, known internationally as Unbeatable Banzuke, is a Japanese television program, that aired weekly as the premier sports entertainment variety show of TBS. Originally a spinoff of Pro Sportsman No.1, it evolved into its own series which has continued to see spinoffs and installments for more than three decades. Several seasonal specials were also made, such as Sasuke, which would become a worldwide franchise in its own right.
Through various games based on varying disciplines of sports, professional players and general participants challenged the limits of physical strength and technique, winning prizes if all challenges were successfully destroyed. The popularity of the displays of amazing physical strength and technique by professional players and luck of general participants drove TV Asahi to move its anime time slot up one hour and caused the cancellation of on Fuji TV.
The use of the program's mascot, , originally only featured during the broadcast, expanded in 1996 into the program's opening sequence and every game's introduction. Later on, he appeared in a wide variety of merchandise including Anime, Manga, Video games, Action figures, Trading cards and Board games.
History
1993–1995: origins, Sportsman No.1 and the early years of Kinniku Banzuke
Through the 1980s, TBS dominated the television scene for competition series with Takeshi's Castle, which ended in 1990 related to fallout from the Japanese asset price bubble. Through the early 1990s, sports broadcasting director Ushio Higuchi began planning a new original sports competition for TBS, which launched as a Television special on December 29, 1993 with the help of prolific sports commentator Ichiro Furutachi. The series, Sportsman No.1, featured athletes attempting a custom Heptathlon-style tournament where competitors from several different sporting disciplines competed against each other to determine who was the true King of Sports. Events covered a wide variety of general athletics including Sprinting, Push-ups, Vaulting, Tug of war, Beach Flags, Rope climbing and Obstacle Racing, with scores based on performance. The best overall competitor would be declared the winner.
While the initial broadcast received mediocre viewership, a second tournament featuring a fully refreshed Greco-Roman theming was broadcast on January 1, 1995 to critical acclaim. A third tournament was immediately fast-tracked, receiving an official sponsorship from the Japanese Olympic Committee, and once again was a hit broadcast.
TBS began to receive a wave of wannabe athletes contacting their phone lines asking, if they could be considered for upcoming Sportsman No.1 tournaments. The idea was initially rejected, as Higuchi wanted to maintain a certain level of athletic prestige to be a requirement to compete on Sportsman No.1, however TBS eventually made the decision to create a spinoff series that would allow the general public to compete. Due to the scope of inquires, production decided that rather than hosting a central tournament like Sportsman No.1, they would host preliminary qualification rounds all throughout Japan, with the best of each region advancing to a final round filmed at Midoriyama Studios in Yokohama.
A pilot season of Kinniku Banzuke began airing at 1:15am JST on July 8, 1995 as a series of eleven 30 minute pilot episodes. TBS believed that it would be an ideal late night program, as it would be a niche program targeting adult men already interested in athletics. These episodes saw Sit-ups, Push-ups, and Vaulting return from Sportsman, with tryouts in Tohoku, Kansai, Okinawa, Hokuriku, Hokkaido and Kyushu.
The series became an unprecedented hit, with record high viewership despite the late broadcast time. This was attributed to several factors; family and friends of competitors tuned in to cheer them on, women tuned in due to the Odagiri effect, and large numbers of youth found the show fun and aspired to compete. TBS immediately pivoted their approach and moved the series to a prime time window on Saturday at 19:00 JST beginning in October 1995.
Following the move to primetime, Kinniku Banzuke continued to broadcast an expanded number of events returning from Sportsman such as Beach Flags, and created additional competition divisions for women and youth. They also invested in new events, most notably a Backflip racing event named Bakuten that attracted success from professional gymnasts such as Yukio Iketani. During this first season, the fourth episode reached an unprecedented 31.9% viewership rating during Belarusian Olympic gymnast Vitaly Scherbo's attempt at Bakuten.
1996–1999: main format and the "9" Systems In the Spring of 1996, as a response to decreasing ratings, as well as competing series like Ucchan Nanchan no Honô no Challenger, Higuchi decided to branch the series out to include two new categories of events.
The first were variations of target practice under different sports disciplines such as Baseball and Soccer, which allowed an influx of professional athletes to compete due to the lowered risk. This category had initially been conceived during the development of Sportsman No. 1 but had been scrapped, with the idea being based on warm-up exercises that Higuchi had witness Pitcher's perform before professional baseball games. The debut events were Struck Out and Kick Target, representing Baseball and Soccer. These events used a format called the 9 Panel or Struck Out system. In this system, competitors would get 12 attempts to hit 9 target panels from a specified distance. While it was possible to knock out multiple targets in one throw, a competitor was immediately eliminated if their number of remaining attempts dropped below the number of target remaining.
The second category were skill-based obstacles courses that featured 9 obstacles, called the 9 Area system. Higuchi's initial concept for this was a course inspired by Bakuten that featured athletes navigating different areas such as stairs, parallel bars and ramps while in a handstand. Originally developed under the name "Handstand Jungle", the event debuted in May 1996 as Hand Walk. Competitors had to navigate an entire course without ever breaking out of their handstand, with the sole exception being during the designated break zone halfway through the course, where they might rest for 30 seconds.
All of these events were critical successes, and Higuchi immediately expanded the roster of events. For courses, Higuchi expanded this obstacle course idea into several other disciplines; Super Rider for bike trials, Like a Pierrot for Unicycle, Kangaroo for pogo stick and Bamboo Derby for stilt walking. For panel events, Higuchi introduced Punch Out for Bowling, Service Ace for Tennis, 9Hoops for Basketball, among others. As expected, these events were similar popular, and so Higuchi began to expand into original course ideas, such as Sponge Bridge, a precision balance course, and Spider Walk, an event based on the Ninja skill of moving while perched between two walls, as was historically done to move stealthily between two buildings in an alley. This expansion culminated in the creation of Sasuke, which would become a global phenomenon under the name Ninja Warrior.
The original courses Higuchi had designed such as Hand Walk were beginning to be defeated after several filming sessions. Each film session contained 32 attempts, and after filming the staff would assess next steps. If undefeated, they would begin to plan adjustments if the course is too hard. If beaten, they decided to employ recursive self-improvement in courses, where events would return with an increasing number in their title, featuring renewed and more difficult obstacles to keep competitors indefinitely returning to events. Hand Walk returned as Hand Walk II later in 1996 setting the trend for returning events, which would go on to be a staple of the series' appeal.
Over the course of Kinniku Banzuke and its parent series Sportsman No.1, had a number of breakout competitors who featured recurring strong performances emerged, including Kane Kosugi, Katsumi Yamada and Akira Omori. The series began incorporating behind-the-scenes documentary segments showing their personal lives, how they trained, and their celebrity pursuits. These segments would continue to drive the series success forward by establishing a De facto recurring cast for a show that otherwise featured new competitors each week. This would be pushed further with Quick Muscle champion Kazuhiko Akiyama becoming the first competitor to win Sasuke.
1999–2002: renewed success and expansion Entering the new millennium, Kinniku Banzuke began increasing its budget and lineup. Events such as Hand Walk IV, Super Rider V, A Craftsman, Super Helico II and Like a Pierrot Ghost sported a significant visual upgrade into themed courses. New large-scale events were created to expand the core lineup, including Escape, Kunoichi and Super Dog. On top of this, TBS began to broaden the franchise with a lineup of multimedia projects, such as an ongoing video game series produced by Konami.
On the air, TBS launched its first ever spinoff of Kinniku Banzuke, under the title Kinniku Seiei: Muscle Elite, which featured a return of the Sportsman themed public trials seen in the first year of Kinniku Banzuke, aired weekly after midnight. The series was hosted by Kane Kosugi and featured additional behind the scenes content for the series. This was followed up with Kinniku Angya in 2001, which had Kane Kosugi touring Japan to visit professional athletes for Ad hoc challenges. During Kinniku Angya, celebrity Shoei introduced a new segment known as Muscle Musical, where a troupe of celebrities formatted an acrobatic troupe for stage shows. Muscle Musical would prove wildly successful, and would move its segments over to the main Kinniku Banzuke broadcasts. A third spinoff series, Kane the Muscle, would continue the focus on Kane Kosugi, featuring dedicate episodes on his life and training. Behind the scenes, Ushio Higuchi decided to produce an original feature-length film starring Kane Kosugi, and featuring references and ideas taken from Kinniku Banzuke. The film would have behind the scenes looks during broadcasts, and released worldwide in 2002 as Muscle Heat. A fourth spinoff, Tōkon Kinniku: MUSCLE-ISM debuted in April 2002, focusing on martial arts competitors.
2002: Chikarajima and hiatus On May 5, 2002, two show participants injured their cervical vertebrae during the filming of an episode entitled "Chikarajima" ("Power Island"), an obstacle course with a temple-like setting stationed outside. The accidents occurred during the "Rock Attack" and "Rock Valley" obstacle portions, both of which involve a giant ball weighing approximately 30 kilograms and having a diameter of 1.8 meters.
In Rock Attack, the contestant must catch the ball as it rolls down a 15-degree slope, then push it back up and onto a platform at the top. For Rock Valley, the contestant must climb onto the ball and walk it across a waterway 2.5 meters wide and 1.4 meters deep. Wei Tao, a 19-year-old Chinese freshman at Kyoto University, fell into the waterway; Takunori Isa, a 20-year-old junior at Tokai University, was knocked down and rolled over by the ball while trying to catch it. It was later revealed that at least two other contestants suffered spinal injuries while participating on the show as well. College student Takahiro Saito, 19, was hospitalized after falling more than six feet into a four-foot-deep water-filled moat, while another contestant was hospitalized after trying to catch a 100-pound plastic ball, nearly six feet in diameter. While most injuries were minor, Isa's injury proved to be a Paralyzing break, however he used the incident as a positive motivating factor, starting a company that produced workout equipment for individuals with Paraplegia and other physical disabilities.