I feel obligated to write a follow-up post to last week’s discussion of G4′s poorly conceived American Ninja Warrior. I said it seemed like fun, but needed a lot of work, and gave a bunch of suggestions as to how to fix thinsg in the future. Well, now seeing the second half of the episodes, and just how badly the Americans got crushed in competition, I have a few more pressing issues to talk about.

I can’t believe how easy they made the American courses compared to the Japanese versions. I’ve already bitched about how stage two was stage one again, plus three more obstacles, but once I saw stage three, I was literally yelling at the TV.

What they had was a  beach “obstacle course,’ if you can call it that, that consisted of the finalists  carrying cinder blocks, crawling under cargo nets, and running through tires like its some sort of backwards ass company picnic/Real World-Road Rules challenge. What the F*CK does running in sand through tired have ANYTHING to do with the Ninja Warrior course they’re going to face in Japan? This stage cut a lot of qualified people, including some of the competitors with the best times previously because something stupid happened like they tripped on the sand tires and were forced to go all the way back to the start. Really, you’re sending home the best competitors because they faltered on a retarded obstacle that has nothing to with the actual course? Brilliant.

So once the sand elminated most of the good people, the survivors headed to Japan, which was actually pretty cool to see, though I was bummed none of the Ninja Warrior pros ever showed up to say hello. But once they started running the course, it became clear just how the American course had been cakewalk compared to the real Japanese version. Most notably, it seemed that the Warped Wall was completely different, as no one at G4 thought it prudent to check their measurements when building the American version, which everyone who qualified mastered no problem. But the Japanese version was taller, curvier and eliminated half our players by itself.

In the end, two out of the three people who completed the first stage were veterans who had been to the real Japanese course before. Only third time Japan visitor and cocky douche Levi Meewenburg made it to the third round before failing, which is respectable, but absurd that he was the only one.The fact that pretty much only the two veterans made it (the third was eliminated by the sand tires) proves that the only thing to get you ready for the Japanese course is the Japanese course itself, and G4 could have at least gone to the trouble to see if the stages they were building were comparable to the ones in Japan. What’s the point of having people qualify only to send them over to Japan and embarrass us?

Sand tires. What a f*cking joke. Someone take this franchise, put some pocket change into it so they can afford halfway decent and challenging course, and maybe this thing can turn itself into a good idea in the end.