Split Screen: TikTok FinaleFun

It’s a milestone post for Split Screen, readers! We’ve reached a season and series finale here for our shows in the same post. See how everything ends for the Coffee Prince staff and pals, and how My Hero Academia’s fourth season draws to a close, along with a weird amount of TikTok discourse for two shows that do not once mention TikTok. Let’s jump in!

(First time reader? You’ve got three whole series you can catch up on! Check out all of our blogs on Boys Over Flowers, Coffee Prince, and My Hero Academia here!)

Coffee Prince Seventeenth Cup

M: I can’t believe it’s finally over! When did we start watching Coffee Prince?

E: 80 years ago.

M: We’re remarkably well-preserved. 

E: No, it was November of 2019. The 19th was our first blog post. We were a little more than halfway through season 3 of My Hero.

M: I’m impressed, I think we made better time than during Boys Over Flowers. (EDITOR EMMA: Only in the recording…not in the editing. Lol.)

E: It is a little shorter, to be fair.

M: Overall, I think I enjoyed Boys Over Flowers a little more than Coffee Prince. 

E: I think I enjoyed this one more? There were less characters I was frustrated with in this one. Even Han-sung and Yoo-joo were just confusing, instead of actively frustrating for me.

M: I think I enjoyed the high-stakes soapy-ness of Boys Over Flowers a lot. Coffee Prince, especially during the second half of the show, was a lot more relaxed. That’s not a bad thing, but it didn’t feel like there was much in the way of even semi-intense conflict in that latter half once Eun-chan was revealed as a girl. 

E: You gotta at least say that the Coffee Prince boys are a much better group than F4. By a mile.

M: I hope Woo-bin gets a job at Coffee Prince one day. 

E: One day, Woo-bin’s time will come.

M: You’re right, the Coffee Prince boys were more fun to hang out with than F4. I would have liked more time hanging out with them as a group. There was a lot more of that in the first half of the show, and I think it’s why I felt the second half wasn’t quite as focused. 

E: I’ll give you that. They definitely felt like they ran out of stuff this episode and just decided to throw a bunch of random stuff in there. Some of which was good. I like Ha-rim and Byul’s extremely strange relationship. I like them more than Han-sung and Yoo-joo.

M: The only major drama this time, other than everyone being sad that Eun-chan was going to Italy, was that Yoo-joo lost her baby. It sounded in the flash-forward like maybe she’s now lost more than one? Han-sung said something about stopping going back to the hospital and just enjoying their jobs. 

E: I don’t know if she lost multiple babies, but it seems like they had been at least trying and failing to have another one. 

M: I was suitably satisfied with the resolution of the two of them deciding to be a dual income, no kids household permanently. I feel like that suits their lifestyle and temperaments better than being parents. 

E: Now they can be a power bicycling couple with matching shirts and shorts, hitching a ride in the back of a truck. That fits them pretty well.

M: And they can continue to break up and get back together without traumatizing anyone for the rest of their lives. 

E: Man, I wish Sweeper had been in the two year flash forward though.

M: Sweeper is their child. 

E: Yeah, just have dog babies. Be true millennials. 

M: They’re in their thirties in 2009…they are just barely millennials. Han-sung might not be, he might be too old. 

E: But they do feel like millennials and that’s what matters.

M: Millennials are in the eye of the beholder.

E: Would a millennial by any other name be as lazy? As the people say.

M: Eun-sae, meanwhile, is pure Gen Z. 

E: She really is, she’s got the hustle. 

M: She’s ready to turn Min-yup into a TikTok star, and TikTok does not even exist. 

E: All his TikToks are just videos of his back. They’re extremely popular.

M: In a remake of this in 2021, Eun-sae wouldn’t go to a TV audition. She’d just be trying to make it big on TikTok the entire show. 

E: That’s a good enough case for a remake to be honest.

M: I’m a little shocked that we didn’t get a single wedding. For a romantic comedy, it was pretty light on the romance in this final episode!

E: I felt like it was more about all these characters finding their personal resolutions. Which is nice. 

M: Absolutely. I am disappointed that Eun-chan didn’t take one more year to study though. What’s one more year? She’s the world coffee champion, take a victory lap!

E: I mean, she’s the world coffee champion! She doesn’t need to study any more!

M: When a school offers you money to do the thing you want to do, you take it. 

E: School schmul.

M: As cool a job as starting Coffee Princess would be, she should take one more year in Italy, because she’s never getting that again. 

E: What do you mean? They can take vacation whenever they want. They’re rich!

M: Nah, they’re workaholics. And Han-gyul is going to be a controlling dad. 

E: But a controlling dad who takes his kids to Italy.

M: Maybe, maybe. 

E: While it does render the plotline totally pointless, I do kind of appreciate that they didn’t have Sun-ki’s lost love come back. That’s probably healthier.

M: Instead, Sun-ki got to sit on a grocery store couch while Mr. Hong reunited with his lost love. 

E: I love that Sun-ki is still living in that apartment. He adjusted to it so fast in the show, it feels right. With his makeshift mosquito nets and stuff.

M: That’s the spinoff we deserve. 

E: Two Men and a Half Waffle.

M: Perfect. I can’t believe that they want me to think that just because Sun-ki met a girl who can speak Japanese, now he will find love. 

E: He can at least talk smack about his coworkers with someone. He loves talking smack to himself, now he can share it. What else do you need in a relationship?

M: I guess I can’t argue with that. 

E: I’m sorry, I mean, he can talk about how nice Min-yup is.

M: Remember how they all went into the locker room one at a time for Eun-chan’s farewells?

E: It was very good. They’re good coffee princes.

M: Will the third shop be Coffee Duke? Coffee King?

E: Coffee King for the older clientele. Coffee Duke is just where they put their employees in training. Not quite as good as Coffee Prince.

M: Coffee King might get shut down by Burger King. 

E: Or a great opportunity for crossover promotion. Date the Burger King at Coffee King.

M: Stop that. They’ll hear you and do an ad. 

E: They love Colonel Sanders in Japan, Korea can have the Burger King. 

M: That’s too much for me. I love that the mom is still refusing to marry the butcher. 

E: The kids have to get married first, ya know. 

M: That was not the agreement!

E: Well, you know. 

M: Finally, if only the Coffee Prince theme had actual words, Han-gyul could have sung that for a full three minutes to Eun-chan instead. 

E: That was a bit too long for me. 

M: It was nice, but yeah, one verse too many. 

E: I also liked the callback in the “interview” to the ID number. 

M: It was nice. Eun-chan’s slight makeover did convey that she had grown up a bit without totally compromising who she is. I appreciated that too. 

E: She just got a new Italian style. 

M: Well, what’s your overall review of Coffee Prince? Would you recommend it?

E: Give it ten stars, Madelyn! Before I delete my Viki account!

M: Yeah, I would be more likely to recommend Coffee Prince if it came back to Tubi. 

E: I agree. It’s not good enough to make someone get like eight free trials of Viki. I guess we got like five and I accidentally paid for a month.

M: Then again, if you watched on a normal pandemic viewing schedule, you’d probably only need two free trials, maybe less. 

E: Still a bit of a hassle. I’m sure there’s good stuff available on easier viewing platforms. Which hopefully we shall be taking advantage of for the next show. 

M: I would moderately recommend the first half of the show, and then less strongly the second. The first half was funny in weird ways and had a lot of fun cast field trip vibes, plus the overwhelming awkwardness of Eun-chan and Han-gyul’s courtship.

E: Three Shreks out of three. 

My Hero Academia S4E25: “His Start”

M: I thought for sure that Endeavor was going to die. 

E: See, I’m of two minds here. I appreciate that the title seems to be saying that this is Endeavor’s first step towards making himself better, right? Or, I hope it’s saying that and it’s not just gonna immediately be like “Oh, Endeavor, you fought so manly, you’re a good man now.” But also him dying would have been so much easier in a lot of ways, you know? So I appreciate that the show is attempting the more difficult road, but also I’m scared.

M:  Unfortunately, I think either way we are in for another Todoroki and dad arc. Which, on one hand, I get. It was sort of inevitable with All Might’s retirement, but on the other hand…surely someone else has daddy issues. 

E: At least in this case, we might get a Todorokis (plural) and dad arc. Since we’ve introduced another brother and brought the sister and mom back into the picture.

M: They don’t even go here.

E: Yes, but even with the school festival part, you do sort of get the sense that the story is moving to be more interested in the hero side of things as opposed to the academia. 

M: That makes sense, but Class 1-A still has two years and a bit left of school. So it feels a bit premature. I realize this is season five coming up so take this with a grain of salt, but timeline-wise, it feels tough to say we’re shifting so much away from school. 

E: I do have a feeling that maybe we’ll have a time skip…maybe when they finish their first year? That sort of makes sense to me?

M: So like, jump to year three? 

E: Yeah. I can’t imagine how the story raises the stakes with everyone still doing school things at a certain point.

M: I mean, they barely do school things already, and they all have their provisional licenses now, so you can get around that. I worry that a timeskip would open a lot of questions about how the League of Villains did nothing of particular significance for a year though. 

E: Well, there would have to be some sort of event to end it on. Like I don’t know much about Naruto, but Naruto to Naruto Shippuden is like a time skip after the Sasuke guy joins the bad guys (EDITOR EMMA: Spoilers? I don’t know, it’s Naruto, there’s the whole yelling names meme, I’m not feeling guilty about this). It’s like a big event thing that triggers the time skip. So maybe it’s like villains running rampant for a year instead of them doing nothing.

M: Here’s the problem: isn’t All Might supposed to die in the next year?

E: They have another season of this year. That’s like three months. That’s like three more seasons of the show.

M: Fair enough. The big event could be All Might dying, I guess. It would probably be too traumatic to air a whole season that is just Deku crying and screaming “why?” over and over and over again. 

E: That’s a thought that’s still pretty far down the line though. I don’t really know where things are going next immediately? I know a couple of things about where the manga has gone, but nothing like specific or in order. So now I’m almost as lost as you here. I need the next episode title now. 

M: Anyway, let’s talk about what actually happened as opposed to our fan theories. It’s kind of lame that Endeavor can overheat. I’d prefer a more creative thing holding him back from unlimited power. 

E: Well, it does explain the fixation on the fire and ice combo, right? If the kid has both, the ice can stop the overheating and the fire can stop the frosting over.

M: Do you think that results in Todoroki Jr. being really bloated with melty water, or having an overactive bladder or something? Because he melts the ice inside him all the time. 

E: I assume it’s more like, he uses fire then ice to keep his body temperature regulated. Not that he’s like warm pee inside.

M: Look, Todoroki doesn’t really seem to have any of the weird…like Aoyama’s stomach issues, for example. He deserves a weird bodily function like everyone else. 

E: By the way, been a while since localization corner. But in the part where Endeavor is thinking about this, having the flashback to his younger wife, his three failure kids, and Shoto, the dub has him like say different things over each of those. Like “that’s what drove me. The reason I did this.” or whatever. In the sub, he just says “that was why…” three times over each of them. 

Again, it’s just the dub sometimes has an aversion to repeating the same thing- which makes sense, the same words can mean different things, I get it- but, in this case, I feel like when you have him say different things over each picture it ascribes different meaning to each picture, you know? Just a pet peeve. Not a big thing. 

Anyway, final localization corner since I guess I will only be watching the dub with Madelyn now

M: Remember when it seemed like he was going to tell the Nomu that it reminded him of his son?

E: I got that he was talking about himself immediately. But sure.

M: He was like “someone created you to have multiple quirks” and I was like, “that’s Shoto.”

E: You know what, that’s not as terrible a metaphor as I thought it was when you first said it. Like he’s looking at it, and he’s comparing himself to the thing that created it rather than comparing himself to it. That still works. Like creating something powerful, but also something that’s suffering. Not bad Madelyn.

M: Thanks, I appreciate that. Meanwhile, Todoroki is watching his dad almost die multiple times on national TV, and Aizawa lets him do it. Aizawa should have turned off that television. 

E: Would that have been worse though? Then he’s refreshing Twitter on his phone he stares at all the time in the opening.

M: He’s probably already doing that too. 

E: Anyway, it’s just a tradition that we have to watch heroes get beaten up on live TV now. Deku can also say “I watched my dad almost die. I mean he’s not my dad, Todoroki, don’t update your hero conspiracy blog.”

M: Did Deku watch his dad die? Where is his dad?

E: Breathing fire somewhere. Hey, another place he can bond with Todoroki.

M: They’re definitely cousins, and now basically double cousins since I think Todoroki’s mom is from the All for One/One for All family. White hair and all. 

E: You’re right, everyone with the same hair color must be related. That’s how it works. 

M: It’s just genetics. 

E: We also learned that Hawks is a big Endeavor fan from childhood. 

M: I’m pissed about that. I thought Hawks was cool.

E: It does make sense. His drive to improve himself really fast, drawing inspiration from Endeavor continuing to seek the number one spot. Probably not knowing about the eugenics he was doing but…

M: When is it going to come out that Hawks was genetically engineered? That photo in the end credits looks suspiciously like a government super-weapon program. 

E: You do see why that is framed with the Todoroki pics now. But yeah, it’s pretty ominous for something that is not explained yet.

M: Especially for something where the character literally isn’t introduced until the penultimate episode. It’s just like “who the heck is that?”

E: You can probably make a guess as to who it was if you remembered Tokoyami going to internship with him. But yeah. It does not look like he had a fun time as a child. Hence maybe why he’s not an All Might fan, but we’ll have to wait and see for more on that.

M: Now that Endeavor is probably going to have to take a few weeks off, and Hawks too, to molt, Edgeshot is the de facto number one. 

E: You know. Yeah. He’ll do fine. Let’s just make Edgeshot number one.

M: Is the Nomu really dead? It had a cool name, so it’s weird that it’s dead. 

E: It’s like High End though, right? That might be like a brand name for those Nomus that are smart.

M: I hope they’ve trademarked that. Nomu: High End. Pre-order now. 

E: Smart Nomu are pretty scary though. Especially ones than can birth dumb Nomu on the fly. 

M: Yeah, that part was pretty wild. It does feel like if you had more than one power hero on the Nomu though, this wouldn’t have been too bad. If Endeavor hadn’t been playing around at the start and had just 100% percent Plus Ultra (which, so out of character, by the way) roasted it, he could have defeated it without practically killing himself. 

E: But then he wouldn’t have a symbolically significant wound over his left eye. Like a certain someone also does.

M: I didn’t notice that at all, so it’s a bad symbol. 

E: I hope whoever was watching Eri kept her away from the TV.

M: Aizawa was with the class, so…who was with Eri?

E: Present Mic was probably giving running commentary. “Look Eri, that’s Hawks. His Quirk? Fierce Feathers”

M: I hate it. 

E: Hawks’ Quirk is absurd by the way. 

M: Either he has an absurdly big brain that can control like 75 feathers plus his fingers and toes simultaneously, or the feathers have some kind of brain?

E: Maybe they’re like a hive mind. He’s like a sheepdog herding them.

M: Is that connected to his brain though? Is he connected to the hive mind?

E: Don’t think about it. Don’t think too hard. 

M: Quirk Singularity Doomsday!

E: Any other thoughts from the episode? Thoughts on the season as a whole? 

M: Not My Hero’s strongest season, season four. Kind of a lack of a strong villain in either half. The second half was very fun, but it lost some of the drive for me because Gentle was just not that interesting. 

E: I like Gentle a lot as a contrast to the other parts of the series. I think he’s strong thematically, even if the stakes are kinda silly. Anyway, I still think season 2 is the best one overall. Then, season 3’s first half is very strong, then season 4’s 2nd half is pretty strong, and then you get like season 1, the test arc, and the Overhaul stuff all sort of in the same place for me.

M: That seems about right to me. I’ve started watching this season now with CBB too, because he was eager. He thinks the cops are going to use Gentle to infiltrate the League, which would be bold. 

E: I don’t think he’d make a very good spy? But he could sure try. He’d probably get along with the magician one.

M: Twice and Toga too, I think! They would also love TikTok. 

E: I don’t know if they’d be really popular or totally really bad at it. 

M: Both, probably.

E: I guess one final Caffeine and Lawsuit watch here. 

M: I wouldn’t call either show especially caffeinated? Endeavor was high-octane, but I didn’t get caffeine vibes from that fight. 

E: Yeah, lowkey caffeination on both sides. 

M: What a bummer of a final Caffeine Watch! Pretty chill all around, minus the part where Endeavor almost died. 

E: I don’t know about Lawsuit Watch either. 

M: I mean, the people in that building should sue someone. Anyone. 

E: Hey, they were all evacuated, and then Endeavor chopped it up so it would not fall and crush them. Good crisis response.

M: Maybe they could sue the building owner for having such weak glass windows in a high crime area. 

E: Sure, maybe. 

M: Coffee Prince almost refused to hire a women for being a woman, which feels like a case, but ultimately they did bring another girl to the boys club. 

E: Maybe another interviewee for the Coffee Princess position could be like “he hired his wife!” you know?

M: I don’t think you could sue over that. 

E: Pretty lowkey lawsuits from both sides. 

M: Good for them!

E: I have no episode title to give you! (EDITOR EMMA: Can you believe we did this before season 5 started airing? How the schedule has slipped). It’s called Season 5. It’s gonna be 24 or 25 episodes, I assume. That’s my knowledge. Monoma is in the key visual pretty prominently. I could show you that.

M: What even is Monoma’s power?

E: Copying other powers.

M: Monoma is the back-up One for All. Like literally, he’s going to copy Deku’s power. 

E: Here we go, let’s get your thoughts on the key visual. Just so we can have one last round of emojis.

M: Without a prompt I’ll go completely off the rails

E: There you go.

M: Okay, as I said while we were watching, prediction one: this is Bakugo’s freaking time to shine. Wholesome is out. Rough and tumble is in. 

E:

M: Prediction two: this poster feels misleading, because Todoroki does not appear at all, and they’re not going to fool me into thinking we won’t get yet another “Shoto comes to terms with his childhood” arc. 

E:

M: Prediction three: Shinso being here makes me think that either this is his moment to get promoted to the hero course (maybe he can take Mirio’s place?) or that he’s going to be the one they use to actually infiltrate the League, since he has a villain quirk. Since when does he wear an Aizawa scarf?

E:

Aizawa can have two children.

M: Oh no. I don’t like that at all.

Prediction four: I think that instead of a time skip when they get to the end of the first year, which I know you think is several seasons away, but I think could potentially be just one arc away, Nezu is going to announce that they’re shortening the program to two years to get them on the streets sooner, so we get all the benefits of a time skip without the questions of “how could nothing have happened in a year?”

E:

M: Why that emoji?

E: Because Deku’s mom is coming to sue a mouse.

M: They all finish their GEDs online, okay?

E: One last prediction! Make it a great one.

M: Prediction five: Deku is about to wake up with the ability to do the All Might bod. He was glowing a new color, so he’s definitely levelled up. Imagine the questions people will have when he can suddenly transform into All Deku. 

 

E: 

–

Thanks for finishing up this season of Split Screen with us! On to season 3, baby. We’re continuing into the fifth season of My Hero Academia and starting Crash Landing on You to replace Coffee Prince. Look forward to it.

I will be doing my best to pick up the posting pace a bit, lol. That’s an Editor Emma…well, promise is a strong word.

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