Split Screen: Mall-feasance

Split Screen is back! Thanks for tuning in after our short hiatus. It’s your intro host Madelyn here, taking full responsibility for the break one episode before the finale of My Hero Academia‘s season finale. Oops! It’s been a busy month, but never fear: Emma and I have still been watching episodes each week, and we’re getting back on track to share all the drama, all the fights, all the head-to-head combat, and also details about what happened on the shows, with you! This week, we go out to dinner with a crazy person, go to the mall with a crazy person, and make some crazy literary comparisons! You’d be crazy not to keep reading!

(New to Split Screen? Thanks for joining us! You can catch up on all of our Boys Over Flowers and My Hero Academia content here!)

Boys Over Flower Episode 19 (up to minute 33)

M: The women of Boys Over Flowers did some heavy emotional labor this week.

E: And by the women we mean Ga-eul and Jan-di.

M: You could argue that Jae-kyung is too. I don’t agree with her decisions, but she’s using a lot of energy on them. 

E: I would say she’s doing more social labor than emotional labor. If that’s a thing.

M: An excellent distinction to make! She actively starved Kang-san once again this week. Negative emotional labor points there.

E: I was really thinking that Jun-pyo was going to order pizza for them all after Kang-san expressed his desire. But alas, no pizza party.

M: I bet the pizza comes back in the latter half of the episode. I really think Jun-pyo’s bond with Kang-san is going to be pivotal to Jan-pyo’s reconciliation.

E: I mean, Kang-san has connections on the dark webs, so. He could do whatever he wants.

M: What made Lizzy Bennett realize she had missed out on Fitzwilliam Darcy? He arranged a shotgun wedding for her sister. Why couldn’t the same thing happen here?

E: I’m going to cross my fingers that there is no child marriage in this show, but you know, I see your point.

M: Jae-kyung is emotionally twelve. Kill two birds with one stone.

E: Nope nope nope nope. Nope. Nope nope.

M: I’m kidding, of course. Let’s start with the Jan-di arc this time. The stories don’t really overlap in this episode.

E: The thematic overlap is “family trouble” but there is indeed no plot overlap.

M: Jan-di is once again pulling an all-nighter. I guess this is what she wants to do, right? Become a nurse? In that context, it feels a little better. I’m glad the beginning set-up was them going to the doctor’s office, not Ji-hoo walking in on Jun-pyo in Jan-di’s apartment.

E: Yeah, I wasn’t sure where they were at first either, although I don’t really know why she had to go to the doctor’s office in the first place. I guess that’s just not important.

M: She’s frequently there late at night, so I can imagine some kind of clean-up duty or prep duty for her. It doesn’t really matter. The better question is, why was the doctor there?

E: He forgot his fishing poles.

M: That makes sense. Total sense. It seems like he probably didn’t orchestrate the car crash. I think we got implicit confirmation of that this episode.

E: No, instead he abandoned his orphaned grandson which honestly he should probably be feeling some guilt for.

M: He literally left him face down in the road. Doesn’t get much worse than that.

E: He really would have had to actively work to keep Ji-hoo from falling into his care too, since I assume, if the system is similar to how it works here, that he would by default go to a blood relative. But he ended up with a foster family instead.

M: Is it clear that he ended up with a foster family?

E: Well, he’s not related to the model.

M: Oh man, I completely forgot about her.

E: It’s been a hot minute.

M: I doubt it was an official foster situation, more likely a friend of the family stepped up. The confrontation between Ji-hoo and his grandpa in the office was…not the best acted scene of the series.

E: I can’t tell if Ji-hoo’s actor is just not great or if he’s supposed to play Ji-hoo as a little off in his emotional reactions. Because I thought the deer in headlights, just get out of here mentality was in character but it did make the scene feel a little odd.

M: He looked a little constipated.

E: That’s how people actually look when they’re upset though.

M: I cannot believe that Jan-di didn’t see him literally poking out around the corner.

E: He was wearing white pants. That’s not hard to miss.

M: It did culminate in the second heaviest emotional labor load of the episode, wherein Jan-di flipped the roles on whenever she was at Ji-hoo’s sick. Either three weeks ago or two months ago, I don’t know anymore. I’m upset that he grabbed her hand sweetly. Please no more romance beats, please please please.

E: They are really reading like BFFs to me now, but I don’t’t know. I’m not as sensitive as you.

M: I might have reached that point by now, except for that dumb temple man!

E: Fair, that temple man was dumb.

M: Clickbait Boyfriend and I were just discussing a meme about how it’s not actually romantic to wake someone up to give them food, so good on Jan-di for just leaving the porridge to get cold.

E: Maybe it was supposed to be cold porridge anyway.

M: Wasn’t the point that he had caught a cold from walking in the rain?

E: Yeah, but porridge is easy on the throat in all forms. I assume.

M: Talk to me the next time you eat cold oatmeal that isn’t overnight oats.

E: This was rice porridge though.

M: I’ll leave it be. Not the greatest look for Jun-pyo, demanding to know where she’s been.

E: “It’s not privacy, it’s P-R-I-D-E!”

M: Note that Emma grunted her best attempt at…well, I think he was spelling it in English?

E: I think he was just sounding out the syllables…in English unless the word is the same in Korean. Privacy sounded the same as in English so it’s possible.

M: I think it was just an excuse to drop the word Pride into the show. Expect Prejudice to be weirdly inserted in the back half.

E: My favorite book Pride & Privacy.

M: Let’s switch gears and chat about Jun-pyo and Jae-kyung. I don’t love the weird dynamic she is cultivating in this love triangle at the moment. It’s almost worse than if she actively haten Jan-di.

E: I just can’t get a read on what I’m supposed to be reading from her character. I don’t think it’s the actress’s fault, I think this one is on the writers.

M: She’s bouncing back and forth like crazy. I don’t want to dwell on them because I hate them, but I always love a good video game beat in on TV.

E: Tekken! Where you can easily lose to your much more experienced small sister.

M: We literally have video proof. The real emotional meat of the episode comes from newly-relapsed alcoholic Yi-jung.

E: Oh boy, he just had a breakdown, huh?

M: The sheer cruelty he showed to Ga-eul is astonishing! Ambushing her on the street to go to a club and hit on other girls? Okay, garden variety Yi-jung. Then, when she gets fed up, taking her to a bizarre dinner with your estranged father where you try to pimp her out to him and then drop the bombshell that your mother is on the brink of death in the hospital again??? Good for her for throwing water on him! She should have done worse!

E: She should have just thrown the glass, to be honest.

M: I totally called that she was going to come back and take care of him.

E: I mean, she deserves so much better than to have to, but Ga-eul is too good for all of us.

M: I still have no idea what he meant by that drunken rambling about the kid, but I hope he wakes up (literally and figuratively) and realizes what a good woman she is, but she realizes she’s too good for him and he has to win her over. That’s a plot I could get behind.

E: I think he was maybe saying that he doesn’t want a serious relationship, because he never wants to have kids and ruin them. He was skipping a few steps in his drunkenness, but I think that’s my final interpretation.

M: That makes a lot of sense. This whole blog so far has been extended Romance Tracker, so do you have any non-romantic predictions?

E: Doctor Grandfather is dead.

M: I second that one for sure. Maybe he and Yi-jung’s mom will end up sharing a hospital room.

E: Also Manager Jung is going to be killed in the next part of this episode.

M: That was a brutal cliffhanger. Good on him for keeping his cool.

E: Good on the actor for the subtle “oh fu-” face he made.

My Hero Academia S2E25: Encounter

M: Speaking of keeping your cool, Deku really didn’t at all this week! I know he managed to not get himself killed, but the boy was dripping snot in a crowded mall. Someone should have noticed the scary man in the black hoodie choking the small boy.

E: Okay, but think about this. Shigaraki was talking about how everybody there was smiling “thoughtlessly” because they would never believe that something bad would happen there. Or, more accurately, they would never believe something bad would happen and a hero wouldn’t come and stop it. So it says something about that belief that nobody noticed that Deku was being strangled in broad daylight.

M: I get it, but you’d think one of the members of class 1-A would happen to walk by or look down and notice their buddy in distress.

E: Well, Uraraka did come back. But they had all split up. Like eighteen people in our local mall? You’d never run into each other.

M: Fair enough. UA really needs to give the kids a panic button.

E: That’s a good idea.

M: It’s shocking to me that this is the first time that students have been targeted by villains, especially given that UA displays them like raw meat in the Sports Festival every year.

E: I think the show is functioning under the assumption that there has been more villain activity recently than there has been for awhile.

M: I still think that Nezu is doing a subpar job keeping these kids safe.

E: He’s just one dog mouse thing.

M: Speaking of Nezu and failing, of course they’re all going to summer camp.

E: They do have extra classes though, so the failing didn’t come without punishment.

M: Shoutout to tutors Momo and Bakugo for a 100% success rate with their pupils.

E: Yeah, Madelyn now holds them up as heroes for herself to aspire to. They are her tutor role models, her All Mights of learning.

M: Maybe I’ll put them on my tutor profile as inspirations.

E: The two tutoring styles I most emulate are serving tea and hitting over the head with rolled up newspaper. I find them very effective.

M: They have never failed.

E: This episode was mostly focused on Shigaraki and his band of villains, however.

M: Are we going to have to spend significant time with demonic Sailor Moon? She’s irritating.

E: She’s only talked once. She can’t be irritating yet.

M: I’ve already made up my mind. Franken-Vanitas doesn’t bother me as much.

E: Well, look forward to getting to know some more villains of which these two may be included in the future of this anime.

M: I don’t find Shigaraki especially compelling either, especially compared to Stain. I get that’s part of the point, but he’s just unequivocally slimy? I like my villains with a side of moral grey.

E: I don’t know, this was the episode where I started to find him more interesting. Before this point, I would have agreed with you. But I think he starts to get a clearer grasp on what he’s doing here as opposed to just having teenage angst or whatever. That starts to make it more compelling.

M: I guess I was expecting a more nuanced manifesto from him. His purpose is that he hates All Might? We already knew that.

E: He clarified that hatred in this episode though. He hates the society that’s built around All Might. Like I said at the beginning, he doesn’t like how people just assume All Might will be there and therefore just live “naively” I think he said. He’s anti-bystander effect basically, and he thinks the Symbol of Peace contributes to a public sense of “it’s not my problem, All Might will handle it.”

M: I look forward to delving more deeply into the why of that. Because that seemed, at least in his moment of realization with Deku, to be secondary to hatred of the man himself.

E: I would quietly point out that flash of the severed hand and the line “As if there was no one he couldn’t save” and then back off.

M: Oooh, interesting.

E: Anyway, I have a small localization corner. Or medium sized. Ahem.

First off, Deku- overall but particularly in this episode- is written a lot more confident than in the sub. For example, when he’s explaining what he thinks the difference is between Stain and Shigaraki, there are a lot more “I think”s in the sub. It might also be the voice acting. Like the Japanese actor played it super shaky with pauses and strain and his voice whereas the English actor just sort of spits “that’s the difference!” in Shigaraki’s face. So he kind of comes off as a bit stupid here. In antagonizing the guy who could vaporize you in a second. That’s just personal preference though.

Also, the other point is smaller, but I often think the dub is afraid of repeating things. Which is a weird thing to say I know, but like they can’t just have Shigaraki go “Stain, Stain, Stain” he has to say a sentence. Or, and this one is more understandable, he uses the Japanese onomatopoeia for “smiling” over and over again when he’s talking about how “people can smile thoughtlessly because All Might smiles thoughtlessly.” Whereas he just says sentences in this version. It comes up a lot in season 3 and bothers me, so I felt it was worth mentioning here. I guess if I had to summarize- the dub sometimes sacrifices emotion for the sake of clarity.

M: Thanks for that fascinating localization three-quarters of a room, Emma! I too thought Deku was going to die when he was screaming at Shigaraki about what a piece of crap Hand-Face is.

E: Yeah, that part in particular really really bugs me in the dub.

M: I’m disappointed that Todoroki and Bakugo aren’t going to get some new threads. I guess they probably had to be out of the picture because they would have kept too close an eye on Deku.

E: They didn’t go for reasons that made sense, but yeah, part of it is definitely that they just can’t be there or the situation doesn’t work.

M: I’m surprised that Iida didn’t mandate a stricter buddy system.

E: Uraraka’s the one who messed up the buddy system.

M: I know, but if he had given a lecture about it beforehand, maybe she would have come back faster.

E: Impeach the class rep. He has shirked his duties.

M: Another weird thought that crossed my mind: Shigaraki went to the mall to have a deep think?

E: He wanted to think about how much he hated the mall.

M: Just saying. Made for a cool confrontation in public, for sure, but weird that he would go there.

E: He’s into immersion therapy.

M: He’s into mall pretzels.

E: That’s probably it. That’s a universal love, good or evil.

M: Okay, thoughts on Lawsuit Watch this week?

E: Ga-eul should sue for emotional damage.

M: And like, prostitution.

E: I don’t really know who would get sued in the mall situation. It feels like a lawsuit worthy thing, but I can’t figure out the players. I guess Deku could sue the mall for lackluster security?

M: That’s what I was going to say. His mom definitely should mount some kind of public campaign against UA.

E: UA is not responsible for students off school hours if it’s anything like public schools.

M: They are responsible for selling the broadcast rights to the Sports Festival and making these kids become public targets.

E: I guess so. Privacy concerns could be a lawsuit. I don’t know if that counts for this episode though.

M: Don’t you mean P-R-I-D-E concerns?

E: Um. Sure, Jun-pyo.

M: Okay, I probably shouldn’t even hear the next episode title, right? Since we’re skipping it?

E: I’ll just tell you the one after that and give you the context that it’s summer now and they’re going to the summer camp.

M: Neato. What’s the title?

E: “Wild, Wild Pussycats”

M: Well, prediction one: season three is all about Mineta’s quest to get girls. We forget about Shigaraki entirely.

E:

M:  Prediction two: That police guy is going to go to the dark side. He’s already spouting classic Xehanort quotes about light and darkness, so it’s only a matter of time.

E:

M: Prediction three: Iida gets a massive sunburn that sidelines him from a key intra-student brawl. A fight breaks out in the class, and Iida isn’t there to stop it because he’s putting on aloe.

E:

M: I try to give one weirdly specific prediction each week. Anyway, prediction four: everyone is going to find out about All-Might when he tries to flex in his bathing suit, runs out of power, turns little, and accidentally flashes everyone.

E: (EDITOR EMMA: there is no emoji in this world that can sufficiently sum up this prediction. I’m sorry. I tried.)

M: Okay, finally, prediction five: the camp is attacked by Shigaraki’s new gang of annoying girl heroes. I’m sorry, villains.

E:

–

Hey everyone! As always, thanks for tuning in to Split Screen. We’re skipping MHA 3×1 since it’s 85% recap, but I’ll give you a summary before our discussion next time. However, we are moving to Funimation to continue watching the dub now that it’s run out on Hulu. Boys Over Flowers remains on Netflix.

Next time! Training camp gets off to a rough start and Mama Gu makes a move.