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gillianthecat · 2 years

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The Devil Judge: Episode 16

I just finished The Devil Judge and something about this show compelled me to take copious notes - it had emotional intensity and layers of mystery. These are long and rambling, so they're likely not of interest to anyone else, but since I spent all that time writing it I decided, why not post it. Perhaps someone will find it interesting.

Below are my moment-to-moment reactions, predictions and analysis as I watched episode 16.

eps 1&2 ep3 ep4 ep5 ep6 ep7 ep8 ep9 ep10 ep11 ep12 ep13 ep14 ep15 ep16

I wrote about my initial impressions, up to episode 5, here and here.

This is cleaned up only slightly. I followed the spelling given in the Viki subtitles. I mostly don't explain what I'm reacting to, so this will probably only make sense if you've seen the episode recently. Occasionally I give timestamps.

ok. here we go. deep breaths

oh god my heart. these two. their faces.

oh god. is one of them going to die? "even if it costs me my life." do they have to bury the gays even when they won't admit they're gay? It is still hard for me to imagine what a happy ending could even look like here, even if they were allowed to be in love.

Ga-On now has no power, he has to beg a low level police officer to intervene, just like an ordinary citizen.

Is he going to end up in jail too? or maybe he's trying to get himself arrested so he can bust Yo-Han out from the inside?

starting to feel like a rat trapped in a maze. what doesn't Seon-Ah control at this point? I hope she doesn't get flattened out into just a conspiracy mastermind at this point.

I'm confused about the timeline here. I thought Prof. Min had been a supreme court justice for a while now? and it seems he'd known Seon-Ah for many years. How long ago did Ga-On become a judge? Based on my research I'm guessing any time from age 24 on, and now he's 30, so it's been 5 or 6 years?

but now it's looking like she only tried to rope Prof Min into her plot when Yo-Han began planning the public trials. Which is just within the past year or maybe two?

(8:15) either way, it's looking like Prof. Min truly is a moral person who got tricked by Seon-Ah because he wanted to stop the televised trials, which seemed dangerous to him (same, dude). My first reaction is that he's pretty naive, but he doesn't see the same Seon-Ah that we get to, so perhaps she's just that good at fooling people.

They're having it both ways: he was conspiring with the enemy AND he's a moral center in this universe. Surprisingly that actually works for me.

"Whatever it takes" a theme of this show - everyone has made this promise and then asked if it was worth it

I'm predicting she's misjudging him here. i still believe he's one of the few not motivated by personal ambition. he has no interest in being chief justice, he's interested in right and wrong

"Someone had to become a monster to stop Kang Yo-Han" With Prof. Min's face sideways reflected in the table! I think this is the first time they use the reflection framing for him? now that we know he's also participating in the games of power.

Ga-On. You're just careening around this world like a pinball now. You lost Su-Hyeon, then you thought Yo-Han had betrayed you, then as soon as you found out he hadn't, he was sent to jail and you discovered your mentor, your moral center had betrayed you instead. I feel like you must not even know which way is up anymore.

he's a reactive character - that's his role in this narrative, but they make it work so he doesn't feel passive or stupid or without agency

oh god, the bandage on the hand. the framing continues to emphasize the intensity of Y & G's connection.

(14:05) Seon-Ah's in pink again as she enters the den of power. Pink because she's feeling safe and in control? and the first time we've seen her in pants and not a short skirt? I feel like she's dressing more for herself now because she feels secure enough in her power.

Cigars again. Last time we saw a cigar someone died. a servile president Heo. He's in the fall part of his rise and fall. This actor is great - the role could easily feel like a caricature, but he somehow manages to make him seem like a plausible human being.

Our Two Representative Businessmen are acting more and more like cackling hyenas. hmm, interesting theory that Seon-Ah has here.

oh yeah, i keep forgetting about this Dream Village plot. I think it's because it's never really felt like it's the reason why Yo-Han is battling these guys? the show is either still keeping his motivations mysterious, or is just confused about them.

Ah, the wives! I was just thinking we hadn't seen them in a while. I hope they're going to be doing their own plotting.

oh god, this is creepy. This is getting very dystopian.

Ga-On's note to Elijah. It's so sweet that he wants to comfort and reassure her. and yet it's just reminding me I'm pissed that this plot twist doesn't make sense. and is a confusing explanation of Yo-Han's behavior

brave boy, preparing to go into the dragon's cave to rescue his prince. He's lost all his protectors and now he has to become the schemer and protector.

I keep thinking about Yo-Han's motivation. They haven't yet sufficiently connected the dots between 'wants to protect Elijah from the guilt of killing her parents' and 'devotes his whole life to a complicated plot to take down the shadow government, committing many immoral acts along the way.' Like, he was always an outsider, and an adrenaline junkie, and walked the line of becoming the monster that everyone thought he was. He was always an ends justifies the means person. I guess I'm struggling because the big church fire reveal was framed as giving us the key insight into Yo-Han's personality and motivations. but it was just a small detail, really. most of what explains his behavior either we already knew or they haven't told us yet.

Is he devoted solely to the few people he loves, and let the world burn? He's literally said this before. and a lot of his actions support it. but his complex plotting seems only to make sense if he cares about humanity at large, or about an abstract idea of justice. If the foundation isn't responsible for the fire, than revenge can't be the reason he's going after them. and i believe that he's not interested in personal power for his own sake, he's not like Seon-Ah. or in money or fame like the Two Representative Businessmen and Prez. Heo. The only other explanation he's stated (although it's always been ambiguous if we should trust this) is that he cares about humanity and justice. which is literally the opposite of "let the world burn"

So. Is there going to be another reveal that the foundation was somehow to blame for the fire? Or does Yo-Han blame them because the only reason they were at the church was because they tricked Isaac into a donation? It's a tenuous connection to motivate a 10 year revenge plot, but I could believe it fit's Yo-Han's character. He apparently killed that firefighter just for stealing a watch off Isaac's dead body. But the problem is he hasn't said this, and he's explained a lot of reasoning by now. and it's so slight a connection it needs to be overtly explained for me to buy that's the reason.

maybe it's a structural issue? I think they're trying to tell two different stories - an intimate domestic story and a sprawling political story, and Yo-Han is the connection point between the two. but the two stories have different requirements for the character's motivations, and the writers haven't fully integrated those contradictory demands. I think it's theoretically possible to make it work, but very challenging

But, patience. I'm sure they'll tell us more, and there's a chance it will even make all these contradictions make sense.

life in prison. People from Yo-Han's past are trying to come back and haunt him now that he isn't protected. I'm not worried though. even if he dies it won't be at the hand of these bit players.

(24:30) ok. adventure heist time. Ga-On has smuggled himself into the medical center in a box. what horrors await us?

i don't' know if it's intentional, but all this plastic sheeting is evoking the false mansion that Seon-Ah built for the kidnapping

well, this is disturbing. I'm guessing it's all vibes, and there's no logical medical/research explanation for what we see, but the vibes are effective.

perfect timing on the espionage Ga-On! almost like you were the protagonist of a movie

WOW this is an interesting choice in the middle of a real life pandemic where people aren't trusting vaccines. (apparently vaccine conspirecy theoreies are not a major problem in South Korea, but still)

https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/19/16/9914/pdf?version=1660218026 (opens a PDF)

Ga-On put your cap back on! These people know what you look like! I can't see how he's filming, but presumably he is.

(min 29) somehow this cartoonishly evil conversation works. It seems like it should feel over the top, but i guess i believe in the evil of billionaires, and their honesty amongst themselves.

laughter, music and slowmo, echoing that first dinner party he attended with these hyenas

they're definitely making it seem like the Two Representative Businessmen are holding the cards here.

gasp! I jumped. but yay allies! Ga-On, I hope you're filming everything.

Seon-Ah looks genuinely shocked and appalled. But what did she think was happening at the dream village? It's always tricky in stories, to depict the conscience of an ambitious schemer who's done plenty of evil herself. How do you make it feel real that there are lines she won't cross?

Oh no, the girl from the orphanage is here. Her grief over this one individual feels realistic. She sees herself in this girl. And she's already been seen to have emotional connections to individual people (Jae Hui and Yo-Han)

ah, so Min Jeong Ho accepted the Chief Justice position. What is he thinking? Has he been corrupted or does he still think he's doing good with this? "doing good" was not how Seon-Ah sold it to him, though

(37:49) I don't believe it though. Besides the fact this is not the kind of story they're telling, that didn't even show him die. But, what did happen then?

this music, their music, playing over Ga-On's face. It still makes me sad even though I'm pretty sure he's not dead. and we see Ga-On in reflection, hmm. Does that mean he's behind this fake-out, or just that there is scheming afoot in general?

Seon-Ah's reaction. her face. the wine. she did love him, in whatever form of love/obsession that was. and the way they're cutting between Ga-On and Seon-Ah's reactions. hmm.

(also that was the most colorful outfit we've seen on her, or anyone, yet)

hyenas in their yellowing den.

i'm wondering - As these rich men take more and more power back, their meeting places get smaller, less stylized and more "realistic" if that's the word. those early shots from above of that stylized table in those stylized grey rooms. whereas this feels like the kind of ugly expensive old fashioned rooms where the backroom deals really happen. and the lighting gives everything the same yellowish tint that most of the shots from the blue house had. It's the lighting for people who don't care how they look because they don't need to impress.

I don't know how to interpret this yet, because I still can't predict who is going to "win" in the end. although I guess my gut is saying it's going to be the Two Representative Businessmen, cause i can't see a way out, storywise.

(40:40) What is Min Yong Sik doing here? If i'm remembering correctly, this is the first time that one of our Two Representative Businessmen has come up with a plan independently (on screen, i'm sure they have lots of plotting happening that they don't show us). This feels significant, like they're no longer background characters.

um, this shot of the back of her head in her desk chair while she's holding a cigar is making me nervous. That is way too similar to the final frames of Minister Cha. like, these are very explicit parallels.

unformed gender thoughts on women and cigars, and the hyena trio's misogyny. which also didn't really get shown until about halfway through the series.

all four of them look confident that they have the upper hand. Who is right?

Seon-Ah even orders her assistant to get her a gun. Is this going to be a re-writing of Cha's story, or an echo?

I'm excited to see what her plan is! I assume she's not going to straight up shoot the president on live tv.

Oh Jin Ju, the secret weapon in this scheming, one we wouldn't have expected from her silly beginnings. I love this for her. and somehow despite the odds, she managed to feel like a real person.

uh oh, what is Ga-On planning? Why does Oh Jin Ju need to leave? my immediate thought is: bomb? and is he acting out of rage and despair because he thinks Yo-Han is dead? or does he know that he's not, and this is part of a bigger plan. I can't see how they could be working together, but they have a lot of secret friends that keep emerging when needed. oh right, he was going to reveal the truth about the medical experiments at dream village. Is this how? is he bravely soldiering on with his work of exposing evil, despite his grief?

oh wow. he's been suicidal since Yo-Han got arrested. This was planned before Yo-Han's (alleged) death. no wonder he looked so blank faced at the news. but i don't think he's actually going to die. We have 45 minutes left. and i don't think it's that kind of story. (she reassures herself)

the plan sort of makes sense from a p.r. standpoint, i guess.

but also, Ga-On. you've been so broken down. There's been so much other plotting going on that I sort of forgot about your grief, but your grief is huge.

FUCKK! I was genuinely not expecting that! (47:40) but this is the perfect way to get us out of this predicament.

also so fucking romantic. This is not platonic. there is no need to shove him up against the wall to disarm the bond. Yo-Han's James Bond smile, his hands on Ga-On's chest. the slow mo, the way they look at each other. the way they can't stop touching each other. That embrace!! (probably the closest thing we're getting to a kiss)

Also, Yo-Han has shifted the tone to confident and humorous. it's heist movie vibes. So I'm starting to feel hopeful we'll get a happy ending for these two after all. it may not be a logical victory, but i'll take it.

Is he bluffing? Who cares? He's hot.

oh, i thought that was the plan they made, they were going to use the fight to smuggle him out somehow. or even switch places with the dead guy. but the warden was shocked.

I see that Yo-Han is not fully reformed. still unbothered by killing this guy. In fact, he looks a little high off of it. That's less disturbing now that I know it wasn't premeditated. I'm glad actually that he's staying a bit feral, a little amoral.

and Yo-Han adapted and came up with the same plan as me. (everybody is getting smuggled out in body bags)

The plot is flying at us fast and furious now. it may not make sense, but it's gonna keep moving. and I'll place a bet on our boys winning. I don't know how this tonal shift is going to fit with Seon-Ah's storyline.

This man loves his vengeance. (52:20)

(53:15) I had a sudden image of the 7 of them trapped inside the court room and killing each other off, gladiator style. we know (assume) there's at least one gun in the room. it would be a convenient way to get rid of them all, but i don't think it's going to happen. a) it leaves Ga-On and Yo-Han too uninvolved. and b) i just don't think its that kind of story. But I would buy one or two of them dying. the president? Chairman Park? Chairman Min still has a scheme afoot that i'm expecting to see play out.

of course. This is cute. and obvious now that it's happening. return to our roots - the public trials.

The wives finally get names! (or perhaps the subtitles finally give the names?)

yeah, i think they would react with a little more composure? or at least pull themselves together quickly. they're used to being in the public eye, to maintaining an image. i guess they are drunk

but mostly i expect this is how the show is going to resolve the unresolvable - the satisfying theatrics of a trial, the powerful conveniently acting like idiots, and just ignore what happens to the country after this power vacuum opens up.

although i wonder what's going to happen with Seon-Ah's Chekhov's gun. I'm betting someone will die. If forced to guess, I would say her, even with this tonal shift.

(58:24) this moment though. this moment with Ga-On and prof. Min. it works, it's poignant, i can feel the history and the heartbreak.

but i guess we've gone to a black and white thinking type of world. Prof. Min needs to stay the bad guy, so that Yo-Han can be the good guy and Ga-On's choice is justified. The frustrating thing is that it still makes sense for Ga-On to choose Yo-Han even if both are morally grey. but that doesn't wrap things neatly in a bow. It could be that what we're seeing here is just Ga-On making that choice, but it feels like this is also the show's point of view.

Yo-Han just really wants to get the public to collectively murder somebody.

I feel like he's not actaully going to set off the bomb, the tone is too cheerful for that. but who knows at this point.

i was right about the 'trapped in a death room' vibes.

At least this time we're not pretending he's a legit judge. but we've gone back to a conveniently credulous public that will do whatever is necessary to move the plot along.

but Seon-Ah's face. this whole time

I should stop trying to find logic in places where I know it doesn't exist, but it seems like people can vote as many times as they want? How is that democracy? (shushshush, we're here for the vibes. for Yo-Han looking like a badass. stop thinking)

He's going to the courtroom?

Min Yong Sik is muttering to himself. OH! he was scheming with Yo-Han since that meeting where he suddenly became an individual? That's why he suggested the celebration here? I wonder what he thought the plan was?

But why do any of them ever agree to do anything with each other? it always seems to end in betrayal.

Drama! but he's not suicidal. The tone of this doesn't match that at all.

Ga-On is freaking out though, understandably.

oh, it was a threat against chairman Min, not a promise. that makes more sense.

i love a long-legged Yo-Han leaning against his bedframe.

I assume this part is all filmed and broadcast as well?

ooooh. and they're connecting it back to the church fire as well. unfortunately it's just a reminder of how flimsy that plotline turned out to be.

It's still powerful imagery though. the lights are going on one by one. the rachmaninoff over the slow mo fighting and hair pulling that echoes the chaos in the classroom flashback. the switch to that tender violin music and then the footage from the church fire. Yo-Han's face as he stands there unmoving. his face! his "hyung"

(1:09:02) and this is their final faceoff. black vs. white. waiting unmoving on opposite sides of the room as the power brokers fight like desperate children, not even noticing Seon-Ah.

about 20 minutes remaining.

and THAT was the correct use of Chekhov's gun. perfect timing

Yo-Han's little smile. I think he does love her, a little, in a way. he knows they are kindred spirits.

this faceoff. "Is it the two of us, in the end?" "Come with me, Seon-Ah."

I think this ending is working for me after all. bringing us tightly back to our main relationships.

"Come with me, Seon-Ah." and that slight smile. oh, I'm getting chills. maybe i was wrong, maybe he has to die for Ga-On to be free? I don't know!! This is getting intense again. their faces. her slight smile. the tears in both their eyes. they see themselves in each other. wow. both completely ignoring the people around them begging. eyes fixed on each other

and it's not a performance of sexuality. all their previous interactions had this layer of pretend sexual seduction. but this is just them, stripped bare at the end, seeing themselves in each other's eyes.

exhale. i'm both shocked and yet was also expecting that. She was given too many exact parallels to Minister Cha. But why did she make that decision?

(i'm getting concerned that all three of our major women have died (and all by gun))

the last lines of the song, right before she shot herself, were"I cannot stop it anymore, it swallows me whole. save me from myself" was that what she was doing, sacrificing herself to save Yo-Han? she jumped out the window before for him (so far as they've explained) "damm it, this is bullshit" she said before she put the gun to her head.

oh god, the broken plate. and his kindness. heart wrenching

more thoughts on her "you know, i always loved you, young master" later

this overhead shot. her white dress (she wears white to murder) Yo-Han's face. his sigh.

and as soon as the Yo-Han & Seon-Ah relationship is resolved, Ga-On comes rushing through the door. less than 20 minutes to resolve everything.

I don't know whether to believe him. it really depends on which story they're trying to tell. A[repentant?] Yo-Han, ready to die for justice and because he thinks he's done with his work, feels compellingly intense. and it gives Ga-On the chance to save him. or to lose him. and even with Elijah his love has been the sacrificial kind, not the stay with her kind.

but it just doens't feel like who he is. he's not suicidal. and he would not let Ga-On stay there to die too. that just feels absolutely out of character for any version of him.

Once again I wonder, is this being broadcast to the nation?

"I will go with you." "You will be the hero. For the devil, I will be enough." wow what lines. I guess he's genuine? and they're going for emotional intensity over plot and character logic? i'll buy in, these guys do intensity so well.

holy fuck

and the intensity delivered. I'm actually crying right now. I wanted to see them together. elijah. my babies. Even though two minutes ago I was complaining that it makes no sense, it's still emotionally devastating. my god. Ga-On. What are you going to do? you've lost absolutely everyone. I want to hope that it was a trick, we didn't see him die, just the ceiling falling down. but... ah, who even knows at this point

the full circle symbolism of him destroying this courtroom at the end.

Ga-On sitting on the curb. Oh Jin Ju's kindness. him wandering that house alone. I keep crying.

I want to have hope for a twist, but I'm scared.

remembering the times when one of them was shirtless. their history. (yeah this ain't a platonic relationship)

[long exhale] oh. this memory of the cards. and Elijah wasn't there. I'm starting to have hope. Hope is a dangerous thing. oh fuck.

(1:21:55) holy fuck, yes!!! YES!! this blueprint. I think I'm allowed to hope now. Are my dreams coming true? Is this happy little family going to hide from the evil world together?

they really just wanted to fit all the endings in there.

ok, whew. i didn't really think elijah would have committed suicide. but for a second there I was kinda worried.

What is this "just the two of us" nonsense, Yo-Han? you're not going to bring your boyfriend? you left him hints.

ok, we're wrapping everybody up. The housekeeper. Judge Oh..

send Ga-On to Switzerland at the last second, show. or have Yo-Han pop up somewhere unexpected to surprise Ga-On. please don't let me down. you don't have to make them gay. just let them be together. Ga-On is alone now, you've gotten rid of everyone else in his life, you can't leave him without his new family. please don't let me down. we've made it this far.

structurally though, i think it's likely. We have at least five minutes left and we're saying farewell to the supporting characters. and i really don't think they'll leave him alone, this is turning into a happy ending type ending. and an alone Ga-On is a melancholy ending.

oh, i guess they've gotta try and wrap up the political stuff too. a sober meeting in a sober room (one we've never seen before) and a sobor new group of people (whom we've never seen before) we'll pretend that starting over with all new politicians will make things ok so our heroes are free to leave the stage.

(1:29:58) hmm, maybe I read that one slightly wrong. It looks like there will be infighting and power games among this new group. we do get an inspiring hero speech from Ga-On about justice and responsibility. and a brief defense of Yo-Han

I guess another possible ending is he becomes the hero he was set up to be from the beginning, and stays to work tirelessly to reform the judicial system. But even then I think we'll see a text message or something from Yo-Han in the final seconds.

I really want him to go to Switzerland though.

ok, Ga-On yet again asking the questions that are on my mind. "It's the same, nothing has changed. What should I do now, to help create a world that doesn't need Yo-Han?"

wait. Is this it?! Is this how they're making my dreams come true?! not to mention Ga-On's dreams!

oh fuck yeah! who cares if it makes any sense, this is amazing! that salute at the top of the balcony! they're having Ga-On run to his love!!

oh my god. their faces. the tears in their eyes. the love the connection. it maybe looked a little like a goodbye, like a one final taking him in before he's gone forever. But. i'm going to choose to believe it was taking him in after you had almost lost him. because Yo-Han's little nod just before he walked away? i'm going to interpret that as a "follow me"

ok. ok

I guess they're going with an open ending. They had Yo-Han walk away and Ga-On stand there staring after him. So viewer's choice. It could be that it was their last farewell. Ga-On stays and works to reform the government.

But. they gave us enough for me to believe that Ga-On follows him and they end up together, somewhere, whether it's Korea or Switzerland, whether Ga-On still keeps working on reforms, or he retires and becomes a hermit with his new family.

Look, Yo-Han has already returned from being lost at least three times. He's gonna pop up in Ga-On's life again.

fucking homophobia. I don't know what forces were at play that led to them making what is very obviously a romance and then censoring it. but the romance side did manage to give us an ending that felt happy with only a little squinting. so good job them.

I could probably write a lot more words about the themes and storytelling of this series. But I'm just gonna take some time to recover from that emotional roller coaster of the final 30 minutes, and bask in their love.

eps 1&2 ep3 ep4 ep5 ep6 ep7 ep8 ep9 ep10 ep11 ep12 ep13 ep14 ep15 ep16

#the devil judge episode 16 #kind of like liveblogging #the devil judge reaction #the devil judge #the devil judge spoilers #reaction by gillianthecat

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dancingkirby · 2 years

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THE QUICK AND DIRTY SACRIFICESHIPPING EPISODE GUIDE!

(AKA the one from GX...not the one from DM)

Are y’all like me and sick of watching every freaking episode of Season 3 to try to find all the little snippets with Ekou and Amon in them for your fanfics??? Or are you maybe new to GX and just want to figure out why I keep blabbing on about these two nerds? Either way, this guide is for you!

NOTE: I, personally, would recommend watching the sub version first, THEN the dub if you want some humor. Generally speaking, I’m not as anti-dub as many fans, but I personally find the dub voices for Adrian and Echo to be annoying (moreso Echo), and some of the line readings during some emotional parts to be pretty flat (moreso Adrian). Buuut if you don’t want/are unable to read a bunch of subtitles, I’m not going to judge.

Time stamps are not guaranteed to be exactly the same on every video of the episode…and dub timestamps are about a minute smaller because their opening song is shorter. There are some episodes that I consider to be the most important to watch if one is in a time crunch, so I will make a note of those.

Also, this is not a comprehensive guide to every single appearance Amon makes. However, it is that for Ekou. (I think?)

EPISODE 106: 00:12-00:55, 02:09-02:23 Amon recording his thoughts while on the boat to Academia Island. (It never says just why he’s doing this, but I like to think he sends it to Ekou.) Is in background during the rest of this episode and the next one, but doesn’t do much else. Okay, okay, I’ll say it: AMON A BOAT!

EPISODE 108: 09:00-09:25 Asshole Philosopher philosophizes.

12:20-13:38 Ekou makes her grand debut! Then Amon does some Skulking Around.

EPISODE 110: 02:35-02:55 Amon spying on O’Brien. (In the dub, this is the part where he thinks, “Why does everyone here think out loud?” LOL) Has another brief appearance at the end of the episode when Cobra catches him on camera.

EPISODE 111: VERY IMPORTANT EPISODE!

04:10-05:05 Cobra’s little motivational talk.

06:55-07:45 Cobra’s EEEVILLL plan; Amon catches onto it.

09:00-10:40 Manjoume researches Amon online and flips out.

11:05-12:00 Amon’s speech at the party.

12:40-13:15 Amon’s EEEVILLL plan. Glasses do The Thing at 12:55.

13:50: DUEL! (The dub has several funny lines in this episode and the next.)

EPISODE 112: Amon vs Manjoume for pretty much the whole episode. One moment of particular interest, which is:

15:00-16:20 Metaphorical dick-measuring contest and flashback to Chibi Amon in the desert.

EPISODE 113: 03:05-03:45 EKOUUUU! <3

04:50-06:23 Amon milks this whole sick thing for all it’s worth. Everyone is gathered around his bedside, but no one is with Manjoume, even though it cuts to him being in the hospital, in a coma, with an oxygen mask on! Then, after everyone leaves, Amon goes all James Bond.

09:00-09:45 Bond. Amon Bond.

(Amon makes brief appearances in the next few episodes, doing more Skulking Around. Not terribly important as far as character development goes.)

EPISODE 117: VERY IMPORTANT EPISODE!

07:08-09:40, 11:35-13:10 Amon confronts Cobra. STEROID MUSCLE FIGHT!

13:50-17:30 Yubel Mindfuckery and a Very Important Flashback. Chibi Ekou in the flashback!

EPISODE 118: 18:35-18:58 Amon’s getting really sick of Yubel. Also shows Ekou’s face in full for the first time in the present day!

EPISODE 119: Start-0:26 Ekou is getting a leetle worried.

09:25-10:05 FREEDOM!

13:47-14:30 Amon had second thoughts about his plan. Ekou starts her Great Rescue Attempt.

20:12-20:20 Ekou and Co get to the island, buuttt…

EPISODE 120: 08:15-09:05 Amon monologues to Yubel Arm Football.

11:15-11:32 Amon shows up at the gym like NBD. Where did he get his regular clothes back from??

12:02-12:10 Amon and Misawa’s Bi Awakening. (In the dub, Adrian says it’s “just a flesh wound.”)

16:35-17:00 Ekou kicks Samejima’s ass! :D But immediately gets outnumbered. D:

18:23-18:45 Amon discovers that Yubel Arm Football no longer has Yubel’s arm in it…

EPISODE 121: Start-00:37 “BUT YOU PROMISED! WAAAHHH!”

03:53 “OSHIT they found the submarine?!”

06:30-07:10 “Can I come with? I’m definitely not plotting anything!”

09:20-09:40 “Yes but what if I just…let go?”

15:18-15:32 Kirby gets a Violent Porn Flashback (preceding phrase thought up by @jcpmop) to her own fic because it happens right after this scene. Glasses do The Thing at 15:20.

16:05-16:17 LIAR! LIAR! PANTS ON FIRE!

(More small appearances Skulking Around over the next few episodes, and no Ekou. T_T Although in Episode 122, there’s that cool shot of everyone where Amon’s like, “Bitch please.”)

EPISODE 127: VERY IMPORTANT EPISODE!

03:15-04:27 EKOU!

04:30-05:37 Amon confronts Yubel/Martin. DUEL!

08:15-08:40 Ekou drops the “k” word for the first time. (Or would that be the “o” word in the subs?)

10:25-11:25 Yubel Mindfuckery and flashback of Sid failing at tennis.

11:30- 14:03 Pegasus having a bit of trouble following Ekou’s logic. Lots of closeups of her gorgeous eyes. Very Important Flashback.

14:05-14:30 More Yubel Mindfuckery.

14:30-15:05 Should’ve just pressed the damn button when you had the chance…

16:05-17:40 SAY HELLO TO EXODIAAAA!

EPISODE 131:

15:16-15:37 Ekou is happy for once!

21:00-21:10 *insert warp pipe sound effect here*

EPISODE 144: VERY IMPORTANT EPISODE!

04:25-05:39 Amon being an asshole.

06:32-08:15 Enter Ekou and Chronos, pursued by bulls. Also, Edo doesn’t know how to mind his own business.

06:52 The shot that proves that my ficverse is canon! LOL

07:32 My Discord profile pic!

08:35-10:03 Edo continues to be nosy. Ekou, in turn, doesn’t know when to shut up.

11:30-13:40 Amon crosses the Moral Event Horizon, and Edo is pissed. Glasses do The Thing at 12:50.

14:08 DUEL!

19:22 Glasses do The Thing again.

20:25-End of episode Amon BURNS the Moral Event Horizon and snorts its ashes.

EPISODE 145: VERY IMPORTANT EPISODE! Buuut…if you think that watching loving closeups of someone dying in agony while screaming/unconscious from the pain (No blood/gore, though) might be a trigger, here’s where to skip: 03:34-03:45, 05:04-05:32, 06:30-07:17, 09:08-09:35, 10:37-10:55, 14:00-14:05, 15:50-16:45.

Otherwise: 02:30-03:30 OMFG EKOU, RUN AWAY! (Spoiler alert: she doesn’t.) Glasses do The Thing too many times to count during this episode.

3:10 LIVE AMON REACTION

18:13 FUCK. YOU. AMON!!!!

20:25-End of episode Amon with his Exodiamobile.

EPISODE 149: VERY IMPORTANT EPISODE!

06:05 Yubel confronts Amon in the Futuristic Insta-Metal Castle thing. Glasses do The Thing at 07:20. Kirby had to pause the episode on first rewatch at this point because she kept imagining Amon singing “Let It Go” while building the castle and wanted to find a male cover. Which she did! https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=kohD5z5mE0E

youtube

09:17 DUEL!

10:30-10:40 Flashback to 145…skip if you think it might trigger you!

16:30-17:30 Yubel Mindfuckery. (Actually, Yubel and Ekou are kind of foils to each other, and I wish people other than me would write about them interacting!)

20:10-20:52 Ghost Ekou and more Mindfuckery.

EPISODE 150: VERY IMPORTANT EPISODE!

Assume pretty much constant Yubel Mindfuckery. And lots of The Thing.

09:04-10:01 Yubel’s “You didn’t love Ekou” speech.

13:10- 14:35 Amon reveals his raison d’etre. Yubel thinks it sucks. Featuring new flashback of Chibi Amon.

16:14-16:32 “Yeah, screw you, Yubel, I’m gonna create my perfect world anyway.” Ghost Ekou is trying her very best.

18:30-18:40 Ummm…Ekou…maybe you should go easy on the weed for a while…

19:39-20:15 Yubel <3 Nekkid Shadow Ekou!

20:17-20:55 Amon realizes he fucked up. Rest in pieces, you utter douchebag. (Another 145 flashback at 20:28-20:30.)

#yugioh gx #ygo gx #amon garam #adrian gecko #yugioh gx ekou #yugioh gx echo

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landofspaceandrainbows · 2 years

Text

The Most Important Character in the Dream SMP

lol

~~~

In general Mexican Dream is interesting because he’s able to disrupt / get one over on Dream / comfort Tommy really well. Weirdly well. Mainly by 2 strategies. 1 by taking Dream’s trolling and going one over and above on him, also by re-contextualizing his shit to call him on his bullcrap. aka Dream taking stuff as a Mugger. 2. as an avatar of someone (aka someone MEXICAN) who's been thrust out of his own country, who is alone and who nobody will speak to, or if they do it's not in your language, who faces harassment, and who people shove handouts at out of PITY (sound familiar yet, Tommy?) who better than... that for soliarity?

Anyway, here’s my timestamped breakdown of the “Mexican Dream visits Tommy in Exile” VOD

mostly for my reference

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6lhr1KlIVQI

~~~

4:05 - action starts! MD will show up in 2-3 minutes. 8:15 - "this isn't home, this ain't mexico man, don't worry we'll make this place like home" 8:50 - "this is way beyond the Dream SMP" - acknowleging that something's not right. 9:00 - Mexican Dream starting out with the big fucking guns here! Re-contexts what Dream has Tommy do as "mugging" ! Which, having someone give you all your stuff because they're threatening your life is. But Dream calls it as an act of a "friend" (the fuck) or a careful prison guard. 10:00 - Tommy laughing! M D pulls Dream into his comedy sketch as the "Straight Man". More mugging shit. "You're not looking too good" Also, the fucking burrito. funny! 11:45 - Re-contexting again! Dream and Tommy have this whole tangled thing Dream gets into with everything Dream or anyone else gives Tommy is "out of pity" according to Dream. But he has to accept it or have nothing. M D yells at Dream for giving him unsolicited "Handouts" ! xD see also the "pity tents" later. 12:30 - "Are you homeless???" from Tommy. Solidarity both ways man! 12:50 - spanish cursing scene incoming! Not really quite relevant to these themes, but i think it's funny. Though it could show momentarily - M D is stronger than Dream. and stronger in Dream's domain - Words. What the F. (also yes, Dream, it is a "curse" because he's cursing you out, lolol.) 13:50 - first showing up of the "private parts" joke. 14:00 - re-framing Dream as Tommy's "Dad"/"Padre" kinda like the "mugging" thing, makes Dream's power look "off" and "ridiculous", or off and unbecoming or wrong. 14:42 - "borderline my owner" = "Dad" (also more handouts) 14:55 - "He's mugging me man." Dream ushed into clear "mugger" behavior" the mask is clear. M D also defeats that with dance and music. 15:30 - Minor thing, but noting because drugs show up a lot "I can get you some drugs" (and man, do you need them lol.) 16:10 - "Your dad's not buying you clothes, man, that's fucked up" Making Dream look bad. If he wants to act like he has legit power and can take stuff away, he has to provide stuff. he can't have it both ways. 16:35 - "I've been living in a tent my entire fuckin life, give me some good shit!" does that apply to M D or Tommy? solidarity. 15:59 - Girl Dream appearance !!!!!!!!!! Girl Dream appears !!!!!!!!! Interesting how M D can summon out of Dream someone who's interested mostly in s*x and friendly to Tommy. And is strong and saves M D. 19:00 - Private parts again lol. 19:45 - "I smash my bros" lol 21:25 - appearance of "the family" / "the homies" 25:20 - "Why are children watching" thing lol. (for my own reference) 34:00 - bonding over homies that have screwed you over / that you miss (tubbo and juan mendez) warning annoying and loud sound. 37:05 - more drugz lol 39:45 - reverse engineering where a burrito comes from from a pic, lol LOL 41:10 - M D gets pissed at dig about "walls" 41:50 - c r a f t i n g t a b l e 46:45 - Tommy is confident. Dream returns. The fight between M D and Dream gets physical. M D starts losing lives, taking a bullet for his homies and starting from there. 48:48 - "How does he have so much beef?" idk, Dream, idk why he would possibly have beef with you. :p 53:35 - f for Mexican Dream ( 3 canon lives, f ) ( Mexican music continues to appear ghostly afterwards)

#long post #dream smp #dsmp #mcyt #mexican dream #girl dream #dream #c!deam #tommyinnit #hope #in the homestuck element sense #homestuck

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huhyuhbah · 7 days

Text

what have i accomplished in my day so far?

absolutely nothing because for the past 30+ mins i have been refreshing the gmmtv ex bird app page to see forcebook pics got 2024 pt2

at the time of writing (10:48am), they have yet to post fb pic

open to see my multiple edits w timestamps (uk time). this is a very long post, you've been warned

edit 1 (10:55) - stressed. panicking. can they not do this to me

edit 2 (10:58) - opened the live, still refreshing ex bird app.

edit 3 (11:01) - how do we still not have a fb pic wtf. this is making me feel sick.

edit 4 (11:05) - wtf theyve posted the live link... istfg wat is this

edit 5 (11:11) - ... opened up minecraft n just farming some carrots while i wait :|

edit 6 (11:21) - live started... lmao they exited full screen on the powerpoint pres

edit 7 (11:26) - p'tha is here everyone lets goooo wooo edit 7.5 - and i've just seen fb pic on ex bird app LETS GOOOO

edit 8 (11:36) - earthmix new series, i physically cringed at earth doing those dog impressions omg edit 8.5 - wait? this is ossan's love thai ver right????

edit 9 - ossan's love thai ver looks fucking hilarious alr

edit 10 (11:47) - omg pond and gun in a series? idk who the other guy is but the way he slapped that cake outta the lady's hands was too funny to me ngl. this series looks interesting

edit 11 (11:53) - firstkhao + joong????? WTF edit 11.5 - FIRSTKHAO + JOONGDUNK DAYUM edit 11.5.5 (ik thats not how numbers work) - im excited to see joongdunk out of the school setting. i wanna see dunk's acting improve w this series

edit 12 (12:04) - FUCK i thought this would be a gl? wat? wat is this edit 12.5 - hella toxic series dayum

edit 13 (12:12) - PERTHCHIMON + FORCEBOOK OMG BUT TAKE MY BABIES OUT OF SCHOOL OMG edit 13.5 - awww chimon smiling when perth opened the door omg he's adorable that smile was so cute edit 13.5.5 - omg book's face when he was pressd against the walllll so cute so cute edit 13.5.5.5 - damn perth in that suit looking so expensive

edit 14 (12:25) - gl gl gl gl?????? edit 14.5 - GL GL GL GL edit 14.5.5 - idk who the short hair woman is but i think she's so hot

edit 15 (12:39) - hide & sis reminds me of some other series. i can't remember wat but it feels similar to something

edit 16 (12:51) - est as a main bl character??? finalllllyyyyyy. last time i watched him act was in love by chance 2

edit 17 (13:02) - lmaooo wtf is this series??? p'godji imma need an explanation loollolololl

edit 18 (13:11) - BOUNPREM VAMPIRE SERIES WAHHHHHHH

edit 19 (13:20) - I FUCKING KNEW IT MARKOHM SERIES edit 19.5 - wtf was that mask. i- mark singing lmaooo

edit 20 (13:34) - ngl this jumanji typa series doesn't interest me that much

edit 21 (13:41) - kristsingtooooo and did i just see that pink drink?????????

edit 22 (13:56) - force imma need you to put a fucking shirt on like sir-

edit 23 (14:09) - forcebook + bounprem in one frame feels so fucking weird for no reason lmao

#iok.txt #gmmtv 2024 part 2 liveblog.iok

0 notes

makhonkit · 1 month

Video

youtube

From Perfection To Authentic - Crafting Compelling Connections Ft Kionz C

Ever wonder how film makers feel when they see the transition of video production changes through the years from picture perfect high quality productions to now, vlog style?

In this episode of In The Spotlight, I'm super honored to have invited my friend @KionzChan to share his crazily inspiring story from being a Multi Award Film Maker, Film Director, Executive Producer to now very famous, especially among our Malay community friends, TikTok's Official #TikTokGuru and Business Coach in the field of Social Media Presence, Business Scaling and Expansions. You Cannot Miss This!

In this conversation, you'll learn about his long journey filled with technically creative pivots and self improvements. Fun fact, he has been posting on YouTube for as long as myself and have endured all the changes on YouTube gracefully over the years before he finally succeeded on TikTok! Most importantly, we talked a whole lot about Monetization too.

Be sure to like, comment, and most importantly share if you find this podcast useful. Thank you very much and advance and Enjoy the Show! Feel free to make use of these timestamps to go to the topics that you're most interested in.

00:00 Intro 01:02 How Did Ray Mak and @KionzChan became Friends? 01:55 First Impression? 04:22 What Do You Do On The Internet? 06:13 The True Definition Of A TikToker 07:00 Over 18 Years On Creating Contents and Thousands Of Contents Later 07:40 Learning The Reasons Of Failure 09:55 Who Is @KionzChan ? 12:25 Started TikTok, Experiencing The Difference! 14:20 Persistence And Continuous Improvement 14:59 Becoming An Author Too 16:50 The PIVOT 17:50 @garyvee 's Role 21:40 Making A Comeback On YouTube 23:30 Challenges? 25:20 SPEAKING 26:30 TikTok Official Creator 26:50 Forming Habits Lead To Polishing Skills 28:49 Konten Bahasa Melayu 33:06 MONETIZATION and Potentials 36:25 Words Of Wisdom

About In The Spotlight

I have been a content creator for almost two decades now as I've had the privilege to have started when all these platforms started. Over the years, I've made many great friends and have also enjoyed the many blessings from the Internet.

In The Spotlight is a Platform where my amazing content creators friends share their precious experiences so we can all learn together as well. I really hope you like it too.

Last but not least, special thanks to my good friend Kevin Chan for being the catalyst, push, idea and brains behind In The Spotlight.

This podcast was recorded with the amazing new BOYALINK - All-In-One Design Wireless Microphone System from @BOYA-mic . They are so sleek and easy to use!

Special Discount Link to my Boya Link (Enjoy!) : https://shope.ee/8zgRUMM75J

#inthespotlight #creator #contentcreator

Follow @KionzChan YouTube : https://www.youtube.com/kionzchan Instagram : https://www.instagram.com/kionz.c TikTok : https://www.tiktok.com/@kionzchan Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/andycfk Twitter : https://twitter.com/KionzC

Talk to me : 🎵 Instagram ▸ http://instagram.com/makhonkit 🎵 Facebook ▸ http://facebook.com/raymakpiano 🎵 Twitter ▸ http://twitter.com/makhonkit

0 notes

thisisawarning · 5 months

Text

Tentative, incomplete

November 24 was very happy and feeling inspired and productive and then suddenly felt cranky

1:00:17 bec i felt convicted by the post after viewing the video next to it; i was feeling impatient and annoyed prior looking at the post as if it read me; i think it was at this time when i peed and noticed a bit of brown color on the tissue after i wiped which made me think that i'm gonna have my period today or soon

1:36:59 God has read my mind again 🙇🏻‍♀️❤

1:40:11 typo on previous while typing emojis and undoing

3:33:10 jh after sitting on the bed and when i was about to unplug other phone; jf peeing and saw a brown color on tissue after wiping which i think is blood

4:16:45 initially saw 4:16:44; jh to see 4:16am PHT on old phone when i was about to turn it off

10:30:28 jh after lying on the bed; jf peeing and washing my feet (specifically right foot) which had been dropped with menstrual blood when i got up before wiping my pee; KINDA PISSED THAT I SAW A MAN WITH A SHIRT MASK AND A YELLOW UMBRELLA ON THE ROOF OF OUR NEIGHBOR FIXING SOMETHING which made me sort of think he's a pervert but then i feel bad because he might just be really repairing something; also, I did officially have my menstrual period today; I'M 7 DAYS EARLY

10:45:50 WHY ARE ALL OF THE POSTS TODAY FEEL LIKE IT'S ABOUT ME AND MY FEELINGS; as always, God really does work in mysterious ways 🙇🏻‍♀️❤

God is the only One who is capable of reading our thoughts and feelings and everything

He always takes care of me even when I thought He has already given up on me 😭

God, how did You know what I'm going through right now? You're so quick. 🙇🏻‍♀️

When I say quick, like really fast! ⚡

These posts, man. It feels like God is consoling me before something happens. He knows. He really knows. 🤣

Thank You for the heads up/warning. I love You. We were just talking and having an awesome conversation and then I suddenly felt sad and cranky and impatient and all the negative feelings, but then **I found out** You never really left ❤

God knows me more than I know myself.

11:07:44 because of "71"

1:11:25 i jh to see the time after sitting on the toilet to poop; initially saw 1:11:24 but the time immediately changed after i successfully pressed the screenshot buttons; also took another screenshot at 1:11:43 when i checked my world clock; i jwu, fell asleep but woke up with stomachache; i immediately prayed: "NO WEAPON FORMED AGAINST ME AND MY FAMILY SHALL PROSPER. IN JESUS' NAME I PRAY, AMEN."

My tummy hurts but all I say now is: "JESUS ONLY."

1:23:44 i jh to see the time after singing (in my head) or when I was about to search the song: "THE ENEMY CAN'T HAVE ME OR MY FAMILY, THIS IS AN EVICTION NOTICE TO THE ENEMY. THE CHAIN-BREAKER IS IN THE ROOM. BREAK BREAK BREAK." Aslo, prior searching for the song, I watched this video suggested on my Instagram Explorer

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Joshua T Giles (@joshuagilesfirebrand)

instagram

1:29:24 bec i saw that there are 72,666 plays for Black Voices Movement's "Xhain Breaker (Spontaneous) – Live"

1:30:12 initially 1:30:11; paused at the @1:09 timestamp

1:48:14 when i was about to wash my butthole but then i decided to update the Poop Tracker app

1:49:45 jf updating Poop Tracker, 7% battery

1:53:07 battery depleted; just turned on my phone and placed it down to let it get juice; was bored so i chose to pick a youtube video to watch on my tv; so many suggested videos i'm not interested in

1:59:11 jh after waiting a while for phone to get juice

2:01:47 i just wanted to see what timestamp i'll get

youtube

Me: "They're making noises again at 2:12pm PHT (and 2:23pm PHT). My TV volume is high, but I can hear my dad's (?) plate and utensils."

My inner voice: "I know, Jovy. I know. Just ignore them."

2:15:09 out of spite 🤣

3:58:04 heard a water hose noise (i think my brother-in-law is cleaning his cars again) at 3:57pm or 3:56pm; also heard noises below at the tenant while i'm making this which they also made a noise prior at 3:30pm or 3:31pm which made me annoyed and stomped at my bedroom floor

4:02:18 after sitting on the toilet; was aware when people downstairs kept on making noises at around 3:55pm PHT onwards; i wasn't supposed to but my tummy ached again at around 4:01pm PHT and i had to get up from my swivel chair after eating two chocolate chip cookies and use the toilet; i think i do have diarrhea 💩

Why does every time I'm inspired to do my laundry, something weird happens? I just soaked my dirty laundry at around 4:30pm PHT YESTERDAY and was about to handwash it at past midnight before transferring it to the washing machine for a final wash

*pre-soak

I'll finish it today. I hate it when I get stinky laundry 😓

*separated the dark and light clothes and then pre-soaked 😆🧺

RANDOM NOTE: typo at 1:40:11am PHT was CF which apparently accdg to Google is "comparison"

Is God telling me to stop comparing myself to others? 🤔

#Instagram #Youtube

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the-conversation-pod · 6 months

Text

On Time And Memory

AND WE'RE BACK!

This week we're doing a thematic comparison about how our memory of the past impacts how we perceive our present. In a surprise for us both, we had a lot of positive things to say about Krist Perawat. We're talking about trauma and how we connect to wounded characters this week with Tokyo In April Is... and Be My Favorite.

Timestamps

The timestamps will now correspond with chapters on Spotify for easier navigation.

00:00 - Welcome 01:16 - Intro 03:10 - Tokyo In April Is... 11:01 - TIAI: Comparisons with the manga 14:15 - TIAI: Strength of execution 26:23 - Be My Favorite 34:00 - BMF: The time travel mechanic 44:47 - BMF: Dings 52:57 - BMF: Jittirain and Gawin and Krist 01:00:58 - Outro

The Conversation Transcripts!

Thanks to the continued efforts of @ginnymoonbeam as transcriber, and @lurkingshan as an editor and proofreader, we are able to bring you transcripts of the episodes.

We will endeavor to make the transcripts available when the episodes launch, and it is our goal to make them available for past episodes. When transcripts are available, we will attach them to the episode post (like this one) and put the transcript behind a Read More cut to cut down on scrolling.

Please send our volunteers your thanks!

01:16 Introduction

Ben

And we're back.

NiNi

Welcome, welcome, to our On Time and Memory episode. And why are we calling it On Time and Memory? Well, we're back in the second chance romance space. And when we're in second chance romance space it always ends up somehow being time fuckery versus head fuckery. So [laughs] what are we talking about this episode? We're gonna talk about time fuckery in Be My Favorite, and headfuckery in Tokyo In April Is…

Ben

I think for both of these shows you have characters who are emotionally stunted by their feelings for each other that they don't deal with for years. In Tokyo In April we have a story about two boys who were very close in high school, and a troublesome event separates them, and they don't run into each other again for…ten years. And there's a lot to unpack in the trauma between the two of them that we'll get into in the episode. With Be My Favorite, we have a young man who, approaching 30, isn't really doing anything and is still caught up in his bullshit from when he was in college. Until a magical McGuffin allows him to go back in time to college and re-experience some of these events—with a very strict time travel mechanic that I really liked how it was used.

Both of these shows offer us some interesting things to talk about with how we perceive the events around us, and how that tends to linger with us and inform who we become.

NiNi

Okay so let's dive right in.

03:10 - Tokyo In April Is…

NiNi

And now we're going to talk about Tokyo In April Is... Ben, what is Tokyo In April Is… about?

Ben

Fundamentally, at its core it seems to be a show about nostalgia? But the description of the setup is, this young man named Takizawa Kazuma is returning to Tokyo after being away for ten years. He left at the end of middle school, finished his studies in America, and is returning to Japan as a pretty well-trained human resources professional and is joining some sort of company that's got office space in a tower. There he runs into another guy who's his age named Ren, who was his friend when he came back to Japan originally when he was a teenager, and they haven't seen each other in ten years. We learn over the course of the show that they were each other's first big loves, and they were each other's first experience sexually. But that encounter ended on a rather sad note for them as Kazuma ended up sick—had to be rushed to the hospital. The relationship became public knowledge to their families, and then Ren was summarily disowned by his family, kicked to France, and forgotten, only to eventually return to Tokyo.

The two of them have a difficult way to go because Ren doesn't want to talk about what happened when they were 15, and Kazuma—who had a horrible bout with pneumonia and I believe meningitis?—he ends up not really remembering what happened after that night. He and Ren end up in an intimate situation, and Ren establishes a friends with benefits arrangement for them. And Kazuma decides to be patient with this so Ren can work through what he needs to as the two of them become closer.

Ren also gets involved in a very Me Too era storyline with his work, where one of the women that he works with discloses that she was a victim, and that another member of the team was recently victimized. That the perpetrator has been preying upon the female staff at the company for over a decade. Two like really big threads in the show and I got a little bit lost towards the end there. But, the core of the show is about the…I guess it's sort of a second chance romance? Between Kazuma and Ren.

NiNi

I think we came down on opposite sides of this one, so I want to let you go first. How did you feel about it? What was your take on the show?

Ben

Overall I ended up liking this show a lot—and I tend to like shows that hearken specifically to things that I think are distinctly queer, also distinctly very male queer, because despite how femme our friend group is [laughs] and how many femmes are on Tumblr, I watch BL because I am a gay man who likes stories about gay men. And so I really connected to the youth portion of the story, where both of them were in love with the other, but couldn't conceive of a reality where the other boy also liked them back. And I really like how earnest that felt? Maybe I'm projecting a little bit of the manga onto this, I think it's a little more explicit in the manga, because we get more internal monologues? But I really like how that felt. The reality of that being snatched away from them at 15 was also something I connected to, having something really special and then having it basically ripped from you. In my case by circumstance, but them by being literally outed.

And then when they get together as adults again, I really appreciate Kazuma’s patience with Ren. I think it's very difficult sometimes to care about someone who's clearly suffered—and you'd like to help but it isn't necessarily your problem to solve or your angst to unpack? Sometimes you just have to love someone very firmly, until they start to settle down a little bit. And I also really liked Ren's friend Ryunosuke, who he met when he was in Paris. I really liked in episode…7? Seven, when he reads Kazuma for filth—because he can't conceive of a reality where Kazuma doesn't understand what happened to Ren. It's less of a thread in the show, but Ryunosuke and Ren identify as gay, which carries political connotations. Kazuma doesn't necessarily think of himself as queer in any way, and so as a result he doesn't seem to consider the social, economic, and political ramifications of being gay, and how that impacts his feelings for Ren. Ryunosuke has been with Ren for ten years, has cared about Ren, has tried to be more than just friends to Ren, unsuccessfully, multiple times—that's text. And he hates Kazuma because this is the person who is the source of this huge knot that's got his friend locked up. And when you meet Kazuma, you understand instantly why Ren likes him. If I were Ryunosuke I would hate Kazuma even more [laughs] because he's so likable.

NiNi

[laughs]

Ben

You would almost want Kazuma to be a selfish prick who didn't appreciate what Ren gave up for him. But the fact that Kazuma is so earnest and gorgeous and naive and kind, makes you hate him even more because you can see what Ren may have been trying to protect. And he succeeded! Oh, I would hate that so much!

[both laugh]

Ben

And so I really, genuinely loved Ryunosuke’s confrontation with Kazuma about that. I also really liked their domesticity. Because Japanese BLs are always using food as a love language. Food is love is a very common theme, especially when you have so many tsundere seme types, or even ukes who can't necessarily say the things that need to be said, but they can make a mean souffle. Ren doesn't have cooking skills. He's so stunted by what happened to him that he is missing love languages. The only thing he can really do is quality time and physical affection, but even then he's super restrictive about it with his rules.

I enjoyed a lot of the gay shit in this that sticks with me.

11:01 TIAI: Comparisons with the manga

NiNi

Okay, so here's a question. I did not read the manga, manga's not really my thing, but you read the manga before you went into the show. Do you think that that influenced your experience of the show in any way?

Ben

The simple answer is yes? It's kind of hard not to…when you know the story, you're watching it differently. And that's true for anybody who read source novels watching adaptations, or saw the original work when it's been adapted to another language or something. Your prior familiarity does impact your viewing experience. I will say in the case of Tokyo In April Is…the show is better, significantly. Whatever I would rate the show, it is a full point higher than I would rate the manga. The manga…is, one, way more erotic, and it uses eroticism kind of poorly sometimes? And there's one particular one that is extremely distasteful. There's other really tactful changes they made to the source material. Some of it was just moving the reveals of certain information around for better coherence.

I think the show is significantly better than the source work. Not in a way that makes me want to say the source work is bad, but very much when they were adapting they were like, [laughs] ‘we have to move some of these pieces around and restructure some of this.’ Some of the stuff when they were kids is far more explicit. They have to say it because they're not relying on the actors to deliver it. So Kazuma being as in love with Ren as Ren was with him is far more legible in the manga I think? And, like that scene on the roof where they're talking about having girlfriends: Kazuma in his own internal monologue in the manga says he's just going to say what straight people are supposed to say, because he thinks it would be embarrassing to admit how much he likes Ren. I don't think that's as legible in the show. Unfortunately.

NiNi

Yeah, and it's strange because the show does use internal monologues, so I'm not sure why it wouldn't have used internal monologues to get those bits across.

Ben

There's this weird dynamic with trying to be a little bit subtle about certain things? Less explicit sometimes about the queer stuff—with the main couples—that I don't know what the party line is on this, because they didn't have a problem doing with Ryunosuke, but he doesn't have any romantic potential, so they can say it for him. He can say the thing, because he's not getting anybody's booty in this show, so whatever. But like there's a whole thing with Kazuma and Ren that was only alluded to in the show.

I think the young actors are fine, but I don't think that they necessarily conveyed on their own, the missing bits of the internal monologue that I think should have been voiced over.

14:15 TIAI: Strength of execution

NiNi

Yeah. And that's kind of my whole thing with the show? So, Ben and I, I think, fell on opposite sides of this particular one. I thought that this was written really well; I am not sure that it was performed well. Or performed in a manner that grabbed me, let's put it that way. Intellectually I feel the tragedy of the story, but I'm not feeling any of it? And I think the performances had something to do with it, and I think a little bit of it was the staticness of the direction. This is the same team that did Our Dining Table, which is also based on a manga, but that show does not feel as static in the direction as the show does. Sometimes the whole manga styling, it works for me—they linger on a shot and it's very clear that that was like, a full page panel, or something like that? Sometimes that works for me with Japan, and sometimes it doesn't.

Some of the times that it's worked for me have been, like, Our Dining Table and What Did You Eat Yesterday? But then there are times that it didn't work for me, like here, and The Pornographer. It's the same kind of like static direction, but the acting is not coming through in the same way as it did in Our Dining Table and What Did You Eat Yesterday? I felt at an emotional distance the whole time I was watching the show. It was very clear what I was supposed to be feeling, because the writing's very good. It's partially the staticness of the direction, but it's really the fact that the actors aren't acting through that direction.

To be fair, when I'm talking about Our Dining Table and What Did You Eat Yesterday? I’m talking about Iijima and Inukai, talking about Uchino and Nishijima, these are top tier actors. These actors are very new. They've clearly been through the training, but they didn't bring out, for me, the emotionality that I would expect to get in a story like this—because this is a very tragic story. It's a tragic story with a happy ending, which is nice, but I neither feel the tragedy nor the joy. I can see that I'm supposed to feel it. The writing is telling me that I'm supposed to feel it. But I'm not feeling it, it's just not hitting for me, I wasn't getting enough of the inner from the performances. And it wasn't coming through in any other way. So if I'm not getting the inner from the performances I have to get it in some way, through a dynamism in the direction, or something in the set design, and I didn't get it through any of those means that I would normally use to soak up a vibe from a show? I wasn't getting that normal kind of pull that I would that I would usually get, that would suck me into something. Objectively it's good, but it didn't touch me? The production did not capture the depth of the story, for me.

Ben

I like Japanese static framing, because sometimes I think you have to just sit in whatever situation you're in. And sometimes that's really fun, like all of the fun eating around a table in What Did You Eat Yesterday? or Our Dining Table. Sometimes it's not fun. When you're watching Kazuma respect Ren's boundary, not asking a question that needs to be answered in a show like this. I totally see what you mean with the set design, about how things feeling kind of generic and bland. But I also feel like that's sort of the point, like, Kazuma is recently back in Tokyo. And the very first thing I thought about his place was that it was too big. But I feel like that's also the point. Missing part of himself because Ren has been gone for so long, and he's willing to provide so much space for Ren. I liked the use of earth tones in the few things that he did have, to ground his place and make it feel more alive than Ren's own place, which was so forgettable.

NiNi

Yeah, this is what I'm saying: normally in Japan, the set design, it pulls you in, the sets say so much about the characters.

Ben

But I feel like that's the point here! The lack of definition from their physical spaces is part of the point, that they're both so ungrounded. With Kazuma’s space in particular…the whole domestic episode of theirs, we kept calling it the What Did You Eat Yesterday? homage episode—but that also feels like sort of the point. That Kazuma is trying to model what he hopes will be helpful for Ren.

NiNi

I just feel like, if it's intentional, then when things shift between them, that it should then change. Because I could have bought the sterility of both of their places at the beginning of the story as intentional, and demonstrating how stuck they both are, that they can't even extend themselves to their surroundings because they're stuck in this moment that happened ten years ago. I could buy that as an argument. But then when they become unstuck, I feel like I want to see that reflected in some way. The story doesn't get there, because when they're moving in together, we only see like the barest bit of their place, and it just looks the same.

So I can take your point and buy your argument, but then to me, they missed a trick towards the end of the show by not making it clearer that now they are unstuck, and their lives can begin, and their lives together can begin, so their surroundings should start to match the new vibe that they're building together, to me anyway.

Ben

I do get that, I just don't know that I want them to do that in either of their apartments. Because both of their apartments look and feel temporary to me. And I'm really okay with the show starting where we began, with Kazuma on the street reminiscing about Tokyo, with the reveal that now he's with Ren and they're walking off together, and now they can casually talk about their time as teens. I'm okay with them completely starting over.

Like I take your point. It just didn't bother me because of how it instantly read to me. Like everything seemed off, and that felt intentional.

NiNi

When we were talking about this a little bit earlier you brought up pulps. Because you know how I feel generally about the pulps. I'm most familiar with the Thai pulps and the rhythms of the Thai pulps, so I can point to a Thai pulp and be like ‘that's a pulp.’ But normally you have to like, guide me into realizing that something from somewhere else is a pulp, because I don't have the same familiarity with the rhythms. This now, you described it as a Japanese pulp, and I had to sit with that for a minute, because I'm like ‘oh okay, is this what it is, is this what I'm feeling?’

Ben

We talked about this a little bit. This is not me reading you, don't take it as such.

NiNi

Why would I ever? If you're going to read me, you're going to tell me you’re reading me.

Ben

I will read you on this podcast, but I’m not reading you here. I just think, like one of the things that I've gotten used to as a queer cinema viewer is: we don't get big budget money, we don't get big actors in our stuff. And if we do, it's like, ‘this is their formative work! Look how bad they were in 1992!’ I get used to a certain raw quality or newness with these actors? And I am not put off by it. I appreciate that they were willing to do the work, and I appreciate when they take the work seriously. Like at no point do I think that Sakurai Yuki and Takamatsu Aloha are afraid of each other. And afraid to play two men who are into each other. And I have felt that from Japanese actors…we get the sense that they're not necessarily comfortable working with their male co-star. I did not feel that here from these guys, I just felt inexperience. And I don't begrudge people the experience they don't have. I care about the work that they're trying to do.

This is a very poignant story about a very specific kind of relationship, that I think is fairly familiar for a certain type of queer viewer who has dealt with familial homophobia and the consequences of being discovered at a young age? Something else the show did that the manga didn't—the manga doesn't do much develop Kazuma’s despair at Ren leaving, and it's one of the things that I really like in the show, because he was very strictly adhering to Ren's rules…about not asking questions that Ren didn’t want to answer, obeying the rules about their intimacy, even though Ren was modifying them, breaking them or changing them on the fly. And you can see how he turns into this shell of himself because Ren's gone. That was so well done, the manga does not develop that at all.

NiNi

Ben's like, ‘inject the sadness directly into my veins!’ [laughs]

Ben

I need to know these gay boys have been through the suffering! And the knowing, it's my favorite part. There's also the mom. The mom is way better in the show. There's a bitterness about the whole resolution with the mom, that is correct in the show. In the manga they make it seem like…it's almost comedic that she separated them for ten years? The conversation she has in the show with the other woman, about how strong their love is and how special it is and why she separated them? Yeah, she has that with the boys in the manga. I hated that shit. I'm so glad she had that conversation away from the boys.

The show is better. I gave the show a 9, I would have given the manga like an 8.

NiNi

It’s hard for me to talk about this show because intellectually I got it, but I still felt mid about it. It is well done. It's well written, it does not look cheap. They put work into the show. It's very clear that everybody from top to bottom on this production put the work in. But it didn't hit me.

Ben

It’s okay, I think, for a viewer to recognize the quality of a story, the intent of a story, but to not necessarily personally connect to it.

NiNi

So you gave it a 9, I would say…objectively it's a 9 show, I would agree with you there. It just, these are two different 9s, let's put it that way.

Ben

[laughs] I get that these are not currently the most compelling actors you've seen. But we're seeing a lot of people early in their careers, when it's cheaper to maybe hire them for these things. And I'm okay with this being some of the first work that people do.

NiNi

So Ben gives it a 9, I give it a 9, that's a 9 for Tokyo In April Is…

26:23 - Be My Favorite

NiNi

Ok Ben, so let's talk Be My Favorite. We, well I, had no intention of watching this, you were going in hostile…Ben, tell the people, what is Be My Favorite about?

Ben

Be My Favorite is about Krist Perawat’s redemption arc. No, Be My Favorite is about this young man named Botkawi, who is thirty years old and still stuck in all of his mess from when he was still a student. He is invited to the wedding of the girl that he has had a crush on for ten years—who he has never really spoken to—has an entire crisis about it, then a magic uncle gives him a plot device to travel back in time to try and change his future. Along the way he ends up realizing that he didn't really understand any of the relationships in his life, and because this is a BL, ends up with the guy who Pear, the girl he was into, was going to marry.

Honestly, describing the show's plot is going to make it sound really silly, but fundamentally it was a show about the importance of kindness, and just choosing to be a little bit decent to people, even when it didn't feel like it benefited you at all. And how that can have transformative effects in the lives of everyone around them.

NiNi

I think that's a good descriptor, and I think you're right that if you just dryly explain what the show is about, it seems like it's a little silly—but it was really really affecting, I found it quite deep and quite emotional in a lot of ways. Kawi is a loser, but he's a loser because he chose to be. He got into his head that he was a loser and he just cut himself off from all the people in his life, and sort of manifested his own loserdom. When we meet Kawi, like we can see that, because people are trying to be his friend, people are trying to be close to him, people are trying to socialize with him and have him as part of their crew, their group, their whatever, and he is just not having it. He's stuck in his own head and his own sadness and his own perception of himself? And the way that his life has gone? And he can't seem to unstick himself.

The catalyst for him starting to unstick himself is when this wedding invitation arrives. That's when you start to get the full story of how Kawi even landed up here. You get to go back in time with him to the point in time when the decisions that he made landed him here. He thinks of it as nothing having worked out for him for twelve years, but what it really is in actuality is that he hasn't tried anything in twelve years. He's just allowed himself to become this sad sack of a person, and just told himself that he was a loser.

The show is very…it delves into the idea of how you can turn your perception, however misguided it is, into your reality. It's a lot about not being able to see the good things that are in your life, only being able to see the bad. There’s a few threads in there that are interesting that the show runs with: threads on alcoholism and binge drinking, threads on decentering yourself from other people's stories. There is a lot the show says about being an active participant in your own life. I thought it was a really interesting show, and well done. Well written, well produced, well directed, and very well acted, I think. I did not go into this as a Krist fan, because I did not think that he was a good actor. And I was very surprised and quite pleased with his chops in this. I love Fluke Gawin, I think he ascended to another level in this particular show. I think he put more of himself into this show than he has into some of his other roles, and I was impressed already with some of his other roles.

Ben, what did you think about it?

Ben

I went into this show…ambivalent? Many of us in the BL-sphere had fallen out of favor with Krist, and I'm also really hit or miss with Jittirain's work, because I don't like how much lying is a big part of her stories. I was really surprised by how much lying was not part of the story of this. This show cared so much about earnestness. It was very determined for people to say what needed to be said to each other, and begged people to treat each other kindly.

One of the things that I really liked early in this show was that three different characters confessed to each other in this love triangle. Pear has a crush on Pisaeng, Pisaeng has a crush on Kawi, Kawi has a crush on Pear. They all reject each other, and it ends up improving their friendships, because now that nobody is withholding their feelings for fear of rejection, they can treat each other properly again. They did the thing that Korean stuff does a lot, which demands that people confess, but they did it in a way that showed that it's actually beneficial, and it can get better for people after you confess, even when you're rejected. I thought that was really really lovely. The show just begs you to choose kindness, to be a little bit nicer to people. To not be so selfish.

And I was not expecting that [laughs] from a Jittirain adaptation with such an unlikable character in Kawi? Because Kawi was not an easy character to like on the front end of the show. It felt very…calculated in the casting, to use an actor that had such a complicated relationship with the BL community? Who starts off so unlikable, and then to make us like him over the course of the show, by letting him grow and change, and letting us grow along with him. Like that was really restorative, in a way that I am genuinely floored by. We didn't want to like him in the beginning, but I genuinely cared about him by the end of the show.

34:00 BMF: The time travel mechanic

NiNi

Let's talk a little bit about the time travel, Ben, because I think that the time travel mechanic is kind of important to the story. So, let's break down a little bit how they do the time travel.

So like you said, there's a McGuffin object that they use, one of those little music boxes thingies? And when you turn the music box the first time, nothing happens. But then the next time that you turn the music box, you are taken back in time to the first point at which you turned the music box. From then on, you're slingshotting back and forth between two points in time, which is the last time you turned the music box in the past, and the last time you turned the music box in the future.

Ben

The big thing with the time travel mechanic is that you're not in a Groundhog Day story. You're not reliving the same day over and over again. This is not about Kawi having to keep retrying the same moments over and over again. The big thing with the time travel mechanic is that you create a checkpoint in the future and a checkpoint in the past, but every time you go back to one area or another, you're still moving forward. So he comes back to when he first buys the snow globe. He goes back the first time to when he bought it and he tries to give it to Pear, but once he tries to go back to the future after the first jump, whenever he goes back, he's back to wherever he was after he attempted to give it to her. So he has to keep moving forward; he gets one redo of what he did before. And so he's still forced to live with the consequences of his choices, he can't just keep trying over and over again. That's also kind of a metaphor? You can maybe mess up something once, and try again with people? Before they're like, ‘okay well this is who you are,’ and then they leave you alone.

I really liked this particular time travel story, because so much about jumping forward for Kawi represented where he was in the moment. So the first time he thinks he's accomplished all the things he came to, to do, like save his dad, become friendly with Pear, etc, and he jumps forward—his life is a mess. Because he was overindulgent when he was last in the past, and that played out to him becoming an alcoholic in the future, who was not great in his relationship with Pear, because he hadn't really committed to being in the relationship with Pear, he just wanted to have the relationship. And this caused friction with all the other people in his life. Particularly Max, his gay bestie, who was one of the first relationships he fixed. Like, he had stopped hanging out with his gay bestie because people were like ‘are you guys, like, homo because you guys are besties?’ So he avoided Max to avoid conflict with other people. But he fixes his relationship with Max, and Max ends up staying by his side through most of the timelines that we get to see in the future.

But a big part of the way this time travel mechanics works, by like—you move forward in both the future and the past—it forces Kawi to be present in either place while he's there. And he eventually learns the theme of the show, which is, live a life that you won't feel like you need to change. We get a great use of this towards the end when Pisaeng, in a moment of fear about Kawi potentially dying, jumps back to the past to try and somehow fix it. Kawi clocks him as a time traveler right away, but they end up revisiting like their first proper date? And end up facing each other as two time travelers trying to fix their past. Kawi really rises to that moment, and tells Pisaeng, ‘don't worry about it.’ I found that in particular to be really satisfying. That for somebody like Kawi who could only see the world negatively, by the end of the show he's able to give his partner—who is incredibly optimistic as an individual, who's facing a really terrifying loss in potentially losing him—the courage to face that eventuality, and say that our lives are still worth living and enjoying even if they might be a little bit short. Which is…kind of a heavy theme for the kind of upbeat Friday BLs that GMMTV likes to do.

So. I was really impressed with the way they handled the time travel mechanic in this. I think it offered a lot to the storytelling, I don't think this show works as just a relationship show otherwise, I think the fact that it's a time travel show is the only reason this particular story functions. And that makes me very fond of it as a result.

NiNi

Yeah, I like all of the time travel mechanic work specifically because one of the things that it makes you think about is that every time Kawi jumps forward to the future, there is a sense that, almost in a way that time stopped—obviously not, because time has kept going—but more that he stopped developing or he got stuck at the point in time where he jumped forward. So when he jumps forward to the future, he's still the Kawi that jumped forward from the past, he has not grown, has not evolved, has not anything like that. And it feels like all the people around him are stuck too? So it's almost like at the point in time that he jumps forward he freezes everybody in amber, which I really appreciated as a metaphor for, you can't fast forward through your life. You have to live it. Which is one of the themes of the show that I think was executed really well, utilizing that aspect of the time travel mechanic. Every time he tries to short circuit and just go from the past to the future without living through the bits in between, the future doesn't go well, it doesn't end well for him. I really did like that about the way that they use the time travel mechanic.

I like how this team deals with science fiction mechanics, because this is the same team that did The Gifted and The Gifted: Graduation, which are probably two of the best Thai dramas that I’ve ever watched, and the way that they think about the genre implications and the genre aspects of the shows that they do—they put effort into it, they're not lazy about the genre work that they're doing. And they deeply integrate it into the story that they're telling otherwise, so to to your point about how this story wouldn't have worked if it wasn't a time travel story: completely agree about that. The time travel is absolutely necessary to the emotional core of the story, and to the core of who the characters are and how they move through their lives. It's really…critical aspect of it. If Kawi hadn't already lived through to the version of his future where he's a sad sack, he might not have been motivated to fix his past. And then if he hadn't jumped forward to a point in time that he thought he fixed everything, and realized that he just made it worse, he wouldn't have, again, tried to go back and fix it properly. And then in going back, decided to live his life rather than trying to fast forward to the end.

One of the things that it really forces him to do as well—because there are rules to the time travel mechanic—basically there are some things that you can't change? There's some things that you can't avoid, there are some things that you can't fix. And this is shown in the person of Kawi's dad. One of the things that Kawi tries to do when he goes back to the past, is he tries to prevent his dad from dying? And he thinks that he's succeeded, because he knows when his dad is gonna die. He knows why he's gonna die. He succeeds at getting him medical help, but he dies anyway, because death is one of those things that you can't avoid, you can't change, it is what it is. Between the discussions of alcoholism and that fact of there being things in the timeline that you just can't change, it led me to the serenity prayer as a reading of the show. You have to know what you can change. You have to have the courage to change that stuff that you can change. You have to have the serenity to accept the things that you can't change.

So for Kawi, he knew he could change things about himself, things about the decisions that he made in the past. Those were the things that he had to change, and he had to discover the courage to change those things, which he did. But he had to also accept the things that he couldn't change. He couldn't change his dad dying. He couldn't change the fact that Pear did not feel the way about him that he felt about her. He couldn't change the fact that Pisaeng felt the way that he felt about him, or that he felt the way that he felt about Pisaeng. He had to accept those things. And then he had to determine, he had to learn, the difference between those two things—because that's the basis of the serenity prayer, right? You have to accept what you can't change, you have to change the things you can, and you have to have the wisdom to know the difference between those things, which is also what the whole time travel thing is giving him.

Ben

It's the kind of show that makes the audience feel smart because they were paying attention to what was happening. It doesn't require the audience to notice a bunch of things in the set design or the costuming, or easter eggs that are planted all over the place. It just rewards the audience for leaning in a little bit and participating in the themes. Recognizing the kind of story that they're telling, and they're very up front about it, they're very clear that kindness, even small amounts, is transformative. And that just choosing to be nice to someone and not be a dick to them, in a critical moment—even if it's a small moment for you—can affect the way that they view themselves and their life.

44:47 BMF: Dings

NiNi

Because we always have to talk about our dings: what are the elements in the story that you were hoping that they were going to deal with that they didn't deal with?

Ben

So I wrote a post about Pisaeng's mom, and how she is engaged in some of the worst kind of evils that queer people have faced. Pisaeng’s mom is a wealthy woman pursuing a political career, and you get the sense that his being out is inconvenient for her. Later they tried to recontextualize this as, ‘she was just concerned that his life would be harder if he chose to be out.’ But one of the things that's revealed in around episode 4, I believe? Is that her employees are spying on Pisaeng, and reporting on him when he goes into queer spaces. She jacks him up about that, and then tries to manipulate him into going back into the closet now that he's trying to push the door open. He knows who he is; this is not a discovery story for Pisaeng. And it was frustrating for me that with all of the evils about her trying to manipulate her own son back into the closet—they also have Max, who's presented as wise in the story and woke as shit, admire her for the things she said when Pisaeng feels some kind of way about her because of the way he treats her. And that is never dealt with in the show. Irked the shit out of me. It raised my hackles when it came to the mom so much, that her resolution with Pear’s dad, to just let the kids sort their lives out, was not enough for me.

On the other end of things that were frustrating for me…I don't like the resolution for Knot. I'm really glad that he got his ass handed to him by Pear and Kwan, because he was a dick. But in a show so much about kindness and change, it feels kind of weird that we leave Knot when he has basically hit rock bottom, and then don’t talk about him or acknowledge him. He just appears at graduation, and he appears at the wedding, and seemingly is a novelist—no matter what history we're in, Knot will be a successful novelist. Max wasn't allowed to have an on-screen boyfriend, but Aou was serving.

NiNi

You talked a little bit about episode 10, and Pisaeng and Kawi's first time, and how it felt like somewhere in there, between them getting together and that moment happening it felt like there was a conversation missing. Now I definitely agreed with you with that, I think a lot of people agreed with you with that. But I do also want to talk about Kawi’s journey with intimacy. There were a lot of people who were reading Kawi as ace-coded throughout the show. I don't think that I ever bought an ace or aspec read on Kawi—well, I wouldn't say not aspec, because I feel like maybe a demi read would be a read that I could get down with.

But I never bought an ace read on Kawi, and there was a lot about the ways that Kawi was discovering his sexuality, not just in the sense of…sexual identity, of being gay or of being a man who likes men, but also in terms of the fact that, when we meet Kawi in the original timeline, Kawi is a 30-year-old virgin. It's sort of put together as part of his whole loser aura that he never got it together enough to be with anybody? So in going back in time, he's going back into his 18-year-old self as a 30-year-old virgin. So this is somebody who has not experienced any sort of intimacy: emotional, physical, any sort of intimacy in his life. The lift that he's lifting, in terms of discovering who he is as a sexual person—not just as a queer person, but just as a person discovering his sexuality period—that was the read that I bought?

Ben

I guess I'll disclose a little bit before I pooh-pooh on the ace Kawi read. I identify as demisexual, and I don't like the ace read of Kawi. Kawi is almost very much in the BL space of, he's happy if they just cuddle and hold hands only. Which is the space some of the readers of BL and yaoi like to put these boys in. The reality coming from Max to Kawi is that Pisaeng is a gay man, who knows he's gay, who's into you. You must face the reality of male-male intimacy if you're going to be in a long term male-male romance. Which—all I think the point they were trying to make with Kawi and Max. By seeing Kawi choose to face that, in the episode with the amusement park about how Kawi needs to face some of his own uncertainties, and go on the ride that might be a little bit scary for him, ha ha, they're getting that particular point across.

It's a little bit muddled, but I'm not a fan of the ace Kawi read, because it feels that we project asexuality onto prudish characters or chaste shows. And that's not always what's happening. I don't want to claim Kawi for the ace side of the board? Because while I do think that a demiromantic, demisexual read is totally valid for him? You must respect that that is a read on the character from the place where you're sitting: don't think that is part of the canon of this show. I think the show is making a different point about male-male intimacy, not trying to make a point about ace spectrum existence.

NiNi

I agree with you that the show muddled that point. But it tried to pull it back by having the do-over of the amusement park beats.

Ben

And that's the really muddled part, because by going back to the amusement park date and doing it better the second time, but not taking us to that moment because they didn't want future Pisaeng to take that moment from their past selves, I think it still leaves the audience hanging. It's okay for them to say that that moment is between them, but it feels like we didn't follow Kawi's arc through that big step. We've been with Kawi for so many personal and really ugly moments, that it was kind of surprising that they would slam the door on us right there.

NiNi

They did show us the first time, and they showed us the aftermath of the first time, and whatever they did, Kawi seemed pretty happy with it. It's not that the arc wasn't complete, it was that a piece of the arc felt like it was missing.

Ben

I'm not necessarily mad about it, but it's why I did not give this show a 10. It's one of the reasons I did not give the show a 10.

52:57 BMF: Jittirain and Gawin and Krist

NiNi

You talked a little bit in the beginning about Jittirain stories, because we were both not feeling Jittirain. I am a known non-fan of Theory of Love. I skipped, and Ben did not enjoy, Vice Versa. Ben likes 2gether for reasons, I have never been particularly interested in it. Jittirain is not particularly my cup of tea, I don't really think that you are a great fan of them either? So why does this story work for us?

Ben

Because the show is not about lying. The show is about telling the truth. And almost all of her stories are built on a core lie underpinning the show. I was waiting for some huge lie to upend this show around the midpoint and it really doesn't. This show was about being earnest and forthright with people. And it was fascinating to see an adaptation of Jittirain work—because I understand that very many liberties were taken with the source material—to tell a story that was not about withholding for some sort of power play over the other person. It was very much a show about how our lives are better when we're earnest with each other. I don't know how much Jittirain's original writing had to do with that or not, because I have not read her books? But this particular story really worked for me!

NiNi

I was so surprised that the Krist and Gawin pairing ended up working. The chemistry was there, the emotional resonance was there between the two characters which I really liked. A lot of time when we talk about chemistry in these shows, we end up talking a lot about the physical chemistry or the sexual chemistry, but something that gets sort of thrown to the side a lot is the emotional chemistry between the characters, and the way that the actors play that emotional chemistry. I really enjoyed the emotional chemistry between Kawi and Pisaeng, and I really enjoy how Krist and Gawin played that emotional chemistry and emotional tension.

Ben

I believe that one of the directors talked about this, that Gawin and Krist are kind of playing against type. They had to really push Gawin out of his shyness to play the Pisaeng character, and they talked about how they struggled in some of their early cues trying to get Gawin and Krist to fall into alignment.

I wasn't worried about Gawin, because Gawin is always playing the emotionally repressed gay man who is sad, because he can't be gay the way he wants to be, in the world he finds himself to be in. That's what he's good at! He's done it three times now! He did it with Mork in Dark Blue Kiss, he did it with Dan in Not Me, and he did it again here with Pisaeng. As soon as they’re like, ‘he's been gay the whole time’ I'm like, ‘there it is! I knew there was a reason we cast Gawin!’

[both laugh]

Ben

But Krist was a real surprise for me, and there were a bunch of interesting callbacks to SOTUS that a couple of us caught along the way, with the way some of the shots are set up, some of the way some of the moments were reconstructed…definite callbacks to SOTUS asking us to compare who Krist was in, say 2016, to who he is now in 2023. And I liked the show giving us all the chance to move on from how we felt about who Krist was at the beginning of BL.

NiNi

It's deliberately done. The creators of the show, they chose Krist deliberately for this role, and part of it was about his public persona; this was a rehabilitation role for him. They've talked about that, and he talked about how hard he worked, because he wanted to change the way that people in the BL fandom thought about him. And I thought that was really neat. I didn't get too much or give too much to whatever the controversies were? My issue with Krist was always that I didn't feel like he was giving 100% in the role that he was playing? And I can't say that I knew why, but there was an eau de homophobia around it, I do have to say. I didn't get into the behind the scenes stuff, and the, whatever he said on the IG live, and, like, that wasn't my thing about it. My thing was that, if you're going to act in a role, play the role, no matter what the role is. So that was always my issue with Krist, I felt like he didn't put his all into the role. I can't say that about him here. Whatever happened back in the SOTUS days, Krist was really young, he was new to acting in general, he was new to this particular industry. Did he make mistakes? He might have, he must have, he probably did. But he put, like, whole pussy into this role, I cannot say that he left anything on the table, and that is definitely the opposite of the way I felt about him when I watched the five episodes of SOTUS that I managed to get through before I quit.

Ben

I'm okay with it! Krist, you may have a plate, sir. You can sit with us now.

[both laugh]

NiNi

I feel like you have done the work, sir. You have earned this plate that you're getting. Good job. So, ratings for Be My Favorite? You said that you rated it a 9, and you had some specific dings on it.

Ben

The mom stuff bothered me, the Knot stuff felt like a thematic misstep, and I don't really think that Aou's character has an arc in the show, he's just there as the wise gay—who has great pants, and nice legs. And like these things are fine. I think the show is fine, but I don't think I'll be rewatching it, and I don't think it's my first recommend. It's a 9, you can have it.

NiNi

I gave this show a 10.

Ben

This show does not get to sit next to La Pluie, Moonlight Chicken, and My School President this year!

NiNi

My 10s are unrelated to all of my other 10s.

Ben

Mine are inherently related to each other.

NiNi

All my 10s are very different 10s! And I gave Be My Favorite a 10 because it nailed, for me, its core premise, like absolutely nailed it. There are, to me, no holes in the core. There are some wobbly edges…there are some little tweaks and stuff that could have been done around the sides, but to me the core of the show is absolutely solid. I got myself a nice few emotional moments, there was nothing about it that bothered me so significantly that I had to ding it. For me, it was a 10.

So 10 from me, 9 from Ben, so that leads us to a 9.5, which I think is a good place for this show to sit personally. Ben, I think, feels a little like ‘ugh, 9.5 is giving it a lot!’

Ben

It's a 9.

NiNi

Yes, but we have a rule.

Ben

I am weighting the average down a quarter of a point.

NiNi

That is…not how maths works, but okay, I will let you have it. 9.25 instead of 9.5, even though that is not how mathematics work, it is fine. [laughs]

1:00:58 - Outro

NiNi

So, Ben…now that we've got some distance between us and these shows: what are some of the things that are sticking with you? What's lingering?

Ben

Tokyo In April Is... was really really gay, and that was preserved from the manga adaptation. Like I was listening back to it and my love for Ryunosuke holds firm. I really liked that this show and Be My Favorite has a very self-affirmed queer character holding the line on the bullshit. In Ryunosuke’s case, he doesn't like Kazuma, because Kazuma should know better, and he doesn't like what that did to Ren. I like that he's in a position to call that out and it's like, ‘we are gay; that means something in this world.’

I really like that both of these shows are pushing past the boundaries of the BL bubble, and reminding the genre and the people who enjoy it that queer people matter, that their lived experiences matter, that there are consequences to the things that queer people experience, that don't go away just because they got some dick. So I ended up, even further away from these shows, like, I find myself thinking about Ryunosuke a lot, and I find myself thinking about Max a lot. I like that Max told Kawi that he does need to reckon with the physical realities of being in a relationship with someone. Felt like very specific shade about BL itself not really considering the physical realities of two men being together.

NiNi

For me, the further away I get from Tokyo In April Is... the less it sticks with me. But I'm having the opposite reaction to Be My Favorite. The further away I get from it, somehow things are popping up in my mind and I'm finding myself thinking about it.

Ben

I'm on the opposite side of that. I thought Be My Favorite was solid, but I watched like 22 things this season: Be My Favorite is not on my ‘I'm thinking about that motherfucker’ list at all. And it's not like [laughs] it's bad in any way. It's just not the show I'm thinking about.

Like I really like the way they handle grief, I really like the way they handle people having unrequited feelings for other people, I really like that show's messaging about how unrequited love is still good, and it should be expressed, because it can help that relationship become a more healthy balanced version of itself. I like how that show says that telling people you love them is one of the best things you can do. Like that's a pretty cool message! But this is not the show this year that makes my, even top 10, in terms of things I'm going to be thinking about long term.

NiNi

I think while you were talking about it I figured out what it is. It's the thing about having to live your life; that you can't short-circuit it, that you can't fast-forward it. That you can't even really go back and do it over, in the way that you might want to. ‘The only way out is through’ is one of my mantras, and I feel like that was also one of the mantras of the show. You can't avoid things, you can't circumvent them, you can't jump over them: you have to go through them.

Ben

I think, as always, Be My Favorite was not gay enough for me.

NiNi

We're going to be talking a lot about that, I think, over the course of the next few episodes and the next few seasons, because I think we've hit a point in BL where it kinda has to shit or get off the pot on being queer rep, and what they are deciding to rep for queerness?

Ben

I don't know how exactly to describe it. For me…Max is pretty gay in a way that I found really accessible. Pisaeng is gay in a way that I found mostly accessible? Kawi's queerness was…a bit difficult for me to grasp. I'm not necessarily keen on the ace Kawi read, because it feels like a cop out. I don't like calling characters ace because they are sexually inexperienced and/or repressed. Either make a story about the complexities of asexuality or shut the fuck up. I don't like the way the cutesy shit reads for me these days.

With Tokyo In April Is... I like how specifically queer their story feels. That you had two boys who loved each other in high school; did not believe the other boy could reciprocate; they have one night together before everything goes horribly wrong; and then one of them tries to take on all of the suffering for the other one, and mostly succeeds? And then they run into each other again, because of course they do. Particularly because the boy who was saved™ never got over the other boy, and has been trying to get back to him for ten years. And that just really works for me. I get the way that both of them are wounded. It doesn't have to be explained to me. Even if the actors may not have consistently landed the performances? Tokyo In April Is... hits for me because it's the kind of experience that I am unfortunately familiar with! And that's the kind of stuff that's going to stick with me more.

NiNi

In winding up here: we talked about second chance romance in the spring, and I feel like we had a lot to say about why we like it? And I just want to get a sense of…how you’re feeling about second chance romance coming out of these two particular shows.

For me, I was really happy with what these two shows said about second chance romance. In both of them there was in some ways a forgiveness of self that needed to happen, in order for these two couples to get their shit together. And it was a forgiveness of self that needed to happen on both sides of the couple? So it wasn't necessarily that one had done something wrong to the other, it was more that…these are people who were living half-lives. In some ways beating themselves up about something that had happened in their past? And I liked that these two shows really put an emphasis on self healing as prerequisite to love. These people had to find themselves to find their love. I like that message.

Ben

Like I said last season, second chance romance is important for me as a gay person. Our youths aren't easy; I'm feeling a whole lot better about myself in my 30s than I did in my teens or my 20s. I do think that second chances are important for queer people, because a lot of people didn't figure it out until they were away from their families and in school and stuff, and a lot of us who did figure it out early did not talk to anybody about it, or did not have a great time with it, or were interested in people who hadn't figured it out yet. And so second chance romance in BL remains super important for me. It's probably the current style of story that most appeals to me.

NiNi

That is going to wrap us up on our On Time and Memory episode. We out! Say bye to the people, Ben.

Ben

Peace!

#podcast #lgbtq #tokyo in april is...#be my favorite #the conversation #ben and nini's conversations #on art #fall series #fall 2023 #thai bl #bl series #season 4 #s4e3 #shigatsu no tokyo wa...#Spotify

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sportsballs-the · 7 months

Text

Footnotes: TGAA Case 2 Twitch Highlight

(Or: Why you should NOT meta Game Studios)

Hey everyone!

I want to begin using this site more regularly, though the way that the site formats its posts means that I need to get a bit more creative with what I post here. And while you will see things more regular such as scheduling posts, I think a great idea would be to post long form deep dives into many of the things I do for content as a sort of bonus. And so, here’s Footnotes: a series about me explaining things.

For this first article, I want to discuss the most recent video I have released to this date: my highlights video for Case 2 of The Great Ace Attorney. This post will be discussing elements of that video in order, so if you would like you can watch along with the video pausing at the timestamps listed to read up.

Two final notes before starting: first, this post will contain my own opinions on Case 2, as well as a brief overview of my opinions on Case 1, but will not cover anything beyond that. This is not meant to be a discussion board for the game as a whole. As of the time of writing, I have not finished the entire game, and as such this is not a place for spoilers or any of that nonsense.

Secondly, on the note of having not finished the game yet, I am currently going through the rest of the game on my twitch stream! If you’re interested in following along with the rest of my progress, you can find me over there!

Ok, let’s actually get to the footnotes now.

(Pre-video)

The first thing I wish to discuss is the production of the video. The video began production in mid-to-late May and ended production in early August, with a final release date of August 11th, 2023. This is a turn around of just over 2 and a half months, which is definitely higher than I would like, but is a bit more understandable when looking at the circumstances.

Over the summer I was maintaining both a full time job and a part time job while also trying to spend time with family I hadn’t seen in months. I had very little time to work on the video once all of this is considered, and even less time once you consider that I was still attempting to consistently stream on Twitch during this time. Combine that with this video being the longest video I’ve ever posted, with 7.5 hours of raw footage being boiled into 42 minutes, and this turnaround time suddenly looks a bit better. I wasn’t happy with it at the time, and I definitely want to make sure I have better turn around for my videos, but with hindsight this all is a bit better than I would’ve admitted at the time.

This long run time bit is going to be dwarfed in the near future btw: I have two videos already in the planning pipeline that I know will exceed it: one with 12 hours of raw footage at the end of it all, and one that currently has 16 hours of raw footage, and is estimated to have around 30 hours at the end of it all. Pray for future me I suppose.

(00:17 - 00:22)

I decided to carry over the prediction counter over from the last highlight video because it was one of the best ways to add comedy in post for this video. I have an annoying track record of predicting what will happen in a case hours in advance for no reason other than “Chekhov’s Gun lmao”. In this case I actually had a bit of comeuppance because of this, but we’ll discuss this in detail a bit later.

Of more important note is the goose. I did a pretty good job of explaining my general thoughts of Case 1 of this game in that videos highlight, and I want to save my fill in depth opinions for when I eventually cover that video in Footnotes, but a general recap is worth discussing. In short, it is one of the weakest Case 1s in the entire franchise for the sole reason that it is waaaaaaaaaay too long. Playtime for Case 1 for me came out to about 6 hours, and the case itself could’ve very easily been 2 hours and I wouldn’t have complained nearly as much.

Because of Case 1 being such a drag, I actually came into this stream with much more tempered expectations. I was still hopeful that it would perform well, but we were off to a rough start.

(00:22 - 00:31)

Ah, Herr Lock Sholmes. A character defined by being transformed into a knock-off version of a popular character due to copyright. I have my own opinions on the character that I will discuss a bit later, but I want to use this timeslot to talk about localization and the weird release this game had for western audiences.

Because this game is by definition a spin-off of the main franchise, I was originally not going to touch the game myself and rather watch a let’s play of a fan translation for the game. This is what I did for Investigations 2 (and also for the Layton crossover game lol), and I was planning to dive into it once I had a significant amount of free time to pay attention to it with. It just so happened though though that it was at around the same time that an official translation and release would be coming for western audiences, and even a port to Steam. This was enough for me to wait to play it myself and even enough for me to work through it on my Twitch stream, but it was a seemingly odd time to do drop this. Great Ac Attorney released in Japan in July of 2015, but not in the west until July of 2021, a difference of a full 6 years. That’s a lot of time for what’s just basically a translation…

I haven’t seen anything from the fan translation, though this is entirely because I am avoiding looking into this game on a deep level until I have fully finished it. However, I do know that there is one very major difference between the fan work and the official release: Sherlock Holmes became Herlock Sholmes.

As far as I’m aware, (a) Sherlock was named properly in the Japanese version of the game without the weird name change, and (b) Herlock is an already pre-existing knock-off that notably ended its run before the official Sherlock run ended. This leads me and many others to speculate that the delay for the western release was due largely to copyright issues with the Sherlock Holmes brand. I don’t know this for certain, and again I’m refraining from looking into anything until I’ve fully finished the game, but if this is true it would suck royally. Copyright law is always a sore point when it comes to fan works, but delaying a wide release of a game by more than half a decade because of copyright really grinds my gears. I understand that the English detective character being specifically Sherlock is actually important to the game, but I do also think you could’ve effectively got the point across while using a knock-off because Sherlock is such a popular figure. Delaying the wide release for that long when another solution does exist just feels really bad to me. That might just be me complaining though.

In future Footnotes for the other videos on this game, I want to reference changes made between this 2021 western release and the original 2015 Japanese release, but I will have to refrain from doing that here since I will not be researching anything about the game until I am fully 100% done with the game and it’s sequel. I accidentally did this to myself for the Zero Escape franchise and said to myself that I wouldn’t be letting that happen again, though that story is one for another time.

(01:02 - 01:08)

Nicknames are funny, what can I say. I started a running joke in the first case that ended up snowballing into me giving nearly every single names character in this game a really stupid nickname. Why? It’s funny. For some reason deep within the recesses of my mind remains a clip from an old episode of Randy Cunningham: 9th Grade Ninja where the comic relief sidekick wins a large scale chess tournament all while calling the pieces by egregiously stupid nicknames (The Pointy One for Bishop, as an example). I think ever since I saw that “stupid nicknames = funny” has been burned into my brain.

I am aware that the nicknames can be pretty annoying to some, and a few may even say I’m being disrespectful by using them, but I don’t mean to come across that way. Even with this being a game about solving murders, the Ace Attorney games are built upon having a lighter tone and being overall a bit goofier. Larry Butz would not exist in a world where Ace Attorney was meant to be played tonally straight. I’m doing the nicknames to exaggerate the goofiness inherit in the series and adding even more comedy to everything.

Anyways important nicknames from the previous case are Ryunosuke becoming Bruno, Kazuma becoming Dramatic Effect, and Susato becoming Deep Bow. There’s another character with a preexisting nickname, though we’ll get to them when we first meet them in this case.

(01:14 - 01:27)

I still stand by this assessment. Up to this point in franchise history, the main player character being the defendant was super rare and only really arguably happened. For it to happen twice in a row right at the start of the game really diminishes the impact it has, and also gets the player less invested in the character. Because both Case 1 and Case 2 have Ryunosuke’s motivation be basically just trying to save himself, it’s hard to feel like we actually learn anything about him. This ties into my opinions on his character arc as a whole, but that is a conversation that happens a long while from now when we get to discussing the game as a whole in the discussion of Case 5.

(01:39 - 01:56)

Locked room mysteries in theory are incredibly interesting because they play on your expectations. When a mystery looks like it’s super narrow and obvious, it gets the audience thinking outside the box and wondering how could the obvious solution not be the true solution. The problem is that you then get a situation where the audience pretty much knows that the locked room is fake from the start, meaning the investment in this trope falls hard from the outset. I have not personally read or seen a single situation where the locked room actually stays locked the whole time, there’s always some sort of clever trick. Somebody in chat during the stream said that Ghost Trick actually has a proper locked room, but I haven’t actually played that at all, so I wouldn’t know myself.

(Don’t spoil this btw. Ghost Trick is on the list for games I want to play, so don’t you dare spoil it for me. I’ll know it when I see it.)

(01:56 - 02:32)

Another brief aside on a mystery trope I don’t really care for: the dying message.

Look. When it’s stupid obvious that the message is fake, why bother with it? Writing a “last message” in Russian when we know the character is Japanese means it really obvious from the beginning that it’s fake, so when the game points it out later like it’s a big reveal it has no weight to it. I’m pretty sure I cut everything to do with this final reveal about the last message out of the video because it didn’t carry any weight. I understand this is more of a gripe with bad lazy writing than with the trope itself, but the trope is a very common victim of bad lazy writing, so I think pointing this out is warranted.

(02:59 - 03:05) and (04:14 - 04:49)

This is probably the single prediction I am the most proud of so far. Calling the knockout powder solution so early into this case really helped make everything fall into place while solving alongside it, and the game does a pretty decent job at letting you figure it out yourself. For what it’s worth, the reason I got it almost instantly is because just before this bit in the game is a scene of me talking about how weird it is for Ryunosuke to have slept through everything and because Chekhov’s Gun means him randomly saying his head hurts isn’t random.

As far as what I think about this twist, it’s good, but not really great. It gets developed on throughout the case and starts to spell out some pretty major ramifications, but it doesn’t actually define this case all that much. That’s probably a good thing considering there’s a much larger aspect of this case that really needs to take center stage rather than this smaller twist.

The rest of the scenario I laid out in the second clip is wrong, but I think understandably wrong given the info we had. The air vent was the only way in that we had seen so assuming that it came from there makes sense. The room being a mess done specifically to make it look like a fight had broken out makes sense when the potential killer wants to hide that Kazuma ingested sleeping powder of some kind. Motive is… uhh racism or something I guess. It’s not great, but for literally 20 minutes into the stream it’s a great line of reasoning.

(05:34 - 05:42)

Florent L’Belle. Redd White. Swan Hat Lady from the first case. Enough said.

(06:14 - 06:25)

While for the most part I want to dissect my personal opinions on characters after we have gotten all of the relevant case specific stuff for them out of the way, I think it’s safe for me to go ahead and talk about my opinions on Herlock Sholmes now because a lot of my biggest issues are visible right from the start.

Herlock is largely in the game to fill two roles: to guide the player with large information dumps when the plot needs it, or to guide Ryunosuke when he needs to grow as a character a bit. While in theory both of these are good things, the delivery of Herlock’s character really messes a lot of things up for me. Herlock in this game is depicted as eccentric and egotistical, leading to a character that often likes to proclaim how smart he is while blatantly getting a basic fact of life wrong. When you point this out to him, he often laughs at your face and calls you an idiot. Herlock also is quite often shown getting crucial details about the case completely wrong, even having an entire gameplay segment dedicated to you having to correct “The Great Detective” (I will explain my thoughts on said gameplay segment in a bit). When you point these mistakes out to him, he attempts to steal credit from you and will often say that he was mere moments away from saying that himself.

I think the game is trying to do it for comedy, but I personally don’t think that his statements carry enough charisma to make it feel funny or charming. As such, he just comes across as a rude prick most of the time, which is not something you want to be doing with an incredibly important main character of the game.

Overall though, my biggest issue for now is that Herlock has next to no arc in this case. He starts of randomly making accusations, and ends off continuing the same handcuff bit and making more random claims. Perhaps we have yet to see all that this character can offer, but in my opinion it’s a poor start. I understand this complaining is quite rambly and heavily opinionated, but at this point I’m starting to realize that I have more interesting things to say about my opinions on the game rather than on cool production facts, sorry lol.

(06:52 - 07:59)

Ok, actual production fun facts now. If you noticed that for a lot of these clips, the background music seemed to suddenly start and stop, that’s because I actually put many of the clips in this section out of order. This investigation segment right here throws a lot at you very quickly, some of which is expounding upon information you had already started to work on. As such I fudged with the order of the clips to make the overall narrative flow of the video come together better, though the background music slightly suffered as a result.

(08:00 - 08:12)

When it comes to my editing style, I’ve really come to appreciate and enjoy the hard cut. I think transitions between scenes with accompanying swoosh noises is distracting and takes away from what the video is trying to convey. That being said, I have been playing around with many of the movement sliders in more recent videos to get things to slide around more where I think it feels appropriate.

In this section, the final message Kazuma wrote in his diary is very important to the story, but I didn’t have much interesting dialogue of me reading the whole thing out. Even if I did though, it’s quite a bit of reading, and I felt having 20 seconds or so of me reading these would halt the flow of the story. As such I needed a solution that would grab the viewers attention and get them to read the text of their own volition without slowing down the pace, and having them “fall” onto the screen and then slide off was a fun way to do so that also looks pretty slick I would say.

I think I like adding more to the edit in this manner. Telling a narrative with the video is still the first priority, but one of the things I want to accomplish with each video is to continue to grow and show the progress I’ve made in editing and production. Editing videos has become a true hobby of mine, and I really enjoy getting to express myself in this way. Who knows, maybe even continuing to show my growth as a creative editor will interest some of you all reading this to consider helping me continue to grow as a content creator so I can continue to fund this hobby of mine *wink, wink*.

(08:33 - 09:01)

Ah, Detective Hosonaga. I get pretty notably frustrated with seeing this character return, but he’s a minor character in this case so it’s not a huge deal in all honesty. Plus we see him get beat up later, so that’s fun. If/when I make a Footnotes post for the video on the first case for this game, I’ll talk about my opinion on the character there. For now though, this post is honestly going to be long with or without the inclusion of minor character dissections, so let’s try and aim for brevity.

Of slightly more notable note is the use of the Akira meme. It was floating around on Twitter around the time of production, and I felt it accurately portrayed my opinions on seeing The Butler of all people turn out to be a reoccurring character. While I originally wanted to use more clips of him to more accurately match how the meme is done, I realized during production that the only easily identifiable thing that he does in one frame poses is the “anime glasses push”, so I decided to just play that animation in full rather than rapid cutting even though it lessened the impact.

One drawback I realized a bit too late about including this meme was that it actively flashbangs the viewer when you watch it as there are multiple instances of nothing but a white screen. Oops.

(09:14 - 09:29)

Yep, me using a dolphin sound effect to cover swearing is me directly lifting a joke from SpongeBob lol. Swearing is something I’m trying to do less of largely because I’m starting to grow and realize that it’s not really necessary the vast majority of the time, though since I’m trying to turn content creation into a part time career of sorts this applies doubly so. I will admit, however, that even though I’m trying to limit it, using the dolphin sound effect is really funny every single time.

(10:11 - 10:20)

I often “blah blah blah” through many of the more unnecessary textboxes that serve to pad out the game, though I’ve noticed that often I try and pitch my blahs into whatever song I’ve got on my mind. These blahs here are actually the Smash Bros Ultimate main theme if you listen closely. Why? I don’t know. I thought it was funny.

(10:20 - 10:59)

Honestly, Bif Strogenov is one of my favorite minor characters in the game. Lots of funny quirks, actually semi-important role to the story, easily let’s me do a funny voice whenever I say his lines, all around a great addition. No notes.

Also another instance of me adding in more motion to my edits when I think it works better than a simple hard cut and doesn’t distract from the overall point I’m making. This time it actually exaggerated the point since I wanted to draw attention to the unnamed third sailor here anyways.

(11:00 - 11:14)

Ok, I’m going to be completely 100% honest: I don’t remember why I put the voice line in the video. I did it even remember it being in the video until I rewatched it. My best guess was that I thought I needed to include this clip because it’s important to explaining what’s happening narratively for the video, but I though it was boring and dragging the pace, I guess?????? I mean it’s really funny when it catches you off guard I guess.

(12:02 - 12:29)

I have to admit, while I don’t like Herlock as a character in this case, he does get the best non-court gameplay segment in the game. Going around and examining fine details about the witness and the scene around them is creative and helps add depth to the world, and the condensed nature of the segment really helps to make it feel like you the player are the ones making the deductions. The gameplay feels natural and easy to understand, and best of all, it has a musical theme in 7/4 so it immediately gets a million bonus points for that.

What can I say other than I like to have gameplay in my game. I don’t like that I often have to mash through a lot of textboxes that feel unnecessary just to unpack the actually cool mystery elements, so when those mystery elements are given a form of gameplay to help break up the monotonous textboxes it does wonders. 10/10, fantastic gameplay element.

(13:43 - 13:58)

Ms Pavlova’s introduction does a lot of work at setting up her character in such a way that the last third of this case hits hard, so it’s important that she is introduced as a meek and shy character here. That being said though, it really does make one particular aspect of the ending to this case a bit… strange. We’ll get to that at the end though.

The earrings being something I pointed out this early though was a delightful find for editing me to use to narratively set up the flow of the video. In my opinion it works really well with how it played out: the earrings are introduced early in what at first seems to be yet another dry humor style comment about the game, only for them to have greater relevance later in the video. Things working out in this manner is the sort of thing I would do if I was scripting my own playthrough, so finding an opportunity like this was a great surprise.

As one last note about the earrings though, I needed to draw attention to them here to make them stick out just a bit more in the mind of the audience, so I decided to once again use a sliding motion to grab focus. While this seems no different from the other times I mentioned this type of edit so far, this is actually the single “shot” that I spent the longest amount of time on for the entire edit. For some reason the speed and duration of the zoom into the earrings just felt off every time, so I spent a good 45 minutes fudging with the sliders in Premiere Pro trying to tweak the zoom until it looked right. Even now when watching the video back it still looks ever so slightly off to me. Some may even say that if I hadn’t stopped myself, I would still be editing that one shot to this very day…

(14:19 - 14:32)

I actually really like this joke, one of the few from Herlock that really sticks the landing for me. So much so, this shot is actually my computer desktop right now, which always gets me strange looks when I’m in class at university lmao.

Also yes, I cackle like a witch. Sue me.

(16:20 - 16:53)

I stand by this, bruising should’ve occurred on the body, but it isn’t really worth fighting this point too much. The game kinda said from the outset “no, this isn’t important, please just ignore this and continue on”, so I rolled with it.

Oh, and that text dump was literally a copy paste of the first paragraph on the Wikipedia article for blunt force trauma. Also of note, apparently a Wikipedia article for blunt force trauma exists.

(20:50 - 21:46)

The discovery of the door bolt being poorly made has to be something that happened in order for the plot to work. Like I said earlier, this case just flat out doesn’t work if it’s a locked room. That being said though, is this really something that would be a surprise to anyone other than the passengers?

This boat and this crew have been sailing for years as established later in the case, and presumably the emergency alarm had to have been used in some instances during that time. You’re telling me that every time the alarm goes off all of the door bolts in this section of the ship slide locked, and that the crew hadn’t done anything about this clear design flaw in years? And the only way to get into these rooms once they’re locked from the outside is to bust them down? I feel like that should’ve been addressed a long time ago.

Is this a nitpick? Yes absolutely. It doesn’t really ruin the case in any way, but it is really funny when you think about it. The implication that they have to replace the door bolt every single time the ship makes an emergency stop is hilarious.

(22:06 - 22:09)

Ladies and gentlemen, may I introduce you to the largest reason I wanted to make this article in the first place.

It’s pretty obvious that there’s a time skip of some fashion at this point, and I wanted to call out this in the video because it is quite noticeable. What’s less noticeable however is the fact that this time skip is actually one that spans over a year and a half.

No, seriously.

At the start of Season 4 of my content, I had just moved into a new, much more academically challenging university, and it was affecting me mentally really badly. From August to December of 2021, I streamed a grand total of 3 times. Once for the first case of this game, once for the first half of this case, and then a third time for Inscryption, which is a game that came out around that time that I was pretty excited for. I fully intended to stream the second half of this case and the rest of this game around then, but didn’t because I didn’t really have the spoons to stream anything around then. It was rough, but my mental state did eventually improve. This did ultimately lead to a change in mentality for streaming as well, but I’ve discussed that in length before in my discord server.

Once I had gotten back into streaming, returning to this case was something that didn’t seem like a good idea for stream. It had been months since I last streamed the game, and there’s a good chance nobody would have any idea what was actually going on, leading to a boring stream. My idea to combat this was simply to wait: I would wait until the video highlight for the first case came out to return to the second case, and then I would simply catch everyone up on what had happened at the start of this case. When it had only been a few months since the stream it seemed fine, but the plan quickly fell out of favor when it took yet another 6 months for the video highlight for case 1 to come out.

At that point, I realized it would be quicker and easier to simply record the rest of this case off stream and stitch it into the video as if it had been live streamed. I intended to fully hide the fact that time had passed, but that became quickly impossible when I had realized that since it had been nearly a year and a half since the original recording date of that first stream, not only had I changed nearly all of the settings for my microphone, but my voice itself had actually changed a little bit. I just had to accept my losses and through in a quick (intentionally terrible) transition to try and jokingly point out what had happened without disrupting the flow of the video to heavily.

It gets weirder though. A bit later in the video you’ll hear my voice change in quality again. This one is actually because I cut a full 30 minute period of silence out of the video when I took a break to go get lunch, and on my way out I must’ve bumped the microphone, dislodging it from the cord just enough for the quality to drop again. Professional content creator energy right there.

But there’s still more to say about this segment! You see, for the backing music for this small transition I used the “You nearly failed” music from Sonic Unleashed, which works fine especially when you have the context like I have just laid out for you, but wasn’t my first choice. I originally wanted to use a song I had stuck in my head from a bunch of older YouTube videos I had watched growing up, but when I tried to go and look for it, I found that none of the music in those older videos every got properly credited. Instead, you just got linked to a website with about a million different free-to-use music samples. I went digging for a few hours trying to find the specific piece I was looking for, but I wasn’t able to find anything. I considered trying to find a video where the specific song was used to link in this post and see if you all could help me find it, but with how much time it took me to find it used in a video before, and with how much time I’ve spent writing this post across multiple days, it just didn’t seem reasonable. Maybe I’ll make an addendum and point it out later.

So yeah, I wasn’t kidding when I said this small segment of the overall video was the largest factor behind me wanting to make this post. There’s a lot going on behind the scenes of each of these videos, and I thought it would be fun to share some of the weird and interesting things that have come up. Hopefully people will actually be interested in reading all of this and I’m not just wasting a bunch of my time.

(22:57 - 23:11)

The chicken image here because this laugh really does sound a bit like a chicken, but I ended up using it because I had just recently before this used the image in the previous TTT video on my channel and I thought it would be funny. Considering I often delete assets immediately after I use them, the fact that this chicken image of all things has stuck around for multiple videos is quite funny to me.

(25:57 - 26:03)

The case loses points for the snake juke by the way. Red herring that exists for no reason other than just for the game to go “haha gotcha!” later and the snake quite literally has no relevance itself beyond being yet another gag. It’s a filler lead that takes up a lot of time and ultimately goes absolutely nowhere. Boo.

(26:22 - 26:35)

I honestly wish I had some good juicy behind the scenes bit for this gag since I think it came out really well, but there’s not too much for me to add other than I like it and the voice is funny. Funny voices just work too well sometimes.

(26:57 - 27:11)

Alright, the blunt sword theory is one that I really wish had been the case, especially looking back on it now and realizing the sword plays next to no role in the game as a whole other than being a literal prop. The running theory was going like this: early on we spend a bit of time going through the ships rules of passage. While this was to set up the “no animals aboard the ship” rule, the game also mentions a rule about “no dangerous or lethal weapons” which Kazuma’s sword absolutely would full under. Knowing Kazuma and his whole honor thing, we figured it was likely that they gave him a blunt prop sword to use for training while the voyage took place, with the real sword being locked up somewhere. Once it was discovered that Kazuma’s cause of death was due to blunt force trauma to the back of the neck, the theory was that while Kazuma was distracted by the “speckled band” in the vent, the killer snuck in to the door thinking that Kazuma would be asleep. Kazuma wasn’t, however, since he didn’t eat any of the contaminated food, yet the killer still had a chance since Kazuma was turned around and distracted. The killer picked up the sword hoping to use it to cut him only to find it blunt, then proceeding to hit Kazuma on the back of the neck with the blunt sword since it was about the only option left. The killer used the emergency stop to cause a commotion in the room and hide the fact that the sword had been used as the murder weapon, and Pavlova discovered the body, but didn’t want to since they were also a fugitive aboard the ship.

Is this a perfect theory? No, absolutely not, but it’s a pretty fun one in all honestly, and I genuinely do like it more than the actual outcome of the case (especially when it comes to the murder weapon). I cut a lot of this theory being formed from the video since it ended up being largely off the mark, but I still wanted to include it here since it is a fun theory. We’ll get to my opinions on the actual ending of the case very soon, don’t you worry.

(31:22 - 31:46)

Ok, I’m picking this clip here to actually talk about something I don’t like about how this video ended up. There’s always something for me that when I look back on a past video of mine I wish I had changed, and for this video, it’s that the last 12 minutes or so basically just become me reacting to the story of the game progressing.

I think it was necessary for me to include all of these clips since it’s the conclusion of the case occurring, and I think part of this has to do with the odd structure of this case (again, we’ll get to that very soon), but it’s such a large portion of the video where I barely provide any commentary. I think at this point in the editing process I was ready to just call it done and ship it out since I was already well behind where I wanted to be with it, but that’s not a great excuse. I don’t add anything to the end of this video aside from a few moments which just isn’t good for making the content my own and actually justifying why you the audience should watch my video over someone else’s.

At this point I can’t exactly change anything about it, and I suppose less to talk about for the video means less to talk about here in this post lol.

(35:47 - 35:55)

Alright, let’s talk about how this case is structured.

The fact that we never go to court, or even leave the ship at all in this case is a pretty big curveball, and one that I certainly was not expecting. It makes the game feel less like a traditional Ace Attorney game and more like one from the Ace Attorney: Investigations side games. A lot of the reason I didn’t see this ending coming is because I didn’t think the game would pull a formula break like this, and it paid off well… in the short term.

Looking back on the case though, everything rides on this twist. It’s obvious from the beginning that the culprit is whoever is staying in the next door cabin, and the only reason we don’t follow through is because once we meet the shy and meek Pavlova, we assume that there simply must be someone else who we just haven’t met yet. And while keeping us confined to the ship is a twist, it’s one that causes the entire game to revolve around 3 rooms, two of which are nearly identical looking, and the third being just a hallway.

The biggest issue for me though is that this twist means that the player never gets a chance to truly show that they’ve learned something important about the case. We’re never truly tested to show that we’ve discovered something, meaning that the fact that I, for instance, saw the sleeping powder and earring twists coming early made no difference. The case is almost entirely on rails, and the player never gets to actually solve much of anything outside of the one gameplay segment with Herlock.

Is this case interesting in the moment? I’m not going to deny it, and you all heard my opinions from the video, but now that I’ve taken a step back and thought about it, the case is just missing what truly makes it an Ace Attorney case, and instead feels like a big narrative sidetrack just to have Kazuma get mentor cursed.

(37:13 - 37:53)

Now onto the opinions on how the mystery played out narratively and about Pavlova being the killer.

Let’s get the bad out of the way first: the motive for this case boils down to a heat of the moment kill spurned from a complete misunderstanding. This sucks. This sucks. This really sucks. This makes Kazuma’s death into what is essentially a fridging, as all of the narrative weight he carried died because of no real reason in particular. There isn’t some connection to the previous case and Brett holding some sort of grudge, there isn’t any connection between Kazuma and the killer, and there’s no connection between Kazuma dying and Ryunosuke’s goals or motivations. Kazuma basically just died because of a convoluted accident, and that really sucks. It’s painfully clear that the writers just needed Kazuma dead, and spun a story around that death rather than spinning a story around the murder and why it occurred.

As one other negative, the murder weapon is basically just the bed post. Really? You put all of this focus in the middle of the case about the cause of death and it turns out it’s a literal background element that killed him? You can do better than that.

All this being said though, I think making Pavlova the killer worked out pretty well. While her motive may as well not exist, the game conveys it in a tragic way that really makes you feel like it wasn’t done out of malice. At the end of the case, we still want to see the best for Pavlova despite the fact that she just admitted to murder, and it takes some clever writing to get us to feel that way. The murder feels like a tragedy in universe, and that’s a great way to end the case.

(41:06 - 41:25)

One final production note before I get to closing thoughts, apparently the YouTube recommended videos at the end are 100000% not centered properly, which sucks because I set up the end card specifically to try and have the text on the left not get covered, but I couldn’t because the videos wouldn’t center. It drove me a little nuts, but I guess I know for the future now.

Oh, and this is also the first time that I’ve included supporters at the end of the video! It a new perk that I want to start including, and if you’re still reading this article up to this point then maybe you would be interested in supporting the channel and having your name in the credits of one of my videos forever.

(Post-video)

My overall thoughts on the case is that while the case has many cool and interesting elements, a lot of those cool and interesting elements come with some downsides and baggage, meaning the case comes out pretty mixed for me. A 6/10 overall. It’s not bad, but it’s not good either. It’s kind of just ok.

I made the thumbnail for this video in Photoshop, and it came out really well. I was making it and occasionally sent WIPs to my good friend LlamaIsFuzzy, and I could tell that each iteration made him laugh more and more. That image of Strogenov staring like a shocked pikachu has even become an emote in the discord server.

My overall thoughts on the video as a whole are that it came out alright, but I’ve definitely showed that I need more work when it comes to longer videos and keeping the audience fully engaged the entire way though. I even started skipping segments to wards the end of the video on this rewatch, which isn’t exactly a great sign.

The overall reception of the video matches this take from me. The video has been out for about a month and a half now and is firmly sitting towards the bottom half of my videos in terms of both views and likes. I think I’ve learned some pretty important lessons when it comes to much longer videos, and I should hopefully be able to translate those well into the future entries in this series.

Speaking of future entries, the rest of this game will be getting a video highlights edit as well, though it may end up being a while. This series falls into what I consider “medium effort videos”, which means between university and a my part time job practically working me 8 days in a 7 day week I don’t have a ton of time to invest into them. This usually means that these videos only get worked on during long breaks from university, normally summer break, thanksgiving break, and winter break. Even then, however, I have a lot of videos above case 3 of this game in the queue. My Stanley Parable stream and TTT videos are long overdue, and I want to get back around into doing Hitman vs Twitch Chat more regularly on the channel. That said, the medium effort videos queue has shuffled around already a few times in the past, maybe we’ll see the next video in the series sooner if there’s enough interest in it.

And that’s about all I have to say for this edition of Footnotes! I’ve put well more time into this than I really expected, so I really appreciate those of you who decided to take time to read all of this. I’m sure there are plenty of grammatical errors both from me and from autocorrect trying to make me look like a fool, so please loudly point those out to me so I can know how much of a fool I am.

If you all have any further questions for me, let me know! I’ll make sure to answer any interesting questions you all post here to elaborate on elements I may have explained poorly.

Similarly, if you all would be interested in seeing more posts like this, I would love to indulge! Writing this and looking back on the production cycle of a video is honestly really nice and it forces me to reflect on how I can improve as a content creator more. If there’s enough interest I’ll start writing posts on many of the older videos on my channel, because there are certainly some fun stories to tell about them.

Thank you all for your time, and I do hope your day is going well.

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