The American embrace of full-contact Japanese game shows — from reconditioned originals like the former “MXC” on Spike to clones like “Wipeout” on ABC — has to do with the appeal of bright colors, spectacular crashes and other people’s embarrassment and discomfort. And, of course, the pleasure of rooting for a winner: After all the carnage, someone is crowned champion.

On “American Ninja Warrior” — in which Americans compete for a chance to travel to Yokohama to take on the brutal obstacle course of the semiannual Japanese televised competition “Sasuke” — has one distinctive, addictive premise: nobody wins.

Almost nobody, that is. In 26 previous “Sasuke” shows, dating to 1997, each including 100 mostly Japanese competitors, only three men have successfully completed the obstacle course: one in 1999, one in 2006 and one in 2010. (Reflecting the democratic nature of the truly rigorous competition, which attracts celebrities as well as a variety of professional athletes, the three winners, all Japanese, have been a crabber, a fisherman and a shoe salesman.) Out of 2,600 total competitors, only 22, none of them American, have made it to the course’s fourth and final stage; 90 percent are eliminated in the first stage.

What happens, typically, is that a handful of men make it to the third round — six out of 100 in the most recent competition, in January — and then meekly succumb, losing their grip on the spinning Doorknob Grasper or the painfully thin ledges of the Ultimate Cliff Hanger and splashing into the water below. Congratulations are handed out, some hearty banzais uttered, and then everyone heads home to prepare for the next nearly hopeless competition six months hence.

But this is not the American way, and a few years ago, G4 set out to do something about it. With broadcasts of the original Japanese “Sasuke” (dubbed and retitled “Ninja Warrior”) ranking among its most highly rated shows, it decided to create the “American Ninja Warrior” series, in which 300 candidates go through a preliminary competition as well as rounds of obstacle-course training in California. From them, a team of 10 Americans is selected to join the 100-man field in Japan.

This approach has yielded not just a recurring eight-episode TV series for American consumption (the first six episodes of the current season of “American Ninja Warrior” have averaged about 300,000 viewers for G4) but a noticeable improvement on the course: In January’s game four of the six contestants who reached the third round were American. This represented a stunning reversal: No more than one American had gone that far in any previous competition.

You could look at this trend in several ways. Perhaps it’s heartening that as American fortunes appear to be in decline in so many areas, there is one place where we’re on the rise, even if it is just a Japanese obstacle course. Or perhaps it’s dispiriting that American money and aggressiveness are threatening to dominate an event that has been a semiannual festival of friendly competition and odd-ball theatricality for Japanese audiences.

The carnival atmosphere that helps make the Japanese show entertaining, with contestants dressed in Superman costumes or carrying octopuses, is absent. So is the congenial ambience in which failure is expected and success is a pleasant surprise.

That doesn’t mean that “American Ninja Warrior” is a bust. There is a built-in tension and excitement in watching one superb amateur athlete after another tackle the monumental “Sasuke” course. The show can be mesmerizing in spite of the humorlessness and manufactured drama typical of American sportscasting.

‘American Ninja Warrior’

When: Marathon starts at 9 a.m. Saturday

Where: G4