Jeopardy – SoraNews24 —Japan News— https://soranews24.com Bringing you yesterday's news from Japan and Asia, today. Wed, 24 Sep 2025 05:00:28 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=7.1.4 https://soranews24.com/wp-content/uploads/sites/3/2020/05/en_rocket_1024.png?w=32 Jeopardy – SoraNews24 —Japan News— https://soranews24.com 32 32 176746664 Jeopardy question about Demon Slayer shows how far anime has and hasn’t come in the U.S.【Video】 https://soranews24.com/2025/09/24/jeopardy-question-about-demon-slayer-shows-how-far-anime-has-and-hasnt-come-in-the-u-s-%e3%80%90video%e3%80%91/ https://soranews24.com/2025/09/24/jeopardy-question-about-demon-slayer-shows-how-far-anime-has-and-hasnt-come-in-the-u-s-%e3%80%90video%e3%80%91/#comments Wed, 24 Sep 2025 05:00:10 +0000 https://soranews24.com/?p=713120

Bare-minimum otaku knowledge could have scored contestants US$2,000.

American game show Jeopardy has always quizzed contestants on a wide variety of subjects, from science and history to literature and “Potent Potables” (which is a much classier category name than “Stuff That’ll Get Ya Drunk!”). Jeopardy even mixes in questions about pop culture, and sometimes those questions are about anime, such as on the episode that aired September 12.

As seen in the clip below which was recently posted to the Jeopardy official YouTube channel, the players were given a prompt that simultaneously shows how immensely popular anime has become overseas, and also that it’s a medium that, in some ways, can still be considered a niche outside its home country. After the player in control of the board selected a category and dollar-prize amount, host Ken Jennings read:

“Films based on this anime series include Mugen Train and now one with Tanjiro facing foes at ‘the Infinity Castle.’”

Now, for anyone even remotely keeping up with the current anime scene, the answer is a slam dunk (though no, not Slam Dunk). The correct response to the prompt, phrased in the form of a question as per Jeopardy’s trademark gimmick, is “What is Demon Slayer?”

In addition to mentioning protagonist Tanjiro by name, the prompt gives the subtitles of both Demon Slayer/Kimetsu no Yaiba movies, 2020’s Mugen Train and this year’s Infinity Castle, which premiered in Japan in July and opened in U.S. theaters on the same day that the Jeopardy episode aired (though presumably the episode was recorded on an earlier date). The phenomenally popular Mugen Train is the highest-grossing film of all time in Japan, surpassing not just celebrated Studio Ghibli anime films like Spirited Away but also live-action Hollywood blockbusters such as Titanic. Infinity Castle, meanwhile, is currently the second-highest grossing film in Japan.

And yet, not a single one of the contestants buzzed in with the correct response. Looking at their responses, there’s not even a flicker of partial recognition, with two contestants standing statue-still, and the other going so far as to shake his head, signaling to the camera pointed at him that there’s not going to be anything for the audience to see from him. Making the moment even more teeth-gnashingly frustrating for anime fans is that there was a significant amount of money riding on this, as the Demon Slayer question was worth US$2,000, the highest possible amount for a standard question under Jeopardy’s current format.

So between the big-money amount and no one being able to make so much as a guess, is this a sign that anime is still an obscure backwater of the U.S. entertainment landscape? Not necessarily. While the three individuals competing on the episode didn’t recognize Demon Slayer, it’s interesting that the question didn’t come as part of a category on anime specifically, nor was it slotted under the topics of foreign cinema or cartoons. Instead, the Demon Slayer question was part of a category simply titled “Movie Sequels,” implying that, at least in the eyes of Jeopardy’s writers/producers, anime is now big enough in the U.S. to be something that they expect movie buffs in general to have a degree of knowledge about, even if they’re not focused fans of Japanese animation.

With that in mind, this probably won’t be the last time questions about anime or manga pop up in unexpected places on Jeopardy, and maybe next time the Demon Slayer prompt will be “As the heroes battled demons on-screen, real-life violence broke out at the screening of this anime movie because somebody started peeing in theater.”

Source: YouTube/Jeopardy! via Anime News Network/Ken Iikura-Gross
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]]> https://soranews24.com/2025/09/24/jeopardy-question-about-demon-slayer-shows-how-far-anime-has-and-hasnt-come-in-the-u-s-%e3%80%90video%e3%80%91/feed/ 0 713120 ds 1 Jeopardy’s Pokémon category is freakishly easy, poses no threat to true fans【Video】 https://soranews24.com/2019/12/12/jeopardys-pokemon-category-is-freakishly-easy-poses-no-threat-to-true-fans%e3%80%90video%e3%80%91/ https://soranews24.com/2019/12/12/jeopardys-pokemon-category-is-freakishly-easy-poses-no-threat-to-true-fans%e3%80%90video%e3%80%91/#comments Thu, 12 Dec 2019 05:00:55 +0000 http://soranews24.com/?p=479112

Do you know the name of the Pokémon anime’s main character? Congratulations! Here’s a thousand dollars!

Society seems to be pretty much in agreement that Jeopardy is the smart person’s game show. No spinning wheels, melodramatic spotlights or other gimmicks. Just questions in the form of answers and answers in the form of questions, with the whole thing presided over by Alex Trebek, the illustrated example in most people’s mental dictionaries’ entry for “intelligence.”

But Jeopardy’s recent attempt to throw players a curve ball had all the difficulty of slow-pitch softball, at least if you happen to be even a moderate fan of the Pokémon franchise.

While Jeopardy occasionally mixes pop-culture categories into its question mix, as far as we know this is the first time it’s focused on a singular anime/video game franchise, and it’s pretty clear the producers weren’t sure how well contestants, or viewers, would handle the “challenge.” The panel of players seemed plenty intimidated, only daring to venture into the Pokémon category after they’d exhausted every other question on the board, presumably having already answered difficult questions relating to science, history, and world events. As a matter of fact, the contestants put off the category for so long that they didn’t even have time to get to the $1,000 block.

The answers (questions) are in the video above, but the prompts were:
● $200: Pikachu, the most iconic Pokémon character, has shown up as a 50-foot balloon in this annual U.S. parade.
● $400: In the franchise’s 20th anniversary in 2016, this in-the-real-world version was released—“Gotta catch ‘em all!”
● $600: The process of a Pokémon turning into another is known as this, like plants and animals adapting and changing over long periods.
● $800: Like a person who prepares horses for racing, it’s someone who captures Pokémon and readies and directs them in battles.
● $1,000: This anime character picked Pikachu as his Pokémon in the TV show’s first episode and they soon became best friends.

Not exactly a grueling gauntlet of Poké-facts, is it? The $400 and $600 prompts are as much about grade-school-level English vocabulary as they are Pokémon, and the $200 one is an extremely easy guess too, considering there’s exactly one noteworthy annual parade in the U.S. that features giant balloons. Factor in that the $400 prompt is related to a global social phenomena, and really the only one that requires any direct Pokémon knowledge is the $1,000 capper, which requires you to have maybe watched the first few minutes of the first episode of the anime (or, really a few minutes of any episode of the anime).

For their part, the contestants had no trouble once they were left with no choice but to brave the category, answering with aplomb even as some of them, and Trebek, referred to the series as “Pokey-mon.”

In all fairness, Jeopardy is first and foremost a mainstream quiz show, not an otaku trivia arena, you really can’t blame the producers for erring on the side of caution in not wanting to completely stump the in-studio contestants and baffle those playing along at home. The recognition is also a feather in the cap for Pokémon all the same, though now that Jeopardy has gotten the basic questions out of the way, maybe if the category makes a repeat appearance in the future they can ask slightly trickier questions like “This Pokémon is the only one regularly cooked and eaten in the city of Yokohama,” or “A life-size version of this Pokémon greets visitors at the only Pokémon Center that sells the limited-edition graffiti Pikachu.”

Source: YouTube/Jeopardy! via Kotaku
Top image: YouTube/Jeopardy!
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