My Review of "American Ninja Warrior: Season 13 (2021)"

American Ninja Warrior: Season 13 (2021) is the latest ANW season and boy was it a doozy. There were a number of new faces and tons of familiar faces. That goes the same with all of the obstacles that they placed for our competitors. It was so nice to have this show back with an audience. Little things like this makes me feel a little normal again after this whole pandemic.

This latest season started with a big doozy of a twist. They lowered the age limit for competitors to enter the gauntlet of obstacles. Usually you would think that it would be an unfair advantage for the seasoned veteran competitors but this wasn't the case this season.

The age limit is now reduced to 15 and now you're seeing some really young kids running the course. A lot of them came conditioned from the American Ninja Warrior Junior competitions. That goes to show that a lot of these new rookies technically aren't really rookies as they've experienced difficult courses in the past.

I'm a bit conflicted with this new change as it seems like a lot of the kids were able to breeze by a lot of the new obstacles like they were nothing. Meanwhile some of our veteran contestants are having difficulty keeping up with some of these youngsters.

I really like that these kids are so physically fit and ready to tackle these courses. It's really amazing to see what they can do. Although they're technically rookies they almost seemed like seasoned veterans.

The bad side of the new change is that it almost makes this into a professional sport now. In some people's perspectives this is a great thing. If you think about it, it was eventually going to happen. This show is on it's 13th season. There's going to be new competitors to take over the reigns as the go to superstars.

I think it's a bad thing because back in the day you would root for these average Joes or Janes of the competition. They had great stories and amazing determination but starting at such an older stage in your life is no comparison to some of these crazy kids. So we'll probably see a lot less of these older stars that we used to root for in the past. At least we'll still see some of them in the audition stages but we're not really going to expect them to make it.

Each year they are making these courses increasingly difficult. It's crazy how some of the obstacles that used to cause a lot of issues in previous seasons are no problem for the competitors nowadays. Obviously, they're probably going to retire them for newer more taxing obstacles as the show doesn't want to give out that one million dollar prize.

A lot of the teens became breakout stars this year. One of them even makes it to the fourth stage and almost took home the million dollar prize and named American Ninja Warrior. This was his rookie year too!

Watching the show this year I started to notice that a lot of the obstacles were pretty well balanced. The divide between women and men in the show is declining. We have superstars like Jesse "Flex" Labreck (who is probably the best female competitor) dominating the obstacles this year. A lot of the competitors weren't overly muscular or super tall either.

They balanced the obstacles to give an advantage to a tall person then another for a short person. Your size will eventually become an advantage for you but you have to get to those obstacles.

I also noticed that all of the competitors in the show barely practiced any balance or steadiness obstacles. They continually passed up a lot of balance obstacles when it came to the new choose your own adventure obstacles. These competitors better watch out. The producers of this show don't wan to shell out the cash prizes so if they know those are the obstacles you aren't good at... Guess what? They're going to make more of them to throw you off.

Overall, this season was a blast. There was fresh new blood in the mix as well as new twists and obstacles that kept us on our feet. The fact that there was an audience and more people at the competition made it feel just a little more normal. I have to give this season an 8 out of 10. I can't wait until next year. Who knows what they will have in store for us?