What is the point of them?
What kind of people derive joy and entertainment from nasty close ups of some tarento’s sweaty forehead and mouth full of half chewed food?
Why is eating until you can’t eat anymore glorified?
Is the average TV enjoyer in this country that brain dead (probably a rhetorical question)?
Happy Monday folks.
11 comments
just wait until one person gets sick and starts throwing up and then one by one they all start throwing up and it turns into a massive puke-fest and you can tell your friends about it on some adventure that you’ll look back on full of nostalgia when you’re old and writerly
It’s a talent without it being a talent. Why do people watch real world challenge or the bachelor or fucking love is blind? It’s something that doesn’t happen to mundane people and there isn’t anything else on.
I also have a theory it’s to boost local food and restaurant awareness. These places become minor tourist attractions for stuff like this. The one that has Ariyoshi in it, those places make the food just for that.
Last, I think people (IE women) live vicariously through it. My wife likes 大食い a lot and I asked her about and she said it’s because she wishes she could eat unhindered like that. So that’s a thing probably.
It was years ago but I had a friend who wanted me to tag along on a date with her and she literally ate 2 bites the entire time. After the date was over she said “we’re going to go get ramen now.” 大盛り with enough gyoza for 2 people. Girl, why did you not just eat at the fucking first restaurant???
I’d say they are as “brain dead” as posters of these kind of threads.
There are tons of 大食い in the west too. Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest, etc.
I think it says more about you, being unable to imagine how different people might enjoy different things.
It’s a good thing there’s no silly entertainment on TV in the US.
I love watching 大食い for the same reason I watch any show where the talent punish themselves for no sane reason.
Having just endured Akiyoshi Seminar, I would wholeheartedly agree that this kind of tv is as lowbrow as it goes. Even dire reality shows can involve an audience by creating characters you like or dislike. These food shoveling exhibitions offer nothing, utterly unmemorable
My uneducated guess is that it’s like mukbang or pimple popping videos in that people are more fascinated the more grotesque/unhealthy something is.
Some people also say they like hearing and/or watching other people eat.
My wife watches an 大食い YouTuber who cooks her own food, so in that case it has the appeal of any cooking show.
They are pretty pointless but I think it’s just the lack of original ideas on Japanese TV. Every show seems to have some sort of eating element – I guess it wasn’t long before it became an eating challenge or a spice challenge or whatever. There was Man vs Food some years ago on US/UK TV but, just like most Japanese stuff, half the programmes here wouldn’t be allowed on UK TV due to drinking, over eating etc