Split Screen: Domo Arigato, Crushing Roboto

Hey there reader! Thanks for tuning in to Split Screen: A Watch This Production from Talk This! I’m your introductory host Madelyn, and I am psyched for this week’s blog. An autumn chill is in the air here at Talk This NYC HQ, but Split Screen is only heating up! You know it’s a good edition when robots are a key part of both My Hero Academia and Boys Over Flowers. Is a sci-fi twist on the horizon, or something much stranger? Read on to find out!

(Tuning in for the first time? You can catch up on all of Split Screen here.)

Boys Over Flowers Episode 8 (up to minute 32)

M: That was a top-notch half of a Boys Over Flowers episode.

E: There was some weird stuff, but it was weird stuff that led up to some good moments in the end.

M: Ruining my prediction from last week, we did pick up right at the cliffhanger. AN unusually mature moment from Jun-pyo there.

E: Yeah! I mean, you know, he handled it decently in the moment for sure.

M: He didn’t scream or hurl insults, he was just like “I’ll stop taking care of you.”

E: I really thought they were gonna save that whole sequence for some kind of flashback thing, but I was wrong.

M: Don’t question the editor of this show.

E: How could I, when he made that car chase sequence last time?

M: I think you and I both agree that the swimming was less exciting than we expected.

E: I’m pretty sure they had the actors swimming because…they were so bad. I didn’t expect Olympic level, but they looked like me in the water. They needed to look at least somewhat competent.

M: The dives were really atrocious. All they needed to do was keep their legs together for half a second. They must have had a lifeguard on set. They should have paid that person a little extra to give the cast a half hour swimming lesson.

E: They were just moving so slow through the water that no amount of cheering for Woo-bin could hype me up for it.

M: Song Woo-bin! Song Woo-bin!

E: I thought that we had underestimated his popularity until I realized that they can’t cheer for Ji-hoo. Since, you know, he’s banished or whatever.

M: Shhh, let Woo-bin have his moment.

E: Here’s the thing about Woo-bin. He gets plenty of moments, but none of them are alone. We’ve got a B plot with Yi-jung, but Woo-bin’s got no stakes of his own so it’s hard to find a reason to care about him specifically.

M: I remember nothing about Woo-bin. I know we got an intro to him in the second episode or so, but I don’t remember why I’m supposed to care about him or why he’s a member of F4.

E: Yeah. Poor Woo-bin.

M: My prediction that he would wear a dorky swimsuit did come true.

E: Jan-di also had a short wetsuit. So he wasn’t alone.

M: Yeah, but she’s a lady. He had the Iida wetsuit model. They both wear weird jumpsuit shorts.

E: Madelyn hates Iida so much.

M: I don’t! He’s great! I’m just saying he’s a little dorky! I wouldn’t emulate his fashion sense!

E: You were wrong with your prediction that Yi-jung would throw the race.

M: We don’t know! He might have!

E: I mean, I’m just saying, he made up half a lane of time. That’s not something you do if you’re going to throw it.

M: Yes it is. You want it to look believable, and Jun-pyo would have him killed if he wasn’t at least close.

E: I’m feeling more and more like nobody could kill Yi-jung even if they tried. He’s a very capable person.

M: He’s a potter, don’t forget that.

E: Um, yes, he is? I’m not sure if there’s a joke there. He also doesn’t seem to be very afraid of Jun-pyo. They literally harassed him out of bed, that’s a dangerous move.

M: I want to talk about that scene, but first, a question: did Jun-pyo orchestrate that well-timed power outage?

E: I think so? That seemed to be what the scene was implying. Especially as they treated it as a loss for Jun-pyo even though they didn’t see who won.

M: I mean, Jun-pyo owed Ji-hoo.

E: What, for his smashed robot?

M: That was an unnecessarily traumatic friendship backstory

E: Madelyn was very preoccupied because she thought one of the other ones was eating snow in the background during that scene.

M: I thought it would finally give me a character trait to assign to Woo-bin. Snow-eater

E: So anyway, I guess the point of that scene was to say that he wasn’t going to treat Jan-di as the robot?

M: Yes, and that’s good! A step forward deserving of bro fists.

E: And hugs.

M: On the other (non-fist-bumping) hand, not pushing a woman in front of a moving vehicle because you can’t play with her anymore? Pretty low bar.

E: Baby steps. He’s taking baby steps. Infant steps even.

M: I realize it was a metaphor, but still.

E: Yeah, I was taken aback by their excited reaction. Like, it makes sense that they’d be happy, but they were ecstatic. But wait! We skipped the part where Yi-jung punched Ji-hoo in the stomach (EDITOR EMMA: ha ha, I didn’t)! Rewind, rewind! That was my favorite moment!

M: There was so much packed into this half an hour! I thought Yi-jung was going to punch him a second time. Like in that episode of The Office with Michael and Dwight, the dojo episode.

E: I thought Woo-bin was going to punch him too.

M: Missed opportunity to define that character.

E: Ji-hoo deserves all the punches.

M: Yi-jung and Woo-bin are turning into the ultimate wingman team. They’ve learned a little something about gaslighting people from the My Hero Academia kids. They literally rage Jun-pyo out of bed.

E: Except for the fact that they apparently let him out of their sight. Slacking.

M: So let’s talk about the date. I shuddered just saying that.

E: I was not a fan of the date, but I thought the …storyline was handled well? Is that the right term? I liked the arc of it, even though it was heavy-handed. Jan-di’s gradual realization and acceptance that this relationship was not something that was going to work, at least not with Ji-hoo in the place he was. It was nice.

M: We start with some embarrassing family goodness. Not goodness, I take that back. Badness. It was too uncomfortable for me. More evidence that this is Pride and Prejudice, by the way.

E: Is Kang-san Kitty then?

M: It’s Lydia who runs away with Wickham. So Kang can be Kitty. Kitty is just annoying.

E: Yeah, that made me more uncomfortable than usual. Like “too bad about Jun-pyo, but at least my daughter is still marrying rich!”

M: Apparently these rich boys only know one spot to go on dates.

E: Apparently! It’s not even that exciting of a place.

M: It’s just the city center! Jun-pyo took her on a tropical helicopter tour and Ji-hoo, you’re gonna take her on a friggin’ urban ski lift?

E: I mean, it was mostly not the place to take her, because of the whole thing that happened there that Ji-hoo didn’t know about. Not totally his fault

M: Still, this date was a hot mess from start to finish.

E: Fair enough.

M: “Oh Jan-di look! Here’s the horse my ex-girlfriend gave me!”

E: And then his house is full of pictures of her and mementos.

M: But Jan-di can’t even point her out in an advertisement without a weird threat of…what, jail time?

E: At least we know why he didn’t put effort into apologizing, he doesn’t believe in them. He was just waiting for the police to pick him up.

M: Seems like a phrase that maybe didn’t translate correctly? His laugh afterwards was eerie.

E: I liked his laugh whenever he noticed Jun-pyo too. His reactions are so unnatural. Jun-pyo following you shouldn’t make you laugh, it should either make you feel guilty or creeped out.

M: He’s a bad friend, and maybe a sociopath.

E: Ji-hoo’s weird narcolepsy aside, I particularly liked that last speech or stream of consciousness from Jan-di. And not just because it meant bye-bye to Ji-hoo.

M: Team Ji-hoo is finished!!!

E: We got very excited.

M: It’s done! I thought we were going to have like five more episodes of this before she came to her senses!

E: Yeah, I thought it was weird that he took her to his house. And it is still weird. But it turned out well for her.

M: He didn’t even tell her? She’s like, “where are we?” “At my house.” That’s a scary situation when you have no transportation home.

E: Yeah, he’s just real bad at social interaction apparently.

M: It seems like he’s come to terms with the break-up, if you can even call it that, too. This validates my theory that the second half of the season is going to be about Jun-pyo’s family, rather than Jan-di and Jun-pyo’s will-they-or-won’t-they.

E: Yeah, I agree also. Although there’s 24 episode, right? And we’re on episode 8. So…I guess there just have to be some happy in-between episodes? Or mini-arcs? I don’t know.

M: We’ll see. They’ll both have time alone for the next few episodes, because I don’t think Jan-di’s realized she likes Jun-pyo. Then we’ll have a few episodes of them courting, and they probably won’t actually get together until episode 14.

E: Dang, that’s an ambitious prediction. I don’t know how they’ll stretch it out that long.

M: More horses. Another vacation. More porridge man.

E: Yes, more porridge man! Wooooo!

M: Romance Tracker time? We’ve sort of already started talking about it.

E: Well, yeah, you said, they’ll get together by episode 14. I think they’ll be together by the end of episode 10.

M: My secondary prediction is that they’ll get together by the end of this episode. It’ll go one way or the other.

E: Okay, we’re just all over the place.

M: Come on, you saw that babushka scene!

E: You mean, the miracle cure head scarf scene?

M: Jun-pyo looking like a little Russian grandma, scrawling love graffiti.

E: In his defense, he was probably still feverish.

M: Can you believe Jan-di landed in the same sky tram with Ji-hoo. How embarrassing!

E:I can’t believe he didn’t notice it. She was just staring at it.

M: Hot mess, start to finish.

E: What a Resasuke.

M: Non-romantic predictions?

E: I think that Woo-bin will get a defining character trait by episode 14.

M: No!

E: Just any defining character trait. Something. Like. A scar maybe. I don’t know.

M: Do you consider a scar a defining character trait?

E: Well, if the scar has a story behind it. Yes.

M: I predict that Ji-hoo is going to have to get a bunch of Windex for a house cleaning party when his whole staff quits.

E: Do you think there’s like a people in glass houses metaphor there?

M: Yeah. Don’t steal your friend’s girlfriend when you live in a glass house.

E: This has been: Words of Wisdom with Talk This!

My Hero Academia S2E3: In Their Own Quirky Ways

M: I can say without a doubt this time: things happened.

E: WOOOOOO!!!!! WOOOHOOOOOO!!!! WE’VE GOT HER. WE’VE GOT HER NOW. WE WIN FOLKS!

M: I was worried when we spent the first three or four minutes of the episode with “here’s what you saw last time.”

E: To be fair, the first two minutes are their “fire nation attacked” equivalent and the opening.

M: Yeah, but three minutes after that were recap too.

E: No, it was literally only two minutes I checked.

M: Okay fine! Weird robot theme this week, right?

E: Yes, there were lots of robots. Only in this one, it was the robots crushing people, not the robots getting crushed. Also, I think it’s funny that you insist on comparing Kirishima to Axel and in the show, there’s also someone who’s really similar to him. He just can’t catch a break.

M: He literally has a Nobody.

E: He even has white hair. Tetsutetsu Tetsutetsu, number 15

M: How did his parents name him that?

E: They were not very creative parents. Maybe they have that quirk too, but theoretically they wouldn’t know his quirk would have anything to do with steel. But they still named him Ironiron Ironiron.

M: That’s exactly what I was thinking. How did they know?

E: To be fair, I do know that a lot of the names, at least when you write them in kanji have quirk related puns in them, But this one is pretty blatant. Maybe too blatant. But fun to say!

M: We watch roughly the same amount, but My Hero Academia always feels much shorter.

E: Well, we watch like 7 more minutes of Boys Over Flowers. That’s pretty substantial for television. Sometimes we watch up to 10 more minutes.

M: This one was jam-packed though! We got through the whole course! I thought that would take until episode five.

E: I just can’t believe that Deku would hold on to that shield. Like, he would have dropped it at the pits easy. No way.

M: He’s stupid though. That’s my rationalization.

E: But he’s not!

M: But like, a little though.

E: It leads up to the cool scene of him literally blasting off, so I guess it’s worth it.

M: Ding! That’s just more evidence that he’s stupid.

E: Why?

M: Here, I’ll do my best, what’s his name, DJ Normal?

E: Present Mic.

M: Close enough. Okay, here’s my impression: “Whoa! What’s that flying through the sky? A corpse? Whose quirk is corpse creation?”

E: *laughing* He did say, over the loudspeaker, that they’re not particularly powerful mines.

M: Yeah okay, but a mine that’s powerful enough to blow you into the air, just the one? Deku had at least twenty.

E: He also had a shield! That he’d carried with him. For some reason.

M: That actually makes sense. Those robots must have super powerful armor.

E: No, I buy that he launched himself across the minefield. I just don’t buy that he held on to the shield for that long without ditching it.

M: It’s like a security blanket.

E: I do love that shot of him falling and then literally standing on Bakugo and Todoroki to launch himself again, That’s a great shot.

M: That was pretty cool. Second favorite moment of the episode.

E: Okay. I’ll bite, what’s your favorite moment?

M: Aizawa negging himself, and then Present Mic piling on and completely ripping him.

E: That was a pretty great moment, you’re right. Aizawa, you’ve gotta be your own biggest fan! Come on, no one else is!

M: Aizawa’is face is basically totally destroyed from a heroic fight, and PM’s still screaming, “Eraser Head is a terrible teacher! Nobody likes him!”

E: I mean. It’s all true though.

M: Speaking of dumb things, why is All-Might there?

E: Because he wants to support Deku. And also, like, while I agree it’s a risky move, he’s pretty unrecognizable.

M: Yeah, but one: there are already villains he saw pretty much yesterday who are on the look out for signs of a weak All-Might. And two: you’re telling me there’s not a single other hero nerd like Deku who is geeking out over seeing all the UA faculty who thinks  “huh, weird that All Might isn’t at the biggest event of the year but this shriveled shell I’ve never seen before is.”

E: I would say that there would be no problem if All-Might was not sitting with the teachers. But at least the school probably has some control over where the cameras are, yeah? Since it’s an internal event of sorts.

M: I still think it’s an unnecessary risk. But hey, as the pink furry girl said, when did they have the time to build all this?

E: That’s a bit of a non-sequitur.

M: It’s not. This school is all about unnecessary risk.

E: Ah, ah I get it. We learned also what the Support course does. You asked about that like five episodes ago, I think.

M: And the business course, whose existence I felt attacked by.

E: I think the Business course is funny.

M: Somebody needs to help the heroes do they jobs. Not everyone can be a performer!

E: Yeah! And they’re doing that! I’m not sure why they make them go through dog and pony show of participating in the first round.

M: They need concessions interns.

E: We also got some family hints. With Todoroki’s “dear old dad” apparently being a pro-hero. And Iida wanting to impress his older bro.

M: I already knew that, about both of them. That isn’t new.

E: Well. Fine. Okay, wait, let me ask again, does Todoroki remind you of anyone?

M: It came to me like right after we finished this last time. Obviously season three Prince Zuko.

E: Yeah, right? Like, he’s such like…not a Zuko clone but very similar.

M: I forgot to mention my need for a Jun-pyo Alone episode in the Boys segment, but I’m throwing it in here. Speaking of intershow connections, which members of Class 1A would F4 be?

E: Um. Uh. Jun-pyo would probably be Bakugo?

M: 100%

E: I’m sort of blanking on the other three. I guess Woo-bin would be Tail Man. Since he’s so undistinctive.

M: I think Ji-hoo would be the flowery guy.

E: I don’t think so. Belly button boy is a bit too flamboyant for Ji-hoo.

M: Okay fine, that’ll be porridge guy.

E: I feel bad assigning Ji-hoo to any of the character. But honestly, Todoroki would probably be the best fit. In my opinion.

M: Sounds good. Man, who is good enough for Yi-jung?

E: I don’t know that there is a Yi-jung. Nobody’s smooth enough. Everybody is sort of too dorky.

M: He could be Aizawa?

E: Aizawa’s too emo.

M: Fair enough. I’ll mull this over and revisit it at a later date. What do you think about Lawsuit Watch this week?

E: Um, I mean. Minefield. And like robots toppling on to children. And I don’t know. Assigning monetary value to children?

M: On the other hand, light stalking!

E: Yeah, UA takes the cake. The cake of lawsuit papers.

M: Gimme next week’s episode title

E: “Strategy, Strategy, Strategy”

M: Okay, so prediction one: nobody wants to be on Deku’s team

E: Crying face.

M: Because why would you? He’s a liability.

E: I mean, like I said, if you have a quirk that’s better at defense, all you have to do is play keep away for awhile. So.

M: Obviously he’s going to be with Iida and Ochaco because they are #BFF, and probably Mineta too since no one will want him.

E:

M: There is an outside chance Todoroki and Bakugo take him on their team so no one else can win by taking out the weakling. That would be a shocker, but a savvy pick. 

E:  .

M: That was detailed

E: I had to cover all of them! Squad, yo.

M: Alright, that was three in one, but prediction two: Deku’s mom starts doing some weird rituals to help him win. Does she have a quirk?

E: Yes, she can pull small objects towards her.

M: So she’ll come up with some kind of good luck dance using that.

E:

M: Wow, she’s gonna be shocked when he uses One-For-All. She hasn’t seen it yet, right?

E:

M: That’s not an answer. Final prediction: Aizawa gets some self-esteem.

E:

–

Hello, it’s your other host Emma here. As always, thanks for joining us for Split Screen, We’ve been watching the My Hero Academia dub on Hulu and Boys Over Flowers on Netflix, so feel free to watch along! Both these shows are fun, even if nothing else.

Next week! We get into the aftermath of Jan-di and Ji-hoo’s not so great first date. And the cavalry match teams begin to be assembled in My Hero. Intense stuff guys. Very intense stuff.

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