Official Sasuke 31 announcement and other related stuff!

Sasuke 31 Official Announcement!

第31回大会開催決定！出場者募集！！

During the Sasuke 30's extended rebroadcast today we received 2 pieces of information. The first is that we got confirmation for Sasuke 31!  Director Masato Inui 乾雅人 is returning to direct another tournament. Seems now that behind the scenes this iteration of shows are in the Sasuke Rising "era", however we will always know and refer to them by their numbers.  Sasuke 31 is officially slated for "Summer" SASUKE 2015夏（仮） (similar to last year).  TBS created a page for Sasuke 31st Annual Meeting on their Sasuke Rising website and updated both the TBS International Facebook and their Sasuke Rising Facebook along with their official Twitter. There was quite a bit of confusion when "Sasuke Rising" title first came out for Sasuke 28-29.  To help explain it further though for those who are still confused, in the past we only had "Sasuke" at the title all the way up to Sasuke 27.  After the bankruptcy of Monster 9 however, the title changed to "Rising" delineating when the tournament was under full TBS control.  I like to think of it as BM9 and AM9 (Before Monster 9 and "After" Monster 9).  That said, I'm excited!

Tokyo Auditions with Director Inui (Standing on left) ©Kikaku

Along with the official Application is the announcement of Sasuke Auditions. Sasuke 28 auditions were held in 2 different cities in the country and Sasuke 30 auditions was the same.  Seems for budgetary reasons we are doing that again for Sasuke 31.  The cities are set for Tokyo and Osaka (same as Sasuke 30).  Also same as last time, they are projected to be sometime during the month of April (seems by the application it will be early April). Deadline for applications is March 22! And as a final note, it is unknown at this time how international competitors will be handled.  If I find more concrete information on the subject I'll post, however now that the ASEAN event is no longer active it seems that only direct guest invites will be the only way to get to Sasuke these days sad to say. If you live and work in Japan however, that option to enter auditions is still open (which is a relief).

「SASUKE」30回記念DVDの発売が決定！！

DVDの詳細概要が決まり次第、本ホームページ上でもお知らせ致します。
また詳細が決定いたしましたら、「TBSishop」よりご案内を差し上げます。

The second bit of news was the announcement of Sasuke 30's official DVD box set.  The unfortunate part of that news is that it's Japan only and not region free like we've petitioned in the past.  No other information was given other than Spring release and once that is posted I'll write about it. However, it will be a Region 2 DVD and is expected to be extraordinarily expensive with multiple disks.  I don't have high hopes for it and if it's too expensive, it won't sell well. If that happens, I doubt TBS will ever do it again.  Sounds counter-productive if you ask me.  Working on a solution for it but we'll see. For now, progress is being made with the attempt to sell the 30th Anniversary tourney with all (but Yamada's) run in full.  (We will finally see Ishikawa! LOL) I suspect that's about 6-7 hours long!  I'd love to see it....

Along with that I should be getting the campaign to get Rambling Rican to Japan for Sasuke 31 up and running this week! As I mentioned before, Starting in the first week of January, I will be putting up a huge fundraising project on Indiegogo to help fund a trip to Japan.  I had to iron out all the financial planning stuff this week somehow during the holiday and should get all the receiving information finalized and the pitch video edited.  That was .. interesting to record.. LOL Once I get all of that done I'll post about it!  Crossing fingers and wish me luck!

"Happy NewYear look whats on the wall. :-)" ©fluffyheadorca

Finally, thanks for those who have been buying the Calendar and sending me photos!  Thanks for the support!  I get a kick out of people letting me know they bought it and the Japanese are fascinated by something they've never seen before! LOL

Update on the Sasuke DVD Petition

As many of you know that for quite some time (I think almost 2 years now in total) I've been working on an project to try to get Monster 9 to talk to TBS to release Sasuke into a DVD collection and/or box set. I sent a proposal with details and options they can use including a Region Free DVD so it's not just limited to North American (region 1) or Japan (region 2). In June, 2009 I created the page on my blog about the project and of course the online DVD Petition.

Months went by without any kind of acknowledgment let alone an answer until today. I had sent a reminder a couple days ago and even asked if the show was canceled since the ratings for Sasuke 25 were catastrophically low in Japan. I assume that is what prompted the response. Either way we have an answer I can share with you.

あなたから送っていただいたメールは読みました。
今のところＳＡＳＵＫＥが終わるという予定はございません。
そのためＤＶＤの発売も予定しておりません。
また、日本で放送した後に海外で放送されているので、タイムラグがあり、ＤＶＤ化は当分ないと思われます。
弊社としてはこのような状況ですので、ご理解いただければと思います。
宜しくお願いいたします。

We have read your email.
At this point in time, there are no plans to end SASUKE.
Because of this, there are no plans to sell DVDs. Moreover, since there is a time lag between Japanese broadcasts and broadcasts overseas, for now DVD releases are not realistic.
This is our company's current situation, and we hope for your understanding.
Thank you.
(Thanks David K. for the translation)

So the long and short of it is this.

a) Sasuke is NOT Canceled. So that alone is great news! Sasuke 26 will be produced. We hope the ratings will rebound (I'll blog about that later) and we have many more years of enjoyment.

b) They DO want to create DVD's for Sasuke BUT because overseas is so far behind the TBS official broadcast they do not believe it will be in the foreseeable future.

USA still is 2 tournaments behind.. granted they will show 24 this weekend but everyone else (except Taiwan) is almost 5 tournaments behind. It means also that if they do make DVD's it will be at the end of Sasuke's run and when everyone else catches up. It seems they are taking into account that releasing them now will jeopardize the airings in the different countries. So although we do not get DVD's now, we can get DVD's in the future after Sasuke has run it's course. As an example - Takeshi's Castle was finally released in it's entirely AFTER the show went off the air. Given that information.. I hope it will be a loooooong time from now!

Thanks to everyone especially on the Sasuke Maniacs' site for help with the project and the more than 700 signatures from around the world with nothing but word of mouth to continue the project. It was wonderful to see so many signatures from various countries were Sasuke/Ninja Warrior doesn't even air!

DVD Petition Project

Online petition - Request for Region-Free Sasuke DVD Boxset from Monster 9
.

For those who don't know I've been working on an ongoing project to try to get Monster 9 to talk to TBS to release Sasuke 1-22 (at least) into a DVD collection and/or box set. I sent a proposal with details and options they can use including a Region Free DVD so it's not just limited to North American (region 1) or Japan (region 2). This way everyone around the world can buy the same DVD and have access to the original tournaments as they were aired on TBS. They acknowledge that they received the proposal but at this time I wanted to add something else to show it's not just Americans asking for this. I am creating an online petition form in hopes of getting at least 500 signatures so then I can send that to Monster 9 to show there is demand for it worldwide. In order to show it's worldwide I want to translate a line of text from English to and any other language I can get it translated to. There were a few limitations on the petition form (in terms of amount of characters.. So I put the other translated text here!

Sasuke (Ninja Warrior) is aired in:

United States - English
United Kingdom - English
Germany - Deutsch
Greece - Greek
New Zealand - English
Italy - Italian
Finland - Finnish
France - French
Malaysia - Malay
Spain - Spanish
Serbia - Serbian (Hungarian, Croatian, Slovak, Romanian, Rusyn in some regions)
Denmark - Danish
Taiwan - Chinese (Mandarin)
Singapore - English, Malay, Chinese, Tamil
Indonesia - Indonesian

This petition is to request from Monster 9 the release for sale a region-free DVD of all Sasuke Competitions to be made available for purchase to the general public.

この請願書は株式会社モンスターナインへ今迄全てのSASUKE大会をリージョンフリーDVDで発売する事を請願しています。

這個請願是要求Monster 9 公開發行銷售無區域限制的Sasuke Competitions DVD 給一般消費大眾購買

이 청원은 Monster9 에게 SASUKE 대회를 코드 프리 DVD로 시장에 판매해달라는 요청 입니다

Esta petición es para solicitar a Monster 9 el lanzamiento para venta un DVD multi-región de el programa SASUKE que se harán disponibles para la compra para el público en general.

Cette pétition est de demander à Monster 9 à la mise en vente d'une région exempte DVD de tous les SASUKE Concours pour être disponible à la vente au grand public.

Diese Bitte soll vom Ungeheuer 9 die Ausgabe zum Verkauf eine DVD ohne Gebiet aller Sasuke Konkurrenzen bitten, für den Kauf zur breiten Öffentlichkeit bereitgestellt zu werden.

Tämän anomuksen tarkoitus on pyytää Monster 9:ää julkaisemaan myyntiä varten alue-vapaan DVD:n Sasuke kilpailuista niin että sen voisivat ostaa normaaliväestö.

Petisi ini ditujukan kepada Monster 9 agar meluncurkan DVD keseluruhan Kompetisi Sasuke yang bebas regional sehingga dapat diperjualbelikan secara umum.

My wish.. OFFICIAL Sasuke DVD's

Thanks to everyone especially on the Sasuke Maniacs' site for help with the translations. I didn't get a chance to get them all but the limitations on the Petition website prevented me from adding them all. Hopefully by adding them all here it will help. Please spread the word any way you can. Thanks again!