Featured Image Credit: Hulu
Topics: TV and Film, TV, Weird
Anish Vij
If you thought Takeshi's Castle was a wild show, then you ain't seen nothing yet.
Viewers have been left stunned after discovering the 'most evil' reality show ever, which has now been explored in a new Hulu film.
The Contestant follows the true story of a Japanese man who was left naked in a room for almost a year as millions of viewers watched his every move.
Since it aired, the game show has been dubbed the 'real life The Truman Show' - a the film that sees Jim Carey's character unknowingly star in a massive reality TV show as a live broadcast of Truman's every move is captured by hidden cameras.
Susunu! Denpa Shonen (translated as 'Do Not Proceed! Crazy Youth') aired from 1998 to 2002 on the Nippon TV network.
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The Japanese gameshow starred comedian Tomoaki Hamatsu, also known as Nasubi, who was 24 at the time.
He was naked on air the entire time and as many as 15 million viewers would watch on.
In English, Nasubi means eggplant, which was an animation used to hide his ding dong - so you can guess where the emoji got its meaning from.
The gameshow began by kidnapping Hamatsu, stripping him down and thrusting him into a small apartment with just a bathroom and foodless kitchen.
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The whole point of the show was to test how long he could last in such horrifying conditions, and it's incredible how the producers got away with it.
All Hamatsu had access to, entertainment wise, was a load of magazines with sweepstakes in them.
He was challenged to use these sweepstakes to raise ¥1 million (approximately $6,500) to win food for himself, which is what he survived on.
But sometimes, the 'food' he won was actually dog food and dried rice.
Now, Nasubi previously explained on the podcast This American Life that the door to the apartment wasn't locked during the show, but he would have 'had to go outside naked and ask for help' if he wanted to leave.
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Conditions were so horrible that he once had to go 10 months before 'winning' toilet paper.
Now aged 48, he explained: "Tsuchiya was a very famous producer. I felt honored to have gotten picked. He, to me, was like a person in the sky.
"I had admiration for him. But that changed. He became evil. My respect eventually turned to anger.
"I did not want to be naked. I told him that a million times. But he insisted. I did it. Then I told him that I did not what to be broadcasted."
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Nasubi was in that same room for a staggering 335 days.
Taking to X, one viewer wrote: "Watched The Contestant and can’t believe something this deceptive and cruel was allowed. He was completely humiliated for trash reality TV."
"I’m horrified by all of this… this isn’t fun or funny…" another shared, while someone else said: "That producer is evil."
The Contestant is available to stream on Hulu now.