Thanks for tuning in, Split Screen fans! It’s your intro host Madelyn, truly unprepared for all of the hijinks our dynamic show duo has in store. This week, we’ve got an unexpectedly light and wholesome episode of Coffee Prince, and an unexpectedly kindergarten-field-trip-from-hell-heavy episode of My Hero Academia.
(First time Split Screen reader? Catch up on all the action here!)
EDITOR EMMA: Oops been a bit since I got one of these up. Don’t worry- gonna have plenty of time to get these up in the coming weeks!
Coffee Prince Twelfth Cup (from minute 31)
M: This was an uncharacteristically cheerful episode of Coffee Prince.
E: It was so wholesome!
M: I’m not sure when Ha-rim got on board with the whole “former bro dates my friend” thing, but I’m glad he’s cool with it now.
E: Like most people, I’m sure it was when it started impacting him in terms of having a ton more work to do.
M: I really did expect the show to drag this out a little bit longer, but I’m glad we got this slice of pleasant behavior before something inevitably goes terribly wrong.
E: Yeah, I was honestly shocked that we just ended on an “I love you” instead of like “your grandma’s dead.”
M: When Han-gyul picked up the phone and it was Han-sung, I was sure there was a family tragedy incoming.
E: Nope, just Han-sung being sad on the couch.
M: How does Han-sung not know any of Yoo-joo’s friends after ten years? Or even roughly where her parents live?
E: Her friends’ numbers to be specific which considering their weird distrustful relationship, maybe that’s to be expected.
M: I hear you, except he has DK’s number.
E: Why does he have DK’s number?
M: I could invent a story about how they must have worked together at some point, or maybe DK has a public website with contact info. I don’t really know what DK does.
E: Isn’t he like a curator of some sort?
M: It seems that way. So maybe Han-sung DJed an opening for him or something.
E: Why did he keep his number?
M: It’s a plot hole, look away!
E: Anyway, we got very minimal Han-sung in exchange for almost a whole half episode of shenanigans, which I was happy about.
M: Starting with Eun-sae catching Han-gyul outside of their house.
E: He was being very inconspicuous, so this is really down to her keen observation sense.
M: Eun-sae is smarter than anyone on this show. Smarter than everyone else on this show, except maybe Sun-ki, put together. Remember when she was running a crime syndicate at her school?
E: Eun-sae is an icon. To be honest, she’s just truly a role model for these dumb protagonists.
M: At least they were able to apologize to each other pretty sincerely.
E: Yeah! That was some good and healthy communication, take notes Han-sung and Yoo-joo.
M: It was fine until he put his head on her shoulder. That was weird.
E: That was cute! Come on!
M: Maybe it was real-life cute, but it was not on-screen cute.
E: Madelyn’s just jaded to romance.
M: As they say, after ten years, it would be weird if they didn’t fight. I fight Clickbait Boyfriend every time he tries to put his head on my shoulder, on principle.
E: Head on shoulder regardless, there was plenty of cute stuff this half episode. Too much, maybe, for me, but it was good.
M: The coffee princes did go a little overboard there.
E: I know you’re talking about the text, but we did learn Ha-rim has a tattoo on his butt that he showed Eun-chan once.
M: What do you think it’s of?
E: Something stupid probably, He seemed to have gotten it to celebrate getting out of the military and it’s on his butt so, it can’t be anything poetic.
M: Alternately, Ha-rim is Korean mafia confirmed.
E: It’s his assassin tattoo! Do they have tattoos in those games?
M: In Assassin’s Creed?
E: Yeah!
M: There are a lot of people in the real world with Assassin’s Creed tattoos, Google tells me, but unclear if there are any tattooed assassins in-game.
E: Sadly though, Mr. Hong can no longer lay on the floor and read comics like the rest of us do in this day and age.
M: It looked like Sailor Moon.
E: I believe Mr. Hong would love Sailor Moon.
M: Which Sailor is Mr. Hong though? I don’t know the show well enough.
E: I only really know, like, basic personality traits of Mercury through Uranus. Maybe Jupiter? I dunno really.
M: Ha-rim was giving him a butt massage.
E: That was so weird.
M: It distracted me from the horrifying half-open vest number that Sun-ki walked in wearing. That’s how weird it was.
E: Sun-ki has a distinct fashion sense. Also Han-gyul’s outfits were normal this week so someone had to fill in.
M: Clearly he was grappling with his sexuality and channeling that confusion into his clothes before.
E: Right and now that he can walk around announcing that Eun-chan is a girl to the world, he can wear normal clothes.
M: Exactly. He can think straight again. I didn’t even mean that joke.
E: It’s so ingrained into you.
M: I can’t escape who I am. Is he yelling that Eun-chan’s a girl because he’s happy and excited, or is it because he’s worried people will think she’s a man?
E: I think it’s the former? I think so.
M: That was my first reaction, but then I worried.
E: I like that he had never remember up to this point their actual first meeting.
M: I hated how worried all of the men were about Eun-chan having seen their packages.
E: To be fair to Ha-rim, I think he was more embarrassed.
M: Right after he bragged about how much he was peeing. This show…
E: It’d been a while since we had a weird bathroom scene in this show, I forgot how much of a staple they used to be.
M: The text thing was peak cute for this show. The boys running back and forth to see if Han-gyul liked her text. But did she send two hearts???
E: Two hearts is too many! It costs too much!
M: Love that Eun-chan is “Hardworking Boy” in Han-gyul’s phone.
E: I think we knew that already, but he should probably change it.
M: Nah, you can never change phone contacts. CBB is his full name in my phone forever.
E: I really hope it’s full full name, not even nickname. Middle name included.
M: On second thought, maybe I will change it.
E: Man, anything else this episode? It was just fun happy times.
M: Han-sung passed up an opportunity to punch Han-gyul. Also, he’s worried that Yoo-joo is dead. But forget about that.
E: It’s fine, they’ve got five whole episodes to focus entirely on the Han-sung/Yoo-joo drama.
M: That’s as good a transition to Romance Tracker as any. I’m deeply worried that’s where the show is going. That those two are the engine of drama.
E: I mean, I do hope that any drama with Han-gyul and Eun-chan has more to do with external stuff than their relationship at this point. But also I don’t want to be the Han-sung & Yoo-joo show. Also where is Sun-ki’s child???
M: Yeah, the only thing giving me hope is that there are a lot of other balls in the air. Min-yup and Eun-sae need to get back together, even though I really think she should get with Sun-ki and take over the world, the grandma is sick, Han-gyul has a third parent dude maybe, Coffee Prince might franchise, who knows?
E: I’m definitely not worried about there not being enough plot.
M: Do you think they’ll tell the customers she’s a girl?
E: I mean, that goes against the brand though. They’ll leave bad reviews on Yelp! They’ll sue them!
M:
E: Yes, I did!
M: Maybe…oh man, this would be good, if they don’t do this, I will be pissed, maybe now they can do a day where all the princes dress up as princesses.
E: That’d be good, I’m here for that.
My Hero Academia S4E16: “Win Those Kids’ Hearts”
M: Who okayed this?
E: Who didn’t take the literal bombs off of Bakugo’s costume before he went outside.
M: I mean this question in the broadest sense. In-universe, at Shonen Jump, at Bones…who let this happen?
E: I mean, I get the idea, right, these are the kids who failed the rescue part of the exam not the fighty part of the exam, so I understand the thought process behind trying to make them get along with kids, but it’s just also a terrible idea!
M: Not to jump to Lawsuit Watch already but…
E: Hey kids! Get your parents to sign this field trip form! We’re gonna go get you beat up by some heroes in training!
M: How hard do you think it is to find elementary school teachers in this world?
E: God, it’s already hard in this world, can you imagine having a class of twenty seven year olds with guns in their mouths???
M: Even just the random flying kid would be a handful. And this woman does not seem to have a quirk, or at least not a useful one.
E: Yeah, she probably has something, but not something that seems useful here. Not like Meatball, which honestly, just great for wrangling some kids.
M: Meatball would put the fear of god in these kids.
E: Meatball puts the fear of god in me, so these kids would be messed up for life.
M: Maybe his power would be okay for really urgent rescues. It’s probably easier to carry a compact meatball than a person.
E: Okay, Meatball is here to train as the next Present Mic and that’s it, let’s stop talking about his nightmare quirk.
M: I can’t believe that Present Mic, All Might, and Endeavor thought that they were going to be able to keep a low profile.
E: Well, lower than taking in a huge breath and then screaming your son’s name from across the stadium. You know?
M: That’s the dad energy I bring to all of my anime sons, so I can sympathize.
E: As long as it’s only that dad energy and not the rest of Endeavor’s unique energy.
M: Endeavor seems like he’s trying to turn over a new leaf.
E: So, sure, let’s briefly talk Endeavor. I understand the writing predicament here. Like, he’s the new #1, you can’t just ignore him, right? But if he stays super bad, that takes the story in a particular direction right? Because you have this horrible abuser as the face of heroes. You can’t leave it like that, if you don’t want to be coming down hard on the idea of a hero.
So the only other thing you can do is try to give him some development, but he was introduced so extremely that it’s a little hard for me to buy it. If that makes sense. And in contrast to Bakugo (who had the same extreme introduction problem) this is a grown ass man.
M: I get that. It would be pretty shocking to have your son totally spurn you on a nationwide television program, so maybe that was a wake-up call, but I’m aware that’s not really how this works.
E: We can talk more Endeavor as the series progresses, but I do find parts of his story kind of uncomfortable. But we’ll see.
M: Maybe he’s in therapy too now, you don’t know. Maybe you do know. Maybe that’s revealed.
E: Anyway, who cares about that, let’s beat up some kids.
M: I know, putting the boy who is a child abuse victim into a position of power over young children feels…risky!
E: Yeah, Bakugo gave Todoroki a line here about himself being raised on violence and turning out fine…which is also uncomfortable.
M: I have to say it. You know what would fix things here? Say it with me:
E: Lay it out me: ice blast!
M: Ice blast!
E: Just freeze those kids solid, then they can’t cause anybody trouble.
M: It’s a little nicer than the “string the leader up and stone him” plan.
E: I appreciate that all their initial plans are just bad in their own way. Like Bakugo’s is too violent, Inasa is too stupid, and Todoroki is too boring.
M: What is the girl’s power?
E: I don’t think we know it yet. Because we only saw Toga’s Quirk during the testing arc.
M: Interesting. I’m surprised the heroes were smart enough to nix Bakugo’s plan. I really thought they might just be like “yeah, okay, sure.”
E: Really what Todoroki needs to do is just embrace the Five Weiners nickname. Go all the way.
M: “Look it’s my fire weiner! And my ice weiner!”
E: It’s a better hero name than Shoto if we’re being honest here.
M: Fire and Ice Weiner? That implies some weird things about his powers.
E: Anyway. Moving on.
M: Really what they should do is throw a dope carnival. Todoroki makes an ice rink, Bakugo does fireworks, Inasa makes a nice light spring breeze or helps people fly or something, the girl smiles.
E: Her smiling is really pissing off those girls right now.
M: Never mind, the girl pretends it’s all super lame so that the kiddo girls will get into it.
E: Good plan, good plan.
M: At the end, Todoroki goes out for soba and Inasa gets udon and they fight.
E: Todoroki literally cannot be friends with someone who doesn’t like soba, because that’s how he expresses his care as we learned earlier this season. His love language is soba.
M: I’d appreciate a flashback where his one good memory with Endeavor is getting soba one time.
E: Wow, get you on the writing staff.
M: Look, not to toot my own, but I would have axed the “kids in the stadium” arc. What a weird week for all the pros to come watch!
E: It’s okay, Endeavor and All Might are having a philosophical discussion about symbols.
M: What is….a symbol?
E: All Might is still on the first volume of Teaching for Dummies, so he gives Endeavor a not great answer, to be honest.
M: It was so patronizing. You can’t tell this man, who literally just said he became the number two hero at age twenty, so he’s not exactly a newbie: “you have to decide what kind of hero you want to be.”
E: To be fair, despite doing this a while, Endeavor might still be at that step.
M: Clearly he decided he wanted to be a strong hero.
E: Statistically!
M: Endeavor is very into math, that’s canon.
E: Well, anything else or do we even need to do Lawsuit Watch?
M: I don’t even know where to begin.
E: The thing is, like, both sides are children. They all sue each other.
M: This is why the certification dude hasn’t been able to sleep.
E: Caffeine Watch is a harder question.
M: Those children are really caffeinated, but I do think the boys of Coffee Prince edge them out here.
E: The children have the natural energy of youth on their side, so I see your point. They are grumpy too, so maybe they actually haven’t had their coffee.
M: Could use a nap.
E: Are you ready for the next episode title?
M: I guess. It’s going to be a trainwreck.
E: Season 4 Episode 17 is called “Relief for License Trainees”
M: Great. Okay. Prediction one: in a twist, this isn’t actually a test for the trainees, but for Present Mic, All Might, and Endeavor.
E:
M: Prediction two: Bakugo teaches the children how to swear, earning their undying respect.
E:
M: Prediction three: Bakugo makes the smartass leader kid cry, that’s the act one twist. Don’t worry, they win everyone over again at the end.
E:
M: See, you’re getting the arc here. Prediction four: the girl’s power is probably inflating things or something (wink) so she makes some balloon animals and the kids love it.
E:
M: Prediction five: Kurogiri shows up and kidnaps all the children. Sure, he escapes jail, kidnaps all the kids, but twist: they love him!
E:
M: He knows all the best swear words.
–
Hello, Emma here! As always, thanks for watching along with us on Split Screen! We’re checking out My Hero Academia dubbed on Funimation and using Viki for Coffee Prince.
Next time! What’s next for our happy couple? And will Bakugo murder a child? Plot twist, it’ll be Inasa instead.