Split Screen: They’re Gonna Kill Each Other!

Thanks for tuning in to Split Screen! Now that Emma and I are done running around all over the East Coast, we should be back to our regularly scheduled programming from here on out. It’s been a little while since we got to watch Boys Over Flowers and My Hero Academia, and I, for one, have been on the edge of my seat! We stopped each of the shows on a real cliffhanger last time, and the suspense is killing me! Given this week’s lawsuit watch, that feeling is oddly (or not so oddly) appropriate. Let’s see what goes down.

Catch up on our previous entries here.

Boys Over Flowers Episode 3 (from minute 34)

E: For me, this half of the episode can be divided into three beats or sections. You’ve got drunk Jan-di and the aftermath, the auction, and the discussion with Seo-hyun at the pool.

M: Those don’t really count as specific sections, do they? So much happened!

E: Yeah, I know, but the first half of this was ten million tiny things. I’m just glad we had some clear separation in this part, it makes the discussion easier.

M: That’s true. We start this second half with that classic sitcom set-up of “girl thinks vodka is water and accidentally gets drunk!” As a former pirate bartender, I was kind of concerned about the really nonchalant dude working the bar You’re not supposed to over-serve! That could have cost him his job.

E: He seemed very unconcerned about the very drunk girl who is very underage. I think? What is the drinking age in South Korea? I guess maybe he’s paid not to care.

M:I forgot that Jun-pyo had rented out the bar for the night, right? Maybe the bartender was expecting these kinds of shady dealings, although that’s not really much better. 

E: Oh, we had shoe (and pants, I guess) moment number one featuring Jan-di’s vomit. All over Jun-pyo’s shoes. He kinda deserves it.

M: We’ve had multiple shoe incidents every time in both halves of each episode.

E: Speaking of shoes and such, can Jan-di never not get a makeover?

M: I’m not really supposed to think she’s ugly, right? Because I feel like everyone has been making a really big deal lately about how she’s super unattractive.

E: I think she’s supposed to be a bit awkward-looking? TV awkward-looking which is different than real life awkward-looking. Her hair is not awesome, for instance.

M: Lately she’s been negging herself constantly too, which confused me. 

E: I believe that’s a bit of a Korean thing. Plastic surgery is a normal part of life. Even compared to here, they’re much more concerned about figure and skin and beauty. I mean, it’s a generalization, but I think that’s where her self-consciousness manifests from.

M:I want to take this moment to brag that my prediction from last time was like 72% correct. Jan-di wakes up at Jun-pyo’s mansion, and then…shenanigans ensue, Mission Impossible-style. F4 going full on spy-mode to try to get Jan-di out was nuts. 

E: His mother explains a lot about Jun-pyo. I mean, if his childhood is full of stories like that, anybody would be a little off. I mean, his mother sent a SWAT team when they ran away from camp? A SWAT team? What?

M: And yet, despite an entire childhood of having to deal with and avoid his mother, Jun-pyo has no idea how to handle getting a girl out of his room.

E: But he does somehow sneak in the other F4 members.

M: The obvious choice would have been to dress Jan-di up as one of the maids, because no way does this Korean Emily Gilmore know who’s on the staff on any given day, and Jan-di could have left that way. No need for the split-screen (hey-yo!)  conference call, split screen and another glamorous makeover.

E: They try real hard to lie.

M:They had no plan! Which I guess is appropriate for a bunch of teenage boys, but come on. They could have at least come up with some kind of a story,! Their alibi for Jan-di was literally “she’s a fancy girl.” 

E: The F2 Minor members distinguished themselves with their thinking on their feet. She’s their new mascot! Her father’s in fashion! Not great, but all Ji-hoo could come up with was, “he has a business.”

M: I thought the idea of F4 training a mascot was funny though. If only that was a real thing. I guess she basically already is in everything but name, like how frat houses have a sweetheart.

Also, just a a reminder that Jun-pyo’s mom would literally kill Jan-di for being poor. Let’s not forget that.

E:  Last Split Screen, I was wondering how Jun-pyo could be the romantic lead when he’s so horrible. But I guess all they had to do was introduce someone even worse. He’s a barrel of sunshine compared to his mother.

M: Which brings us to the charity auction. I can’t believe that in such a high-stakes situation, Jan-di is again one hundred percent transparent about how out of place she is. It’s starting to get on my nerves. Stop trying to be discovered in places you shouldn’t be! It’s like she wants to get caught!

E: She pulled it together for the modelling. She did have no warning.

M: After she had already made a scene, and stood by herself instead of near her “friend,” and was just generally a mess.

E: Why were they standing alone without her? That’s just bad planning.

M: They’re dumb boys.

E: Anyway, the auction provided Jun-pyo the opportunity to be smooth and snag her some $10,000 goggles. Which she very symbolically put in her handkerchief drawer. By which I mean, the place she kept Ji-hoo’s handkerchief, not just like, a handkerchief drawer.

M: She needs to keep her parents from selling those goggles, because if they put it on eBay, they will be discovered and the ice queen will assassinate them.

E: I mean, worst comes to worst, she could go “They were stolen!” As a very last resort. Very last.

M: That sounds like a plan F4 would come up with, and then the laundry man dies.

E: She’s gonna be found out anyway, because scholarship man (a true bro, trying hard not to give her away) has been ordered by scary mom to find out who she is.

M: The midseason finale will be a bloodbath.

E: It’s like Game of Thrones really.

M: I was just thinking that.

E: We end off the episode with Jan-di sticking her nose into a bunch of thorns. Seo-hyun comes to say goodbye because she’s obviously in love with her, and Jan-di begs her to stay for Ji-hoo’s sake.

M: This is a famous model/smart lady, and you’re begging her to stay because this sixteen-year-old boy needs a hot mom? No way.

E: Ji-hoo did not appreciate it.

M: STAY OUT OF MY LIFE FOREVER.

E: Mood.

M: It’s time for the weekly Romance Tracker! Who’s in the lead this week?

E: F2 Minor was bursting onto the scene in a new way this episode! And the one that does pottery and doesn’t have the wig seems to be playing the sax next episode. Saxophone is romantic, yeah?

M: You’re hopping on the bandwagon! I’m having a hard time with my pick. Jun-pyo seems way too obvious? We’re only three episodes in and he’s spent thousands of dollars on her, so that’s not nothing. I’m really torn, but I guess I’ll do F2 Minor too. The bad wig one.

E: He bid on her goggles for a bit!

M: Yeah. Foreshadowing.

E: Okay, for our non-romance prediction for next week: I bet that other F2 boy plays the jazz drums.

M: Is Jun-pyo the singer? Does he scat?

E: Maybe, but they don’t want anything to do with Ji-hoo and his horrible violin playing. What’s yours?

M: I predict that the cheating scandal that was mentioned in the “next-on” montage will be discovered because Jan-di left her shoe in someone’s room. Cinderella-style. I guess that’s a romance thing but it’s more about the shoes.

E: Shoes are very important. This show is about child endangerment and shoes.

M: One more bonus funny quip: Seo-hyun is offloading her child care responsibilities to the poor. Social commentary right there. Take care of Ji-hoo, laundry girl.

 

My Hero Academia S1 E7: Deku vs. Kacchan

 

M: This week’s MHA might as well have been a two part episode. There wasn’t too much that I found super surprising, except maybe the huge amount of flashbacks. I was expecting a pure action episode!

E: I do appreciate the flashbacks. I like Kacchan a lot because he feels like an MHA character rather than a character stolen from elsewhere and adjusted for MHA (you’ll see what I mean in season 2). His “I’m better than everyone!” belief comes from the societal issues of MHA’s quirk-based world. I mean, it’s not crazy creative, but it feels like it has its own identity. I’m not sure if that’s the right word, but you get what I’m getting at.

M: It’s not that unique. I’m like that. That’s my quirk.

E: While we’re on Kacchan, let’s go in to my dub issue of the week. Spoiler, these are often Kacchan-related. Okay, what does the line “Oh, he’ll be fine if he dodges,” say to you?

M: Dodge means get out of the way. Deku did not get out of the way.  Why?

E: I think he says something like “oh, he’ll be fine if I don’t hit him” in the sub. Which, to me, feels much more like Kacchan. He has a lot of faith in his own ability and a lot of control over it. However, he’s got no faith in Deku’s, obviously. So, if he says “he’ll be okay if he dodges,” he’s actually saying he thinks Deku’s gonna freaking die from this. Which…is a bit too extreme for him.

M: Yeah sure, that’s a good character justification for why that’s a better translation. But purely based on what happens in the scene, it’s obvious the translation is bad. BECAUSE DEKU DOES NOT DODGE.When he got up from that blast, I was surprised, because I thought he was deceased. 

E: Like, honestly, he should be dead. He was exploded. Side note, imagine leaving nitroglycerin sweat everywhere you go. Like, everything you touch, you just leave nitroglycerin.

M: You couldn’t ever cook again, not on a gas stove. You’d blow up the whole place.

E: Anyway, you can claim your correct prediction about Boys Over Flowers, but you were wrong about Iida in this episode. He leaned in hard into the villainy.

M: No no no, my prediction was still spot on! Iida was not a natural villain, and that was really his downfall.

E: You know, moving everything floatable was not a bad defense.

M: No, that’s super dumb villain logic. All she would’ve had to do was have Deku break something, which he did at the end of the episode of course, but no one else seems to realize he can only use his quirk once. Why wouldn’t he just smash up the whole place? So yeah, it seems like a good idea to remove all the objects, but it’s only good in the same way as cleaning when I should be working is a good idea.

E: I don’t fully get that comparison.

M: You will one day. This is getting into Lawsuit Watch a little early, but when the whole class is telling All-MIght that Deku and Kacchan are going to kill each other, it’s definitely time to pull the plug on that little classroom exercise.

E: 10-pack abs, (my fave supporting character, by the way), should have just pulled the plug himself.

M: He’s my favorite too 😉 It seems to me though, if the original Hero Academy, that is to say, the X-Mansion, AKA Charles Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters, had the Danger Room in the sixties, that tech probably should have made its way to Japan by now.

E: Is that less potential for a lawsuit?

M: It’s computerized, right? You can call off the robots at any time. Heck, in X-Men Legends (and this is a gaming blog after all), it seems like it’s just holograms.

E: Didn’t we have a whole conversation about how fighting the robots was kinda dumb?

M: Yeah, but this is an education program. You can’t have kids, just like I said last week, pretending to be villains. Seems pretty obvious that tendency should not be encouraged in Bakugo.

E: I feel like they could have done away with the villain/hero angle to make it a bit better. It tests teamwork and planning and communication, it’s just badly coded. Like, just set pairs against each other and call it capture the flag.

M: So his whole school is just gym class then. And grammar.

E: Hey, what else do you need?

M: Lawsuit Watch for real now: it is a very difficult call this week. On one hand, someone almost died. On the other hand, someone might be killed. Which school is in which hand? Unclear.

E: There’s was a lot of risk for death in these episodes

M: Teacher negligence, parental threats, underage drinking,

E: Going into an area CLEARLY marked “don’t go in here.” I mean, gasp.

M: I think it’s gotta be a draw. Which is what I predicted for the fight in the episode, so my guesses are on-point, by which I mean “just slightly off-point” this week. If I had to choose, maybe UA? Because no one seems that phased by hitmen at Shinwa. Seems like just a part of life.

E: The UA students do seem more concerned about the possibility of death. They might talk to their parents who might then talk to lawyers.

M: It’s all about the communication factor.

E: So, give me your predictions. Do you want the name for next episode to help you?

M: Sure, hit me with it.

E: Episode 8 is Bakugo’s Start Line.

M: Cool. Okay. Prediction One: Nobody else gets to do this training exercise, they all get As

E: 

M: Prediction two: We didn’t get much crying this week, so Deku will definitely cry in front of the entire class next time.

E:

M: Bakugo is going to try to hit on floaty girl.

E:

M: I don’t understand why that’s so funny. Emma is literally crying. Not just in emoji face, but in real life. 

E: I’m sorry, I don’t- I’m not sure why that got me so bad. Oh man. Sorry, shippers.

M: Not in this next episode, but long-term,  Ten Pack and Weird Torso Cut-Out Girl will also totally hook up.

E: They’ll bond over their inappropriate costumes

M: They’re the class hotties, okay? They go to school with Birdface, so that’s not so hard. Anyway, final prediction. Iida will drop out of UA and decide to take the GRE instead.

E: 

–
Hey guys, Emma here. Thanks for reading and watching along with us! We’re watching Boys Over Flowers on Netflix and My Hero Academia on Hulu if you want to catch up with us.

Next week, it’s all about F2’s secret jazz band, I’m assuming. Hopefully, Jan-di will get to play the tambourine. And then, as mentioned, My Hero Academia Episode 8 is Bakugo’s Start Line, referring to when Bakugo began being my favorite character in the show. No, seriously, they titled it for me.

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