Some Thoughts on the Machine Guns Whirlwind and "Idol Comedian" Manzai After THE SECOND ①

[Aside] The circumstances leading up to watching THE SECOND

The catalyst was the manager of a bar, or rather, a former junior of mine who is close to us as a fan.
Regarding "THE SECOND," a manzai award competition for comedians with 16 or more years of experience, my general level of interest was just following the names of the comedians who advanced. That was the case with Sanboushi, who dropped out at the selection stage, and once Ranjatai was defeated in the 16 to 8 round,honestly, I had almost lost interest in this award competition.

I think it was probably the day before or two days before the final tournament.
While we were chatting idly about comedy that day,
"I really want Machine Guns to win THE SECOND," I said while looking at the finalists.

No matter what comedy fan I met, he was the only one who said, "THE SECOND is all about Machine Guns."

That day, while tilting my beer, I thought vaguely in my heart,
"I see, so it's Machine Guns, huh."

Even after the tournament, he was consistently overjoyed with Machine Guns' results. He spoke with such excitement, saying, "You have to watch the whole thing without skipping, because even the time outside of the skits was fun! It's the first award competition I've watched without skipping a single second!"

I hadn't watched it live, and my level of enthusiasm was just, "I'll watch the finals slowly when I have some free time," but I thought, "If he says that much, I should watch it sooner."
And so, it landed in a direction I never expected.

Machine Guns was the THE SECOND tournament itself

From the previous story, it is true that I had a filter on.
That said, when it comes to Machine Guns, they were known for their short-tempered manzai and foul language, so I didn't have a good impression of them to begin with.
All I remember is their double-tsukkomi style from their heyday on shows like Enta no Kamisama and Red Carpet. That pose where they both get angry and raise their arms at the same time—that was about it.

And I couldn't predict their manzai better than any other comedian. Unlike Yoshimoto comedians, they didn't appear on live shows much, and I didn't know their current state. Perhaps my expectations were naturally low because I was honestly "ignorant" about them.

The manzai of the now-middle-aged Machine Guns had changed from "complaints of short-tempered, energetic youths" to"the laments of middle-aged men drifting with sorrow."Especially Nishibori-san. I also felt that I had become an adult myself. It was incredibly funny. I felt that even their self-deprecating humor back then didn't have this much tragic laughter.

Above all,I felt that the style of Machine Guns was a perfect match for THE SECOND, a tournament that also had experimental elements in its first year.I felt that.
What kind of tournament would it be, how would the tournament matches play out—the viewers, the audience who were the judges, the staff, and the performing comedians themselves, no one knew the full picture, and I felt that excitement even as someone watching a recording where I already knew all the results.

It was as if Machine Guns were meta-cognitively, honestly, straightforwardly, and self-deprecatingly speaking for the state of mind of everyone who was nervous, wondering, "What's going to happen?" As Saraba's Morita-san also said, it was a handling that could only be achieved because of their style of tuning in midway through by reading the room.
Somehow, that felt very comfortable. While the other seven groups were all undoubtedly comedians, only Machine Guns felt a little closer to us (the audience).Their position was between the stage and the audience seats.

Especially in the third final match, which completely broke through the realm of a skit, Nishibori-san's"Let us win"was no longer a skit or anything, but just the lament of a helpless middle-aged man.
I applauded their desperate determination to get a "laugh" even if it meant throwing away their pride, with no skit left. They were completely raw soldiers.
"If it's not us, we're dead."
Nishibori-san continued. I really thought that was true.
However, they were already something different from comedians who risk their lives for a skit.

What we must not forget is that the premise of the program is to decide the funniest manzai performer, and it is not to get a "laugh" by any means necessary.
If you go by whether it was a work (skit) that was polished over and over again, or a performance that created empathy with the atmosphere of the venue, the judging criteria were still the skits after all.
I felt that Gallop was definitely the winner in the end.

The thing I watched wasn't an idol audition, but a comedian's award competition, right?

By the time I watched THE SECOND, Takizawa-san had already been trending on Twitter for "visual explosion" and "having a good face," and had been celebrated for a while.

For THE SECOND, I had expected excitement like when Nishikigoi won M-1,"a moving breakthrough where long-career middle-aged men get results in an award competition and become popular,"but the commotion surrounding the runner-up, Machine Guns, was in a league of its own, starting with the "Takizawa-san" uproar. It was already
a way of making a fuss as if to say, "An up-and-coming idol has appeared like a comet!"Wait, everyone was watching a tournament where comedians with over 16 years of experience, mostly over 40, perform manzai, right? Is that really right? Was the ambassador J.Y. Park by any chance?

I don't really know the reason why Takizawa-san suddenly went viral, but I was somewhat convinced by the speculation made by Hanawa-san on Knights' The Radio Show: "(The reason Takizawa, who had no popularity in his later years, suddenly started being called cool after THE SECOND is)maybe because the others were too middle-aged."Is it the feeling that you were looking for middle-aged men at a tournament for middle-aged men, and found a handsome guy? Source: Nippon Broadcasting System "Knights The Radio Show" 6/21 (Wed) 15:00-15:20 broadcast

And if this were just a buzz among geeks, the topic would have disappeared in an instant, like, "Takizawa-san, it's like the excitement after Moguraider Shiba-san's M-1 the year before last!" or "I wonder if we'll be able to see Machine Guns on TV from now on!"This next development is where Machine Guns was a little different from other comedians.

EspeciallyTakizawa-san (or rather, the whole family) was a go-getter. He wasn't the type of person to let this once-in-a-lifetime big wave end with just "going viral."

To be continued to ②

I borrowed the photo