Documental (2016)

Matsumoto Hitoshi is hands down my favorite comedian so when I saw that he had his own show outside of Downtown/ Gaki no Tsukai I was excited for it. He takes his craft very seriously and that is the reason why I personally find his comedy just so much fun. I am never disappointed with what he does so I was excited for this...
Unfortunately, although this is his show, he's not the actual star of it so that means the comedy, though funny at times, was not really all that great. There were some comedians I was familiar with like Onishi Jimmy and Kukky but a bunch of new folks as well.
In the end it fell flat with me because some of the jokes were either boring/ dumb or straight up vulgar; makes sense as to how it ended the way it did. Either way though I will be watching the subsequent newer seasons.

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I had never watched anything like this before! I have seen a few stand-up comedians from Asian countries on Netflix but none were Japanese, so I am very unfamiliar with Japanese comedy... it was not what I was expecting!
So the basic premise is that 10 comedians are locked in a room together for 6 hours and they have to make the others laugh while not laughing themselves. Not being familiar with Japanese comedy, I didn't know any of the comedians, but being comedians most of them were quite likeable and by the end, I did have a couple of favourites (Jimmy and Fujimoto). It wasn't actually as funny as I thought it might be; I think Japanese humour is very different from what I'm used to and most of the comedians knew each other so they knew each others acts so there was kind of a shorthand in communication between them all which made understanding all of the jokes slightly difficult for me. It does get a bit rude, which I really wasn't expecting ("analympics" anyone?). SPOILER: if you don't want to see full-on male nudity (pixelated), don't watch!
While some of the jokes went totally over my head, I did find myself laughing out loud, it's the silly things that are actually the funniest - just seeing the comedians break down/crack up was funny. Overall funny show (although it really pointed out some cultural differences to me) with a good concept, I'm not sure what the second season will be like, it might become very repetitive but I'm willing to give it a go.

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