yeou_bi

I think that generally speaking it can be fun without him but this season wasn't it

Zero

That's honestly also what I've been thinking. The members already largely showed that they're good at this type of competition, too, so it's not like Korea picked random athletes. Most of the others seemed to be regular athletes, so they wouldn't be used to that type of competition. The one guy on team Japan who did seem good at everything literally also won a show like that, so he would have been a total exception as the Japanese version of a celebrity athlete.

maybe but Japan also generally seemed to struggle more than the others seemed to and on the ship challenged they moved less weight than them, so they might have lost anyway. Also, they ultimately placed last on the toten pole challenge and while they didn't have to win that anyway, I somehow doubt they would have forfeited that easily. I honestly think that Japan just wasn't that great at lifting stuff, so if anything was rigged then maybe the game order that forced them into a situation like that.

I mean, it's television, so I'm sure parts were scripted. What you're saying also makes sense regarding the probabilities. I think the competitors were still remarkable but in the end, shows like that are never 100% fair.

Exactly. I think it's too simple to call it an ego thing since Korean anger at Japan is imo mostly justified but because of that, it would have been unthinkable to let Japan win the whole thing.

Japan being disqualified was sad but I guess it makes sense because their strength throughout the competition was largely agility and not necessarily physical strength. They lost the first time they had to do a challenge that involved heavy lifting and Itoi san is strong but he's also only one guy.

Also, I kept thinking that Japan vs. Korea would probably the worst possible outcome for the final, just from a historical perspective.

I swear, Japan keeps surprising me. Every time I think they can't possibly win something, they do? I mean Itoi literally won Final Draft, so I knew he'd have his beast mode moments but it's not like he's the only one on that team.

There are more than two countries in Oceania though, if we're being technical

Are you saying that the countries presented (minus Australia because what are they doing there) can't call themselves "Asia"? I'm sure there was reason for why certain countries were chosen. China, for one, doesn't have Netflix and it's a Netflix show, so their main goal would have been profit.

I bet the game designers didn't even consider the possibility that someone could try and steal stuff from a different team because it's such a low move. It does feel like a colonizer thing but one thing I wonder about is whether it also had to do with the fact that the guy coming up with the idea isn't a traditional athlete. Parkour is impressive but it's not the type of highly reglemented discipline most of the others are coming from, so maybe he had more of an anything goes mentality. Then again, it's not like the others protested. Anyway, all in all not great advertisement for Australia.

I was surprised, too, because they're not the first countries I would think of when I hear "Asia" either. I get Türkiye but I don't think Australia is considered as Asia but as part of Oceania.

None of the stories in the book are connected. It's literally a short story collection and that does make more sense. The story with the dating guy app for example was from his perspective. And while I actually liked the live stream thing in the movie, it fell apart in the end for me when it became too preachy. Like, it didn't feel like something written by the same person who came up with all the other messed up stuff.

I read the book and this definitely is another case of them changing something massive for the movie.

That is a valid point and I think if I saw the show in a vacuum, I would probably also see it that way. I do like how the show dealt with gender stereotypes and I think there is a way to explain the sudden switch. But it was just so convenient in the way the story was told and I feel this happens a lot in Japanese storytelling. They often introduce something very progressive and then have to soften the blow at some point because Japanese society is often very conservative. I think I have just watched/read to much of it, so when Hikaru suddenly started to appear less feminine the moment he was in a relationship, it just felt inevitable in a way that I found disappointing.But, you know, everyone can obviously interpret it however they want.

Okay 😬 I mean, you chose the engage but I suppose we can agree that we don't understand each other.

It was, yes. He also identified as a man, so obviously he can wear what he wants. But here's the thing. Hikaru isn't a person but a character pushing a certain narrative and as far as I can tell, the narrative is that a man is free to dress however he wants and that gender roles are pointless (which is great) UNLESS he's in a heterosexual relationship because in that case, he should dress as a man and the woman should be devoted to him. It's a progressive idea wrapped in a conservative wold view in my opinion and that's what bothered me.

I didn't expect anything else but it actually bothered me that Hikaru mostly stopped crossdressing when they started dating. Obviously, the drama wants us to see that this is ultimately still a straight romance but why spend so much time on showing us that Haruka loved Hikaru the way he was, only to make him more "manly" in a relationship?

I really appreciated that and yes, definitely! The great thing about fiction is that while not everyone works for everyone, most people will eventually find something that perfectly works for them.

To be honest, I can't remember the details in the drama but I can see your perspective. As I wrote then, it's just a major pet peeve of mine because I feel like many of the things in the drama were just very common for the way Japan in particular sees foreigners.As for the writing, I actually disagree exactly because I have experience studying the language outside Japan at university. From what I recall, he studied it at university, too, and while I agree that in a regular evening course they might skip that, at university I had to be able to read and right all hiragana and katakana within the first two weeks. Not being great at writing kanji is a different matter but hiragana/katakana are pretty essential and honestly not that hard to learn since they're basically just syllable alphabets. The thing is that it's entirely possible that I confuse my experiences with other people's but I also heard from other foreigners that they were asked the same weird questions by Japanese people, so that made this uncomfortable for me to watch. and also, thank you for writing that this wasn't going to be an attack. The moment I saw that someone replied to my comment, I immediately got scared haha

edit: okay I just missed that part in your comment: So regarding learning how to read/write Japanese, that could then be my misunderstanding since I'm European and there maybe is a difference in how I know language courses are tackled here. I know people who did Japanese courses at uni without it being their major and they also learned reading and writing. so yeah, possibly me assuming everyone's experiences are the same. But this still doesn't really change my opinion because the language usage in the drama still was weird to me personally.