When I was little, I dreamed of building a Takeshi Castle theme park. What Alberto de Celis did not imagine then was that at 27, instead of dying as rock stars usually do, he would become the protagonist of his favorite show.
An aerospace engineer from San Fernando, Cádiz, and a resident of Nagoya, a little over four hours by car from Tokyo, he jokes over a video call with his real objective when embarking on this lysergic adventure sponsored by Prime Video: «It is very good as training for be astronaut. They are flight hours, they validate some subject and everything ».
When the rumor reached him that they were going to record a new edition of the crazy contest devised by Takeshi Kitano, he thought it was a joke. But he did a quick search and there was the form: “I had to sign up, I was born for this.” The shooting lasted three days, from Saturday to Monday. He asked for the day off from work and traveled to Yokohama accompanied by his partner and his roommate. Not before reviewing old programs as if for an exam: “Here, training is useless, there were Ninja Warrior participants who did worse than me.”
The Cádiz-born Alberto was looking for adventure and found it, even more than he expected. “All the tests are based on the originals, but they are leveled up,” he says, “before, the pool for the zamburguesas was tiny, this one is very long and has more stones, it is practically impossible. In my group we were 60 and no one managed to reach the other side.
The group in question deserves a stop, because apart from the hilarious beatings, the magic of the program lies in the high level of surrealism of its participants. «They suggest that you go in disguise. We were discreet, dressed in a happi, a kind of jacket that is widely worn at Japanese festivals.
Around them, half-naked men, a mascot with an uncomfortable felt costume and even a comedian, Mr. Cherry Yoshitake, famous for breaking Guinness delirious records. For example, cracking nuts with his ass: “he gave us a live demonstration,” Alberto recalls. From there he took many new friends, the hosts unite a lot: “Every time one was going to take a test, everyone: ‘Come on, quillo, come on, you can do it!'”, and he translates it into Japanese with much less ornaments: “Ganbare!”
The new Takeshi Castle compensates for its difficulty with three play-off possibilities, which in the Spanish dubbing have been dubbed El coche escoba. Alberto resorted to all three, but his balance was not bad. “I stayed two rounds from the final,” he says, “but this is above all a matter of luck. You go ahead and see what comes out ».
According to the criteria of The Trust Project