Bare-minimum otaku knowledge could have scored contestants US$2,000.
American game show Jeopardy has always quizzed contestants on a wide variety of subjects, from science and history to literature and “Potent Potables” (which is a much classier category name than “Stuff That’ll Get Ya Drunk!”). Jeopardy even mixes in questions about pop culture, and sometimes those questions are about anime, such as on the episode that aired September 12.
As seen in the clip below which was recently posted to the Jeopardy official YouTube channel, the players were given a prompt that simultaneously shows how immensely popular anime has become overseas, and also that it’s a medium that, in some ways, can still be considered a niche outside its home country. After the player in control of the board selected a category and dollar-prize amount, host Ken Jennings read:
“Films based on this anime series include Mugen Train and now one with Tanjiro facing foes at ‘the Infinity Castle.’”
Now, for anyone even remotely keeping up with the current anime scene, the answer is a slam dunk (though no, not Slam Dunk). The correct response to the prompt, phrased in the form of a question as per Jeopardy’s trademark gimmick, is “What is Demon Slayer?”
In addition to mentioning protagonist Tanjiro by name, the prompt gives the subtitles of both Demon Slayer/Kimetsu no Yaiba movies, 2020’s Mugen Train and this year’s Infinity Castle, which premiered in Japan in July and opened in U.S. theaters on the same day that the Jeopardy episode aired (though presumably the episode was recorded on an earlier date). The phenomenally popular Mugen Train is the highest-grossing film of all time in Japan, surpassing not just celebrated Studio Ghibli anime films like Spirited Away but also live-action Hollywood blockbusters such as Titanic. Infinity Castle, meanwhile, is currently the second-highest grossing film in Japan.
And yet, not a single one of the contestants buzzed in with the correct response. Looking at their responses, there’s not even a flicker of partial recognition, with two contestants standing statue-still, and the other going so far as to shake his head, signaling to the camera pointed at him that there’s not going to be anything for the audience to see from him. Making the moment even more teeth-gnashingly frustrating for anime fans is that there was a significant amount of money riding on this, as the Demon Slayer question was worth US$2,000, the highest possible amount for a standard question under Jeopardy’s current format.
So between the big-money amount and no one being able to make so much as a guess, is this a sign that anime is still an obscure backwater of the U.S. entertainment landscape? Not necessarily. While the three individuals competing on the episode didn’t recognize Demon Slayer, it’s interesting that the question didn’t come as part of a category on anime specifically, nor was it slotted under the topics of foreign cinema or cartoons. Instead, the Demon Slayer question was part of a category simply titled “Movie Sequels,” implying that, at least in the eyes of Jeopardy’s writers/producers, anime is now big enough in the U.S. to be something that they expect movie buffs in general to have a degree of knowledge about, even if they’re not focused fans of Japanese animation.
With that in mind, this probably won’t be the last time questions about anime or manga pop up in unexpected places on Jeopardy, and maybe next time the Demon Slayer prompt will be “As the heroes battled demons on-screen, real-life violence broke out at the screening of this anime movie because somebody started peeing in theater.”
Source: YouTube/Jeopardy! via Anime News Network/Ken Iikura-Gross
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