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「Desperate」
If there’s one thing that this episode emphasized, it’s that one may never truly comprehend an encounter until several years later. In Mario’s case, the American soldier Jeffrey who he boxed against back when An-chan was still alive ends up helping him arrange a proper medical examination for Suppon to see if he’s suffering from the aftereffects of the atomic bomb. Given how the preview last time made it seem like Mario and Lily would get screwed over at by more Americans, it was really surprising to see that Jeffrey’s gesture of kindness had no strings attached. All he wanted was to spar with Mario again out of respect for his boxing skills, which quite frankly didn’t seem as bad as Lily made it out to be. Sure Mario’s right hand is still a huge handicap, but he was able to use it to a fair degree without any visible signs of discomfort. Jeffrey didn’t look like he was only out to injure Mario either, making their exchange come off as a fairly sportsmanlike match in my eyes. In fact, they both looked like they were completely in the zone and communicating with their first in better ways than they could with their different languages. In short, at no point did Mario seem like he was in any serious danger.
Be that as it may, it was kind of nice to see their match stopped so that Jeffrey could learn about Mario’s busted right hand that he’s fought him with before. Quite honestly, I’m amazed that Mario’s hand healed as well as it did, because it looked like every bone was shattered back at Shonan. If this were reality, I’d be hard-pressed to believe that he’d still have some resemblance of a hand and be able to make a fist with it unless he had a specialist resetting every bone in hopes that it will heal properly. On that note, I found Mario’s sudden tears from feelings of helplessness towards Suppon’s condition a bit premature. Believability was definitely a bit shaky in that scene, since there was no confirmation that Suppon had radiation poisoning yet and this was the first time that Mario had seen him in such a state. I did appreciate the story’s attempt to reemphasize that Mario cares about his friends the most and inherited An-chan’s spirit though. It’s always nice to know that Sakuragi continues to affect the boys’ way of life in positive ways well after his tragic death.
As for Lily herself, she’s become more of a motivational plot device for Suppon in this arc now. While it felt a bit abrupt hearing him want to support Lily’s dream of opening her own small shop one day — to the point that he’d go to Sugi and beg on his hand and knees for him to lend him thirty hundred thousand yen — it did help reiterate that he feels indebted to her and considers her family. This in turn led to what should be the main conflict of this arc — Suppon’s decision to stick with the money lending line of work even after learning that Sugi’s body is ridden with deep scars from people unwilling to pay him back. The plus side is that the old money lender doesn’t appear to have an ulterior motive like I was suspecting, making the antagonists of this arc the yakuza-like thugs whom Suppon’s been tasked to collect a debt from if he wants to borrow enough money to help Lily out. Incidentally, it’s also for him to see if he can handle this line of work, so it’ll be interesting to see how far his resolve takes him. The preview on the other hand still has me wondering if Sugi’s up to something.
Preview
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That old guy has a really broken body. Is a miracle that he’s still alive. For some reason I was nervous the whole episode expecting the worse. I think Suppon dream will be realized thru Lily’s independence of the military. It seems strange how people fail at communication. Mario and Lily risking it all trying to help Suppon and Suppon walking into that rat hole trying to help Lily. People talk to each other for crying out loud!!!!!!! But nothing like this to slap some sense into people and learn to express their feelings. Lily will make a good okasan err I mean oneesan for the gang. She has been there (indirectly) for so long now. Actually she and Mario walking together did look like a nice couple. Ship me awaaayyyy!!!! 🙂
When the old man wanted to take Suppon to the baths I bit my lip. “Oh god, Suppon is going to get molested/raped”! Glad my prediction did not happen, that would have been pretty messed up. But, it is not like young men have not been raped in this show before… >.>
I forgot to mention before, but, if Suppon somehow screws up his hospital visit I am going to be REALLY irritated! >:(
Wow, that english voice acting isn’t really acting at all. Sounds really stale and awkward.
Decent episode otherwise, I guess. But this show is really losing it’s grip on me.
Hope the japanese people learn to speak more english in 10 years time, so we dont have to listen to this Engrish crap. Funny and annoying at the sametime. D’oh!
Try to speak other languages in a proper way yourself… then you will realize speaking other languages in a proper way is really hard.
“Try to speak other languages in a proper way yourself… then you will realize speaking other languages in a proper way is really hard.”
I can speak English way better than that woman.
Of course, my language is more related to English than what Japanese is, both being Germanic and all.
Either way, personally, it wasn’t Lily that bothered me, it was the Americans. Just clarifying. I might have been a tad unprecise about that in my previous post.
About the Engrish, you got to remember Lilly may have been around the Americans after the end of the war. I’m not too sure but would give it maybe between 2-5 years (hypothesis really since I still think she may be in her mid to late twenties) that she might have been exposed to English. In other words, I’m not sure anyone could really blame the bad English acting when you haven’t been exposed to the stated language since birth (and knowing Japanese does not resemble English) on a daily basis.
D, I share your opinion on Mario’s emotional scene but I believe the message still does come out fine. Mario does care about all his friends he made during his correctional time. I really do hope the bleakness of their lives will get pushed away at the end of the series. Those guys and girls deserve some true happiness.
About Jeffrey last week from the preview I called it!!! Now worship me.
Jokes asides,pretty magnificent episode again, though I agree the scene when Mario cried was a bit overacted.About the engrish well I already heard much worse.Jeffrey only understood Mario’s actions after all these years huh cool way of saying it.And it’s not even over yet they’ll talk again next episode judging from the preview.
And speaking about the preview noticed how the music this time was not the strange bad-omen-announcing-music but a bit of instrumental of Dear My Rainbow?Maybe it’s announcing a good end to the series.
“I did appreciate the story’s attempt to reemphasize that Mario cares about his friends the most and inherited An-chan’s spirit though.”
Sakuragi: Mario!
Mario: Aniki!