I don’t know the name of the show I’m watching right now, but it’s really neat. It’s kind of a cross between Mythbusters, Crash Lab, and one of those shows that capitalizes on the embarrassment of its hosts.
They started by creating a remote control replica of the Mach V car from Speed Racer (“マッãƒã€€GoGoGo!”, “Ma-ha GoGoGo!” here in Japan), and tried to replicate a stunt where he drove upside down inside a tunnel. They added some carbon fiber aero parts to create lots of downforce and created a neat ramp that twisted to align the car with the tunnel wall, but their experiment just ended in a spectacular spread of carbon fiber and miniaturized electronics. The professional who hand crafted the car looked like he was ready to cry when the meter-long car fell from about fifteen feet up in the air. The slow motion playback was great.
The second segment had them trying to replicate an egg cutting scene from a TV show or movie I’ve never seen, where a swordsman cut through a raw egg suspended on a string. What made it remarkable was that the cut was clean and sharp, and the slow motion replay showed the egg actually draining out of the shell after it was cut, rather than the whole thing exploding as you might expect. Anyway, they got some sort of master swordsman (this is Japan, after all) and he not only replicated the stunt, but then proceeded to cut edgewise through a 0.4mm thick sheet of what looked to be galvanized aluminum in one smooth stroke. I guess the sword must be really sharp.
In the third segment, they recreated two of the three little pigs’ houses, each about five feet tall. They made one out of bunches of straw and one out of 1″x6″ wood planks, then blew the houses to smithereens with a swamp boat fan hooked up to what looked like a big V8 engine from a car. The great part was the woman with a microphone standing right in the airflow holding a pocket anemometer in front of the houses. As you can imagine, the straw house blew over pretty easily, but not so the wooden house. This poor woman was standing in hurricane-force winds, shouting readings into her microphone, struggling to stay on her feet, until the house finally blew over and fell apart, in winds somewhere upwards of 100kmph. I’m sorry I don’t remember the exact number, I was laughing too much.
Japan really has some crazy TV shows, with very dedicated hosts.
Oh, like the female host who went in for a colon polyp removal and had the entire thing broadcast on national television (including video from the scope itself showing the hot wire actually removing the polyp), all the while commenting on her experience and talking to the doctors.
You know, I think it’s about time I wrote a full post on Japanese television programming. Maybe I’ll do that over my vacation in the next ten days or so.
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