If you take a look at the game show landscape here in the U.S., we have stalwarts like The Price is Right and Jeopardy!, with new ones like Fox’s Bullseye on the way. But no matter how wild things get, you can be sure that they’re still pretty tame to everyone in Japan. Their game show AKBingo! is a testament to bizarreness, and a recent episode featured one of the most disgusting things I’ve seen in a while. Check it out below.
It’s almost a shame that there was no sound on this video, which first hit YouTube before going viral across social media, but then we would have actually gotten to experience this bit of yuckiness with our ears as well as our eyes. That might have been too much. It was already too much. This whole courtroom is too much!
Premiering in 2008, AKBingo! features the girl group AKB48 as its contestants, and since there are currently around 140 of them, there’s not much limitation as to what can be done. Each episode involves an activity that some of the members go through, such as dodgeball, and the losers have to compete in some kind of an unenviable challenge. In this case: trying to blow a dead cicada into the mouth of another person. That may sound like just another Saturday night to some of you, but I’m pretty sure my involvement in this would have ended in giant Family Guy streams of vomit covering the stage.
For only 12 seconds, this video contains a wealth of emotional responses. First, instant revulsion as soon as it’s understood what’s happening. (The revulsion remains steady throughout.) Then, there’s a willingness to allow both of the girls to “lose” the game by having the plastic tube break apart and the insect falling to the ground. Then, there was disgusted hilarity as the one girl successfully blew the cicada into the other’s mouth and apparently all the way down her throat. And for the rest of my life, there will be abject fear of waking up from a dead sleep and finding myself in the middle of this game, with a world-renowned tuba player as my opponent.
I guess the only way to make this game show any weirder is by adding handjobs and karaoke to the mix. But seriously, don’t do that, Japan. However, I’m not entirely against the idea of a human slip-n-slide.
You can find tons of AKBingo! episodes online, as well as episodes of the Chinese version SNHello and the Indonesian version IClub48. I mean, if you want to, that is. You might just want to lay back and relax with a nice Fear Factor marathon.
