Kiki Canned Coffee!!!

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?!