Kisumai GAME 28 July 2015 episode review

A new game is tried in this episode as they mix something old with something new to create Hit Song Karuta.

The guest for the episode is Inoue Yuusuke from the comedy duo NONSTYLE, who gets to join Kis-My-Ft2 in trying to figure out songs from mainly their lyrics alone.

There are three difficulty levels for this, the first with having the lyrics recited in the method of old Chinese poems (shigin). So there is still some rhythm of the song to try to listen for, but barely. But basically this is a special version of the karuta game where in place of poetry song lyrics from hit Japanese pop songs are said and the guys have to figure out which song it is, from the cards placed in front of them, before the lyrics that use the title of the song comes up. Which is usually the chorus.

The next level is with a narrator, and they have a veteran who does documentaries and variety programs to read out the lyrics. With it going to spoken word it gets of course harder as they have to rely on knowing the lyrics on their own. Not to mention a quicker pace so they have less time to figure it out.

The final level has the lyrics read out by a robot, a Palmi by DMM. Adding to the difficulty level with that is that its English pronunciation sounds strange. As a native English speaker it all sounded clear enough for me, but I can tell that it would be hard at times for someone not nearly as familiar with the language to figure out what exactly it was saying.

Yokoo Wataru has the most entertaining moment with his reaction to his failure. There are some other amusing ones but his was definitely the most memorable. With having to fit five rounds for the three levels there was not much time for the members to do much more than play the game.


The next episode is a magic episode, which I am dreading. Though to be honest it is partly because it was announced that they decided to end Kisumai GAME to replace it with a new show, Kisumai Magic. I can only assume it will be based around the magic episodes as honestly they are some of the most boring episodes of this show. So I am disappointed with that news and doubt I will continue with doing episode reviews for that. I will finish up with Kisumai GAME though so I will have the full run covered.