The Contestant

Countless folk have made waves telling the story of Nasubi, all hitting basically the same emotional beats and tone of righteous indignation. “The Contestant” tops all these tellings not just by having impressive production values (whoever digitally erased the Japanese text on the archival footage and inserted English text better have been paid damn well) but by also letting Nasubi himself speak on his experience and his life afterwards. There’s a good twenty minutes of movie left that covers what happened after the show, mere footnotes in past recountings but arguably the most affecting part of this film. Highly recommended.

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