American Ninja Warrior

Here's a thought: 1) Cut the lengthy video montages for a special few and dedicate that time to the sport itself.

2) Post a leaderboard online showing all the competitors, their stats, their background and any videos (emotional and/or competitive), if applicable.

3) Once the playing field is down to a handful, THEN run the video montage of what they had to conquer (physically, emotionally, whatever) to get this far. At this point viewers should recognize the competitors and have picked favorites. This is the appropriate time to dedicate a minute to each player's backstory.

Again, it's just a slap in the face to those who have trained so hard just to get on the course only to be granted a 2 second recap after commercial because the producers chose to air long background videos on competitors who ended up disqualifying themselves on the first challenge.

I wish I could get access to the original Sasuke competitions.

AJW has started down the path of America's Got Talent by adding a sob story to most every contestant. Please NBC don't ruin another show for me. Let the contestants compete.

The first around five or so seasons of this were great with a good mix of both competition and stories, high production and still not feeling like some giant corporate show, extreme difficulty and motivational moments, and so on. After that, it went completely downhill for many obvious reasons that all of the other popular reviews sum up better than I ever could. All I'll say is that if you want to watch good shows like this then watch Ultimate Beastmaster and the original Ninja Warrior from Japan. MCX, Takeshi's Castle, and Unbeatable Banzuke aren't the same but are also fun watches. Even the meh newer version of American Gladiators that was cancelled after a couple of seasons and fricking Wipeout are somehow a billion times better, more entertaining, and more competitive than what American Ninja Warrior has been for a while now. At least they don't take forever to get to the obstacles. This and Survivor for the last eight or so years are abominations compared to what they once were. I'm not giving it that low of a rating because of the seasons worth watching and since there is the odd moment in between all of this that's great and reminds me of what this show once was. Not all of the sob stories are bad either and especially since some of the contestants with them are legit and would probably make it onto the first few seasons such as Zach Gowen. Those are few and far between though so it's still getting a mediocre rating. The first handful of seasons get a high 7/10. The other seasons after that get a 2-3/10.

On another note, I watched most of the episodes of that other side thing they've done with Japan, Europe, and Latin America yearly. It's even worse than the main episodes of the show and sums up everything I hate about American television. It's basically the best Ninja Warrior contestants from the United States having a huge hometown advantage with being used to their courses and not needing to travel or anything like that facing off against a bunch of washed up Japanese contestants from the past, whoever they could find for Latin America, and Europe's best Ninja Warriors from their version of the show where the obstacles are nothing compared to what the United States have yet.

I'm continually disappointed with each season as they get worse and worse. I watched the new season 12 and in the first 25 mins they have shown 5 competitors with a course time of about 1.5 minutes and a back story of about 3 minutes and the rest is replays, coming up ahead, and the announcers talking it up. It's amazing how they can have a good thing and totally ruin it with over the top sob stories, fake drama, autism, school teachers and what else you might want to thrown in in order to be socially woke.

They still haven't fixed the main issue with ANW, and that is all the events are grip based and upper body. Hanging, climbing and a few agility obstacles made for a rock climbers body. Heavier body builders, and other athletes don't have nearly the same chance of succeeding as a 120 pound agile nerd. And women mostly have zero chance of finishing. I don't recall any obstacle ever using the legs besides the warped wall.

Hi, Used to be a fan, but now the episodes are all talk and profiles. I was just watching one and I only saw two contestants attempt the course, this was in a span of 16 minutes. And after some ads they showed highlights of around four others who undertook the course ... How about we see these attempts in full instead of all of the profiles, interviews and repetitive talk.

It should only take around one episode per region. However, it is being stretched out and distorted. But not with the competitors attempts but with talking and other stuff. This is a disadvantage to the competition as viewers like myself lose interest.

I did not finish watching and switched channel.

cheers