Split Screen: Bang Bang Boom

Thanks for tuning in to Split Screen! Your intro host Madelyn here, feeling very thankful for all of our readers and already looking forward to another holiday break soon. This week’s blog is a not-so-split edition, as Emma and I were both home for Thanksgiving. That’s right readers: we watched Boys Over Flowers and My Hero Academia on a normal-sized television this week! Will that change our reactions? Who can say. Regardless of screen dimensions, these two episodes are super-sized with drama, so let’s jump in!

(New to Split Screen! We’re happy you’re here. Catch up on all of our past blogs here.)

Boys Over Flowers Episode 11 (from minute 34)

M: It’s safe to say this episode did not go the way I was expecting.

E: I’m gonna say, right out the gate, that the fact that the conflict seems to be resolving does not excuse how much I disliked the first half of this episode.

M: I said this to you while we were watching, but it’s been several years since I’ve watched a romantic drama or even a romantic comedy where i didn’t already know the outcome, and it’s been really hard. Especially only watching half an episode a week!

E: I can’t believe we have more than half this show left.

M: We need to amp up how much we watch. Three quarters of an episode!

E: That’d make pacing so much more awkward than it already is. I also want to point out that if we did that, you’d just complain even more about nothing happening in My Hero Academia. Since we currently watch about 2/3s as much MHA as we do BOF. You’ll just have to suck it up.

M: My little heart can’t take it. This episode was such a wild ride from start to finish. It just wrecked me.

E: Where’d we even start? What happened before the gas grenade incident?

M: Jun-pyo in the midst of not my predicted spring cleaning, but actually packing for a break-up vacation.

E: Did the potted plant happen before or after grenade?

M: Before. We got the return of the red card, but no manhunt this time, so counting my blessings here.

E: It’s been so long since the last red card, the masses of Shinhwa have forgotten what they’re supposed to do.

M: These kids are supposed to be the F4 Army Reserve, and clearly they’re not been keeping up with their training. Then the mean girls pulled the dumb ‘you don’t have a desk trick’ again. Jan-di, start arriving earlier.

E: Glue your desk to the floor.

M: If she wasn’t always the last person to arrive, this wouldn’t happen.

E: Right, and when she was retrieving her desk, Haje “”””rescued””””” her in heavy quotation marks from a falling potted plant and immediately blamed JUn-pyo despite not having a clear view of the assailant.

M: I assume it was just a Shinhwa grunt? Maybe F4’s English tutor?

E: I mean, the F4 office is clearly not locked because people burst in there last time. So could have been anybody. And with the red card in effect, they would have been willing to do it.

M: One major relief for me this episode was how steadfast Jan-di’s belief in Jun-pyo was. I really expected her to fall for Haje’s lies. By the way, shout out to Mama Ji-hoo for using a dramatic confession to help fortify her feelings. That’s where the episode really turned around.

E: I want to go ahead and give props to the actor playing Haje for making even the most innocuous lines sound like the most ominous stuff I’ve ever heard.

M: With a heavy assist from the sound designer.

E: The sound designer was literally waiting for this moment. They brought in a new instrumental track, I think, and there was good use of the boooom booomm type effect.

M: Something that’s bothering me: Ji-hoo. Am I really meant to believe that he’s not going to make another pass at Jan-di?

E: I hope not. I hope this was a way to put that behind the show too. Because, again, by now it would feel like serious character regression.

M: He keeps bringing up his feelings and being a supportive friend. That concerns me.

E: Bringing it up and acknowledging it and working through it helps you move on faster than just bottling it.

M: But the longing looks!

E: Again! He’s working on it. I, as much as Ji-hoo annoyed me, actually think it’s good character writing on his part that the crush isn’t just mysteriously gone.

M: That’s fair. This is fifth tier news for this episode, so moving on. Jan-di got lured to the science classroom and showed a lack of common sense by not leaving right away when no one was there, but whatever. Then, she literally got smoke-grenaded.

E: In their relationship, Jan-di is the brawn, Jun-pyo is the looks, and nobody has the brains.

M: We got to see Jun-pyo’s tiny pores in HD today, so that was fun. And Ji-hoo’s roots!

E: It really is real hair. I was a doubter for so long. His eyebrows even match his roots.

M: When we got the shot of someone (Haje) pulling the pin on the grenade, everything entered a whole new echelon of craziness.

E: Haje is also the one to “”””rescue”””” her with heavy quotation marks from the science lab in a mirror of that one scene with the fire extinguisher and the on-fire bicycle. BUT instead of taking her to her house or a hospital, he take her to his house for a whole day.

M: He doesn’t even carry her using pure bicep strength, so boyfriend points to Jun-pyo.

E: I was little confused about this at first, but he apparently also calls her family pretending to be F4 and her workplace too maybe? Saying she’s out with F4 somewhere. Of course, Ga-eul, good friend that she is, sees through that BS.

M: Ga-eul is a queen. Ga-eul deserves the world.

E: She barges in on the remaining F3 minus Jun-pyo and gets them to call on Woo-bin’s police contacts.

M: He finally has a character trait! He knows the chief of police. And owns a phone earpiece!

E: Getting there Woo-bin. Baby steps.

M: I was very relieved that F3 was just as freaked as Ga-eul.

E: They like her! I think the show has done a good job showing that they do like her. Jan-di, that is. And Ga-eul, of course.

M: Ga-eul deserves her own show.

E: Gimme my spinoff. Number 1,003 or so. We’ve come up with a lot of spinoffs for this show.

M: Which brings us to some of the most touching and disturbing moments of the episode. The whole interaction between Jan-di and Haje in his apartment was simultaneously so much better and so much worse than I was prepared for.

E: Jan-di was so much better and Haje was so much worse, to sum it up.

M: Although, remember how many forced kisses Jun-pyo went for in the early days?

E: We even had a flashback to Looney Tunes CPR kisses in this very episode. He usually did, unless I’m remembering wrong, back off after the first shove-away or so. Not that that’s much better. But Haje was just framed so…creepy.

M: Jan-di was awesome. It was so awesome when she was straight through Haje’s BS and it’s a shame she got chloroformed for it.

E: I was pretty much expecting everything content-wise in that interaction up to the chloroform.

We used this clip back in our first Split Screen

M: I knew she wasn’t going to be able to leave so easily, especially when the whole police force is apparently out looking for her. They haven’t checked the school yet?

E: I guess not. I just thought that, since it was revealed that Haje is working with Jun-pyo’s mother, some goons were gonna be out there and would grab her.

M: Nah, we’re going the old-fashioned route. Featuring a ransom note, which must be hard in Korean.

E: I don’t know how Korean works. Do they have symbols for words or for syllables?

M: I think it’s syllables.

E: Syllables would be easier that words.

M: Still seems much more complicated than the English version.

E: Less to cut out though.

M: Very true. He was busy cutting her hair.

E: I cannot believe there was a lock of her hair along with a picture of her. You’d think just one would be enough. But nope. At least there wasn’t a finger.

M: Let’s save our finger talk for My Hero Academia, shall we?

E: Deku’s fingers are all gone. They fell off. Spoiler for later in this post.

M: They probably would have if he had used them one more time.

E: Anyway, Jun-pyo is called out to the school, alone. We last see him putting on some murderer gloves. Nothing better to call them, honestly, they super look like murderer gloves. F3 just misses him jumping out the window like Batman.

M: Shout out to Butler Lee for all of his assistance.

E: He’s literally Alfred.

M: Finally, we close with Jan-di maybe realizing that Haje’s brother was the kid from episode one.

E: I like that they have circled back around to that.

M: It gives him more motivation, which is good, because I don’t buy that this superstar model, who is so famous he goes to school in disguise, needs Shinhwa’s money.

E: I imagine that Jun-pyo’s mom knew who he was, contacted him, offered him money from the get-go. I don’t think he needs money, but if she’s offering anyway and giving him a chance to get revenge…why not take the money?

M: It’s weird, because he’s getting revenge, but at the same time he’s helping the Group.

E: Well, it’s not the group that made his brother want to die. He clearly specifically blamed F4 and even more specifically, Jun-pyo. And he’s not wrong. Just to put that out there. Jun-pyo really did used to be horrible.

M: It will be interesting to see if Haje sticks around past the first third or so of the next episode.

E: Well, romance tracker, based on the next on, everything sorts itself out at least temporarily by the ski trip. What ski trip, you ask? The one that’s coming!

M: What time of year is it? I can’t figure it out.

E: You can ski any time of year especially if you have F4 money.

M: True.

E: We also get some Yule action on this ski trip, so I’m down for that.

M: Yule is the only 100% positive and pure thing on this show. Speaking of Romance Tracker, it seems like Jan-di and Jun-pyo are back to their petty BS. A stupid fight about jewelry again.

E: JAN-DI. PLEASE. STOP LOSING THINGS. FOR GOD’S SAKE.

M: Jun-pyo, stop giving her stuff! She’s gonna lose it, you can’t take it personally!

E: Just buy like six copies of the same present so you can continue to give it to her when she inevitably loses it.

M: Or give her six to start with so she can pretend that she hasn’t lost any for at least a week.

E: Non-romantic predictions though, how do you think this current situation is going to be resolved? Police? Jun-pyo? Ga-eul charging in like a beast?

M: I’m a little torn. On one hand, I don’t think that Jun-pyo is ultimately going to be the only one to show up. But these people are working for his mom, so they can’t hurt him. I’m not sure what the end game of this ransom is. Presumably he’s in no real danger.

E: I wonder if either Haje has gone rogue or…yeah that’s all I’ve got.

M: That would be an interesting angle. He’s already closed the deal with Mama Shinhwa, so it could be personal at this point. But he had a lot of henchmen for it to be personal mission.

E: His model gang.

M: I’m telling you, it’s like on Arrested Development with the hot cops.

E: I hope that’s how the situation resolves itself.

M: If only! You’ve sold me on him going rogue, so maybe the cops will show up and Haje will get in serious trouble.

E: And he will be unceremoniously written out of the show just like that one rich girl friend.

M: RIP.

My Hero Academia S2E10: Shoto Todoroki: Origin

E: Please alert the police, there’s been a double murder. Where the victims are also the other one’s murderer.

M: Is that a double murder or a double suicide?

E: Both.

M: This is gonna be a tough one for the movie.

E: If they get to this in the movie, they’ve seriously rushed things.

M: The sequel, then.

E: Yeah. I can’t wait to see live-action thrice broken fingers dangling in the wind.

M: I need to go back to our previous blogs, because I swear the power flick used to break Deku’s thumb too.

E: I don’t remember him doing a power flick before the Shinso fight. You were talking about the power poke when he was going to break his whole arm, and I said the poke would still break his whole arm. But the way it seems to work now is he channels the power into one finger and the flick is like the spark on the fire so to speak. (EDITOR EMMA: So, he did use a flick that broke his thumb back in S1E10, but you could see him channeling One for All into both fingers in that shot. Here he only seems to channel it into one finger and not his thumb when flicking)

M: Well, clearly. He didn’t shatter his skull.

E: Yes.I want to mention that occasionally the gore is scaled back on this show because it’s on TV. I don’t think this case was much worse in the manga, but occasionally there is a place where it’s slightly less horrifying than the original source.

M: Delicious. So, surprise surprise, the episode lived up to it title. I was right. Todoroki won.

E: Yup! Good job, Madelyn!

M: The child-dog-fighting odds are in my favor.

E: You’ll have to predict who you currently think is gonna win the whole thing once we get to that part.

M: I know about sixty percent of their names, so this will go well.

E: So, in this episode, we got to learn more about Todoroki and got the context for the stuff he explained to Midoriya a couple episode ago.

M: Some of it felt redundant to me. It was good for thematic filler in this episode, but I didn’t feel like I gained that much seeing the lead-up to Todorki’s mom scarring his face or his dad mistreating him from a young age. I already got that.

E: I kinda feel that way about this episode too. I think that the flashbacks are directed really well, and I wish that maybe Todoroki had explained less of it prior so that this could be the first look into his past. If he had left most of the stuff about his mother out, for instance, we might have felt that shock that it seems to want you to feel with some of this But all you really gain information wise is that he has siblings. Who were apparently not subjected to the same treatment.

M: One of whom is apparently Kirishima.

E: Yes, the only person in all the MHA universe possessing red hair.

M: It was the same style too, okay?

E: Yeah, but the direction, again, like the slowly increasing volume of the boiling water for instance? Very nice.

M: I really liked Todoroki watching All-Might on TV, especially because for some dumb reason I thought the voiceover was commentary from All-Might in the present, like he had seized the mic.

E: Someone’s gotta take it away from Present Mic. Anyone.

M: Spittle flying everywhere.

E: Yeah, that one actually is probably helpful and different from what Todoroki had described previously. It’s reinforcing that idea that All-Might is this untouchable symbol looked up to by everyone, right? Even someone whose father is the number two hero.

M: And that his smile really is that powerful! It always seems dumb when Deku goes back to that grin as his limbs dangle uselessly from his torso. But it was nice encapsulation of what that smile could mean. I also liked that we saw, and I don’t know if his mom said it multiple times or he was just going through his chain of false of memories until he got to the real one, Todoroki slowly realizing he didn’t remember that there were good times too.

E: Yeah. I think it was the latter. Like he was slowly remembering more of what she actually said to him and the more he remembered the more supportive it got. Meanwhile. Mama Deku is dead.

M: She’s almost never seen him use his power. She’s seen that one flick with Shinso, and you probably couldn’t see the broken finger on TV. It likely wasn’t even clear exactly what his power was. This is disturbing for me as an outsider, let alone as a competitor’s parent. Could have cool to intersperse her panic attack with Endeavor’s bizarro cheers.

E: Okay. So, I don’t buy that literally no one has any idea what’s going on in Endeavor’s household. But even if they didn’t, like after that outburst, I would be concerned if I was a teacher.

M: Aren’t these people mandatory reporters?

E: Right? I mean, whatever, we already covered last time that there’s rampant sexism and bullying going on, so I guess this just fits right in with that.

M: UA is due for a reckoning.

E: So, after a speech about how everyone else is trying their hardest while Todoroki is not, along with reminding him that his Quirk is his Quirk, Todoroki does use his fire.

M: We haven’t talked about the most memorable part of this episode.

E: The mouth flick?

M: That too, but mostly Deku’s slow mutilation.

E: He did, however, manage to control his whole punch twice.

M: What a tremendous taunt in the midst of battle. “Imagine the egg not exploding.” If I’m Todoroki and I hear that, I am so confused and, frankly, terrified that I jump out of the ring.

E: Honestly though, not only was what Deku did risky to himself, if he hadn’t managed to control his punch on Todoroki, they would have been cleaning his giblets. He would have exploded like the egg.

M: Is that really so much worse than what happened to Deku by the end? Like, Deku has already landed in a potential Small Might situation at age fourteen.

E: He clearly seems to get tunnel vision during fights. Which might actually go back and explain his reaction to Shinso back in that episode. He just gets into it and turns his brain off a little.

M: That’s not impressive.

E: He’s not All-Might yet.

M: No, because he’s dead.

E: You’re right. Show’s over.

M: Do you think Present Mic feels any concern? He’s just like, “Midoriya’s out of the ring, Todoroki wins!” No mention of the fact that Deku is maybe a corpse.

E: Honestly, if I had been Cement Man, I probably would have stepped in sooner than immediately before Todoroki’s extreme temperature changes caused an explosion. Just a tad sooner.

M: Do you think Aizawa feels responsible for this? I really thought his voiceover was going to be expressing regret for baiting Deku in class and contributing to this moment where he’s literally shattering every bone in his body multiple times for a dumb game.

E: Well, he could feel guilty. But he wasn’t wrong in what he said to Deku on the first day of school. If he just breaks his arm and that’s it, he’s not gonna help much of anyone. I guess the regret would come in that this solution clearly isn’t what he meant to say Deku should do.

M: These episodes have been much more gruesome than I was anticipating. That’s all.

E: Lawsuit Watch?

M: I don’t even know where to begin.

E: We don’t have enough eyes to watch these lawsuits.

M: UA is clearly negligent here. It seems pretty obvious that Midnight and Cement Dude should have stepped in sooner, especially if Deku suffers any kind of permanent damage as a result of the fight. On the other hand, a student is being held hostage at Shinhwa.

E: Yeah, honestly, pretty even this week. Yeah. Just some real terrible stuff happening on both side of the break on this Split Screen.

M: Everyone wins and no one wins. And Todoroki wins, in case you missed it.

E: His shirt, however, loses.

M: Quirk anatomy question of the week: is Todoroki at all concerned about his reproductive health with all these extreme temperature changes? Emma, thoughts?

E: Listen, once you start getting into Quirk anatomy questions, there’s no turning back, okay? You just descend into that deep dark pit.

M: Bakugo is the one who brought it up. He was the one who gave the whole class a lecture about how quirks are physical abilities and they affect you like other physical abilities. It’s a reasonable question to ask. I’m not crazy, I’m not going to analyze how Tetsu Tetsu turns into steel, okay? It’s a cartoon.

E: He did mention his iron deficiency last episode though.

M: See? The show is baiting me into asking these questions.

E: I tend to find that the show uses scienc-y explanations just to the level that they’re interesting. Like he has a iron deficiency, but no one wants to know how he actually channels that iron, right?

M: I find it interesting, but that’s fine.

E: I do wish a little bit that they addressed the everyday problems of some of these quirks though. Does Iida clean his exhaust pipes? Does he cover them in the shower? Does Bakugo have to treat all his clothes?

M: Does Dark Shadow occasionally poop on people’s heads?

E: ANYWAY. What do you think will happen next on My Hero Academia?

M: We’ve got another title begging Iida to do something, right?

E: “Fight on, Iida!”

M: As if he doesn’t already know to do that. Who is he fighting again?

E: Vine girl. Shiozaki is her name.

M: Bulbasaur, got it. Prediction one: Iida will come close to giving up at some point and Deku will start a rousing cheer: “Beat ha’, Iida!”

E:

M: Prediction two: The vines are going to go into the exhaust pipes and it’s going to be weird for everyone.

E:

M: Prediction three: Deku will have some kind of very small injury that he’ll carry with him forever from this fight, but overall he’ll be okay. Of course, Iida won’t know that and will probably have to fight while worrying about him the whole time.

E:

M: Prediction four: Midnight and Cement Dude will continue to be useless.

E:

M: And Prediction five: our overall winner. This is a tough one. We’ve got Todoroki, who’s way too obvious. Same with Bakugo. Then there’s Iida, Vine Girl, Kirishima, Acid Girl, and Dark Shadow. If the final match takes place at night, a primetime fight, strong advantage to Dark Shadow.

E:

M: I’m leaning one of two ways. One is that someone from 1-B will win because that wouldn’t mess too much with any of the delicate dynamics in 1-A.

E:

M: On the other hand, I think it’s very likely that the end fight between Bakugo and Todoroki will be interrupted by a real life crisis and there’ll be no winner.

E:

M: Excited to see how this all plays out and if anyone dies.

E: “Fight ha, Iida!”

M: Fight ha. Fight ha.

–

Hey everyone, and thanks for sticking with us on Split Screen! If you can’t tell, we’ve been really sucked in to Boys Over Flowers, much more than we ever expected. My Hero Academia continues to go strong too! I don’t think we’ll quite go fast enough to react to season 4 live, but it just means you get Split Screen for longer! If you want to watch along, we’re doing Boys Over Flowers on Netflix and the MHA dub on Hulu.

Next time! It’s rapid fire fight time as Iida gets some bad news and Jan-di loses her freaking necklace or something and, oh yeah, I guess gets rescued from her kidnapping. Who knows.