Why This Topic Landed in Japan

Fuji TV has been under sustained criticism through 2026 over a separate scandal, and this backlash travelled along that existing current. The clips came from Mechaike, a variety show whose sketches ran from the 1990s into the 2000s, and the framing that reached Japanese threads was that overseas viewers had found them and were passing judgement. That framing maps onto an argument Japanese forums have been running for years about applying present standards to past work, so the discussion became less about the sketches than about retroactive judgement itself. The critics being foreign sharpened that. The originating post dates to 28 August, another followed, and by 30 August short reactions from overseas accounts were being quoted alongside them. Who those critics were, and how widely the clips actually spread, is not established, and the words "overseas fans" and "the whole world" rest on no count.

Key Reaction Themes

  • Most of the posts argued that the sketches were being judged after the fact, without their context — The bit parodied an out-of-date Showa father figure rather than celebrating violence, and measuring the past with today's ruler was called the basic error the critics were making.
  • The next largest block was cold about the television industry itself — Surprise that the violence had been laid out in a detailed script, paired with the view that the industry has not changed since.
  • A smaller group agreed with the criticism — Somebody was actually hit for the sake of a laugh, and that does not become defensible because it was scripted.
  • Some posts left the show behind and went after Fuji TV's finances and other scandals — The backlash read to them as an opening rather than a subject.
  • Pushback aimed at the foreign critics themselves formed a large share of the material — Much of it was written as ethnic abuse.

What Japanese Netizens Are Saying

Old sketch clips spread on X and draw criticism from abroad

Footage from sketches broadcast between the 1990s and 2000s circulated and drew objections over its violence.

Comments:

  • "I think it was a good era precisely because there was no political correctness. Look how dull variety shows are now — nobody puts their body on the line."
  • "Back then they weren't making violence the joke either — the joke was the anachronistic Showa father figure. Most of the people attacking it can't grasp that structure."
  • "Measuring the past with the ruler of today's values is the height of foolishness, and why they can't see that..."
  • "Oh really — if the past was that abnormal, then the present is normal, so we've got no complaints about today's society at all." [Translator's note: sarcastic.]
  • "The frightening part is that a script existed with every detail written into it."
  • "Television people have always been lunatics, then and now. Well, Hatoyama said they should keep apologising for life, so good luck to them lol"
  • "The Showa era did anything for ratings; the Reiwa era does anything to go viral."
  • "There are machines abroad too where only women take part and get spun around, streamed on YouTube. This was a sketch without a tight script. Sooner or later they'll be complaining about comedians' slapping tsukkomi as well."
  • "What would satisfy the people setting fire to this now? Fuji TV going under?"
  • "This is retroactive law, plain and simple."