musume again? No, probably not. At least it didn't turn me off to the song. Good going Reina, you've come closer to my approval with a cover than most people ever will.

(UPDATE: 1/14/2010)
Well, it looks like through various circumstances, I have once again returned to this song again. I happened to be a complete idiot, spacing out on a project for a Japanese class where we had to translate a Japanese song into English, and didn't know that the project even existed until the day before it was due. Luckily, I had this translation and used it. I did translate by myself, just not for the sake of this project specifically. I hope the teacher doesn't mind. c.c

Anyway, in my searching and wanderings since I wrote this post, I've found a few more renditions worth note! Whoo!

I guess I left off with a good place using Reina Tanaka from Hello! Project to end it, because the next version is by Aya Matsuura, who is a graduate of Hello! Project. For those who don't know much about Hello! Project, saying someone "graduated" is a kind way of saying "getting kicked out for not being pedo-bait". They had a mass "graduation" for most of their founding and in my opinion, some of their greatest ever, talents a few months. Aya was one of them. This video was taken from a live performance of hers, with a nice guitar arrangement backing her.

I'm taken aback by the sheer cuteness that is her little vibrato flutters at the end of the high notes. :3

Next up is one of the more... interesting versions. Like I said earlier, the song was designed to be singable by both women and men. This time it's a male singing it at karaoke, where he recorded and uploaded it to YouTube. Apparently he's a little too embarrassed to enable embedding. I don't know why. It's pretty good! Although, he messed up a little on one line, he caught it quickly and gave a good performance! Better than I could have done it, I think. (Maybe I should try it. I've never actually sung it outside of my head. <_< ) Since he didn't enable embedding, here's a link:
Male HtYStW

And here's another from the lady herself. This time, a live version. This just goes to show why I respect her so much. First, she's plays her own instruments. She kinda makes me wish I had kept at the piano. Oh well, I still have a chance with the violin (which I haven't even picked up in about two months. Maybe tomorrow.) Second, She sings live without playback, and sounds comparable, if not the same or even better than the recorded version. Third, even sitting still behind that piano she still has stage presence, which I'd imagine is hard to do.

Next up to bat is this jazzy, upbeat version. It's really nice, in it's playful take on it. Enjoy!

While the playfulness is a strong-point, it's also a little weak point. It somewhat draws away from the solemn tone of the slow song. But, hey, if you're not looking for solemnity, then this has it going on!

And while we're on the topic of interesting takes, this is definitely a good one. The concept of "music-boxing" songs has long been a fascination of mine. This is the music-box version of the song, and it is damn wonderful. If you like that, the user also has several music-box versions of other classic Japanese songs on their page.

The little chiming in the harmonic chiming that starts in the background at about 2:11 has me hooked. Man, I wish I had the time to re-learn my instruments and such.

Now for the recap of points.
Ratings out of 10 points:

MihimaruGT with "Da Offkey Heffers": 4 points

MihimaruGT san queue cards: 5 points

Reina Tanaka: Hmm... 7.5 points (I had it at 8.3 before the update, but I changed my mind.

Aya Matsuura: 8.5 points

Male Version: 7 points

Upbeat Version: 7.5 points

Music-box version: 9 points

Eri Hiramatsu: 10 points (I had some mega huge number here before, but I'll be more reasonable)

We still have ourselves a winner, folks.

(Also, Eri later released a book called "My Name isn't Cancer" and it sold pretty well.)

The Friendly Being 2

2009-07-15T21:39:00.003-04:00

Due to more technical difficulties, I was not able to get my release out of Sunday. I thought I'd solved my video splitting problem, but those videos don't work in my subtitler. So I'm either off to find a new video splitter capable of splitting all the files I have, or I'm off to find a new subtitling program.

Anyways, I've managed to get you this week's BBB. This skit involves Hamada playing a business man who frequents a certain hotel on his trips. In his first visit, he was introduced to a friendly spirit, played by Matsumoto, who loves to play games and have fun with guests.

This is their second encounter and Hamada makes it known that he doesn't mind the haunted room.

I personally love moments like these shown in this clip. Sometimes Matsumoto's over-the-top personality even surprises Hamada, and they've been working together for years. The skits on Gottsu Ee Kanji are very special in that there's usually no completely solid script for the skits they do in studio. Usually someone starts laughing in an inappropriate place or someone gets hit. You can see that both Hamada and Matsumoto love toying with each other sometimes. Although they don't hang around each other in their spare time, they do seem to enjoy the time the spend working as a comedy team. You can't really ask for more than that.

And in what's becoming a usual around here: The BBB Topic of discussion! Um. . . Talk about your most memorable hotel experiences.

For me, it had to be my trip to Mexico when I was little. I was not used to geckos, but apparently they are pretty common in the Mexico. The outside of the hotel was covered in them. Okay, that was heavy exaggeration, but there were a few of them. Being foreigners, my family didn't really know about them, and freaked out whenever we saw one. The staff at the hotel, being Mexican natives, looked at us like we were wimpy idiots but tried to assure us that geckos were completely harmless and pose no threat. So we just figured we'd stay in our rooms when not sight-seeing, and we'd see as few geckos as possible. So the first night, after a long day of delayed flights and such, my father and I both laid down to go to sleep. The layout of the room should be fairly familiar: It's two beds with a nightstand in between with a lamp on it, all along a wall. Like this, with B being a bed and N being the nightstand:
____
B N B

My father and I both laid down facing the nightstand, and as soon as we did, we saw about 9 geckos clinging onto the back of the nightstand staring back at us. Needless to say that a 10-year old boy and a grown man have never shrieked so loudly in the history of Mexican tourism.

Worldwide Downtown News: Whoopee Cushions

2009-07-09T22:55:00.006-04:00

Ah, the whoopee cushion. Always good for a quick, tasteless, joke.

This BBB (which is late. Sorry. ) comes from Downtown's show "Worldwide Downtown Headline News". The concept is very simple: Get some foreigners, put cheesy Japanese voice-overs on them, and commence with the funny.

In the form of a news show, Hamada and Matsumoto appear as panelists and are subjected to the stereotypical members of the panel.

Gilles (French name, pronounced like "Jheel". I had a friend with that name. Let's just say I had a hard time guessing the pronunciation from his name tag in elementary school) Besson plays our host, and he's got a deep profoundness for being corny. He plays the stereotypical "Trying-too-hard" foreigner, trying to crack quick jokes and puns. Unlike most shows where this type of character is pushed to the back except the the odd occasion, Gilles is in the role of power, as he controls the flow of the show.

Ghorchyan and Natalia are foils of each other, with Ghorchan being the fairly grumpy, purely logical one and Natalia being the "Live is lovely!", ever-sunny one, who looks on the bright side.

Almost every show starts with Gilles introducing a video of some sort, which generally features something incredibly corny being made into something amazing. Afterwards, Gilles asks everyone's opinions, and Ghorchan and Natalia disagree. Then Gilles usually starts the funny with Hamada and Matsumoto.

What I love is the way that sometimes the corny voice-overs that they place over the actors are actually what they are saying. For example, if you keep an eye on Natalia, you can see it when she says "I'll think about it"(kangaetoku wa), "Hi, Gilles!"

In this case, the video introduces a coffee shop where the owner pranks his customers. If they react in what he thinks is a funny manner, get food for free. If he keeps that up, he'll be out of business soon.

I'm keeping it short this week for the summary, as I've got a meeting tomorrow that I need to prepare for. However, let's see. . . As I'm trying to foster discussion on the BBBs, let's get a discussion started about this one. Hrm. Share with the world the best practical joke you've seen played (preferably one you experienced first-hand in real life, and not "i saw this funny vid on youtube of (X)") or the funniest promotion you've seen a store have!

I went to a pet store once, and they were giving away tiny (and I mean tiny) sacks of catnip of April 20 (4/20) if you brought your cat dressed up in a reggae outfit. Kinda stereotypical to reggae and Jamaica in general, being labeled as pot-smokers, but you could see the cats look at each dressed up, humiliated, thinking "Hang in there, brother. When we rise up. . . Oh, when we rise up. . .". Almost needless to say, this pet store was run by your stereotypical pot smokers.

Guide to the Poll and Update!

2009-07-05T23:59:00.004-04:00

Hallo, hello, hillo, hollo, hullo.

I've been pretty scatterbrained lately, hence the lack of a post last Sunday, and lack of anything really substantial this week. Sorry about that. I've recently started playing a free online game and got sucked in, and taking some time to self-administer some "retail therapy". Also, a guy from Japan moved in down the hall, so we've been having a sort of "language exchange". And by "language exchange", I mean that we both fail at communicating in the other person's native tongue and then try to explain it in the other and fail there too. But it's interesting to speak with a native speaker. I've been distracted to say the least. So that's where I've been, not for reasons that I oh so emo-ly talked about a while ago. Anyways, I'm back. Things should be back to normal this week, barring nothing horrible happens. *knock on wood*

Before I get started again, I'll just rundown the housekeeping as usual. (Boy, keeping up a blog like this is hard. I always thought it would be "make a post and never return" type of thing.)

Updated General Request Post, cleaned up older comments, and responded to comments that I'd neglected. Also, due to me finding a better video editor that can handle some of the files that were giving me trouble, "Kiki Nattou" and the "Matsumoto and Eri" episodes have been put back into rotation.I've also moved up some episodes to break up the surge of Itao we're getting around here, due to the new BBB segment and improptu changes to the schedule. Also moved a few requested episodes up the list in doing so.
Reuploaded videos for Kiki Canned Coffee and Goodbye Yamazaki episodes.
Updated caption files for Ice Coffee Limit Check to explain who Ouyang FeiFei and Vivian Su are.
Fixed a subtitle timing error in Matsumoto's Skateboard Challenge when Matsumoto is reading in his dressing room.

However, I was thinking about the poll I recently put up on here, and I couldn't help but wonder if the limited descriptions that I put for some of the episode themes were a little too non-descriptive. So I have come up with this post, as a way to explain what I was getting at, and perhaps jog your memory if you've seen any of them. This way you can make an informed decision or adjust your vote if you want to. Just a reminder, if you see something you like and want to request an episode, put it here in the General Request Post so I don't forget it.

High Tension Series - In these episodes, we find comedians being, well, High Tension. "High Tension" is basically how you'd call someone high-strung or easily excitable. Usually in a style parodying a music show back in the late 80's or early 90's, Matsumoto and Hamada host comedians who come and make people laugh while being extremely hyperactive and high-strung. This segment usually features some mainstay comedians like Shouji Murakami and the Chihara Brothers, and will occasionally feature some comedians who are popular at the moment. It almost always features one of Endou's "Hohoho~i!" bits.

Genkai Series - Stemming from Matsumoto flubbing an order at a coffee shop, but still getting what he wanted, the Genkai series puts the Gaki members in the predicament of trying to use words that sound close (and some that don't) to try and order the item of the day. I've already covered one episode here, and there's more to follow.

Shichihenge - Another type of episode already covered here on the blog, Shichihenge gives a comic the chance to make the Gaki crew laugh. They get seven chances, and whenever they manage to make someone laugh, that person has to put money into the bin for charity. There's almost always some sort of nudity, because let's face it, unnecessary nudity is pretty funny. This type of episode has become one of Gaki's most famous series.

Absolutely Tasty - This series has many different names. The whole name is the "Kore wo yattemitakatten! Zettai ni oishii..." series which translates to "I always wanted to that! Absolutely delicious ___". In this segment, they take a commonplace recipe and create two of their dream versions of that item. For example, we have an upcoming episode where the members come up with their dream pizzas, cook them and try them out as a group. The items are assign a rating with 10 stars being the highest, and two skulls being the lowest.

Matsumoto's Challenge - Matsumoto sometimes feels the urgent need to perform some sort of grand task. In these episodes, we see the other Gaki members assist Matsumoto in the completion of said tasks like completing a backside-grab shifty 900 Air, all without the physical cooperation of Matsumoto. Whenever it's time to accomplish the task, his body just becomes a wet noodle.

Itao's Interruption Skits - Usually in the dressing room or on the way to a location shoot, the crew usually gets bugged by Itsuji Itao. Sometimes, Itao's wife comes along for the ride, but it almost always results in hilarity like seen in the "Itao's Car Crash" episode seen here. Usually involving a new television format, or in general a get-rich-quick scheme that Itao thought of, the Gaki members are usually forced to pay up big time if they intend on continuing with their daily lives.

Kiki Episodes - The Kiki episodes are basically taste-testing wrapped up in a penalty game shell. Each member is given one brand of a specific food or item to try while blindfolded and they have to match it up with that brand out of a line-up. An episode where members have to try canned coffee can be seen here.

Goodbye, Yamazaki! - A "prank" which Gaki pulls every year, it involves the ever-annoying Yamazaki faking his leaving the show. The first episdoe in the series, seen here, does an okay job at trying to fool the audience. After the two years or so, they stopped even trying to be subtle about the pranks and they just let Yamazaki be a damned fool. At the end, Yamazaki announces the prank and he does some sort of reference to the popular happenings of the past year. It's usually a popular song with the words "Yama-chan isn't leaving!" substituted in multiple places.

Yamazaki vs. Moriman! - Yamazaki and the notoriously chubby comedian Moriman go head to head in several battles. It first started as a competition to see who could pants their opponent, like bullies do on Japanese playgrounds, hence the kindergarten outfits. Yamazaki and Moriman later got stadiums and sold lots of seats, as this became a very popular Gaki No Tsukai series.

Matsumoto Team Vs. Hamada Team - Usually spanning multiple episodes, Gaki usually invites guest comedians and split into two teams with Matsumoto and Hamada being the leaders. The usually guests are Ame Agari Kessintai, Hosshan, and the comedy duo Fujiwara. Various games are played, and usually culminates in a complicated final round in which all members have to move a ball through several obstacles.

Gaki Team Vs. Former Tennensozai Team - Similar to the Hamada Vs Matsumoto matches above, the Gaki members go against a group that once called themselves Tennensozai (which I ever so failfully misspelled on the actual poll). Translating to "Natural Materials", the Tennensozai team was going green before Al Gore said anything! Just like the above, there's a series of absurd challenges, and the winner gets prize money!

Piccadilly Umeda's Job shows - To put is simply, Piccadilly Umeda is an cool, old man. He comes on Gaki No Tsukai often to showcase what new job he's doing. Of course, being a cool old man, he has no normal jobs. He takes jobs ranging from motorcycle stuntman to fortune-teller. He's pretty creepy though, as he can take all of his teeth out, supposedly. Eww.

Regular Cast Member Auditions - As Gaki no Tsukai gained popularity, it was only natural that other comedians would want in on the show. So, Gaki occasionally holds auditions for new members. As you may have noticed, the regular Gaki team hasn't grown in many years, so it may come as no surprise that these auditions are fake. However, it is fun to watch the comedians jump through hoops to get on the show.

Celebrity Baseball - I guess this title was a little bit deceiving. The "Celebrity Baseball" episodes involve the Gaki members as well as many other staff and comedians dressing up as a popular entertainer and then playing baseball. It's fairly simple. Usually the celebrity has a very distinct mannerism or appearance, which everyone has to imitate. For example, they imitate Hibari Misora, a famous Enka-style singer, and play baseball in full dresses and headwear.

Celebrity Fishing Competitions - Gaki No Tsukai's most laid-back (almost to the point of boredom) episodes are the Celebrity Fishing episodes. Usually in a two- or three-part episode, the Gaki Members invite several celebrities out for a fishing competition on one of Japan's many lakes. It seems more like something for the Japanese Tourism Association or something, if it exists. In some of the later episodes, they introduced some items that were fun, like a dice where the celebrity had to give their honest opinion about what comes up on it.

Cosplay Bus Tours - In what is usually a spree of cross-dressing or nostalgia, Gaki members, along with some of the crew members or other comedians, take to the streets of Tokyo in a tour bus dressed in costume. In the bus, they play a game which will eliminate one person. That person, while in costume, has to walk back to the studio alone.

Producer Suga's Nostalgic Re-enactments - Producer Suga seems to love nostalgia. He sometimes remembers things from his childhood like pro-wrestlers, manga, or anime. And sometimes you just want to relive those things, don't you? He does. Even if it comes at the expense of the Gaki members. In these episodes, Suga puts the members through a series of punishment games, and who ever loses has to play the specified part in his re-enactment.

Heipo's Arranged Dating - One of the Gaki staff, Heipo, is known for being a bit perverted. He also has a great fondness for pretty much all things woman. Unfortunately, he's a big strike-out with ladies, so sometimes, the kind people at Gaki No Tsukai set him up on a date. Heipo goes out and we usually see him go down in flames, as he generally sexually harasses his date.

Yamaquest - In a scavenger-hunt type episode, Yamazaki hides a "hidden treasure" in some location and the other four members go on a spree to find it. There have only been two episodes in this series, one in an amusement park, and one in a water park. Each time, the "hidden treasure" is well. . . Yamazaki. And that means that the treasure was "special", and not in the valuable sense.

Member Chases - In an effort to see what each member's private lives are like outside of the show, Gaki decides to follow a target member around the city "incognito" and take a sneak peek. The member's pastimes seems to include re-enacting old movies and nipple tweaking.

Eating with Kouji-chan!

2009-07-01T22:12:00.007-04:00

It's time once again for another BlackGaki Boredom Breaker! *clap clap clap*

This week, we have another quick one from Gottsu Ee Kanji. (I promise I'll do something other than Gottsu Ee Kanji next week. I have some stuff I want to do, but I haven't been motivated enough to rummage through all the video files to find them.)

This time, the loving family tries to feed the young Kouji, played by the aptly named Kouji Imada, with apples.

This whole skit shows you how much fun you can have with a hole in the floor.

The first woman, I have no clue　who she is. Perhaps an extra, even though an extra wasn't needed since Ryouko (the one in the red) didn't do anything. However, as for the rest of the line-up:

Grandma: YOU
Grandpa: Takahiro Kurano
Dad: Itsuji Itao
Other lady (in red): Ryouko Shinohara
Baby Kouji: Kouji Imada

EDITED 7/3 to add:　The woman in black is Yayoi Nishihata. She joins Gottsu Ee Kanji as a regular during later seasons.

Short and sweet indeed, but THAT'S CHILD ABUSE, ITAO!

In an effort to spark conversation around here... hrm... Spankings: Okay or not? If okay, how young is too young? Proceed with discussion.

The Busukko Club!

2009-06-24T23:15:00.000-04:00

Heysup, my fine, loyal, readers.

It's time for yet another BlackGaki Boredom Buster. This week, the players of Gottsu Ee Kanji take us into the apparently wild and comical world of prostitution. In Japan though, it's usually not a thing where you just go to a street corner in a less than desirable neighborhood. It's more like the things you see if you go to Las Vegas. There's fliers and cards with advertisements on it, and you call a number and they send a prostitute over to your house. If you're not happy with the prostitute's appearance, you can "change", which means you send the other prostitute back and they send you a different one.

In this skit, Hamada, gets the rare opportunity to call one of these services when his wife leaves town. The flier for which he happens to have the number for is for the "Busukko Club" which would translate to "The Ugly Girl Club", but I really wanted to translate it to the "Uggmo Club". I don't know how he managed to not see that when he called, or heard it when the operator picked up the phone. But when the girls actually get there, let's just say that Hamada wants change like Barack Obama buying one item at a $1 store with a $100 bill.

Sadly, I have to laugh at the sheer realism of the skit. I grew up in Portland, Oregon which for a long time had the bragging rights having the most strip clubs per capita. (Apparently small town in Virginia or something is trying to take the crown, or something. But as far as major metropolitan cities go, I think Portland's still got the title. Check this article out in the Portland Mercury newspaper, a fun newspaper to read if you're ever in the Portland area: Article. )

But let me tell you, quantity is DEFINITELY not quality. The general manhood ritual of going to a strip club when you turn of legal age can just be ruined by some of the things you see there. As some of you may know, strippers sometimes name themselves after precious stones, liquor, or luxury cars with names like "Diamond", "Champagne", or "Lexus". Some of the strippers in Portland should have retired LONG ago. They could have names like "Plymouth Rock" and "Model T". In an effort to keep a stable of dancer they pretty much just scrape the bottom of the barrel. Damn near literally. If you're over 18, check out the website for one of the clubs near where I used to live, look under Female Entertainers(link), and tell me that Midori doesn't look like a tranny and Talina just needs to retire outright. Seriously, one look at Midori... IT'S A TRAP!!!1!

Some of the clubs in the area, in an effort to distinguish themselves, occasionally host some sort of freakshow nights. My friend said they had conjoined twin strippers. That's... just... sad. Is one stripping and the other one's along for the ride? Were both of the girls together unable to muster up enough self-respect to refuse the offer? Do you have to tip in increments of $2? Which one holds the pole? That's something that I both do and don't want the honor of seeing first-hand.

See you guys on Sunday for another Gaki episode!

Ittsuji Shopping!

2009-06-22T23:56:00.008-04:00

Hello Readers.

When I tried to sub the planned episode, I was getting the same problem I had with the "Matsumoto and Eri" episodes, where it thinks it's only an audio file when I try to split it. So, I went on to the next episode, but will return when I figure this out. So I got it done in a day, there's a small part or two with a sub gap, but I'll fill that in later.

On a PSA-type note, be sure to tell the people you love that you love them early and often. No one has passed away yet, but my grandfather's mental health is deteriorating. He's confused half the time and belligerent the other half. He took some joyride 4 hours away from home on his own and got stranded on the side of the road when he ran out of gas, and refused most of the help offered to him. Police had to bring him home (not under arrest, though, so one minor plus). It hurts to tell someone you've known your whole life that you love them, and they can't remember who you are. The only reason he probably thinks I'm related to him is because I look just like my uncle. In fact, he calls my by his name even though I'm 22, and his son would be in his 50's now. So, just as a small forewarning, if my posting here is late, sporadic, crappy, or just generally absent for a while, there's a reason. Probably family business to take care of.

Anyway, I'm just going to put the videos and after the jump.

Ah, the Gaki No Tsukai dressing room. The beginning for many a hilarious episode of Gaki No Tsukai. And with sitting in the dressing room comes... no, not dressing (oddly). . . it's insulting Yamazaki! Even better than the prospect nekkid or half-nekkid middle aged men! And in from the shadows of the corner of the screen comes none other than... Itsuji Itao! (Okay, if you couldn't guess who it is after reading the title of this post, you either don't know who Itao is or you're the person the short bus stopped by the blog for. I'll tell the driver to wait for you when school starts.) And with Itao is his usual entourage of his "wife" and "kid". These are the new wife and kids, and the Itao's first appearance back on the show after the "divorce" from his more popular wife. But this one looks pretty similar to the old one as far as body shape goes, but shows more facial expression. She seems to have slight comprehension of Japanese, if you talk slow. Anyway, they come in their Betty Boop printed wardrobe which has become a signature for Itao on the show. (He doesn't wear Betty Boop clothing on any of the other shows he appears on. Perhaps it's meant to be a trademark of the whole family as a whole? Wife doesn't appear on other shows except Gaki No Tsukai.)

This time, as per usual, there's an introduction of the new wife and kid, and then the unveiling of Itsuji's brilliant plan for making a quick buck. This time, he's invented an Internet shopping show called Ittsuji Shopping, and he wants to pitch it in hopes that SOMEONE (read as "anyone close-by with money") will buy it.

After the intro, Itao's all decked out in a nice suit *SLICK!* and he's ready to introduce the product of the hour! Today's product will be Erection King! The miracle product promises to cure erectile dysfunction and help save marriages.

In the spirit of infomercials and general love of innuendo on TV, there's tons of phallic objects and hip thrusting motions in the introduction, followed by the testimonials of "real" customers as well as a brief summary of the invention of Erection King.

After the first introduction of the product, Itao takes some quick prods at both Endou's fairly recent divorce from Chiaki by suggesting that maybe his love isn't enough but perhaps he could just bone her back into his life, and a quick jab at Matsumoto saying that he's probably impotent. LOL WRONG, ITAO. He may be a little too potent, or else he might not be getting this semi-shotgun marriage to his fiancee.

Then Itao brings out the sweat pants. These pants are just made of awesome and win and what dreams are made of. I want a pair. Someone make some. Now. He straps these huge phallic harnesses onto Matsumoto and Hamada, and then has them try on the sweatpants that feature a Wang Sleeve. He has them running around the studio feeling the man-centric design of the pants and then they are led through some light Jazzercise-style aerobics by Itao's Wife. (I don't think Itao can really get over the incredible dancing skill and success that his last "Wife" had dancing to 80's/90's tunes.) During this part, try to notice just how many times Yamazaki looks at Downtown's simulated junk and giggles to himself. You're married now, Yama-chan? Nice cover, but I'm not buying it.

After the Flop-a-Thon on Downtown's front ends, we watch another video about Erection King's other uses. This section features a fairly well-known comedian in Japan, who is part of a comedy team composed of himself (a foreigner) and a native Japanese. I'm pretty sure his name is Chad. I think. *note to self: research this later. It's on the tip of my tongue. He's always in cheesy Japanese commercials and short films where they need someone to overreact and speak a combination of Japanese and English* Anyway, let's just say, Erection King has many uses beyond a male stimulant.

Then, Itao moves onto the stereotypical "in-studio" explanation of how Erection King cleans everything and can ever cause time paradoxes. Then in stereotypical form of informercials, they play pretty much the same video that they already showed you two or three times during the allotted period and everyone goes "We've seen this already!" And then, it's time to unveil the items that you get when you purchase Erection King. You get a ton of Erection King in different forms as well as the sweatpants all for around 20 US dollars. *ponders calling*

And then they immediately sell out of all 30,000 available units. *slams down phone frustratedly* I just wanted the sweatpants. While Itao tries to convince Suga to purchase the rights to the show, I'm going to see. . . if I can get some of those pants.

I don't believe I've had this rated before, but I'd give it a 6/10 on my rating scale It's fun for the whole fami-- okay, it's fun for the grown folks and the incredibly immature. Things like this are why Gaki doesn't come on during primetime in Japan, and what's keeping it from coming on in most places overseas. That's truly sad.

Happy 6 Month Anniversary!

2009-06-17T19:00:00.003-04:00

On December 15, I started this blog in my dorm room, to give myself something to do and something to say that I bring to "the table", as far as the Interwebz goes. Over the past 6 months, lots of visitors have come to this site and made this little blog a home. *minor sentimental moment*

In celebration of having a 6-month anniversary without this place being shut down by the Feds -- *peeks out of curtains* -- I'd like to unveil a new segment around here! Like I wrote a while back, I'd like to put up some short videos from other Japanese comedies, with stress and emphasis being on "short". I think I'll try focusing on some of Downtown or Cocorico's other shows (Yamazaki doesn't have any other shows with the exception of the occasional pity appearance on Downtown's music and talk show "Downtown DX", probably due to his high concentration of FAIL per square inch) but my occasionally stray into the world of Japanese comedy at large and bring you some different acts.

Also, the usual updates: Done a lot of cleaning up on the Request Post, and mixed in some of the requests into the mix. Note that due to the long list of episodes that I really want to get to, your requests there may get pushed to the rear.

Also, I have added a new poll to the main page: "What's your favorite Recurring Series/Themes?" As you can see, it is MONSTER HUGE. You are allowed to select multiple answers for it, because otherwise I'm sure that there would be some that get no votes. I would say try to vote for 3-4? I guess. Whatever's clever. That poll closes at the end of July, so you've got a month and half. Unlike our first poll, I'm not planning some sort of special week for the winner. Also, I'm aware there's some series that I kinda left out. I just didn't want to add all of those things in there. o.o

Anyway, onwards, to the first-ever "BlackGaki Boredom Breaker"!

In our first installment of the "BlackGaki's Boredom Breaker" (BBB), we have some of Downtown's Gottsu Ee Kanji! In this short-- and yes, this is the whole skit -- piece, Kouji Higashino plays the part of the customer looking to buy a new pair of pants. The ever helpful sales clerk is played by You. No, not you! You! Seriously though, that's what she goes by, but it's usually in all-capitals, which we on the internet know means that you win at life, as "YOU". She's a singer, actress, and general entertainment jack-of-all-trades. You can do the wiki thing for more info here.

Before I start this though, I'd like to take a moment to say that I won't be subtitling the ever-popular 5 Ranger skit, as there's already subtitled videos out there. So with that said, hopefully I bring a little extra sunshine into your week! Enjoy!

Itao's Car Crash!

2009-06-14T23:59:00.010-04:00

(Original Airdate 7/18/1999)

Hello, hello! It's time, once again, for the Gaki members to let out some pent-up aggression with a dodgeball match. In commemoration of a new summer, the Gaki members head to a nearby park to shoot. [sarcasm] And like always, when Gaki doesn't shoots on location for playing sports, they always go off without a hitch. [/sarcasm] On the way to the location shoot, several things happen.

First, the other Gaki members put Yamazaki's ticket sales out in public, which made me laugh. It makes me smile to know that not everyone's just slobbering all over his tiny, shriveled testicles like the Japanese fan-girls do with the other, more testicularly-ample members.

The second, and in my mind the less gratifying thing, is they get into a car accident. The large Gaki location bus gets into a silent, non-fatal crash, all while staying about 5 feet from the car in front of it.

Stay tuned, BlackGaki readers, you are about to witness a tale of love, spilled stew, and murder on the dodgeball court...

It was a day like any other. Five celebrities, their manager, and TV production crew head out to do a shoot on-location in a local park. And like any other day as a Gaki member, when you do an on-location shoot, there will be several things that go wrong. So, yes, this will be a day like any other.

On the way to the park, Yamazaki tries to make friendly conversation with the other members about their experiences with dodgeball. When Endou tries to be analytical, Yamazaki takes the "sarcastic-ass" route and cuts the conversation short. Matsumoto, hereby demonstrating on why everyone loves him, blasts Yamazaki's ticket sales. For some reason, I can just see these empty audiences who come to see the shows. I'd wager a bet that at least 3 of the 25 people who came to see his performance in Nagoya were in his own family. Seriously, when only 25 people show up for a show, your material must suck. Even struggling comics can pull in 35-40 if they can get a gig. I can just imagine Yamazaki not being able to pull off a gag, and then resorting to whatever the Japanese equivalent is for the "Wow, all you ladies are looking good tonight" bit. Then, by his own mention, he only managed to sell about 1/3 of the seats in his performance in Tokyo. Haha, all these years on Gaki No Tsukai really built up your following, hasn't it?

Suddenly, the location bus stops. The car in front of the bus is waving the bus down to pull over. The driver gets out, and it's none other than our friend, Itsuji Itao.

This episode shows prime examples of several comedic elements that I love about the Itao episodes.

First of all, these episodes are filmed on the streets, so there's usually bystanders just watching. I -LOOOOOVE- seeing the occasional passer-by get completely starstruck and defecate all over themselves. I present to you a prime example, the woman right behind Itao :

You can practically see her bowels loosening at the sight of Hamada! She then seems to emit some sort of dork-summoning signal which calls in dorky goon to pop onto the left side of the screen for a second. It's always fun to see how many people just watch, like I may have commented on in the "Itao Is Watching" episode, where there's a random bystander on the roof of the building that the cameraman tried to zoom in to hide, to preserve the integrity of the storyline.

Itao's signature on the Gaki No Tsukai series, besides his love of money, is his use of his "wife". Over the years, there have been many wives. The one probably most of you are familiar with is the one with the long ponytail who dances, as seen in the High School and Police station penalty games. I plan to discuss the history of "Itao's Wife" in an episode shortly, including some facts you may not know. Over the years, we've seen several "wives" come and go. I believe we're on wife number 9 or 10. Yet, I digress.

The second thing I love is the "I signal, you say" type of interaction that Itao uses. Itao's Wife is usually limited in vocabulary. In most cases, she's a foreigner that doesn't and thus there's she just has to take body-language cues from the situation and give her usual response of "mochiron sou yo!" ("Of course so"). It's hilarious when they fool her into confirming something that only hurts Itao's position in begging for money.

Okay, so back to the action. While trying to settle this little accident, Itao goes through the contents of his car. I don't know how hard I laughed when I saw the spilled stew. I don't know what it is about it, but I just crack up. Maybe it's because I found it funny, and Matsumoto just cracks up laughing when he sees it, thus making it thousands of times funnier. Maybe it's because it's poop-brown with broccoli floating in it. I don't know, I just find it funny. So for my, and hopefully your, viewing pleasure here's pictures of the spilled stew. XD

Itao then reveals the slightly less comical contents of his trunk, and then begins the usual negotiations for some money. They agree to pay for the car repair, but like almost all people are starting to do in today's litigious society, he brings up the "Oh, my neck. It may be whiplash" line. I wonder if we have seen the last of him for this episode? Okay, we haven't. There's another video right below this.

We knew this was coming. They show up again in neckbraces and toting X-ray pictures. They're injured, and seeking compensation. So, after another round of negotiation with the Cowardly Lion -- I mean Producer Suga, Itao decides to make the most of this appearance on the show and try to earn the money by joining the dodgeball game. When he manages to get his foot in the door, he weasels his wife onto the other team, so no matter which team wins, his family gets a share of the prize money. I SEE WUT U DID THERE, ITAO.

And in breaking news, there's been a death on the park. Not from a rapist, not from a serial killer. This time from a rubber dodgeball. Today, a woman known as "Itao's Wife" was killed during a dodgeball match after being struck in the leg and getting too damned excited. (I'll admit the clutching of the heart during the fall was so funny though.)

And in an act of stubbornness and love, Itao fights to get his wife an ambulance as soon as possible. The only obstacle in the way is the prospect of the undivided prize money. It's just not Yamazaki's day, is it? First his underachievement is put out in front streets for all to see, then Itao fake-demeans him.

About three hours ago, somewhere almost halfway around the world, Chuck Norris farted. Those sacred sulfur molecules wafted all the way over to Japan and into the nose of one dead Itao's Wife, and brought her back to life and all lived happily ever after. (Yes, I made a Chuck Norris joke, even 4 years after those things went out of style.)

Clarification note: There seems to be some confusion, in both my translation and the interpretation of the removal of the Wife's face mosaic. Matsumoto asks "You aren't Itao's wife, are you?" to which she replies "Of course." This "of course" meaning along the lines of "of course not". Since she's not really Itao's wife there's not need to protect her identity and they remove her face censoring. This is what errors in your subtitle files gets you, kiddies. They have been fixed to display a more clear and correct translation.

I don't know how to rate this episode. This is another one of those episodes that I didn't attach a rating to. I want to give it around a 6 on my rating scale, but then again I want to give it a 9 just for the stew. You guys have no idea how long I spent laughing at just the 20 second interval where they were showing the stew. I have no clue why I find it funny, but I do. I'll just go ahead and give it a 6. Mochiron sou yo. (Maybe I should create some labels so you can search episodes by rating? I think I might do that.)

Matsumoto's Challenge: Skateboarding!

2009-06-07T23:30:00.002-04:00

"Matsumoto Week" comes to a close here at BlackGaki with this episode, again from the "Matsumoto's Challenge" series. I wanted to do the "Matsumoto and Eri" episodes that someone requested from this series, but I can't get them to work right. Everytime I try to separate it so it will fit, all the programs I've tried using think it's an audio file. I can open the file and it plays as video just fine. Tried updating my codecs and everything. I'll try and figure out why that is, and then throw it up here to watch. They would have been a nice change of pace, and it's somewhat fitting given the news that he's going to be a daddy. So, minor bummer, as I didn't get to put in all the programming I wanted to during the week.

However, any Gaki is better than no Gaki, right? So today's episode really doesn't need that much explanation if you've seen the other Matsumoto's challenge episodes. Matsumoto wants to skateboard. Not just your normal "maintain balance while rolling" type of skateboarding that I still have yet to achieve. He wants to do tricks. Specifically, a "backside-grab, shifty frontside 900 air".

I'm most definitely not an authority on skateboarding, but using what I've picked up from playing "1080 Snowboarding" a long time ago on the Nintendo 64, I think I've been able to pick apart the nomenclature to dissect the elements of the trick. Any of you who happen to be more skate-savvy, feel free to correct/confirm.

"Backside-grab" = Rider grabs the board on their rear side.
"Shifty" = Rider's feet shift on the board in air
"Frontside" = The rider's front side is going into the spin.
"900 Air" = A 900 degree rotation in midair. 2.5 spins.

That sounds like an impressive accomplishment.

As it's a fairly familiar format if you're a regular, I'm just going to put up the movies and let you sit back, relax and watch. See ya afterwards.

So, it looks like they didn't try to research what a back... that trick is supposed to be. Oh well. It was still very funny in the process. Sometimes I wonder just how much Matsumoto is on what the other members are going to be doing to him. For most of these tries, he looks incredibly surprised, afraid or gets hurt (that surfboard thing lands on his wrist when he falls off of it). After this and the other Matsumoto challenge episode, I might have to see if I can't snag a copy of Hitoshi's movie "Dainihonjin". He shows that he might have some abilities to be a serious actor, like when he's in the dressing room with snot dripping down his face or in the other when he's about to cry.

I didn't actually give this episode a rating, in my big list of episodes. I wonder why not. I'll give that one a 5-star rating. It's got all sorts of natural, scared Matsumoto moments, combined with great comedic set-ups like the magazine reporter's "Wakarimasu wa~"s. Over time, these Matsumoto's challenge episodes become a struggle between Matsumoto and the other members to be the most outlandish. You can see the both sides surprising each other with their shenanigans. I love those moments.

Matsumoto Week: A Salute to Hitoshi Matsumoto!

2009-06-02T23:59:00.001-04:00

The results are in and the BlackGaki readers have decided, with 54% of the total votes, that Matsumoto is most lovable member!

* Handclaps, confetti and fanfare! *

So, this week is dedicated to Macchan! I tried to pick just one episode to show off Matsumoto, but when I couldn't I just went and picked 4 or 5. That means, that I will be bringing you Matsumoto related releases ALL WEEK! Not necessarily every day, but every other day or so. So be sure to check back for more! It's going to be a proverbial Matsumoto festival! (Hmm... Festival... "Matsuri"... Matsumoto... Matsumotori?!)

You don't really have to read after the jump. It's just some random factoids on Matsumoto. Had to put something after it. *shrug*

Also, other general housekeeping:
- I have done some updating on the "General Request Page" and removed some of the older comments. I've also figured out how to move the post some, but it may break the links to it in other posts, I may have to fiddle around with that. I'll try to keep it somewhere on the front page, so it is easy to find.

- I'm cooking up some new polls for you guys to participate in, just haven't gotten around to actually making them. Keep an eye out for those.

- I'm planning on introducing some sort of "Midweek Comedy Break!" segment, that will feature SHORT clips (i.e. not whole episodes) of other funny shows, most likely shows featuring Downtown or Cocorico. (GNT is Yamazaki's only regular show, so he doesn't get much other airtime. Ha!)

Hitoshi Matsumoto is quite obviously the best person to ever walk the face of the planet Earth... EVAR!

Okay, but honestly, hrm... some factoids I can list off the top of my head that most Gaki fans might not know...

- He WAS known for not wanting to have kids, because children would get between him and his wife's relationship. On other shows that he appears on, they often try to set him up with women. He's gotten married now, and having a baby with Ihara Rin, who was a newscaster.

- Usually speaks in Kansai dialect, as he is from the Kansai region. (Semi-duh.)

- He quit smoking in 2003. He never really gives a reason why he did it. Even so, he doesn't push other Gaki members to stop.

- Once had a dog named Peru.

- Is partly responsible for the comedy group now known as "Summers" changing it's name.

- Along with Hamada, currently hosts NUMEROUS televisions shows and hosted several with Hamada in the past. (Two of my favorites, Lincoln and Gottsu Ee Kanji, may make an appearance on here from time to time.)

Hrm, I can't think of many other interesting things about him that you couldn't find on Wikipedia or the like. Anyone else have some they want to share?
*AH! I've got one more. Let me check the episode to make sure I get the name right*

The Matsumoto Martin James Hypnotism Show!

2009-06-02T22:07:00.009-04:00

(I wanted to upload this last night, but stupid YouTube was down for maintenance.)

BlackGaki's "Matsumoto Week" continues with another episode! This time, like the last episode I reviewed, Matsumoto has something he REALLY wants to do. However, being so close as comedy partners, he only tells Hamada. However unlike last time, he wants to try his hand at hypnotism.

Hamada being ever so kind to his comedy partner, he enlists the help of the entire staff to play the victims of Matsumoto's latest venture. Also unlike the "Matsumoto's Challenge" series, this is not Hitoshi doing the High Jump, the hypnotism will be performed by his Japanese-fluent, westernized counterpart, Matsumoto Martin James. But seeing as Mr. James' powers of hypnotism are weaker (read as "non-existant"), the staff will have to play along.

Just like the Matsumoto's High Jump challenge, Hamada makes his entrance into the dressing room before the show in an unusually cheesy outfit. Speaking of cheesy outfits, what the hell is Yamazaki wearing? A shirt with cannabis leaves on it? What are we, immature college students?! Well, okay, I am. But are you, Yamazaki? I bet if someone threw a bag of it into your lap, you'd run off crying.

Aaanywho. We don't care about Yamazaki. He didn't win the poll. Matsumoto did. They've even made him his own set to host this new show, with a bench big enough for all of the prominent staff members to sit on. With Hamada acting as the assistant/announcer/commentator, the other staff members are put into a hypnotic state. The first suggestion which Matsumoto Martin applies is to Heipo, which is that of a chicken. Hilarity ensures. I don't know if did an adequate job translating the misunderstanding, but hopefully the note in the subtitles explains it?

So, the ever-pissed James retires to his dressing room to get a bite to eat. As you'd expect, a few follow to try and get Matsumoto to complete his act. I mean, it wouldn't be funny if they just let him leave and that was the end. So we try it again, with everyone coming to the agreement that they need to understand the damned instructions and do a better job of faking. So Matsumoto returns to the stage, and has to re-hypnotize everyone. However, his return act is to turn several people into Bruce Lee. More hilarity ensues due to an epic failure. However, one hypnotic suggestion does pass, thanks to Endou and his inner pervert.

With one successful hypnotism under his belt, James moves one to another suggestion. This time it's a gorilla, and the one tapped to be made primitive is the already slightly ape-ish Producer Suga. They would have ended the episode by now if something funny wasn't going to happen. And it just wouldn't be the same if it wasn't at least a semi-epic failure. Another apology, another excuse, another hypnotism. The last group hypnotism is fantastic, due to Tanaka's presence.

And Hamada, who is the biggest critic, winds up just ruining all the work. Not all stories have a happy ending for Matsumoto, I guess. I have no clue what I rated this video before, but I'm sure it was high, due to the monstrous amount of failure coming from Heipo and Sakamoto combined with Fujiwara's Bruce Lee face, all topped with a gay Tanaka and a nipple-rubbing Endou. I must say that even though it wound up being the entire episode, rather than the usual 10-15 minute opener, I enjoyed subtitling this release. It was easy since there were several things that were repeated over and over. Ha.

Matsumoto's Challenge: High Jump

2009-05-31T22:00:00.002-04:00

In 1993, Javier Sotomayor of Cuba set the current world record for the High Jump event by breaking 2meters and 45 cm, which is over 8 feet for all you non-metric users out there. The validity of this jump is much debated as Sotomayor allegedly tested positive for a performance enhancer. (Note: I'm not saying he did. It's "alleged". I really couldn't care less.) It's somewhat of a hot-button issue as he will openly admit to doing enough cocaine to put an artificial snowcap on Mt. Everest, but denies the use of a steroid.

Whether or not this feat of physical prowess was all skill or brought about by a steroid and crack binge, there will always be someone who strives to be number one. Today, that person is Hitoshi Matsumoto. The only things I assume Matsumoto would ever get high on is life and liquor, so if he succeeds, I wouldn't dispute it. Sometimes, a man has to do things that he feels are right, no matter what anyone else says.

Possibly on the verge of a mid-life crisis, Macchan breaks down crying and asks Hamada to help him get into the record books. Sensing that he can't do all of this alone, he asks for the help of the other members while dressed in "kuroko" uniform. Kurokos are kabuki-style stagehands. As kabuki usually was performed in front of a black background, a kuroko could walk around on the stage and manipulate things while blending into the background. Think of it like an old-fashioned green-screen technique/special FX department. Kuroko is still used today in things like TV shows when they want to move something, but don't want to show the staff's faces, etc.

After being coerced into helping with Matsumoto's predicament, Cocorico and Yamazaki change into kuroko uniform and get the show started. Matsumoto, clad in athletic gear, looks ready to get this thing started. Please note Matsumoto struggling to hold in his laughter as he explains why he has to do this. The other members start by trying to assist Matsumoto with an old-fashioned "Heave-ho!" over the bar, but to no avail. They try it again using a mat for some added leverage, but yet again to no avail. A frustrated Matsumoto returns to his dressing room to cool down with some knitting. When the other members come in to apologize for flubbing up the attempt, Macchan has had enough of being patronized and takes his frustations out on his own knitting. It's going to hard to pick this lost stitches back up.

Being the good sport that he is, Hitoshi gives it another shot for the sake of being a worldwide sports phenomenon. This time, the kuroko members use a firm mat to lift Matsumoto's limp and uncooperative body over the bar, but unfortunately that doesn't work. Hamada tries to say that it's a matter of angles, when it's pretty clear to anyone watching that height is a problem too. He probably could get higher on his own by really running and jumping.

Giving it another shot, they try to be inventive and create a makeshift harness and check him over poles. As usual, this does not work, and as soon as he can get those painful things off, he becomes a beast unchained. Please note Matsumoto pimpslapping Endou at 2:09 as well as Endou receiving said slap. Once again, Macchan pays a visit to his dressing room where he practices drumming, just in case this whole comedy thing doesn't work out.

After yet another reconciliation, an attempt is made to build a ramp up to the bar, and then flip over a stretcher with Matsumoto on it. Let's just say that the ramp wasn't near close. Also, please note Tanaka's frustration grunt/dance at about 3:44. Another trip to the dressing room while Matsumoto fills out an embarkation card. If I had enough money to commission an award, I would give the first ever Gakkster Award to Matsumoto for the hissy-fit he throws at starting around 5:12. I actually thought he was on the verge of tears. Literally.

So, in a last ditch effort to prevent BlackGaki's favorite member from breaking down, they use several stepladders and the strength of a few staff members to pull Matsumoto's body up to the bar. Even Matsumoto has to laugh when he sees what's in store for him. When they get it together and get him lifted, Matsumoto manages to "clear" the 2m 50 cm bar. With that, a new world record was set.

If my record is right, this is the first in the "Matsumoto's Challenge" series, in which Matsumoto tries to do something amazing, usually involving a world record. On the surface these types of episodes are funny for many "Factors of Funny": The "WTF?!" factor, the "That was unexpected" factor, the "Random Violence" factor, and the "Physical Comedy" factor. It also makes you wonder one several levels just how they planned this type of episode to look. Did they really want anyone to thing that Matsumoto was really trying to break a world record? Did they want us to believe that Matsumoto was being serious for once?

I'm not sure if I'm actually able to judge this episode very well just on its own merits. I gave it 5 stars in my big spreadsheet-thing that I logged these episodes in. I think that is a fair verdict, if even a little high. The episode is quite enjoyable due to hilarious, and at times believable, overacting coupled with slaps and the general "comedy-of-errors" format. I think I'll keep it at 5.

Itao is Watching!

2009-05-24T19:40:00.008-04:00

(Original airdate: 2/7/1999)

Sorry about the late post AGAIN this week. Got stuck helping a friend move to a new apartment. Unfortunately, this friend has no sense of space and when to let things go, so there was a ton of unnecessary things that he wanted to take with him, etc. I was trapped all weekend, and it takes about 2 days for me to subtitle a video, especially one this speech-heavy. And then I've got to post a review here, which usually make take another night to really refine and polish, but since I don't want to be any later, I'm just going to throw one together in about an hour. Sorry for giving you less than my best. *bow*

Before we get started, a few reminders. The first poll is going to be ending! It looks like Matsumoto is far out in the lead, so I'll probably just declare him the winner now, as Yamazaki getting enough votes to take over the lead is probably the result of foulplay (I can see where the votes are coming from :P ). It ends at the end of Friday. Well, Saturday morning at exactly 12:00, but anyway. Just vote if you haven't!

Then stay tuned for one or two new polls. These polls will be shorter duration and have fairly little effect on the programming here at BlackGaki, but it's a way to get input out of you. So, on with the program.

It was a day like any other. The Gaki No Tsukai members and staff were going to play some badminton and try to shake off some cabin fever caused by the cold winter. Nothing out of the usual. We just get to sit back and enjoy the antics of 4 comedians as they try to play a game which they really have no idea how to play, with the help of a referee who has EVEN LESS idea of how to play. (If you swing and miss at a shot that lands out, it still landed out, Yamazaki! You'll see what I mean when you watch the video.)

Nothing out of the ordinary should happen here. . .

Just going to play some normal, fun, uninterrupted badminton. . .

We're all good at the beginning. Everyone's going to enjoy a nice refreshing game of badminton in a park in the city. The members are divided into Hamada-Endou and Matsumoto-Tanaka teams for the match. When the action begins the Hamada-Endou team (in blue) takes the first point as Matsumoto seems to lack hand-eye coordination with a racket. Both teams find their rhythm and coordination, and finally get a few rallies going, with Endou and Tanaka having some sort of unintentional "Who can hit the birdie the unnecessarily high?" match. After a point that requires a line judgement, Yamazaki spots a familiar face on the veranda of an overlooking residential building.

That figure is Ittsuji Itao, member of the comedy group 130R. Itao is also a member of Yoshimoto Kougyou talent agency, along with the other Gaki members, and worked with Downtown for about 7 years on the show "Gottsu Ee Kanji". One of his main gags is his "wife", who usually is just a sidekick to Itao's hairbrained get-rich-quick schemes. These "wives" aren't his real wife, as he is happily married. The comedy wives are usually foreigners, but in the earlier episodes, they were native Japanese. I believe so far he's had about 6-7 wife characters with the 4th or 5th one being the most popular (the one that dances, and uses only 3-4 phrases). I'll probably have some sort of post on the history of his wives and what I've been able to dig up on some of them.

Anyway, they don't want Itao watching them, which is understandable, as Itao does look somewhat creepy when he stares. He's got the buggy rabbit-eyes thing going on. Naturally, being a shot on location with skies looking somewhat gray, they want to wrap up the shoot as soon as possible. So, they send the doughy manager, Fujiwara, up to ask Itao to kindly GTFI, with I being "inside." After some arguments, Itao does in fact GTFI and the members are able to play.

The quiet doesn't last very long as Itao emerges again. This time, they send a squad of men, slightly more intimidating than chubby little Fujiwara, to make it clearer that Itao has to let them finish taping. And he does get the message and goes back inside disgruntled.

So we thought...

And ONCE AGAIN, Itao peeks his head out onto the veranda to watch the match. The part I found funny about this whole staged situation (Yes, it's staged. Sorry if I ruined the thinly-veiled surprise) is that there actually is a random spectator watching from the roof at 5:13. Ha! Anyway, Itao returns with a vengeance. He doesn't think he should have to go inside, as the place is his house after all. They chose that spot to work and they should just deal with it if he cares to watch from his own property. Minor hilarity and minor blackmail ensue. . .

So in the end, Itao wins the badminton tournament, and the legacy of Itao's episodes on Gaki No Tsukai begins. On my scale, I gave this episode a 4. It was fairly good, but compared to other Itao episodes this is just the basics. This episode itself isn't that iconic in the GNT universe, but this type of structure provides the foundation of what Itao's involvement in Gaki will be for years to come. I promise more Itao episodes to come, as those are some of my favorites (mainly for his wife though).

Producer Nakamura's Shichihenge!

2009-05-18T21:44:00.005-04:00

So, I've been laid up with a cold all weekend, so I am sorry I wasn't able to get you your weekly dose of Gaki on Sunday, like I usually do. But, I managed to fight through the medication-induced mental fog and subtitle a small portion of an episode. I'm glad it's so short, since you'd probably still be waiting on it if it wasn't. I plan to cover the talk portion of this episode later. Just not now. My head hurts.

Being so sick, I'm not going to talk much. I'm just going to put the video after the jump and let you enjoy it.

So, the first five gags are pretty self-explanatory. They are:
1) Nipple shirt
2) Monkey dance
3) Tranny hair-check
4) Superhero Hustle
5) Shake the pudding

The sixth one is a streak of impressions. The first impression he does is of impressionist Hori. Nakamura does a great impression of a great impressionist. Does that mean that by transitive property Nakamura is a great impressionist? Okay, I realize that I'm sick. I'll stop trying to be funny now. *sigh*

And if you've been following along, you'll notice that despite Shichihenge meaning "SEVEN apparitions", we only get to see 6, just like with Yamazaki. It makes you wonder juat what that last gag was. It looks like it was in the beginning half, because Hamada said he had 4 left after the second one. Maybe that was Hamada's way of saying that he can't stand 5 more, so he limits him to 4?

I'm going to hold off on rating this episode, because the opener was somewhat boring, but the talk segment is very funny. We get to see Hamada joke it up a bit and be the one telling the funny story. I'll put it up later. Wish me well. *sneeze sniffle sniffle*

Kiki Canned Coffee!!!

2009-05-10T19:25:00.008-04:00

Before I get started, I’d like to take a minute to remind you readers about the poll on the main page. If you haven’t voted already, go ahead and do so. I’m going to be uploading an episode which I think does a good job of showing off the winner’s charm. So far, Matsumoto’s in the lead, while Yamazaki and Tanaka are neck and neck near the middle, and Endou and Hamada are fighting it out in the tail end. So make your voices heard and hopefully your favorite wins!

Also, the general request post has been updated and some things have been added. If you’ve got anything else you’d like to see, put it up there, and I’ll try to work it in if I have it.

Now, on to the episode at hand.

The Kiki series is yet another one of Gaki’s many main series. In each episode, there’s a topic product, usually food, but not always, like in the case where they used cigarettes. On the table before them, several different brands of the topic product are spread out, and one by one, each Gaki member has to try and guess which brand of the product was given to them by process of elimination. If they manage to do so, they get a 100,000 yen in prize money! If they guess wrong, they get a fat slap in the face! The audience can’t lose either way!

The first episode of the Kiki series is canned coffee. First of all, let me take an educational moment to reflect on some of the oddness of the Japanese language. If you don’t care about this kind of thing, skip on to the next paragraph! Okay, so when the opening scene shows up, and Hamada’s reading the banner, you may notice that “can” has a kanji character "kan"(缶) even though “can” is a borrowed word. Normally words like that are spelled out in Katakana, which is usually used for loan words and onomatopoeic sounds. However, through the phenomenon called “ateji” kanji compounds that would have the same sound when read and similar meaning are attached to the word. A common example that you might see when watching Japanese TV is “club.” You’d expect it to be written out in katakana as クラブ(kurabu) but you may see in kanji as 倶楽部 which has the same pronunciation, and pretty much the same meaning. Another example I can think of off the top of my head is tobacco. In katakana, it should be tabako(タバコ), but also has the kanji 煙草. In this case though, the katakana version is used way more frequently than the kanji version. Aaaaanyway, back to the episode.

The Gaki members are dressed up as suave waiters, with cute little vests, bowties, and aprons. Hamada gets the honors of introducing the segment and rules. If you watch closely during this part, you can see Tanaka getting all riled up and anxious, because he loves coffee. Hamada also gets to introduce the prize money of 100,000 yen, and that there’s a penalty if you guess incorrectly. Knowing that his comedy partner doesn’t like coffee normally, Matsumoto questions Hamada’s motives for participating in this kind of event with accusations of wanting some money for to keep for his self.

I know the review is going to be very short, but as not to ruin any of the results, I’m just going to put the movies in here and let you watch them. I‘ll see you guys after the movies. :P

So, no one managed to guess their brand correctly. That is unfortunate, but it really makes you wonder just how hard it is to do something like that. I imagine it would pretty dang hard. However slaps abound in this episode and it really manages to keep you on the edge of your seat: will we get to see someone succeed? Even if we don’t, we get to see them get smacked! I also got the added bonus of watching Tanaka fidget around while hyped up on coffee and watching Yamazaki get pimp slapped.
I gave this episode a 6-star rating on the official Black Gaki rating scale.

This is one of the episodes where I started to realize the pure genius that comes out of Japanese late-night TV. We’d never get something like this on American TV. The host take themselves way too seriously to ever let someone slap them, and they’re just too anorexic to eat things in front of other people. I wish there was some way we could write a letter to TV execs basically saying “Your shows suck. We’re outsourcing your jobs to Japan.” I think we’d have some sort of valid basis to show how popular their shows are if they didn’t go screaming “COPYRIGHT!” every few weeks and taking things off of video sites. Until we get our voices heard, you know that you have me, right?!

Goodbye, Yamazaki! 1

2009-05-04T23:59:00.005-04:00

If I remember correctly, I had come home from a bad day at school. Or maybe it was summer, and I had a hard day at work. Anyway, I had a crappy day, and I came home hoping that Gaki would be there to cheer me up. I opened the video file to find Downtown and Cocorico, wearing suits with a very somber tone to the scene. I looked just above their heads to see a banner reading “Goodbye, Yamazaki!!” My mood escalated tremendously. After years of having to put up with Yamazaki trying to push his way to the TV screen, he’s being sent packing?! Oh Gaki, I knew you’d make the right choice someday. Let’s just hurry up and get this episode over with, so we can have the show feature the four people I can stand!

Hamada breaks the news that Yamazaki will be leaving the program, and today will be his last episode, due to his “graduation.” Yamazaki is brought out, wearing a tuxedo that looks too big in the shoulders, to explain his feelings. Hamada tries to put the mood into perspective with an “although it’s a sad time, it’s also a happy time” type of speech, when all I really care about is whether the door’s going to hit Yamazaki on the way out. Matsumoto brings up that neither he nor Endo had heard anything about his reasoning behind leaving the show. Yamazaki tries to spit out this crap about how he’s found a girlfriend and implies that he won’t have time. Then he tells the real story about how he wants to appear on more than one show, and they tell him that ain’t going to work, so he decided to leave. Apparently, Matsumoto realizes that Yamazaki is worthless, because he’s turning away from the camera to laugh. Wait. . . That’s why he’s laughing, right? It has to be.

Anyway, Yamazaki has chosen his best 5 clips from his time on Gaki No Tsukai. C’mon. Let’s get this over with. . .

First is Yamazaki’s attempt at becoming a “Super Yogore” comedian. (I actually thought about covering this episode. I’ll get to it eventually, I promise.) In an attempt to be a shock comedian, Yamazaki goes to a “Love hotel” with a dresser. Love hotels are hotels that you rent out on basically hourly rates, and are for, well, making love in. He proceeds to wash and give an “erotic massage” to the dresser, while Downtown watch from a separate room via camera.

In fourth place is Yamazaki versus Jimmy Oonishi. Not just one episode, but over several episodes, Yamazaki and Jimmy Oonishi, which many of you know from the High School Penalty game as the “Ten. . . Ten. . . Ten. Ten. Ten. Ten. Ten” guy, had a feud going on. The clip shows Jimmy doing a move to Yamazaki’s car a la Rick James on Charlie Murphy’s couch. (That first note that shows up during that scene says that is really Yamazaki’s car.)

Coming in third place is a prank that the show played on Yamazaki in which an actor plays the role of the older broth of the girl that Yamazaki is dating. Basically, Yamazaki tries to bitch out and act like he’s not there AFTER he asks “Who’s there?” when the actor knocks. Dumbass. Then when the accomplice writer “accidentally” opens the door for the actor, Yamazaki acts like he’s not Yamazaki. The prank is revealed and he gets all teary-eyed, etc.

Second place is the “Haunted School Piano Concert”. In a penalty game, Yamazaki’s forced to walk around a “haunted school” getting instructions and sheet music on songs to play on the piano. It’s dark and eerie enough, but with added scares from the set-up traps placed by the production crew, there was lots of screaming and whining going on.

Number one is “Yamazaki vs. Moriman: Battle of the Blaze”. As for the reasoning behind this, I’m pretty sure that if you’ve seen the series, you’d know why it’s easy for anyone to enjoy. If you’re a Yamazaki fan, you’ll love that he’s not afraid to make fun of himself. If you’re not a Yamazaki fan (you probably can tell which side of the fence I’m on), you get to see him get his ass handed to him repeatedly. Featured in the clip is a brief history of the “Hot, hot ankake” battle, in which competitors pour hot soup over each other in order to make the other give up.

After the clip, it’s time for the members and prominent members of the staff to say their goodbyes. First up is Producer Suga, starts his message with the traditional “Thanks for these 12 years”, etc. message, and then descends into speaking complete gibberish because he doesn't have much else to say. Then Cocorico gives a speech, and Downtown drops a bomb basically saying “It’s a good thing you quit, because otherwise we were going to.” Ha! ROFL! OWNED!

Next up is Yamazaki’s turn to speak to the audiences. He basically gives the typical “Thank you for cheering me on” speech but adds “I just want to appear on a few other shows”. Ha! Yet again! Ha!
As soon as Yamazaki leaves the stage, Matsumoto explains that his leaving makes it easier on the show. A group of five is a hard thing, and having only four people makes it easy to work together and easier to split up into teams. Way to look at all the positives, Matsumoto! It looks like we’ll be seeing a lot more 2 vs 2 competitions on Gaki No Tsukai, with four people that are going to make this interesting. This calls for cute, little, celebratory emotes! (^__^)b \o/ 8-)
Hrm. . . “Yama-chan wa. . . Gaki No Tsukai Yamahende!”... Doesn’t that mean, “Yama-chan isn’t leaving Gaki No Tsukai”? Wait. . . WHAT?! No! Why is Yamazaki standing behind that curtain? And what in the world is he doing in that shirt?! This is all a joke? No! NO! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOO! Why is the music starting? Oh, not Ricky Martin... And what's with the Engrish?
. . .
Oh great, now he's doing Para-Para dancing?! Leave. Now.

Okay, Gaki. You got me. I thought you'd kicked him to the curb. Jokes on me. Har har har. Overall, I gave this episode a 4-star rating. If they'd actually booted him off of the show, it would be along the lines of a 25-star rating. I've found out that I really didn't like this episode because I had to subtitle it, and this episode is almost all talk. Secondly, the announcer's voice during the montage is so damn slow, I'd have to leave some subtitles up for 10 seconds just waiting for him to finish a sentence. *shakes fist vehemently at person who requested this episode* Anyway, I guess it's better that I just go ahead and get reviewing it out of the way. I probably won't do most of the others. They're the same format, with different clips and slightly funnier parting messages. The ending parts where he proclaims he's not leaving are the only parts worth the time, in my opinion.

Ice Coffee Limit Check

2009-04-26T15:26:00.005-04:00

Another one of Gaki no Tsukai’s long-running series, the Genkai(Limit) series finds the Gaki members interacting with just more than each other. They take the action out into the real world with real people. The first episode in the Genkai series comes about due to Matsumoto flubbing up his order and his observation that if you go into a restaurant and order ice coffee, even if you should slur or mangle the word a little, you’ll still get the iced coffee. Isn’t it funny how Matsumoto gets all sorts of ideas from restaurants, like when he wanted to make waitresses spin in place.

So Downtown and Yamazaki hit the tour bus, and head out into the town. Matsumoto kicks his idea off by introducing 11 things that he thinks that you can say and still get away with. They are:

“aisu moohii” (Ice Mohi)

“naisu koohii” (Nice coffee)

“maisu moohii” (Mice Mohi)

“naisu koochi” (Nice Coach)

“aisouwarai” (a faked smile)

“koohii koohii” (coffee coffee)

“tansu nouhin” (a cabinet delivery)

“atsui koohii” (Hot coffee)

“aitsu mou ii” (I’ve had enough of him)

“haisosaitii” (High Society)

“aianhiiroo” (Iron Hero)

They only aired 10 of the them, and cut out the “atsui koohii”, which always got hot coffee. Due to Downtown's notoriety, they send Yamazaki to do the hard work, as at that time he was still fairly unknown. Let’s see how the little runt did. . .

First up, “Ice Mohi”. Yamazaki orders his “ice mohi” and the waiter stands there with a dumb look on his face, trying to confirm that that he really meant iced coffee. When asks for four “ice mohi”s, he knew it wasn’t a mistake and went to fetch the drinks. “Nice coffee” went off without a hitch, and the waiter returns with an iced coffee. Hopefully it actually tasted good, then he would have gotten what he ordered.

For the third attempt, Yamazaki finds himself trying to order a “Mice Mohi”, which he does actually get. But I’d like to take this moment to make a public service announcement: Children, brush your teeth. The waiter helping Yamazaki and friends has a grill that would make Chuck Norris cry. (Yes, I did just make a Chuck Norris joke, even though those are about 3 years old now.) Seriously, his teeth are so bad that his hairline is running away from it.
The fourth phrase, “Nice Coach”, was a close one. The waitress and the man making the orders both heard it, but assumed he was talking about coffee after he refused to give a response. The waitress just decides to screw it and go with an iced coffee. It was just barely close enough to pass.

Aisouwarai is a forced smile, kind of like when you’re forced to play nice with someone you really don’t like. Apparently when you order at a restaurant with that, you get iced café au lait. I guess I can see how that would work: “Aisouwarai” versus “Aisuoore”.

Ordering a “coffeecoffee”, gets you regular hot coffee. That would be a no-brainer, so I can’t figure out why Yamazaki looked surprised and disappointed when she brings hot coffee.

The seventh is where we just ditch the concept of coffee altogether and start ordering all sorts of oddball things. The seventh phrase is “tansu nouhin” which translates to “delivery of a dresser/cabinet”. There was no way that these from here on out were going to pass.

“Aitsu mou ii” is eighth, and this threw the waitress for a loop. She tried to act like she understood the order and walked off, but when Yamazaki called her over to make sure that she got it right, she gave away that she had no clue.

The last two, “High Society” and “Iron Hero” were just not going to pass. I do commend both of the waitresses for not slapping Yamazaki in the face for his idiocy. The last waitress even wanted to learn, like she wanted to stay on top of the current slang and lingo. She figured it was a new trend that she might need to take note off. I’d give her a tip if I was Yamazaki.

After reviewing the results, Matsumoto takes Hamada out to try ordering with high-level words. The hilarious and the miraculous ensue. However, in the comedy talk after the opener, Hamada puts Matsumoto in his place by exposing the truth about what happened in the coffee shop that day.

Overall, I give this episode a 4-star rating. For more on my wonky rating system, check this out.

Your input appreciated!

2009-04-22T21:00:00.002-04:00

Hello, ever increasing Black Gaki readers.

In an attempt to make the reader experience more enjoyable,　I'm looking for some feedback on a few things．Feedback on anything, from the layout of the blog itself to my *cough cough* less-than-regular posting schedule, would be appreciated.

If you click on the "READ MORE!" below, I've posted a few things I'd really like your opinions on. . .

THINGS I'D APPRECIATE YOUR OPINION ON:

Subtitles - I recently started putting subtitles on the videos that I'm putting up on YouTube. How do you like them? Are they too fast? Too slow? Should I continue to use the YouTube subtitle service thus letting people have the option of removing the subtitles, or should I encode the subtitles onto the video itself?

Content - What parts of the show would you like to see? Just the openers? Mostly openers, but some talk portions if they're good? Would you like just episode clips or would you like to see some compilations of pieces grouped in some interesting way?

Layout - Perhaps a different color than this boring old black and light green? (Keep in mind that I'm horrible with HTML, CSS, and pretty much all things Webpage related, so if I do change it, it's going to be rough sailing.) Would you like to see more things like polls around? Should post titles be in English or Japanese with English below it?)

Non-Gaki items - Anyone care about my personal goings-ons that I put in here, or should I just generally STFU and let you enjoy Gaki in all its glory? How would you feel about the occasional posting of other Japanese comedy acts, and not just those of Gaki or its members? Should I just keep them marked with a "[Non-Gaki Related]" tag, so you can just avoid them if you choose?

Tetsuo's Shichihenge

2009-04-19T18:19:00.006-04:00

Original Airdate: 2/8/2009

I've taken a break from reviewing the older episodes to do sometime more recent. I figured that I might as well watch and review videos at the same time to save myself some effort. Makes sense, right? I'm also trying out the YouTube thing, and embedding it here. So, try to check out my channel and all that.

Today’s challenger will be the Tetsuo from the comedy group “Waraimeshi”. If you watch Gaki often, you’ll recognize them as the group that’s always putting on some sort of play whenever Gaki tries to hold a badminton event in a park. Tetsuo is the taller of the two and is probably the most outspoken and stylish of the pair.

As always, the rules of shichihenge apply, I believe. Upon counting though, I’ve found that there are 11 people in the room. There usually are only 10, but when the person belongs to a comedy group, they usually let their partners stay in the room to watch.

1st henge: Tetsuo comes in wearing a old-fashioned baseball-cap. You know, one of the ones with the mesh thing in the forehead area. He’s got it flipped down over his eyes, like I’ve done so many times while bored during Little League baseball practice. He soon flips it back to the correct position and pulls out some red tape. He begins marking off a box around his area on the table, and spells out 入ルナ (hairuna), meaning “DO NOT ENTER”, then flips the mesh back over his eyes.
On second consideration, he adjusts the boundaries of the table to include some of Matsumoto and Hamada’s table space, and sets some money down in front of Hamada. Giving up, he heads out of the room, putting the money in the counting basket, with no one laughing. After he leaves, the cast is left to wonder if that actually counts.
2nd: Tetsuo comes back in with a mirror, and begins practicing his “one-line gags” in front of it. He starts by doing Edo Harumi’s “goo-goo” gag, then someone else’s “Sanpei-desu”, followed by Dandy Sakano’s famous “GETS!” line. For some reason, this part really echos, probably due a recording. This essentially freaks everyone out. He tries a half-hearted “sanpei-desu” again, then tries Ai Haruna’s “Iu yo ne!” line. He then returns with an echoing “GETS!” which gets 8 of the people in the room. After another “sanpei-desu”, he does another “GETS!” which gets his partner. A total of 9/10 laughed. Compared to his first try, a definite improvement.

3rd: Dressed as a doctor, he comes in and sits down and calls for someone to send the next patient in. A woman in a red sweater comes in and says she feels feverish, so he asks her to lift her shirt. He takes a stethoscope, and puts it on her boobs. This immediately gets Hamada and Matsumoto. He asks her to do a half-turn in her swivel-chair and then immediately asks her to turn back around and repeats that several times. He puts a pair of rabbit ears on her and starts groping her with a pair of plastic hands. After a good groping, he sends her on her way. Over the course of the gag, he gets 6 cast members to laugh.

4th: In a magician outfit, with two lovely assistants carrying fish tanks with water and a not-so-lovely male assistant, Tetsuo sidles into the room repeatedly thrusting his hands into the water. His chubby male assistant hands him a towel to dry his hands. He takes a rapier, and one of his assistants throws what’s supposed to be a orange, which he seemingly pierces with the sword. He goes back to thrusting his hands into the water and dancing with the disco music in the background. They repeat the process with the orange and rapier a few more times, and the chubby assistant switches places with Tetsuo and does the hand-thrusting and dancing. The room is left to wonder how the hell someone thought that up. 7 of the crew are driven to laughter.

5th: Dressed in a red robe and equipped with a fart machine, Tetsuo waddles in with funny eyes painted over his eyelids. He scampers frantically around the room, sounding the fart machine near people. This got most of the people in the room. Between the combination of the make-up and the farts, he gets 6 people.

6th: Leading a class of PE students, PE Teacher Tetsuo teaches the students how to count off in the coolest way possible, with a mild lisp. As they start counting, he jumps in and corrects the students who used alternative pronunciations of numbers. For example, the fourth child uses “yon” and is instructed to use “shi” instead. He leaves out of the room to let the students practice, and the students huddle and just decide to leave. The lesson gets all 11 people in the room to laugh.

7th: As characteristic for shichihenge, there’s got to be some absurd amount of nakedness. Tetsuo comes in wearing a bath towel saying “I guess it’s not here” while searching around the room. He takes his towel off, and according to the note which the censors have left, he’s apparently has red bean paste slathered all over his junk. Once again, this gets the whole room to laugh for another 11 bills added to pile.

Added all together, he gets 53,000 yen and ties for second place with Bob Sapp for all-time second place.

I’ve given this episode a rating of 5 stars. Fart jokes just get me every time. Combined with the nostalgia from the baseball cap, this probably would have gotten 5 stars even if all the jokes sucked.

つっつん　八変化!!

2009-03-26T23:59:00.004-04:00

（Tsuttsun Hachihenge）

Original Airdate: 3/3/1996

(NOTE: I did not have the time to add screen grabs and pictures. I will do so soon。)

Since the beginning of the shichihenge, they’ve been letting some of the standouts on the staff try their hands at being comedians. Today, they let director Tsuttsumimoto Yukiou, affectionately known as Tsuttsun try his hand with the shichihenge. Tsuttsun is known for being a fairly shy guy with practically no stomach for breaking bad news to the cast. He’s also known to get it crunk after work with his love of alcohol. But seeing as the last three non-comedians (Heipo, director Sakamoto, and producer Suga) didn’t do so good with the numbers, they’re letting Tsuttsun get 8 chances to make them laugh to even things out. Let’s see what Tsuttsun has up his sleeve for laughs.

Henge 1: Tsuttsun walks into the room with shades and a black tank top on. He sits down in his chair as he puffs his cigarette, and then gets uncomfortable and just kinda squats on the chair. Probably not all that funny in itself, but it might be if you knew the man. Probably one of those “I always wondered what it would look like if he did that” moments. Matsumoto laughed, putting the first bill in the money box. First blood for Tsuttsun.

Henge 2: Tsuttsun runs in wearing a Judo gi (the stereotypical martial arts outfit) yelling “Yah!”, like they do in judo schools. He starts grabbing the staff members and shaking them violently. Judo is a sport all about balance. There’s a lot of grappling, and throw maneuvers and you have to keep your balance while still being on the offensive. As a warm-up, a lot of judo practitioners warm up by finding a partner and then pushing and pulling each other as a way to get those stabilizing muscles working. He ends the gag with a less than enthusiastic “hai” and exits. This last bit gets Heipo to laugh, and forces him to pay.

Henge 3: Tsuttsun’s got a hat that essentially makes his head look like an acorn. On the little piece of branch are a few more acorns. He pulls one of them off to eat it, bites in and throws it away as it tastes awful. He then just gets up and leaves. Not very funny. Hamada right afterwards brings up a reference to Yamazaki’s fail-tastic shichihenge experience.
Henge 4: Tsuttsun comes in dressed as an anime character. I can’t seem to put my name on the anime though. His cell phone rings, and he answers with “This is Bell”. I wanted to say Zatch Bell, but that’s not it. Man, I’ve gotten out of touch with anime. Okay, I never was in touch with it, as I never really liked it much. Anyways, the conversation continues with “What?! Someone’s injured? I’m on the way.” Tsuttsun walks back out of the room, apologizing to everyone while leaving. This gets two staff members, producer Suga, and Yamazaki.

Henge 5: Tsuttsun walks in wearing a cartoonish police hat, a tie, his undies, a backpack and nothing else. He’s carrying a jitte, which is like a police nightstick with the little side protrusion bending the same way as the main shaft. I’ll let you do research on it if you so care, so I won’t bother you with the details. Basically, he takes the jitte and rubs it over Matsumoto’s face and body and all sorts of creepy ways. This gets Matsumoto and Hamada. On his way out, he does some little random moves.

Henge 6: OMG blackface. Okay, not really. Tsuttsun adorns some dark make-up, almost ganguro-ish (something else to look up in your free time), to imitate what the members assume to be producer Suga. He walks around the room, pestering Hamada in Suga’s style of talking closely and asking questions twice.

Henge 7: Wearing only cardboard angel wings and a halo, cherub Tsuttsun strolls into the meeting with his bow in hand. He straddles the helpless Matsumoto and shoots him softly at close range with a few arrows.

Henge 8: Dressed as a school girl, Tsuttsun sits next to Matsumoto and pesters him with cries of “do it~~~!” and “Gimme~~~!”. Really doesn’t get anyone, until long after the joke is over and everyone starts shouting their opinions. That seems to be a good way to avoid laughing during the joke: Knowing that you can laugh like hell when the person leaves the room. Much different from the “No Laughing” penalty games, where laughing anywhere gets you a penalty.

When the dust settles, Tsuttsun racks up 10,000 yen for charity. That means that he got 3000 yen more than Yamazaki did, and didn’t need the extra chance to do it. Anyone else up for filing a “GTFO Yamazaki” petition?
This episode’s opener wasn’t that great, but the talk is the great redeemer. Matsumoto talks about various topics like interracial children and sex. One write-in question asks about the concept of the “Half,” which is what the Japanese call someone of half-Japanese half-some other nationality, usually American. The question wants to know what it’s called when two “halves” make a baby. I was interested in what the hell Matsumoto was going to answer, as I’d imagine that knowledge of the word “quarter” is rare in Japan. Matsumoto’s answer is “that’s a traditional child” and he didn’t understand the question. He never gave an answer, but went on to say that he thought there were three or four words for it already. If this episode were just the opener, I would have given this episode a 2-star rating, but the great talk bumps it up to a 3.

[Non-Gaki Related] One of those months...

2009-02-19T23:59:00.001-05:00

Hello readers and fellow Gaki fans...

As you may have noticed, I have not put any new reviews up in about two weeks. That is because my computer with all my movies on it decided to blow up. So, I've decided to inform you on the status.

If you want to read a long, pitiful rant, feel free to click the "Read more..." link below. If not, just feel free browse around or hit the Back button in your browser or something like that.

The tale of my computer is an interesting one. I had a laptop during my first year here at college, and somehow the little headphone jack got broken. The computer would no longer would play sound at all, since it thought that the headphones were always plugged in, but the jack was broken so sound couldn't get to you if you plugged headphones in.

My aunt, who had just left her job of almost 20 years for a higher paying one, had more money than she essentially knew what to do with. She was now working for this new job with great pay, and her old job gave her a severance package, paying her for several years after she'd left.

Out the combined deepness of her heart and her pockets, we went online to Dell.com and picked out a nice, new, shiny laptop: the Dell XPS M1330. As my aunt wanted to spoil me, she decided that money was not an object and just started hitting the upgrade options left and right. One of those upgrades was an nVidia graphics card.

The catch, and general punchline to this story is that the graphics card has apparently had a glitch in it, that tends to cause the card to fry itself and sometimes the motherboard with it. That's what happened to me. So, I took my non-functional laptop to the library to do some research on what could be done. Apparently, this is a common issue for this model of laptop and graphics card, and usually happens fairly early into the life of the computer. I saw reports of people's computers biting the dust only 14 days after they got it. So, I think about contacting Dell to see what they can do about it, and having had my computer for about a year got me thinking, "Holy crap. This better be covered in my warranty."

Punchline number two: My warranty expired just two weeks before the thing tanked. I call Dell anyway, where I'm referred to the Out-of-Warranty service department. The person working the phones actually recognized the symptoms and said that I was "lucky" to have gone so long without that thing failing. Apparently, so lucky that I new have to pay to get it fixed. The lady on the phones told me that service was $199 dollars, and that covered everything, including plastics and keyboard should it be needed... And that should the motherboard or screen need to be replaced, that'll be another $299. So doing the math and taking into account that more than likely this video card has made my motherboard go kablooey, I'm out $500 dollars because all my stuff is on this laptop. I've sent it off to them, and they gave me the usual "7 to 10 business days! Enjoy disconnectivity, and I hope you backed up your files. :D" schtick, and I'm stick walking across campus in the snow (yes, it's still snowing here. -_- ) to use the library computers every few hours to check my e-mails, with no guarantee that the files that I'm really shelling out this money to keep are going to be there when this thing gets back to me.

So, the moral of this story is: If you buy a laptop, (not just a Dell or Windows PC, as this same card is screwing over Mac users too) get an external hard drive and save all your important things on there, just in case your laptop craps out and you have to explain to your blog readers why you ain't bringin' the funny. :(

Alright. Enough about me and my computer. I'll see you guys again soon, hopefully with a laptop full of Gaki videos that I'll be able to review and post here.

山崎邦正　七変化!!

2009-02-02T00:00:00.005-05:00

(Yamazaki Housei Shichihenge)

Whoo… Sorry it’s been so long since my last post. Life has been getting in the way. Anyway, I think I will try to post things on a regular schedule. Right now, it’s looking like it will be Sunday nights. Well, I guess it’s early Monday mornings, as it’s about 1 am now.

The Shichihenge series is another legendary part of Gaki’s legacy. Shichihenge(七変化) translates roughly to “the Seven Shapeshifters” or “The Seven Apparitions”. The point of this game is fairly simple. The Gaki members, producers and general staff higher-ups have a planning meeting. Whoever’s turn it is to do the shichihenge-ing leaves the room and returns seven times, to try to make the people in the room laugh. Each time someone laughs at one of the gags, they have to pay a penalty fee of 1,000 yen (which ranges anywhere between USD $10-12, depending on the exchange rate) which is donated to charity. So, doing the math, since there are ten people in the room, with seven gags at a penalty fee of 1,000 yen, the maximum amount earnable is 70,000.

Today is Yamazaki’s turn to take on the Shichihenge. So far in the history of the show, I think there’s been three other shichihenges: Heipo, director Sakamoto, and producer Suga. If anyone out there can correct me on this, it would be greatly appreciated. I can’t find the dates or episodes for those three, so I don’t know for sure when they happened. None of them really did well, but they decided to let him go anyway.

Matsumoto starts out with by saying he wondered what would happen if he let Yamazaki do this. Yamazaki explains that he’s studied, thought about it carefully and come up with several gags to unleash on the crew. Let's take a look at how Yamazaki, who I generally don’t find funny, did.

Henge 1: Yamazaki walks into the room mostly naked, in what I think is supposed to be a play on the stereotypical mermaid outfit. He’s got shells over his nipples and only-God-knows on his crotch (Thank you, censors). He brings in a mirror to set down on the meeting table, so he can check himself out.

Who laughed?
Me: No.
Staff: No.

Henge 2: Yamazaki walks in carrying buckets of live fish, and wearing a stopwatch. He starts and stops his stopwatch a few times, then grabs a fish from the bucket and puts it in his armpit. The fish flops around and gets away, so he grabs the buckets and leaves. There was no mention of him picking that fish off of the ground (which will probably upset you more if you’re in PETA), but I’m pretty sure that one of the staff picked it up, as it isn’t there for the next henge.

Who laughed?
Me: No.
Staff: Heipo.

Henge 3: Yamazaki comes in wearing a burglar outfit, with a stocking over his head. For those of you who are familiar with Japanese comedy, you know that the stocking over the head is used fairly often as it just warps the wearer’s face into funny shapes. He faces everybody with his little toy knife, and nobody laughs so he leaves. He stops in the doorway on the way out and breaths heavily, which produces a Darth Vader-ish noise. This cracks Matsumoto and one of the directors.

Who laughed?
Me: No.
Staff: Matsumoto and some staff member who I can’t remember right now.

Henge 4: Okay. This one was kinda funny. Yamazaki comes in dressed as an office lady. He unzips his/her briefcase and starts typing away on a laptop. A cell phone call comes, which he answers with “Hello?... Hello?.. Oh… Georgia… Okay… Michael… Okay…” He cracks Matsumoto. This also cracked me, but for different reasons. One, if you watch enough Gaki, you’d know that Yamazaki touts himself as being good at English, but he’s only good at imitating things he hears. If you watch some of the “Yamazaki Produces” episodes of Gaki (which I guess I will do here eventually) you’ll see that he tries to write songs in English, but completely mangles grammar. Thus, when he speaks English as jokes and such, it’s usually small one or two word phrases, or longer phrases that they teach students in school like “Nice to meet you.”

Who laughed?
Me: Okay. Yeah, I did.
Staff: Matsumoto.

Henge 5: Yamazaki comes in dressed as a superhero. He cracks Hamada right off the bat, and then complains about it being cold, which then gets Matsumoto. He punches some staff with his big foam hands, then leaves.

Who laughed?
Me: No.
Staff: Hamada ,Matsumoto and that producer whos name I’ll figure out later.

Henge 6: Yamazake comes in “dressed” as a baby, carrying a baby doll. He puts the doll on the desk, and then stands on the desk two in the position that the doll is in. As you can see, this resulted in people sitting in the room seeing more of Yamazaki than they’d really care to. Nakedness though, really does get the job done when it comes down to making people laugh.

Who laughed?
Me: No.
Staff: No. (Although, I will say, that I would have ruled that Matsumoto laughed.)

Hrm… they stop there. Now I’m glad that I’m actually blogging this, as I’d never noticed this before. It looks as though either Yamazaki didn’t do a seventh or it was generally too stupid or too vulgar to be broadcast. That’s interesting. Maybe I could do some research and see what happened.

Anyway, the money was totaled, and Yamazaki earned a measly 7,000 yen for charity. That is a mere 10% of the maximum total possible. That score was the lowest score for a long time as far as shichihenge goes, and stayed as the low score for several years. It may still be the lowest score ever. That really must be a huge blow to the pride, when you call yourself a comedian or entertainer, and your score for making people laugh is being resoundingly beaten by the producers and directors on the show you work on. That’s why I gave this episode a 2-star rating. It was just lame. Okay, the talk wasn’t bad, but I hardly make it to the comedy talk on this episode because I usually turn it off during the shichihenge.

レベンジマッチ:山崎vs.Moriman　Part 3

2009-01-17T23:59:00.002-05:00

(Revenge match: Yamazaki vs. Moriman part 3)

　　　　After getting his ass handed to him on a platter in the previous two matches, Downtown revises the format of the match to include more than the pants removing match, in hopes that it would give Yamazaki the chance to get his revenge. Also, the newcomers to the show, Cocorico, serve as Yamazaki’s trainers. Feel free to squeal at the sight of a tracksuited Tanaka. Endo gets the responsibility to break the tension before the fight, and does so with great ease. He’ll get this responsibility for all of the Yamazaki vs. Moriman events after this, and it’s easy to see why. However, after this he’ll be doing this bit in briefs.

　　　　The first match is the “face stocking removal” match, in which both contestants try to remove the pantyhose placed over their opponent’s head. In doing so, their face will warp which means big laughs for the viewers. Unknown to the organizers of this event, Moriman wasn’t in it for the laughs, and winds up wrestling Yamazaki to the ground, climbing on his back and choking him. Yamazaki taps and loses the match.

　　　　After regaining his composure, Yamazaki is faced with the “slipper fight” match. The premise is simple: each person gets two slippers and attempts to beat the living hell out of their opponent. Moriman jumps out of her corner and begins the ass-beating. Yamazaki puts up a fight, but finds himself backed into a corner. He tries to circle to the center of the ring, but turns his back to Moriman and finds himself on the receiving end of a direct slipper hit to the face. Another victory for Moriman.

Behold the face of a man who has been beaten down with a slipper.

　　　　Yamazaki gets to choose the third match, and chooses the “Low kick” match. I don’t think he really thought through the idea that Moriman was going to be able to kick him.
　　　　The fourth match is the “super hot ankake” match, in which each person gets a pan full of hot ankake sauce to fling at their opponent. The first one to give up or is unable to continue loses. Okay, while it’s still funny, the “OH MAN IT’S HOT” myth was debunked a while ago. Japanese comedians seem to love doing thing with “hot” things because they get to do reaction bits. The most common hot thing is hot water. For example in some quiz shows, if you get an answer wrong, you get dropped into “hot” water, and the comedian runs around, says that it’s hot, and flops around, etc. In actuality, it’s a little warmer than room temperature, and poses no health risks at all.
　　　　Fifth match is the “wet towel” match, where several wet towels are placed in the ring. Rule is much like all the other ones. Use the towel, beat the snot out of your opponent, you win.

　　　　Much like times before Yamazaki gets pummeled while showing little to no resistance. I think I’ll give this episode a rating of 5 stars. Although the new battle themes were nice, all of the matches were fairly short. The commentary between and after rounds is what made the episode worth watching.

山崎邦正ケツリベンジ:　KETSU-1グランプリ!! (Yamazaki vs Moriman Part 2)

2009-01-12T01:14:00.008-05:00

(Yamazaki Housei Ass revenge: Ass-1 Grand Prix)

Original Airdate: 12/29/1996

As the title suggests, today is Yamazaki’s chance to get revenge on Moriman because he got steamrolled by Moriman. First he starts by making excuses, about his ribs, and that there’s something keeping him from performing at his very best. Matsumoto just wants to clear the air, and make sure that he’s not wimping out. When he asks if Yamazaki wants to quit, Yamazaki answers “…if I can…” for which Matsumoto, like I would, smacks him across the face.

Unlike the previous time, Yamazaki opts out of the sparring matches against groups, and shows off his sparring partner. His sparring partner, Heipo, works on the show, and is generally known for three points: He’s easily scared, he’s got no luck with the ladies, and he’s generally a pervert. Yamazaki squares off against this pervert. Then after the first match, Hamada reminds Yamazaki that Moriman usually manages to get him in a defensive position and that he has to be able to guard, so the second sparring match starts with Heipo on top of the grounded Yamazaki. Pimp slaps ensue. Matsumoto suggests that they should change the line-up to Moriman vs. Heipo.

The show then breaks for a Downtown comedy talk, in which they talk about things ranging from Yamazaki’s work as a singer to the sound of rain in the building to the Tamagocchi (you know, those little virtual pets that all us kids, including myself, had in fourth grade) craze. I was thinking of subtitling some of these talks because they’re a big part of the show, and sometimes they’re things you can’t laugh at by visual cues alone unlike most of the other openers. So, uh… if anyone knows any programs, or generally what you’d use to subtitle videos, dropping me a line in the Comments section would be appreciated.

After the comedy talk, we’re ready for the revenge match. It starts with challenger Yamazaki’s entrance to “Eye of the Tiger”, then champion Moriman’s entrance to “We Will Rock You” and rocks Yamazaki with slaps to the face before the match even starts. Yamazaki’s forced to wimp out yelling “Owowowow!” Once the dust settles, both fighters are presented with flower bouquets from foreign women (showing Gaki’s, or perhaps all of Japan’s, concept that “it’s funny because they’re foreign” which we’ll see many times throughout Gaki’s history) and then they are ready to battle. Note: as you watch this video, please be prepared for Matsumoto’s infectious hyena-laugh at about 15 seconds.

Hamada pretty much summed it all up with the “何ソレ?” (nani sore?) meaning “What was that?” The story of Yamazaki’s life, eh? I’ve cataloged this episode as a 4-star episode, but I’d like to bump it up to a five. It’s building up to a legend. I probably marked a 4 because I think this was the first of the “Yamazaki vs. Moriman” episodes I’d ever seen and didn’t know that it was going to a part of something so huge. It lacks the polish and general hilarity over that most of the other episodes have, being so short, but it’s still able to hold its own.

山崎ケツ公開スパーリング　（Yamazaki Vs Moriman　Part 1)

2009-01-08T23:00:00.006-05:00

Original Airdate: 11/03/1996
Yamazaki Housei ketsu koukai sparring. Yamazaki vs. Moriman 1

This episode is a classic that will start what will go down in history, at least in my book, as a legendary series on Gaki no Tsukai. Yamazaki, who recently joined as a regular on the show still has to prove himself to Downtown, and therefore has decided to show that the entertainment world is all about kicking ass and getting your ass kicked. On a side note, he does all this while wearing this schoolboy uniform.

Downtown didn't ask why he wore this, so neither will I.

Yamazaki has decided to warm up, and then have a match with the Champion. Myself, nor Matsumoto or Hamada know how a champion exists, but apparently there is one. The rules of the battle are simple: Pull off the opponent’s pants, leaving them to lie there bare-assed in shame. The first two matches are sparring matches in which Yamazaki faces a group of five opponents at once, and cannot remove his opponent’s pants. The point is to see just how long he can hold out against them. I think the main reason is to see Yamazaki get straight owned by 5 people at once.

The first match is against a squad of American Football players. The squad doesn't see to be professional, but hey, they're just there to tear the pants off of Yamazaki. It doesn't take a professional anything to do that.

A pitiful nine and a half seconds. I can't play a song on my violin sad enough to describe how sad that was, but then again, I've only been learning for about 3 months so I can't play much of anything.

Sparring match two is against the fearsome "おばさん軍団” or "Granny Squad". These here ain't your "give you fresh baked cookies" variety of grannies. These are the pants-pulling, ass-slappin' grannies that your friend told you stories about, but you never believed.

After strutting down to the ring, the grannies sized up the opposition. Yamazaki seemed to want to size up the granny in the gray blouse...

... but, uh... Yamazaki... that big grape looking thing behind you looks like she can crush you with her left boob alone... (which I secretly wish she did)

As is somewhat obvious if you know how weak Yamazaki is, he gets dragged to the ground and stripped. Left to lie in shame, with this ass flapping in the breeze.

After the warm-ups, it's time to take on the Champion, which no one knows who appointed as the Champion. The champion is Moriman. I guess technically that's wrong. Moriman is a duo made up of 種馬マン(Taneuma-man) and モリ末(Moriou), but Moriou is the one doing all the fighting. Taneumaman serves as the corner girl. Aaaaaanyway, the champion makes their way into the ring, and starts by sending a message of the hard slap to Yamazaki's face. This is where to the battle begins. Yamazaki can now try to take off his opponent's pants. It's on, show them what you can do, Yamazaki.

Not much, apparently, lol. Okay, well you have to give the man some credit. After taking that beating, he gets back up and is ready immediately for his rematch. You lost the battle, not the war. Get 'er done, Zaki.

Okay, so now you've lost the war. It's okay, Yamazaki. Unfortunately for you (yet fortunately for the rest of us), you'll be fighting Moriman again later.

I'm giving this episode 6 stars. As I said in my first post ever, there's very few things that make me even care about Yamazaki. One of those things is Yamazaki getting pummeled. This episode if chock full of it. This is episode sets up a series that will last for years on Gaki no Tsukai, and is truly a golden gem in th -- ... wait... a golden gem? Is that even possible? It must be late, I'm being nonsensical. Let me be brief then, and generally non-poetic. Yamazaki gets beatdown, and that makes me happy. Four stars!

Gaki Messes with Waitresses

2008-12-16T11:02:00.016-05:00

Original airdate: 8/17/1997

For my first review, I just randomly picked a video in my arsenal, and decided to highlight and review it. I think that for a first video, this was a good choice. The title for today's episode is "回して、回して、一万円！” which means "Spin 'em, spin 'em, 10,000 yen!" The concept came from an observation that Matsumoto made two weeks earlier during one of Downtown's comedy talks. He said that if you go to a coffee shop, the waitress will come over and help you. However, if you say "Excuse me" as they are walking away, they pivot on the balls of their feet in place to come back. Today's episode was planned to shed some light on whether this is true or not.

In the opening, Yamazaki serves as the organizer for this little experiment and explains that it will be done in game form. The show has hidden cameras in two coffee shops. Cocorico and Downtown are to split into pairs chosen by pulling on rope ends. Each pair will try to get their waitresses to spin in place as much as they can in 20 minutes by only saying "Excuse me." Each time a waitress spins in place, 10,000 yen is added to the pot. After time is up, the team that made their waitress spin the most gets the whole pot.
The first team is the Hamada-Tanaka team. They get off to a rough start, not even getting one spin in place. However, if the game were to scare the living bajeebus out of the waitress, Hamada did just that. Note the "Holy crap, it's a gorilla!" look on the waitresses face whenever she sees him.

After about 12 minutes in, Tanaka and Hamada change seats, and Hamada lets Tanaka do the calling. Tanaka manages to get 3 points for the team in a row. (*throws on Tanaka Fan Club T-shirt and cheers wildly*) After they realize they are about 18 minutes in, they decide to ditch the premise of the game and dig into their food. Yamazaki, Endo and Matsumoto who are watching from a separate location don't find it interesting to watch them sit there and chow down, so they send Yamazaki to bring them back. Yamazaki rushes in and smacks Hamada hard on the back of the head.
Some of you may not know this, but disrespecting a senior (whether it be by age or by experience) is taken pretty seriously in Japanese society. Getting whacked on the back of the head by his inferior set Hamada off and he handles the matter gangsta-style. Yamazaki backs down and apologizes like a little beyotch. So, in total Hamada-Tanaka team scores 3 points.

After Hamada schools Yamazaki, it's Matsumoto-Endo team's turn to try. They do horribly to start. The waitress tended to finish what she was doing before the Matsumoto's timing is laughably horrible, as he starts asking the waitress to turn around while she's still at the table. So they have to resort to making the waitress show things from their display cabinets and repeated asking for things put back and to see other things. In a frenzy of failed spin attempts, Endo just resorts to calling the waitress over, and then having Matsumoto call, then alternating between the two of them. Even that doesn't work. So in their last few seconds, Matsumoto just shifts into manual and spins her with his hands.

Yamazaki stretches his rulings for the Matsumoto-Endo team based on pity, and the score winds up being tied 3-3. But since the rulings were less stretched, he awards the Hamada-Tanaka team with the win! *throws parade*

Talk-
Most episodes of Gaki no Tsukai have a talk portion, which is basically the comedic stylings of Downtown. It usually consists of a bin full of postcards being wheeled on stage and Hamada reading off questions to Matsumoto, but sometimes Matsumoto comes in with things that he'd like to discuss. If I had the time, I'd probably subtitle videos because it I think it would be really worth it. But I'll just provide some translation on some of the funnier parts here to save room. (This post is already big o.o)
During the talk, the first post card that was pulled said "When the rain suddenly stops, the umbrella you are no longer using gets in the way. Please show me a cool way to hold it when that happens." Matsumoto explains that an umbrella is only an umbrella after it's opened. Otherwise it's in its "pre-umbrella" stage. Therefore the way to hold an umbrella is to hold it opened. Matsumoto strutting around the stage in "Singing in the Rain" fashion then followed.

In proving how not cool that is, they did a test-run and showed that you'd hit everyone walking down the street. Matsumoto's rebuttal: "Well it would be okay if everyone had theirs open. You open yours." Then the battle of "You open yours!" vs. "No, just close yours!" began. Things like this are a very small piece of the magic of this show.

The last part of the episode was one that I almost forgot about completely. While taking a photo the week before, the video cameras picked up a voice saying "...downtown..." when the camera shutters closed. Scary, I can somewhat hear it too. o.O

Rating- Overall, I gave this episode 5-stars. If you haven't seen it, please refer to my rating guide.
The concept was original and fairly interesting to me, having worked in fast food during high school and early college. It really goes to show the determination of the Japanese workforce. They either weren't phased by being called back to the table every 10 seconds or they did a great job of hiding it. I know I would have been annoyed.
Yamazaki getting manhandled will pretty much give any episode at least a 4-star rating, but the talk alone is a good one. Rewatching this made me realize how unaccustomed I am to seeing Matsumoto with hair. XD

My Ranking System

2008-12-16T10:29:00.005-05:00

As I went through (and still am) going through my horde of Gaki episodes, I decided to through them all in a spreadsheet, and give a brief description of the episode and a rating for the episode as a whole.
After talking to some of my friends about my cataloging efforts, I realized that my rating system makes NO SENSE, at least to them. My scale is from 1 to 10 stars, with 1 being the worst rating. Normal people would then s However, as to not confuse you, the reader, I shall explain with a rubric.

1 star - A video rated with a one will be incredibly rare, especially for a show like Gaki no Tsukai. A one-star video is physically painful to watch, has no entertainment value and would generally make me want to assassinate whoever made the show.

2-4 star - A two-star video is fairly boring. It's nothing more than a waste of a few minutes. It's one of those things makes you wonder if your time was better spent. A four-star video is fairly entertaining, but still could use some improvement or generally did not quite meet up to the potential of the premise for the show.

5-7 star - These are the good videos. A five-star show will have you laughing and/or make you think the whole way through. The premise is well thought out, and executed well. Seven-star videos are rolling on the floor hilarious, and are generally what dreams are made of. It's what people would describe as "excellent."

So at this point, you may be thinking "Wait... Seven-stars is excellent? What about the other three levels above that? Shouldn't 'excellent' be about a 9 or so?" Not to me. In essence, my scale runs from 1 to 7, with anything above that going somewhere into the "epic" and "ZomgThatWasJustTooAmazing.WhyHasn'tMyHeadExplodedYet?" territory. Hopefully now that makes some sense to you. It'll start making more sense once I actually start reviewing videos, hopefully. Just thought I'd straighten that out beforehand. Episode reviews on the way!

Blog is now open for business!

2008-12-15T23:59:00.001-05:00

So, I'm sitting here in a dorm room clear across the country from where I live, on December 15. Today just happens to be my birthday. With no close friends here for me to give me gifts, I decided to give myself a gift: the gift of blog!

I've decided to share with the world abroad, my love for the popular Japanese variety show "Gaki No Tsukai Ya Arahende." The show was started by the famous Japanese comedy duo, Downtown, and later added comedians Housei Yamazaki and duo Cocorico as regulars. The show's been on the air since 1989, and for good reason. It still remains a very popular show to this day.

I've amassed quite a collection of episodes, and have watched them all for the most part. So I figured that I might as well chronicle them and let anyone who wants to share their thoughts do so.

For those among you readers who don't know the cast, here's a quick rundown:

This here is Matsumoto Hitoshi. It's technically Hitoshi Matsumoto by western standards as Hitoshi is his given game and Matsumoto is his family name. For the sake of continuity with the show and not confusing people, I'm going to just leave it in the traditional Japanese order. ...Anyways, Matsumoto is one half of the comedy group, Downtown. He plays the "boke" which is the stooge. He wins over the crowd with his exuberance and almost naive sense of humor and generally just wins at life. Also, he's got one of the most infectious laughs I've ever heard on a human being.
Next up, Hamada Masatoshi, the other half of Downtown. He plays the "tsukkomi" which serves as the straight man. It's his job to point out idiocy, usually by the Matsumoto, in the funniest way possible. However, as the show has progressed, audiences have learned many things about him and his personality. For example, he gets mad pretty easily and generally resorts to violence and/or yelling when irritated. He's also often teased for having big lips, and also for looking like a gorilla. (Please note that I chose this picture of him in one of his more monkey-like looks.)

Third up to bat is Yamazaki Housei. He's the only member on the show who isn't part of a comedy duo. You, as a reader, will find that more often than not, I will take little interest in the actions of Yamazaki except when he's getting beaten up, insulted, or dressed in drag. I don't know why that is, but it just is. Of course there are times when I care, but most of the time I feel like he's trying too hard.

This dude here is Endo Shouzo. He plays the tsukkomi for the duo Cocorico. He's known around Japan for being one of the sexier male comedians. I haven't seen many of Cocorico's performances, but he could play a good boke since he's known for not being the brightest bulb in the box. Now that I think of it, he was one of the reasons why I started actually watching the show.

Although Endo is one of the reasons I started watching the show, here's the reason I keep watching the show. This here is Tanaka Naoki, Cocorico's boke. He's the tallest of the members by a few inches and fairly skinny. He writes most of Cocorico's material, and he's got a very subtle style of humor. That's the kind of humor I like. It's almost no wonder why I idolize the subtle style of Tanaka, and couldn't care less about the more obvious style of Yamazaki. Also, please note that as a reader you may see me paying generally too much attention to this guy. Sorry if this creeps you out.

I'll get this blog started up soon enough. I hereby christen this blog ready to sail! *breaks wine bottle on side of laptop* *watches wine get all over the keys* OH NO~ES!

Black Gaki

[Update] Damn you and you law, Murphy!

Oyassan!

A Bunch of Catch-up!

License Poll!

A Salute to Itao's Wife!!!

In the Spirit of Kill Bill!

Viewing Habits Poll Results and New Poll!

[Update] After the dust settles...

[Update] Honor Among Thieves!

Matsumoto and Eri, II

The general request post and schedule!

Happy Birthday, Blog!

The Great Debate!

[Update] Doctor, Doctor!

Poll Results and Update!

Kiki Nattou!

The Bondage Angels!

The Friendly Being 1 and 3

Endou's Hollywood Audition!

[Non-Gaki Related] Everyone's Got A Song!

The Friendly Being 2

Worldwide Downtown News: Whoopee Cushions

Guide to the Poll and Update!

Eating with Kouji-chan!

The Busukko Club!

Ittsuji Shopping!

Happy 6 Month Anniversary!

Itao's Car Crash!

Matsumoto's Challenge: Skateboarding!

Matsumoto Week: A Salute to Hitoshi Matsumoto!

The Matsumoto Martin James Hypnotism Show!

Matsumoto's Challenge: High Jump

Itao is Watching!

Producer Nakamura's Shichihenge!

Kiki Canned Coffee!!!

Goodbye, Yamazaki! 1

Ice Coffee Limit Check

Your input appreciated!

Tetsuo's Shichihenge

つっつん 八変化!!

[Non-Gaki Related] One of those months...

山崎邦正 七変化!!

レベンジマッチ:山崎vs.Moriman Part 3

山崎邦正ケツリベンジ: KETSU-1グランプリ!! (Yamazaki vs Moriman Part 2)

山崎ケツ公開スパーリング （Yamazaki Vs Moriman Part 1)

Gaki Messes with Waitresses

My Ranking System

Blog is now open for business!

つっつん　八変化!!

山崎邦正　七変化!!

レベンジマッチ:山崎vs.Moriman　Part 3

山崎邦正ケツリベンジ:　KETSU-1グランプリ!! (Yamazaki vs Moriman Part 2)

山崎ケツ公開スパーリング　（Yamazaki Vs Moriman　Part 1)