My Review of "American Ninja Warrior: Season 15 (2023)"

American Ninja Warrior: Season 15 (2023) has recently finished. We now have a brand new American Ninja Warrior with Vance Walker! This is one of the most energetic and exciting seasons yet! There are a lot of new faces but that also means unfortunately some of the old faces are starting to disappear.

I kind of miss the old walk on try outs for the show. Though, I understand why they decided to get rid of it. In previous seasons there was justification due to the pandemic and the logistics behind having walk ons come onto the show. This year it just feels like the level of competition is so high that we just can't have walk on people anymore.

Maybe there should be a separate show for walk on people, just so that they can survive to make it to the regular show for a different season. I liked the old wacky stories and the David versus Goliath situations. Nowadays it feels like everyone is pretty much a superhero.

Though the new kids show that they worked their butts off to get to where they are now. It almost feels like the Olympics where if you didn't start young there's no chance for you to make it into the regular show now. The level of competitors is so crazy high. There are older obstacles that the new teenage competitors make look like child's play. I remember seeing older competitors struggle on them and this new generation is making mince meat out of them.

We have our older veterans that are starting to show their age and some of them are even announcing their retirement on the show. It's crazy because they've only been on a few seasons too. Props to Joe Moravsky for being able to be so consistent throughout the years and still making it to the finals.

Speaking of the finals I am loving the new format that they have. The show has been constantly been tweaking and changing things to make things better and better. They added the safety badge a few seasons ago and this year they added the one on one competition. I love how they have to strategize being super fast or be methodical for all of the obstacles. Being fast does have its downfalls and that's not being careful. We can see a ton of people falling because of a misstep from going too fast.

I'm also starting to get to know a lot of the new competitors. This show has always felt like a community and sort of like a second family. Each year we hear about their lives and what's been going on. There's a connection with all of them and I'm glad they're able to portray that to us the audience.

I know I mentioned that the competitors are at a higher level but there's a little thing inside my head that made me think that they made stage 3 a little easier so that there would be more people to get to stage 4. This year there were 8 competitors. Still only 2 people made it up and we can see how treacherous the obstacle really is. I had a feeling Vance Walker was going to make it though. That guy had Ninja Warrior written all over his face from the first time he showed up on the regular show. I think everyone in the audience knew he was a favorite to win the whole thing. I'm just curious if he's going to show up for the next season since the other 2 Ninjas never came back.

Overall, I really had a great time with this season. I loved all of the new additions that they did especially for the finals. It made for a really fun and exciting time. I'm really starting to warm up to the next generation of ninjas but I'm really sad to see a lot of the old familiar faces go. I have to give this season an 8.5 out of 10. Really great season and I hope they continue to keep up the great work!