ゴロミの部屋第4回 Goromi no Heya: The End of Mentore G :(

October 4, 2008 by Goromi

So, I need to apologize to KNDY and whoever else actually read my blog. September was a very busy month for me it seems. I started a second job at the Sanrio Store, which took up a lot of my time and then I’ve spent the last week sick. It appears I might finally be recovering from that -_-;. I apologize for any inconvenience.

Last week when I went to rent DVDs at the Japanese video rental, I was shocked to see that the latest Mentore G DVD said “終” on it. That character means “end”. I know I had been a little bit out of the loop with keeping up with my JE Blogs and News sites but I had no idea it was going to end! I just watched the last episode yesterday, and I must say it was a very non climactic ending. Eight years or so years on the air, and not even a 2 hour special, just a 1 hour episode with Kokubun’s top 20 picks out of Mentore restaurant and the wrap up of their Global project, that they just started airing. I think that was one of the biggest reasons I was surprised that it was ending. They just started the Mentore G Global Project thingie and it already ended…

Sadly after doing a little more research, it seems the show finally ended because of the drop in ratings since 2008. Last year, Mentore G went from being a late night 30 minute program to a full hour program during “Golden Time” (pretty much primetime). At first, the full hour show was doing great in my opinion… but then the “Yonjatta” segment they started doing was a real hit and miss with me. I really missed the “Gakuya Houmon” segment where they would show the guest’s belongings. Then they started the “Tokio Garage” segment recently and that was tons of fun but once again, short lived since the show ended. It seems that giving Mentore G a Golden Time timeslot, it pretty much ended up killing the show.

They still had a lot of great guests and their guest talks were still a lot of fun and of course, Mentore Restaurant was still fun as ever… but apparently it wasn’t enough to keep the show alive. I had been regularly watching that show religiously for the past 2+ years so it’s really sad for me. TOKIO is super fun when they’re all together doing a show. I read a rumor that there will be a new show starting instead so I’m hoping that’s true.

Thankfully, SMAPXSMAP and Tetsuwan DASH! Are both running strong even after over 12 years of being on the air. Two of my regular shows are still going strong ^_^