Hello there, Split Screen fans! Summer time is here, and it’s not just the weather that’s heating up: it’s the action too! This time on Coffee Prince, we reach what I can only hope is peak bro, and on My Hero Academia, the villains are back in the spotlight and have a PSA for you on the importance of wearing your mask. Grab an iced coffee (or the caffeinated beverage of your choice) and let’s go!
(EDITOR EMMA: What do you mean it’s already August and I’m way behind the times on these posts? Time is meaningless! Also, you may notice the header image looks ever so slightly off- I am freeing myself from the prison of Adobe. Stay tuned.)
(New to Split Screen? You can check out the full series here!)
Coffee Prince Ninth Cup (from minute 31)
M: Coffee Prince is starting to cross the line from enjoyably ridiculous to just ridiculous for me.
E: I will be glad when the “bro arc,” if we must name it, is over.
M: No More Bros.
E: I think it’s because it’s started focusing more on the romantic plot, honestly? Like, as much as I like Eun-chan and Han-gyul, the highlights of the show are just the guys hanging out, to be honest. And there was a pronounced lack of that this episode.
M: Don’t get me wrong, I appreciated the break from the Han-sung and Yoo-joo drama, but I missed the coffee shop boys.
E: Wow, you’re right. Han-sung and Yoo-joo weren’t even in this half-episode at all.
M: Not once! Like I said, a breath of fresh air. Fresh bro-y air.
E: Ha-rim got the one great line about the customer who wanted a kiwi without seeds, but that was all from the coffee shop crew this half episode.
M: I’m glad Chekhov’s kiwi came back after they picked it up at the store.
E: People gotta get those seedless kiwi waffles, I guess. They sure have a picky clientele.
M: People want what they want from their local host cafe.
E: Well, if they want extreme crises of the sexuality variety, it’s here in spades.
me too min-yup
M: This episode was a whole heck of a lot.
E: As much as I do want to get through the bro part, (and we seem to have done so?) going too fast has maybe made it worse? Overall, it was just too much concentrated relationship drama in one half hour.
M: I’m inclined to agree.
E: Like all those scenes would have been fine if they weren’t playing back to back to back with each other, each with their own slow, mournful, indie pop tune in the background.
M: Han-gyul spent a whole song staring at Eun-chan sleeping on the beach.
E: Again, that would have been fine, if it wasn’t immediately preceded by a whole song’s worth of them walking dramatically hand in hand on the beach, and then I feel like there was another sequence after that…
M: Where she was still awake but laying in his lap. To be fair, if you were grappling with the internalized homophobia that Han-gyul seems to be battling, yeah, it might take you a few songs worth of reflection to break through. But this is television! I can’t take this!
E: My secondhand embarrassment was really off the charts.
M: On one hand, I don’t understand why Eun-chan won’t just say that she’s a girl. On the other, Han-gyul is going to be angry.
Catch me cringing into the void
E: Yeah, I think it’s just intimidating because she’s in so deep now that coming clean is going to be a huge explosion. Pulling the bandaid off, except the bandaid is literally going to tear your skin to the bone. She should have just told him like a week into the job when they were getting along, you know? But it’s too late now.
M: I’m worried that those scary pills are going to come back.
E: I really hope not. I really hope that whole little plot beat is just dropped and forgotten.
M: Please. We suffered through so much “bros do this, right?” Surely we’ve earned this one request.
E: Also, after you write that sequence in your TV show, nobody else is allowed to use bro. You’ve poisoned that word.
M: Do Mr. Hong and the butcher also have a romantically-fraught brotherhood? Unclear!
E: At least that one would probably be a little funny.
M: What a twist.
E: One plot point that I don’t want dropped is…well, A. where is Sun-ki’s child? But I was going to say the bathrobe man.
M: Son-ki. But yes, the bathrobe man is SO MYSTERIOUS. Han-gyul’s mother is going to leave his father if the mystery man so much as says the name Han-gyul. What? Why?
E: I mean, from what we know, Han-gyul’s dad had an affair with a math teacher that presumably resulted in Han-gyul. But he stayed at an orphanage for like six years before he was adopted. I don’t know where bathrobe man fits into that.
M: I need a break from the romantic drama, so maybe this will be a welcome distraction.
E: But that was basically the only thing that happened outside of the Han-gyul and Eun-chan stuff, thinking about it. There were a couple scenes with the butcher man, but it was romance heavy this time. Bromance heavy.
Observe the middle aged men in their natural habitat….
M: The fallout is going to be rough for about fifteen minutes next episode.
E: The next on did seem to indicate that Han-gyul at least comes back to work, and they seem to be getting along again.
M: There’s definitely still some tension. On the plus side, it looks like Donkey Kong is making another appearance!
E: On the plus-er side….band time…
M: I cannot wait for the band. If the whole show pivots to be about a band called Coffee Prince, that would be fine by me.
E: They only sing mournful indie pop, but also Min-yup is on the triangle.
M: Songs to hold your bros hand by the beach to.
E: It would have been ten times less uncomfortable if they had just stopped saying “brothers do this, right?!” I guess that’s maybe the point.
M: Look, normalize male affection, right? But this ain’t it.
Catch me evaporating through the sheer force of my cringe
E: There’s not really any point to romance tracker this episode. Although where did we even leave Han-sung and Yoo-joo last time? They were on like an uncomfortable vacation, right?
M: Maybe. It was unclear to me when they left home, but they did seem to be somewhere different, being snippy with each other but also weirdly joking about cheating on each other.
E: Han-sung was ignoring Eun-chan’s calls, which is maybe good right now, honestly.
M: Both the cousins are ignoring her calls now.
E: Good. I guess. I dunno.
M: This whole thing was Romance Tracker. Do we need to do Non-Romance Tracker?
E: We are looking for Sun-ki’s child. If anyone knows where Sun-ki’s child has gone, please call 1-888-SON-KI
M: Also, the chalkboard got redone!
E: Exciting stuff. I do love it when I erase my whiteboard and redo it and then leave it like that for six months. It’s a highlight of my year.
M: Maybe if you had more bros, you would change it more often.
E: Just bro things.
My Hero Academia S4E10: “Temp Squad”
M: I have to ask: is My Hero Academia copaganda?
E: I mean, to the extent that almost all superhero fiction inherently is, yeah? I think it gets into some critique of itself as it progresses, but that doesn’t mean that the superhero concept isn’t always conservative is some ways.
M: Should we all have been identifying with Stain a little more in calling for hero accountability?
E: To be honest, if I were to rank, like, my top ten favorite My Hero Academia characters…would at least half be villains? Yes.
M: I’ll put this aside for now, but it’s a little harder when there are literal cops providing flavor text a few times an episode during this storyline.
E: It is helpful in this particular time period- usually it’s what I would call the weakest part of this arc- but Overhaul is just cartoonishly, cardboard villainy to me. Like, in all the episodes we’ve had with him so far, there has not been a single sympathetic feature. Dude deserves what he gets, even if you can’t really root for cops.
M: Just aniki things, am I right?
E: Sure.
M: Other than his voice, there’s basically nothing distinctive about Overhaul. All of his cronies are like “he wants to save the yakuza,” but none of them seem to be talking about anything good about the yakuza.
E: Yeah, and we haven’t really gotten anything concrete from Overhaul himself on what he wants. And it’s been ten or so episodes since we met him…like, there should be something by now.
M: He wants drug money. I know that much.
E: I think part of the issue is that he’s sort of all over the place. He’s got this plague doctor aesthetic (which is cool, design-wise), he talks about people being sick with hero syndrome, he abuses a child, he wants the yakuza to be strong, he sells drugs. There’s almost too much going on, but then none of those things have substance behind them.
M: It seems like he has the ability to put people back together in addition to tearing them apart. That’s what I was meant to understand from our villain from the world of MMA, right?
Our general reaction to Overhaul
E: Yeah, that’s right.
M: So that makes the plague doctor thing kinda cool. But I still don’t get why he’s a villain. Also, why did he murder Big Sis Mag when he could have put her back together?
E: I mean, in that case, it was a show of power right? Also, I imagine it probably takes additional focus to kill and then immediately put back together, which might be hard if you’re surrounded by potential attackers.
M: My Hero is not doing well by its marginalized characters this season, that’s all.
E: Yeah, I agree. I still happen to be very fond of Toga and Twice, so I enjoy this episode a lot.
M: Twice has really grown on me since his spotlight episode, and that was a nice moment when Toga tied his head back together. But poor Rock Lock! I’m glad you’ve assured me he isn’t dead, because he looked pretty dead.
E: He’s not dead, he’s fine. Just a little stabbed.
M: I can’t believe his power is called Lockdown.
E: You know, as cool a combination of Quirks as the hero squad have, they really did not put together a balanced team. They have no DPS.
M: As you rightly pointed out, Fat Gum has like one offensive shot, and that’s it. That’s the whole offense.
E: Nighteye has his humorous personal seals.
M: And his frightening abs. Those are offensive in a different way.
Pay no attention to the abs in the background, it’s all about the seals
E: I guess there is technically Ryukyu outside, but I don’t think she would be very helpful in a hallway environment.
M: So that leaves us with the children, most of whom have potentially offensive quirks. Uraraka and Kirishima are more support or defense oriented, but they can fight. Who authorized this?
E: *shakes fist at Nezu*
M: Until Rock Lock received a minor stab wound, the only people hurt were students. Who could have predicted it?
E: Hey, Fat Gum got beat up too, to be fair.
M: Fat Gum’s blood pressure just dropped to the healthy range. He’s received a neutral health benefit.
E: But yeah, the mission has gotten a lot more chaotic than was anticipated, but it’s sort of too late to send Deku back out.
M: I get that they’re trapped now. What I don’t get is that they didn’t seem to have any plan for if the League of Villains had teamed up with the yakuza, or even if they just happened to be there on their own revenge mission.
E: Yeah, that seems like a possibility that they should have considered at least.
M: Especially given that Nighteye is on their team. Nighteye, whose only power (other than apparently really strong fingers? He was holding three 5kg weights in his hands?) is seeing the future.
Our general reaction to trying to think too hard about Nighteye’s power
E: But he can’t change it. So, as soon as he sees it, that’s what happens.
M: But this is proof that he can change the future. If they knew the League was there, things would not have played out the same way.
E: I assume he would have seen the way it would have played out already having used his Foresight. Does that make sense?
M: You’re right but one, it would have played out in a better prepared way and two, isn’t that proof that looking at the future affects the future?
E: And that’s exactly why he has some hang-ups about it. Anyway, I do agree with you that it feels like they should have anticipated some sort of messy revenge plan coming from the LoV, especially with the image they have of Shigaraki at this point. I mean, he’s clearly grown at least slightly outside that petulant personality, because he’s playing his revenge plan relatively close to the chest, but you’d think the heroes would have considered it.
Tfw your villainous leader takes his weird comfort hand off his face in front of you for the first time
M: They also really don’t care about the lives of this police squad, huh?
E: Like, why are they in there, to be honest?
M: They’re a liability. No one they’re fighting is quirkless. That raises a lot of questions about who’s allowed to be a cop but let’s not dive into that for this world today. They’re just there to be taken hostage. That’s their whole purpose.
E: Somebody has to deliver that flavor text.
M: You’re right, my mistake.
E: Any other thoughts on your part from this episode. Mirio’s still running. Where is he going? Forward.
M: Still has his clothes on, so he must be doing fine.
E: Yes, he hasn’t been forced to whip out his secret technique yet.
M: No. No.
E: But seriously, any other thoughts from you?
M: I wonder what Kurogiri is doing.
E: Well, he’s not here, which is good.
M: I knew that much. I was referencing Shigaraki saying that Kurogiri had his own stuff to do.
E: Something nefarious, probably. Something truly warped.
M: That’s for sure. Oh no. That took me a moment.
Trust no one, not even yourself
E: Lawsuit watch?
M: Oh, there are so many.
E: I mean, it’s the same stuff on My Hero, so like, does that even count.
M: Kirishima got the crap kicked out of him, I feel like it’s a little different. He had not woken up.
E: The MMA man called him a man though. So. Worth it.
M: Plus identity theft. That joke is never not funny.
E: I was thinking that Eun-chan would have a case for unjust firing, but then he didn’t end up firing her, and you pointed out that she was probably work at will anyway,
M: Yeah, it was pretty close there. I mean, workplace harassment continues to be a viable case.
E: So just the usual on both shows.
M: Which was more caffeinated though?
E: I mean, Coffee Prince was kind of not caffeinated, and Toga and Twice seem to be constantly on those five hour energies, so. I think it goes to My Hero.
M: I thought at first that they pulled an all-nighter on Coffee Prince, but Eun-chan actually didn’t, and the soundtrack could use a jolt. So let’s give it to My Hero.
E: Next episode title?
M: I’m ready!
E: Season 4, Episode 11 is called “Lemillion”
M: I hope the lemon guy from Bungo shows up. The crossover no one asked for.
E: Hey, they’re animated by the same studio so…it’s not too out there.
M: We were already in Yokohama last season and no one appeared. That was the moment. Aizawa and Dazai become fast friends. What happens when Aizawa looks at Dazai but Dazai touches Aizawa at the same time???
E: Top ten anime fight scenes.
M: Just bro things. Anyway, prediction one: I guess we’ll find out what Mirio’s been up to. Probably with some juicy flashbacks to his childhood explaining why he is the way he is today.
E:
M: Prediction two: We’ll finally discover what Eri’s power is, because Mirio will be hiding in the walls with his ear poked out as Shigaraki asks Overhaul about it and he explains the whole thing.
E: 
M: Prediction three: I’m worried that at some point in this arc Deku is going to break his leg.
E: 
M: Prediction four: Toga and Twice and Aizawa and Deku have a dope fight with walls dude. Not Mirio’s ear, the villain.
E: 
M: Prediction five: Class 1-A starts English class. Lunch break is next!
E: Present Mic! Omniscient narrator of the world! This is not the time for English class!
M: Learning never sleeps.
E: 
–
Hey there everyone! Thanks for watching along with us! We’re watching the MHA dub on Funimation and Coffee Prince on Tubi if you want to catch up now.
And, hey, if you ever find yourself wanting to read My Hero Academia (or Boys Over Flowers for that matter, as a throwback), maybe consider ditching Amazon and finding yourself a local black-owned bookstore or comic shop. If not, find something else that you can do!
Next time! Mirio finally stops running. Meanwhile, the coffee shop boys rehearse for their musical performance.