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Bonus Podcast (with Transcript): 2022 June - Summer Popcorn Flicks
🕑 Added 2022-06-27 20:57:21 +0000 UTCSummer is upon us! Alex, Dee, and Mercedez each discuss their favorite big, bombastic anime movies.
Note: This was recorded before Billy Kametz's tragic passing, if folks are wondering why it doesn't come up during the Promare discussion.
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DEE: Okay. I mean, should I sing another little song? I feel like if I sing another little song…
ALEX: [crosstalk] You can sing a song.
DEE: I feel like if I do that, I am committing us to beginning every episode with a song, because that’s three. Oh wait, wait, wait, well, this one will be the second, but…
MERCEDEZ: You invested in it, so you gotta do it.
DEE: [resigned] Okay. All right.
MERCEDEZ: And I do think you should do it to the Pokémon theme.
DEE: Well, I haven’t written that one yet, so…
[Chuckling]
DEE: I’ll have to—
ALEX: Maybe we should harmonize.
DEE: I’ll have to work on writing one to the Pokémon song. But that could happen. Yeah, do we need to break for a minute so I can come up with some lyrics?
ALEX: [Chuckles] That’s all right. I think we can… We’ll… We’ll… Let’s hum a ditty together and then [obscured by crosstalk].
DEE: All right. Well, oh, no, no, no! Oh, oh, oh! You don’t think I have—
MERCEDEZ: [crosstalk] Yeah, because I did just come up with Pokémon lyrics for the opening of the theme song, on the fly, but they’re not very refined.
DEE: I mean, if you want to hit us with your Chatty AF Pokémon lyrics, you’re welcome to. Or if you want to wait and refine them, we can drop them in a later episode. That’s also fine.
[Chatty AF theme music]
MERCEDEZ: [Singing] Duh-nuh-nuh! / I want to cast the very best / Like no pod ever does / Bow bow bow-bow! / To chat with my friends is the best!
Oh, geez. You know what? These lyrics need some refinement, though.
[Chuckling]
MERCEDEZ: I rhymed “best” with “best” like I was a beginner musician.
ALEX: That’s all right. We can keep workshopping it. This is the beginning [obscured by crosstalk].
MERCEDEZ: [crosstalk] But it’s Chatty AF.
ALEX: This is the beginning of your arc to idol stardom. [Chuckles]
DEE: Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, where else can you get us singing awkwardly but the bonus episodes of Chatty AF?
ALEX: Exactly. This is what you’re paying for, gang. [Chuckles]
DEE: So, Mercedez, do you want that in or do you want that cut and do you want me to drop a bad song?
MERCEDEZ: Nah, uh-uh, keep that. Keep that.
DEE: Keep that. Okay, okay.
MERCEDEZ: Keep that.
DEE: All right. All right, we got it then. Okay! [Chuckles] We’ll keep working on it, folks, and one of these days, we’ll get ourselves a theme song.
Hello and welcome to Patronizing AF, the Anime Feminist bonus podcast for patrons. I’m Dee, one of the managing editors. I’m on Twitter @joseinextdoor, and I am joined again—because we’re just knocking these bonus episodes out 1-2-3 in a recording—with Mercedez and Alex.
ALEX: Hello, everyone, and welcome back again. I’m Alex. I am on Twitter @TheAfictionado. I am here at AniFem doing content editing, reviewing, and many other fun things.
MERCEDEZ: Hi, y’all! I’m Mercedez and I’m also an editor here, as well as a light novel editor elsewhere, and you can find me on Twitter @pixelatedlenses, where these days I’m likely to be talking about my desire to eat cherries and the waterfall I live near.
ALEX: Ooh!
MERCEDEZ: Yeah.
ALEX: That’s very idyllic. You can eat cherries beneath the waterfall.
DEE: [crosstalk] Yeah, I mean, if I lived near a waterfall…
MERCEDEZ: Well, the water’s very cold, Alex. [Chuckles] The water’s too cold to eat cherries under.
ALEX: Yes. Well, that’s part of your, you know, anime training montage, where you…
MERCEDEZ: Oh, right, right. That’s how I’m gonna level up.
DEE: I think at some point it’s a cherry smoothie because of the force of the water.
ALEX: [Chuckles]
MERCEDEZ: Yeah. That’s how I’m gonna level up and, like, dethrone God. Yes!
DEE: That’s how it starts, is by living next to a waterfall. Which, if I lived next to a waterfall, I’d talk about it all the time too. So I get that, 100%.
MERCEDEZ: [crosstalk] It’s very pretty. [Chuckles]
DEE: Today, folks at home, as the waterfall conversation definitely gave away, it is summertime, and so we wanted to hit you with some feminist-friendly summer popcorn flick recommendations. So some good movies for a summer night: something fun, something light, something enjoyable. So we’ve gathered some recommendations here today.
Mercedez, would you like to get us started off here?
MERCEDEZ: I would. I’m going to start it off a little queer, y’all. That’s right. It’s Promare! [Chuckles] Which, I will say, I had to watch twice because the first time, I watched it in Japanese with no subtitles and I only felt emotions. And the second time, I watched it in English and was like, “Oh, I understand what’s happening!”
ALEX: [Laughs]
MERCEDEZ: So, Promare was a slam dunk of a movie that came out in 2019, so it’s relatively recent. It’s from the before times.
DEE: Yeah, huge hit, too. Back when people went to theaters.
MERCEDEZ: Oh yeah, yeah, because I did see this with… Well, it was me and another person, and we both made eye contact and we were like, “We’re in this moment together.”
DEE: [Chuckles]
MERCEDEZ: So, the movie follows Galo Thymos, a member of a firefighting group called Burning Rescue living in the city of Promeopolis [sic]. And they basically engage with this renegade, kind of radical group called Mad Burnish. Which, the Burnish are people who have developed these pyrokinetic abilities during this event called the Great World Blaze. And it caused spontaneous human combustion and took out half the world’s population, which is really not talked a lot about for that being such a big issue.
DEE: Don’t think about it too hard.
MERCEDEZ: It follows the leader of Mad Burnish, Lio Fotia, the most queer-coded character I’ve ever seen in leather on a screen.
[Chuckling]
MERCEDEZ: And it’s really the story about Lio and the other Mad Burnish being all right with their abilities and the push and pull of having to engage with a government that doesn’t want your existence but also does, for rather nefarious reasons. It’s a little gay. It’s really good. It’s 112 minutes long, so it’s not too long. Get a large popcorn. Or if you’re like me, pop yourself some Orville Redenbacher kettle corn because that’s the only old white dude I trust.
[Chuckling]
MERCEDEZ: And sit down and chill. [Chuckles] It’s really chill.
DEE: [crosstalk] Kettle corn is the superior popcorn. You’re not wrong.
MERCEDEZ: It is the superior popcorn and Orville Redenbacher knows what’s up!
DEE: [Chuckles]
MERCEDEZ: It’s a really beautiful Trigger film. I really like the soundtrack. The soundtrack is very, very moving. Also, Johnny Yong Bosch is in this as Lio, so you know you’re in for a good time with that! We’ve also got Steve Blum, Yuri Lowenthal… I mean, which y’all already know, if you watch dubs, Yuri’s gonna be in the mix. And it’s just really good. It’s just a really good movie.
DEE: I saw it dubbed in theaters as well. Alex, you’ve seen this one as well, right? This is one that everyone on…
ALEX: I have. I have indeed seen this one. I have experienced it. It has washed over me in its beautiful neon ridiculousness.
MERCEDEZ: Oh, it’s so good.
DEE: I think describing it as a movie you experience is a really good way to word it. It’s one I’m very glad I saw on the big screen, so if it ever… And this will happen sometimes: some cinemas will do one- to two-day re-showings of… They do Ghibli films a lot, and I’ve seen Promare pop up occasionally. If you ever get the chance to see this one on the big screen, folks at home, when it’s safe to do so, I recommend it because it is a visual feast.
I think it is like the quintessential popcorn flick in terms of just high octane, everything’s dialed up to 11, the emotions, the animation, the music. Yeah, it is…
MERCEDEZ: If you are like me and you are waiting for Panty & Stocking with Garter Belt season 2 to come out, this is a close fix.
ALEX: [crosstalk] Ah, it’s an energy. [Chuckles]
MERCEDEZ: This’ll get you there for what we know will never happen.
DEE: Yeah. I will say it does have some pretty heavy background themes. It is very much a movie about oppression and liberation. And again, as you mentioned, there’s a lot of implicit queerness in it. Like a lot of Trigger shows: heart full, head a little empty.
ALEX: [Chuckles]
DEE: The metaphors don’t perfectly land in a one-to-one ratio. It’s the constant issue with “Your marginalized people also have superpowers that can end the world.” Like, mm?
MERCEDEZ: I will say, kudos to them for actually investing in their villain actually having ice and essentially being ICE, like the organization. I like an on-the-nose metaphor.
DEE: It does play into some… yeah, the immigration narrative. And the thing with a lot of Trigger shows is you can tell they’re so achingly sincere about ideas of freedom and being very antifascist and letting people live their lives the way they want to. And that’s all terrific. It is just that sense of “If I think about this metaphor too hard, oh no!”
MERCEDEZ: Oh yeah.
DEE: So, definitely a movie you experience, you let it wash over you, and you go, “Hoorah, yeah! Punch that fascist in the face! Let’s do it!”
ALEX: [Chuckles]
DEE: It’s good times.
MERCEDEZ: And spoiler alert: they give you the ship name twice in the climactic battle, which was very helpful, if you…
DEE: Oh, yeah.
ALEX: [Chuckles]
MERCEDEZ: They do. They just give it to you. They’re like, “Here you go. Here’s it one way; here’s another way.” It’s great, even though it’s queer-adjacent but it’s not full queer. We can only hope.
DEE: [Chuckles]
MERCEDEZ: It’s still good.
ALEX: Again, we can only let its neon fabulosity wash over us and read between the very, very colorful, bright, fast-moving lines.
MERCEDEZ: It’s so good.
DEE: Yeah, agreed.
ALEX: Nice.
DEE: Alex, did you have one you wanted? I know you came onto this maybe not having seen a ton of anime movies and sort of wanting to learn…
ALEX: Yeah, and I’m absorbing the conversation. But you know what? I have… So I was thinking… I thought, “What’s the last anime movie I actually went to see?” And it was the Heaven’s Feel trilogy, which are fantastic movies but hilariously inaccessible if you don’t already know anything about Fate, so I’m not going to recommend those today.
But what I am thinking about, actually, I’ve gone to complete other end of the spectrum. I think, what is the anime movie that got me into anime movies? And that, I believe is the Digimon movie from the early 2000s—
MERCEDEZ: Yes!
DEE: Excellent.
ALEX: —which I want to highlight, if nothing else, as a really, really interesting study of localization because, as I have now learned as a grown-up looking back at it, it’s not actually a movie. The version that was released, that I had—oh my God—on VHS [chuckles] that I got for my ninth birthday or something maybe, this was actually three OVAs released at different times and fitting into different parts of the Digimon timeline. Which, if you don’t know, it is a sort of cousin series to Pokémon. Kids get transported to a magical digital world. There are creatures that they bond with. They evolve. They fight one another.
Series that had a big impact on me as a kid. Really strong character writing, honestly, for a kids’ show, and a lot of the emotional beats have really resonated with me. So, naturally, the movie came out. It was a perfect birthday gift for nine-year-old Alex.
So yeah, what they’ve done is they have taken these three OVAs, these three kind of bonus, short episodes, and stitched them together into a cohesive, long-running narrative in a way they were never supposed to be. But they’ve made it work.
DEE: Huh!
ALEX: And that is through a collection— Yeah, and this was purely for the American release, which I believe… I did not get to see it in cinemas, but that would have been a heck of an experience. So yeah, the first story is about the main characters, all these really little kids, finding a Digimon for the first time and witnessing a Digimon fight all at the same time, which is implied to be the thing that links their fates together and draws them into the digital world later.
The middle part is a really interesting, fun battle of wits. And, you know, Digital Monsters… it takes place in this very abstracted internet space. It’s what we thought the inside of the internet would look like in the early 2000s.
And the third part brings in characters from the sequel series as well and has the more grown-up versions of the original characters, and shenanigans ensue. There’s a new character in there. Terriermon is there. It gets quite dark and action heavy.
And yeah, they knit all of these into a cohesive chronological narrative when they were just not ever supposed to speak to each other. And that is really, really interesting and honestly a really impressive feat of localization work at the time. They made it work. I think if I went back and rewatched it, there would be something that didn’t quite knit. But as a kid, I was like, “Heck yeah. This is happening.” It was great.
So, honestly, yeah, I would recommend this for a revisit with your popcorn this summer. Again, being kids’ monster action show from the early 2000s, it does have an issue of gender imbalance in the cast. The main characters tend to be the boys. The girls are really great. They are well written. I think they have a great variety, a diversity of personality types and motivations. But, you know, yeah, most of the focus is on the lads, which is unfortunate, but it’s just kind of the way it is. And I don’t think it goes out of its way to be sexist. Maybe it gets a little bit silly as it tries to tease the budding romance between one of the main boys and one of the main girls, which I was not there for as a child.
[Chuckling]
ALEX: Honestly, Sora, Mimi, and Kari, they’re great. I love ‘em. Feminist masterpiece, maybe not, but did really good for its time and, I think, is one worth revisiting if you also have that nostalgia.
DEE: Still holds up reasonably well, yeah.
MERCEDEZ: I do want to let you all in on the fact that… So, Mamoru Hosoda [chuckles] directed this. And this movie’s international success was so strong, he went on to direct Howl’s Moving Castle, but left due to creative differences, and I feel like we were robbed.
DEE: Yeah, I didn’t realize that he went there initially.
MERCEDEZ: Yeah, he got contacted by Toshio Suzuki to direct Howl’s Moving Castle but left midway through production, and honestly, I really feel like we got robbed of a different version of Howl’s Moving Castle.
ALEX: That is fascinating.
MERCEDEZ: I would love to see the Digimon-to-Howl’s Moving Castle pipeline.
[Laughter]
DEE: Well, there’d probably be a lot more digital worlds because Hosoda has continued to revisit that digital scape in his later works.
That’s actually a terrific segue. No, folks, I’m not going to use Digimon as an excuse to talk about Pokémon, although I could.
ALEX: [Chuckles]
DEE: Go watch the movie The Power of Us, it’s on Netflix, it’s really, really, really good, and it’s a great entry point to the series. Okay! That’s all the Pokémon I’m gonna say.
[Chuckling]
DEE: The second movie’s the best. Okay, that’s the last.
MERCEDEZ: [Gasps]
DEE: No, my segue is—
MERCEDEZ: Third movie rocks.
DEE: Yeah. No—
MERCEDEZ: The third movie’s the one.
DEE: I’m sorry. Does Team Rocket save the world in the third one? No, they don’t. The second one’s the best.
MERCEDEZ: It’s got Daddy Entei!
DEE: [Laughs]
MERCEDEZ: Daddy Entei!
DEE: No, I—
ALEX: Uh, I don’t like those words together. [Laughs]
[Laughter]
DEE: This is why we can’t talk about Pokémon: we’ll get into a fight about which one’s the best, and it’s the second one because Team Rocket saves the world. Anyway.
MERCEDEZ: It’s all right to have bad taste.
DEE: No, my— [feigning shock] Wow!
MERCEDEZ: [Laughs]
DEE: Wooow!
ALEX: Okay, everybody calm down. [Chuckles]
DEE: Okay! I think we’re gonna have to end this call because I think Mercedez just dissed Team Rocket and I don’t know how we can continue on this… I don’t know how we can keep this call going at this point. I might have to back away.
ALEX: [crosstalk] We’ll have to have a Pokémon-specific bonus episode. We’ll have to—
MERCEDEZ: I apologize. I apologize. I’m just a little hangry, y’all.
[Laughter]
ALEX: Eat some cherries and maybe you’ll calm down.
DEE: That’s right. Eat some cherries.
ALEX: Eat some cherries and you’ve got a waterfall and maybe you’ll calm down. Dee, as you were saying? [Chuckles]
MERCEDEZ: [Chuckles]
DEE: Yes, yes, yes. My actual segue from Hosoda was what to me is kind of the ultimate summer popcorn flick (it’s right there in the title), Summer Wars.
MERCEDEZ: Yeah!
DEE: This was one of his— Well, The Girl Who Leapt Through Time was his first big original film, which is also quite good. I think Summer Wars was his first original hit. And I adore this movie to the point where I like to watch it almost every summer.
MERCEDEZ: It’s so good.
DEE: Once it gets hot outside, I want to sit down and watch Summer Wars, usually right around Tanabata, so, July 7.
It is… My memory is gonna… Even though I’ve seen it tons of times, it’s been a little bit, so, apologies if my memory of the plot points is a little fuzzy. But it partly takes place in a digital MMO scape. I guess not an MMO necessarily, more like a Second Life type thing.
MERCEDEZ: [crosstalk] It’s virtual reality.
DEE: Like a VR internet landscape. And the main character gets asked by his female classmate, who he does have a crush on, if he will come with her to visit her family and basically pretend to be her boyfriend because they’ve been giving her a lot of crap about, like, “Oh, who’s your boyfriend? Have you started dating yet?” and she freaked out and lied, and so she just needs a fake boyfriend. So he goes out to meet her family. They are huge and overwhelming.
And the writing is terrific because there’s so many characters and it never feels overstuffed. It feels like it’s intentionally writing a big family, and you’d only get little bits of some of the characters, but they all feel like real people, like you can tell from those little bits the kind of people they are. And it very much captures that sense of meeting a friend’s big family and being totally overwhelmed by them.
But the main character… And they’re run by the matriarch, the grandma of the family, who is one of my favorite characters in anime history.
MERCEDEZ: She’s so good.
DEE: She’s so good. She’s kind of no-nonsense, but she’s also very sweet and loving to her family. She knows when to push. She knows when to come at you with a naginata when you deserve it, but also when to encourage.
And so, the story… there’s a decent chunk of it that’s about her and her relationship with their daughter and the boy, the main male protagonist, who… I love that I’m not using anybody’s names, but it’s fine because folks at home won’t recognize the names anyway.
So it starts off as being that, and then the main character, because he’s so involved in this VR scape, he meets one of her cousins(?), a younger boy who’s also deep into that and does a lot of the fighting game portions of it and is semi-famous because of that.
So, we’re having a summer family movie, and then this virus gets dropped in this VR scape and starts killing characters and causing all these issues, and so our cast is trying to fight this virus. Things escalate to the point of… without giving too much away, they escalate to the point where our characters are basically trying to save a town from destruction.
And it does a really good job of escalating the action, of giving everyone a chance to shine. Like, the main character is the male protagonist, but again, the grandma has some terrific scenes. The main female character plays a very integral part in saving the day at the end in a way that is like… There’s multiple moments in this movie where I tear up—
MERCEDEZ: It’s so good.
DEE: —just from the sheer triumphant emotionality of it. There’s some sad beats, but it’s just… The amount it fits into a couple of hours is always really impressive to me and the way it integrates the characters. And I think it’s a really good example of why Hosoda needs to work more with Okudera Satoko, who was the writer on that one and really just did a terrific job of bringing this very large cast to life in a relatively short period of time.
It is an extremely fun movie. Again, it is very bright. It has its emotional moments, but it ends on a very upbeat moment. A bit of a romcom, a bit of a cyber action flick, and again, all on this backdrop of large-family dynamics and relatives who have maybe gone away coming back and dealing with those complex relationships with that outsider perspective. And again, it’s an impressive film.
It’s super fun. I highly recommend it. It to me is like the ultimate summer feel-good popcorn flick. So, go watch it, cry a little bit, and have a good time with it.
MERCEDEZ: It’s so good. It’s so good. It’s so good. [Chuckles]
DEE: Mercedez cosigns.
MERCEDEZ: It’s so good.
ALEX: [crosstalk] I have not actually seen that one. I’ve been meaning to, but I now have more context. I’m gonna go hunt it down for sure.
MERCEDEZ: Like, I know it’s not summer in your corner of the world, Alex… You gotta.
ALEX: [Chuckles]
DEE: [crosstalk] This is true. I do apologize. We’re talking about summer popcorn flicks and you’re like, “It’s cold here. What are you guys talking about?”
ALEX: I mean, it’s aspirational, right? I can watch a movie set in summer and be rubbed up under my blankets, be like, “Mm, yep, that sounds good. It’s making me feel cozy inside.” [Chuckles]
DEE: “I remember what it was like to be warm.”
[Laughter]
ALEX: Mercedez, then, are we on to your… Are you next?
MERCEDEZ: [crosstalk] We are. We are. So I’m going to come at y’all hot with a classic. That’s right. The 19— I think it was released in 1987? That feels wrong. But Kiki’s Delivery Service. The year doesn’t matter. What matters is that it’s a movie that exists. And I’m not talking about the live action version.
ALEX: Oh, was there a live action version?
MERCEDEZ: Yes, it’s ironically the female writer for Summer Wars.
DEE: Yeah, I saw that.
MERCEDEZ: It’s not good.
ALEX: [crosstalk] It’s all connected.
DEE: [crosstalk] She worked on Kiki’s, which is wild.
MERCEDEZ: It’s not good. Some things are better as animation. Kiki’s Delivery Service is one of those things. (I’m sorry, 1989 is when Kiki’s Delivery Service came out.)
But it is your quintessential “Girl leaves home with her black cat and a broomstick” and goes to the port city of Koriko. And the whole story is her meeting Anime Griffin McElroy and just settling into this town as the witch and really just kind of finding what it means to use her abilities and to just live in a big city and in a new place as a young girl on the cusp of becoming an adult. She opens up a witch delivery business, and there’s just a lot of vignettes about Kiki’s life.
I will say, this is one—and I normally wouldn’t do this—where I’m actually going to push to watch the Japanese over the English because the English… at least at the time of the dub (I think it’s probably been updated), the English does a few things different with the dub in the ending that I think really decreases from the overall message. But honestly, all of them are good.
I should say—and I don’t feel it’s a spoiler alert—part of the ending is Kiki’s ability to engage with her cat. And in the tradition of American things, we cannot leave them silent. And the silence… there’s a lot of silence in this movie that’s really important. And that moment’s an important one. That said, I also think you should want to listen to Kirsten Dunst as Kiki!
So, it’s a really fantastic film, it’s a really important movie to me, and I think it’s a good movie because summer is often a season of change, and this is a movie that really speaks to anyone who’s ever been on the cusp of change and on the cusp of feeling like they’re stalling in life. This movie is really speaking to that feeling. Yeah, it’s good stuff.
Have either one of you seen it?
ALEX: I have seen this one, yes.
DEE: We did talk about this in our last bonus episode. I confessed to having never seen Kiki’s. [Editor's Note: We released the bonus episodes in an order different from the recording order, so this won't be mentioned until the July episode.]
MERCEDEZ: [Sighs and groans]
DEE: Not for lack of want, just didn’t have an opportunity to do so. It’s one of my best friend’s favorite Ghibli films.
MERCEDEZ: There’s also a book.
DEE: So, I want to see it. I just haven’t yet.
Oh, and this is just a side note, because I was curious about this: it was dubbed twice, which is typical of a lot of the older Ghibli films, because Disney got the license and redubbed a bunch of the older ones.
ALEX: Ah, I see.
DEE: But it also looks like, apparently… and I don’t have time to read this entire wiki while we’re on a call, but apparently some of the changes they made they reverted in later releases of the film. So, depending upon the version you get, it might have some of the updates you were talking about or it might not. So, that’s a fun game you get to play if you decide to watch the dub. Dub histories are wild.
ALEX: Again, the fascinating world of localization, especially in bygone eras.
DEE: Oh, yeah. But no, I would love to see Kiki’s. And now that all the Ghibli films are on HBO… Is it called Now? Yeah, HBO Now—whatever their streaming service is called now. They’ve gone through so many names.
MERCEDEZ: I will say, if you do want the one that is closest to the Japanese version but with the English dub, the 2010 version is really what you should go for.
DEE: Okay, yeah, that’s kind of what it was looking like based on this wiki. And that may be the version that’s on HBO. I mean, I’d probably just watch it subbed, but it is good to know that… for folks who prefer dubs or need dubs, good to know that the more modernized version doesn’t have some of the changes that you were talking about that maybe lessen the impact, yeah. So that’s perfect! And like I said, since it is streaming, I no longer have an excuse. I should watch it this summer, maybe with one of my friends who is a fan of it.
MERCEDEZ: [crosstalk] Yeah, Dee. You gotta watch it.
DEE: It’s a perfect summer popcorn flick, as you’ve explained. So, you’ve sold me. I’ll check it out this summer. I’ll make that one of my… One of my goals this year is to watch that.
MERCEDEZ: Excellent, excellent!
ALEX: [Chuckles]
DEE: Okay, so I wanted to end us on one that’s a little less well known, if y’all don’t mind me wrapping us up here.
ALEX: Yeah, please do.
DEE: This is a much newer film. This just came out in 2021 and was released on Netflix pretty quick after it came out in theaters in Japan, because they had some kind of contract deal with them. It is called Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop. To me, it’s another just very good popcorn flick.
It is a high school romance but in the sort of romcom vein—there’s a lot of levity to it—about these two high schoolers who… I feel like they’re high schoolers. I don’t think they’re in middle school. They might be. Anyway, these two teenagers, who are both kind of struggling to communicate and have confidence in themselves in different ways.
Yeah, so the main boy, his name’s Koichi—he goes by Cherry—he kind of has a hard time expressing himself, but he finds that he can communicate through haiku, which is sort of unusual for teenagers nowadays to be really into haiku, but he writes a lot of haiku. He’s very much a poet. So he uses those to express his feelings, but then when he needs to read them out loud in front of other people, he gets really bad stage fright and doesn’t want to do it.
So while he’s working with that, he, through a chance accident at the local shopping mall—which is where a lot of the story takes place because he’s volunteering there with an elderly care center over the summer—he meets a girl who goes by… Her name is Yuki, but she goes by Smile.
She has a pretty big online following via basically Instagram influencer-type videos where she just kind of talks about her day-to-day life and recommends different things that she’s into that day, kind of stuff. So, she has no trouble talking, necessarily, to an audience as this persona. But also, she just got braces and she’s super insecure about them, especially because of being on cameras and stuff.
ALEX: Oh, oof. Yep.
DEE: So she wears a mask all the time. And it doesn’t take place during COVIDTimes, so it’s unusual for her to wear a mask all the time.
So it’s very much a story of these two insecure kids meeting—and they have a bit of a meet-cute and then there’s some miscommunications, but they eventually start hanging out, and they kind of influence and inspire each other’s different art forms.
And one of the things I really like about the movie is it doesn’t look down on her for being basically like a YouTuber, whereas he’s writing high literature with haiku. It really treats them both as valid forms of expression and communication and ways to connect with other people. So I really enjoy that about it.
All of those are kind of background elements, though. I mean, at its core it is a sweet, fluffy little love story between these two characters, with, again, some side characters circling around them and some complications that occur along the way.
It is comfortably predictable. It has gotten criticized for being a predictable movie, but I think that when you’re writing a romcom, I don’t necessarily think that’s a bad thing to go in and be like, “Oh, I have a feeling I know how this story is going to go, but I’m going to enjoy watching it because the characters are endearing and I like watching them fall for each other and develop this relationship.” So, it is a comfortable film in that sense, especially.
And again, if you’re a teenager watching this, maybe you haven’t seen as many romcoms as I have as an adult, so maybe it will surprise you in some ways. But I did not find it boring. I did not find the predictability boring. It had an endearing quality to it, which I liked.
MERCEDEZ: And I’ll say, I’m with you. I like the comfort of predictability in romcoms. And I will say I feel like romcoms are the only genre that gets that. Like, no one’s ever like, “You know what? San Andreas, the apocalypse movie, was a little bit predictable.”
ALEX: [Chuckles]
MERCEDEZ: I feel like romcoms get that rap, and there is comfort in… I like to know what I’m getting into, and this sounds like I want to get into it.
DEE: Well, to me, with romances and with comedies, part of the charm of them is you know it’s going to turn out okay.
MERCEDEZ: [crosstalk] Yeah! Be happy!
DEE: You know that the couple’s gonna get together or there’s gonna be a happy ending, and that is part of the charm of the film.
MERCEDEZ: That’s the good stuff.
DEE: And so this is one… like, I wouldn’t say go into it expecting it to surprise you. But it is very charming. The art design is beautiful. I really love the background art. It has just very bright, expressive colors. I think a lot of it takes place over summer, so it’s got a lot of bright blue skies and bright green grasses.
And again, the way it interacts with the two characters’ art forms and them trying to find confidence in themselves with the help of each other… It’s just really nice.
We put it on kind of on a whim, shortly after it came out, and I was just delighted with this one. So, I think this is another good one to grab that kettle corn and watch a comfy film. So that’s Words Bubble Up Like Soda Pop.
MERCEDEZ: I love it.
ALEX: That sounds great. That sounds lovely.
DEE: [crosstalk] Yeah! I recommend. I know it’s on Netflix in the States. I can’t guarantee it’s everywhere else, but probably? So give it a try, if you can get a hold of that one, as well.
ALEX: Does that also have a simultaneous dub as they often do, or is it just the subs?
DEE: Yeah, Netflix, both dubbed and subbed. So…
ALEX: Nice, nice.
DEE: Which I sort of figured. I don’t think Netflix drops anime without a dub, with the exception of some of the simul stuff they’re testing out right now. So yeah, so it is both subbed and dubbed, so you can check that out and just have a nice time with some good kids, is what I would recommend with this one.
And apologies if I missed any critical points, folks. I watched this a while ago and just thought of it kind of on the fly while we were recording this. So, if you think of anything folks should be aware of… I remember it being an extremely preteen-, teen-friendly film. If there’s something I’m forgetting, please do drop a comment so folks are aware of that.
So, yeah, that’s our summer popcorn flicks. Was there anything else?
ALEX: I think we’ve covered a fun range of genres and experiences in this little pitch. [Chuckles]
DEE: That’s true. There’s been some action, there’s been some fantasy, some more grounded romcoms, and again, some good stuff for younger audiences that we rolled in here, too. So, lots of films in here you could watch with the younger relatives, which is nice.
MERCEDEZ: Oh yeah.
DEE: Okay! Yeah, folks at home, we hope you have found some good films to watch on these hot summer nights. And thank you, as always, for your patronage and support. You know, we really couldn’t do this without you. We say it all the time and it’s incredibly true. So, thank you so, so much!
Try to stay cool out there—or stay warm if you’re in the Southern Hemisphere like Alex—
[Chuckling]
DEE: —And we will catch you next time.
ALEX: Take care, wherever you may be. [Chuckles]
DEE: Yes.
MERCEDEZ: [Chuckles]
Comments
Skinkling
Great summer movie suggestions all around. I did see Words Bubble Up when it premiered last summer and just love it for featuring a main character with braces. It’s just not something you see often in anime and would’ve gone a long way to restore my less confident teen self when I had similar orthodontic gear. Also saw Promare last summer, which doesn’t wholly make sense for me but it’s a visually bright, queer-coded treat. Definitely putting Summer Wars and Kiki on my list, the latter especially considering I’m feeling adrift in my life myself.
