Just finished watching the "Kakushigei Taikai 2004 Special" which is a special shown on January 1st in Japan featuring celebrities vs. celebrities. In the past, the show used to be awesome because the majority of the celebrities which include many that you know from Japanese drama or music groups.
In the 2004 special, Morning Musume, MAX, FLAME and many others are part of the special but many are from comedy groups and girls that you rarely see on TV (more for eye candy). But what keeps people watching is to see what innovative ideas people come up for their competition segment and also, to see if Mr. Kakushigei - Sakai Masaaki will lose (the man always takes on the more difficult segments and this year is no exception).
Here are some highlights:
* Last year, Morning Musume had to do jump rope (at the same time) for the # of years the special has been on. This year, it's removing the table cloth off of the table without spilling or breaking the glasses on the table which are on top of the cloth. In this case, it has to be done by each member to complete the segment and like last year, the girls came through right before the show was supposed to end. Not sure if this is coincidence or they want MoMusu fans to turn in to the end.
* Marcia, the members of MAX and a group of other girls had one of the coolest dance segments ever on the special. Marcia (for those who remember her from "Yorumo Hippare" or her most recent divorce scandal) has been great with her dance routines in the past few years but this one which combines Japanese festival style dancing with stomp was very entertaining.
* Hikawa Kiyoshi wowed everyone with Uehara Takako last year with their backwards Cinderella story but this time, Hikawa and Iijima Ai teamed up for their rendition of CHICAGO which left Hikawa emotional at the end.
* The guys from Neptune and other guys did very well with their Climbing skit which was quite difficult by balancing themselves on poles and lifting themselves up. Interesting enough, the person/people they had to go up against was Nakayama Hideyuki who didn't battle Sakai this year but went against them with a drumming segment. He teamed up with members of FLAME and other girls and they did a really cool drumming routine. Nakayama's team won 50 to 49.
* Who was to go against Sakai this year? It was Matsumo Akiko and three other gentlement doing a bar segment and doing something ala the movie "Cocktail" by throwing wine bottles and juggling them and other difficult tricks. But will Sakai lose his Mr. Kakushigei title? Well, again...Sakai has come up with one of the most interesting competitions which was to play those air trumpets (the one with the rubber ball like thing at the end and squeeze it and noise comes out of the trumpet), well he had it attached throughout his body...possibly near 2 dozen of them and he was playing songs by utilizing his movements. Then to cap off things, he performs with a symphony and hands down...Sakai kicked butt again!
- Other things that were shown was a Matrix parody with a large Neo with his gut hanging out vs. the Matrix baddies of Papaya Suzuki and his afro-wearing clones. I thought it was funny, but obviously the judges didn't and scored this with a 35. The Waterboy guys (Comedians doing a spoof) were back with another bad segment and in fact they spotlighted how they have done really bad in the past two years and again, they did bad scoring a 32.
All in all, I'm still missing the star studded specials of the past but nevertheless, missing Kakushige for me each year is like missing a Kouhaku...Have to watch it!
kndy
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