“Takeshi’s Castle” and “MXC: Most Extreme Elimination Challenge”

When I lived in Japan, I was introduced to an insane series called Takeshi’s Castle. I loved it so much, I wrote a piece about it for the early days of this blog in late 2006. Fast forward to early August, Discotek Media announced that they license-rescued the Americanized version of the series (MXC: Most Extreme Elimination Challenge), I felt compelled to write some more with more information.

–> Buy MXC: Most Extreme Elimination Challenge from Amazon.com!

What was Takeshi’s Castle?

For those who don’t know, Takeshi’s Castle was a crazy, comedy game show where contestants had to perform physical challenges. Indeed, it originated a new genre of physical challenge shows for “regular” folks to participate in. The premise for the show was that a large group of contestants (as many as 142 from what I understand) make up the “army” for General Tani. Their goal is to survive physical challenges. If they don’t, they are eliminated.

For example, one challenge that stood out to me was simple — cross a narrow, wobbly bridge over a body of water. The contestant had to carry a ball across the bridge. However, cannons would fire large, rubber balls at the contestant to knock them off the bridge. The results were often hilarious.

At the end, the survivors of General Tani’s army assault Takeshi’s defended castle. It was must-see TV when it was on, which sadly was near the end of its run when I moved to Japan.

What was MXC: Most Extreme Elimination Challenge?

Takeshi’s Castle was licensed and aired with major edits all over the world. (The British version used Craig Charles from Red Dwarf as the narrator.) In America, the re-edit and redubbed version aired on Spike TV as MXC: Most Extreme Elimination Challenge. The MXC series dub had nothing to do with anything said in the original Japanese. Takeshi and other characters are renamed. The premise is changed so that the challenges are portrayed as a team vs. team event.

I never watched MXC on Spike TV. I caught clips on YouTube (from the good old day of the site), and I was horrified by what I saw. Indeed, that’s what prompted me to write my 2006 piece. I didn’t want some Americanized rubbish. I think the only reason MXC became popular in America is that folks didn’t know the superior source material.

Why not Release Takeshi’s Castle Unedited?

When Discotek Media stated that they were releasing MXC, Twitter/X user Andrewhabara wrote about the work that they did for the new release. I responded to him, “Hard pass. Takeshi’s Castle was on when I lived in Japan. This travesty butchers the awesomeness that was the original series. I just want the original Takeshi’s Castle.”

A few days ago, I got a reason why this can never happen from The JM Archives.

Can’t happen. The rights issues make it impossible.

The audio from Takeshi’s Castle is unclearable in North America. The major factor being the music. But there’s other stuff too. It’s never really aired in its original format anywhere else in the world (except Taiwan).

Ugh. Not the first time music from Japan cannot be licensed. And it doesn’t surprise me that there are other rights issues as well. Heck, even Discotek reported that for their license rescue of MXC, they couldn’t get all the episodes for licensing reasons.

Regardless, there goes my hope of getting the series unedited. Even in Japan, the series no longer has a physical release. Only 20 of the 133 episodes are available to stream.

As an aside, in 2023, Takeshi’s Castle was brought back with a new season. Amazon has it for those with Prime. I’ll have to give it a watch, but when I glanced, it seemed to be a pale imitation of what I remembered.