KASSO is a Japanese skateboarding gameshow. It is produced by Tokyo Broadcasting System and filmed at Midoriyama Studio City, like many TBS shows such as Takeshi's Castle, SASUKE and KUNOICHI. The show has been officially marketed as the skateboarding version of SASUKE. The show's origin can be derived from both SASUKE and the Skateboarder event in Kinniku Banzuke.
In each episode, professional skateboarders compete in a multi-stage course to achieve Kanzenseiha. There is a ¥1,000,000 prize money for each winner.
History[]
The show's concept can be traced back to the Skateboarder event in Kinniku Banzuke.
As mentioned, the gigantic set was built at Midoriyama Studio. The name of the show can be derived from the kanji (滑走) of the same pronunciation. Additionally, the illustrations scattered throughout the set were drawn specifically for the show by ESOW, a pioneer of Japanese skateboarding culture. On March 11, 2024, it was reported that the artist WILYWNKA would be in charge of the main theme song of the show, "PUSH 'N' PUSH", which was released digitally on March 20.[1]
The show was planned with a strong digital campaign focused on the show's social networks, especially its official YouTube channel. Promotion of the channel began a couple of weeks before the premiere. Videos were uploaded on various KASSO's official social networks introducing some competitors and also calling for those who want to participate in future editions.
The first 2 episodes, which together form the first competition, premiered on March 18th and 25th, respectively, at 11:56pm JST. After the premiere of the second episode, TBS published a recap of the two episodes with English subtitles on KASSO's YouTube channel, which gave it an enormous boost in popularity with more than 3M views in less than a month. Due to the show's success, the first 2 episodes were released in full on KASSO's YouTube channel with English subtitles on May 11 and May 12, 2024. Shortly after, TBS announced that two more episodes were being produced and would be released sometime after the 2024 Paris Olympics Games.
The next 2 episodes were released on October 7th and 14th at 11:56pm JST with a time slot of approximately one hour. These broadcasted the second KASSO tournament, which featured multiple new obstacles, major stage redesigns, crowd attendance and new competitors, including the debut of foreigners and female contestants. Both episodes were broadcast in a 24-hour loop live on YouTube with English subtitles, a week behind the premiere date. Also, as with episodes 1 and 2, TBS posted highlights of episodes 3 and 4 on YouTube on December 16, 2024, announcing that they would later upload both episodes in full with English subtitles, something that happened on March 9th.
Similar to Kinniku Banzuke, SASUKE and KUNOICHI, an edited version of KASSO II, called Kasso 2024 was later aired in Red Bull TV on January 23rd, 2025, with Tim Warwood, Margie Didal and Madars Apse as the three English announcers of this tournament.
KASSO III, split into episodes 5 and 6 in turn, would premiere on March 16th and 17th 2025, once again featuring a revamp. New obstacles were added to Midoriyama Downhill, the second stage's Rail Coaster recieved a modification, and a new penultimate stage was introduced replacing Tokyo Upside-Down. This iteration featured an abundance of international competitors from the US and Canada.