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welcometothejianghu · 3 months ago

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Welcome to another round of W2 Tells You What You Should See, where W2 (me) tries to sell you (you) on something you should be watching. Today's choice: きのう何食べた? / Kinou Nani Tabeta? / What Did You Eat Yesterday?

Kinou Nani Tabeta? (which I'm going to abbreviate here to NaniTabe) is a live-action adaptation of a manga with the same name, which tells the story of two middle-aged Japanese gay men as they navigate their relationship, their families, and their professional lives, all while having some good meals.

Do you want something nice? Do you want a show that's just ... nice? Not saccharine, not cloying, not reductive, but just cozy and kind? This! This is what you want. Every episode deals with some events in their lives, and then the action will pause once or twice while someone demonstrates how to make a meal. There's no real overarching plot. You just get to peek in on them every so often and see how they're doing.

...Shit, I'm just going to steal the GagaOOLala second-season synopsis, it's perfect:

Shiro Kakei and his partner, Kenji Yabuki, live a life full of some hardship but mostly happiness together, with Shiro's speciality cooking affordable and delicious dishes. As they turn 50, they begin to experience different changes, but Shiro and Kenji are still gentle with each other as they move on to a new stage in their lives.

So here I am, a middle-aged gay who cooks affordable and (mostly) delicious dishes and treats my partner gently, serving you a five-course meal of reasons that you should watch this show -- especially if you too are a middle-aged gay, in which case I'd say this goes straight from "should watch" to "unmissable."

1. Help, my face hurts from smiling too much

Prepare to get your heart warmed whether you like it or not.

Kakei Shiro, the main character, is a closeted gay attorney in his forties whose main likes are cooking and saving money. He lives with his slightly younger boyfriend, Yabuki Kenji, who is a very openly gay hairstylist. They're an incredibly unlikely couple who somehow manage to make a relationship work, kind of to their mutual surprise.

I called bullshit on the show early on: This relationship is cute, I said, but this is not the behavior of guys who have been together a decade. But as the show unfolded, it became clear that I was so wrong -- their behavior is perfect, because these middle-aged boys actually haven't been together nearly that long. In fact, once you finally get the story of how their relationship started, yeah, it explains a lot of their insecurities and awkwardnesses about one another. Combine that with how Shiro's a neurotic mess who absolutely does not want anyone to know that he's gay, while Kenji lives on eggshells for fear of rejection, and it all starts to make sense.

It helps that the two leads have incredible chemistry. Not in a horny way, mind you (the show is incredibly, and intentionally, nonsexual, but more on that later), but where they genuinely make one another smile and laugh. Nishijima Hidetoshi plays Shiro as an anxious mess who slowly learns to become at least a little more comfortable in his own queer skin. I have a t-shirt that says Oh, Honey and I want to put it on every time he does something.

Meanwhile, it would have been so easy to make Kenji a caricature, but Uchino Seiyou skips right past the stereotype and plays the behavior that the stereotype comes from. He minces his way along as Kenji so perfectly, I was surprised to find out he's married to a lady in real life. He's got to be doing an impression of someone he actually knows, because his faggotry is just too accurate.

Their relationship is far from perfect. They're capable of annoying the tar out of one another, sometimes on purpose. They keep secrets and avoid talking about feelings. They get jealous over completely irrational things. They want things the other person isn't comfortable giving. They get into petty little arguments over petty little shit.

And because of all that, it feels real.

Also, if you're one of those Jane Austen bitches who swoons every time lovers scandalously brush knuckles, well, here you go.

2. Surprisingly educational about the state of gay life in modern Japan!

This is not incidental: Like the manga, the show uses this cute food-based story to present a fairly realistic snapshot of what it's like to be a middle-aged gay couple in Japan right now.

Like the manga it's based on, the show goes out of its way to be incredibly nonsexual, to the point where Kenji and Shiro barely touch, much less kiss or even hint at getting naked together. It is very consciously and deliberately attempting to counteract the stereotype of the hypersexualized, salacious homosexual by presenting two gay men who are delightfully mundane.

It is not, however, homonormalization. There's no attempt here to make an argument that gay people are just like straight people, only with incidentally matching genitals. Every time someone falls prey to the pressure to conform to cishet gender norms, it ends badly for them. While the first-episode conflict establishes that Kenji tops, he's also the fruity hairstylist who does the housekeeping. Shiro's the straight-passing suit-and-tie guy, yet he's the one who cooks and goes grocery-shopping. They have a division of labor based on personality traits, not gender roles. In fact, their relationship as presented challenges a lot of those norms by decoupling gendered expectations from the necessities of everyday living.

(This isn't even just me getting my queer studies goo all over everything! Allow me to be a good academic and send you to two people who've done even more thinking about this than I have: the unfortunately paywalled "Queer Cooking And Dining: Expanding Queerness In Fumi Yoshinaga's What Did You Eat Yesterday?" by Katsuhiko Suganuma, and the more freely available "Queering the Palate: The Erotics and Politics of Food in Japanese Gourmet Manga" by Keiko Miyajima.)

Every so often, one of the episodes' conflicts will have to do with how gay people in Japan do not have equal rights and protections under the law. This doesn't just mean they can't get married -- not having a spouse and children actually messes with a lot of legal stuff, including inheritance and government assistance. Sometimes the show will even take a beat to have one of the characters explain to another what a certain statute says. Changing laws about same-sex partnerships even get factored into the story!

And sure, I don't know these things, but I bet a lot of straight people in Japan don't know these things either. Well, if you watch the show, now you do!

It's important that no one is ever outright shitty to Shiro or Kenji. No one calls them slurs or hate-crimes them or refuses to serve them at a business or anything like that. In fact, the majority of people they encounter are perfectly chill and even outright supportive. The most serious challenges they face are bigger than individual people being dicks. They're about systemic barriers to equality.

That said, there are still plenty of instances of individual people being dicks -- just not maliciously. In fact, most of the homophobic sentiments in the show come from the mouths of people who are otherwise supportive of Shiro and/or Kenji! These nice people seem like they're way okay with the gay ... and then they let slip that, no, they're actually not as okay with it as they think they are.

And I love that the show includes that, because I know that feeling way too well. When these things happen, our boys don't throw a righteous fit or cut the offender off completely. They just ... absorb the blow, sigh quietly, and keep going with the belief that the person in question means well. It just sucks, you know? It sucks to have to know now that your straight lady friend who thinks it's great that you're gay would be uncomfortable if her daughter were a lesbian. You're not going to stop being friends with her, and you're not even going to hold it against her, but it lives in your mind now, and you're going to add it to the I Am A Disappointment To My Parents rotation of intrusive thoughts.

Speaking of parents, Shiro's incredibly fraught relationship with his aging parents is hands-down one of the best parts of the show. They love him, he loves them, but they don't always know how to love one another. As their childless only child, Shiro finds himself having to support them in spite of a lot of hurt they've caused him because of his sexuality. He would in many ways be justified in cutting them off -- after all, many other gay people in the show no longer speak to one or both of their parents! Shiro wants to keep them in his life, though. He'll just have to learn how, for his sake and for Kenji's, to lovingly set boundaries.

This, to me, is the most important lesson a show about boring gays can teach a straight audience: There's always a background level of suck. You can be as chaste and normie and regular as you want, but you'll never be normal, because there's literally nothing you can do to erase the background level of suck.

It's easy to reduce someone else's oppression to Big Bad Events, and then to assume that the absence of these Big Bad Events means that oppression has ceased. That's like thinking there's nothing left that needs to be done about racism because the US had a Black president and you've never personally seen a cross burned on somebody's lawn. Once other people's oppression stops being Big Bad Events, it becomes Everyday Stuff You Can Ignore. And that's worse.

NaniTabe pushes back against this in two directions. The first is to show gays who are not miserable, but are instead living happy, fulfilling, and exceedingly regular lives on their own terms. The second is to give reminders that what gay-related misery they do experience largely comes not from their being gay, but from society's giving them shit for being gay. This misery doesn't destroy the happiness, but neither does the happiness make the misery go away.

By the way, this is true of any non-normative identity! The gays do not have a monopoly here. There's always going to be a level of suck when you don't inhabit an area of privilege, and it's very easy to be unaware of someone else's background level of suck when you yourself do have that privileged status! One of the best ways to become aware is to listen to stories about people unlike yourself! Hooray for empathy and learning!

3. tfw your bffs are straight-up freaks

If you're queer, and especially if you're queer and the vast majority of the people around you aren't, you know all too well that sometimes you wind up being friends with people you'd never associate with otherwise, except that you're queer and they're queer, and buddy, if you thought the queer dating pool was shallow, the queer friendship pool can sometimes be even worse.

That's how you get Kohinata and Wataru.

When I said earlier everything about how nonsexual and normie the show is, I was intentionally glossing over whatever the hell is going on with Kohinata and Wataru, the bizarre boyfriends who become Shiro and Kenji's gay besties. You know that couple where you think, I cannot imagine how this relationship works because if you were my partner I would want you stab you every minute of our lives, but it clearly does, so I'm happy for you both? Yeah, that's these two.

The elder of the pair, Kohinata, is a butch, severe man -- except when it comes to his boyfriend, the much younger and worse-behaved Wataru. Then he's reduced to a complete simp, catering to Wataru's every whim. Wataru knows that throwing a tantrum and being bratty is the way to get anything he wants from Kohinata, so he's just a little shit recreationally. He loves saying bitchy things and pointing out people's flaws, while Kohinata chides him ineffectually.

And I love how much this is totally a sex thing for them, except that when you put it in the context of an otherwise extremely PG-rated show, the kink of it flies completely under the hetero radar. Ha ha, look how generally funny these two weirdos are! While Shiro and Kenji are over here doing the thing where somebody calls their partner "master" in front of you, and you're like, I wish you wouldn't.

Their presence is great for the acknowledgment that gay people can be maladjusted freaks in a whole spectrum of ways! They also make the point that a great deal of your ability to openly be a maladjusted freak is related to your job and your level of wealth. Wataru works from home and Kohinata works with celebrities, both of which bring in high incomes and allow for way more deviance from social norms. They're in positions of privilege that allow them to be themselves, but the price of being themselves is that they're always going to stick out in a society that values harmony in sameness.

By contrast, Shiro's good-but-not-great-paying suit-and-tie job means he has to behave. Because of this, he has plenty of angst about being Not Gay Enough, through which the show reinforces time and again that not all gay existence is about barfing rainbows. You're still a valid homosexual even when you're a dull one.

So just remember: When you feel like you're not queer enough, remember that there are always worse queers out there in the world. Oh, they're not worse at being queer. They're just worse in general.

4. Itadakimasu!

This show, like the Sleuth of the Ming Dynasty and Otoko Meshi, is a food-centered show that is very dangerous to watch if you're hungry, so be prepared! Snack first!

It's also got actually followable recipes! Unlike those other food-centric shows I've done recs for, this show actually gives pretty precise measurements, lists all the ingredients, and walks you through basically the whole process. Aside from a few "add the incredibly Japanese thing I bought premade at the store" steps, Shiro's cooking methods are replicable at home.

...It is here that I should probably put up a warning for the occasional bout of very Japanese-typical and gay-man-typical fatphobia, which can be a heck of a combination. I don't think it's a dealbreaker, but you should be aware of it going in. However, I will say that the show almost always comes down on the side of positive moderation: Sometimes you need to eat like you're an aging homosexual watching your cholesterol, and sometimes it's a special occasion so you should enjoy yourself without guilt. It also never once conflates "eating healthy" with eating disappointing meals. If anything, it's mostly just being honest about what happens to your body's relationship to fried food when you hit your forties.

The other nice thing is that Shiro's not some trained chef. He makes good food, but he's a dedicated amateur at best. There's not a single super-fancy technique in anything he does. Much of the time, he's just winging it, combining techniques he knows with what he's already got in the fridge. Sometimes he uses recipes he found on the internet. Occasionally he cooks alongside other, more experienced people and learns techniques from them. Once in a blue moon he just tries a thing to see how it works. (Of course, he does have the unfair advantage of being fictional to cover for how none of his meals ever turn out bad, which, you know, must be nice.)

Sometimes you even get to see other people cook when Shiro's nowhere around! Some of them follow instructions to the letter, while others just sort of wing it with whatever's on hand. And that's okay! For a show so much about cooking, it is very unpretentious about food. The manga drives home even more strongly the point that you don't need fancy meals and a million perfect side dishes to be content. It's great if you're perfectly happy microwaving a pork bun! What matters is that it works for you and your family.

...Now can we please convince subbers everywhere to translate "Itadakimasu!" as "Itadakimasu!"? Please? I think my favorite bad choice is "Bon appetit!", which, okay, good job, you took an opportunity to teach English-speakers a non-English phrase that has no good English translation, and instead you chose to bank on their extant familiarity with a different non-English phrase that has no good English translation. Just keep it what it is. It's just something you say before you eat. It's obvious from context clues. I promise.

5. Makes you, an aging queer, feel real weird about some stuff!

Over the course of the show, Kenji and Shiro go from their early/mid 40s to pushing/over 50. Their parents age, have health scares, and even sometimes die. They deal with losing eyesight and hair alike. They get promoted. They make household budgets and purchases. They worry about saving enough for the future. They work late. They go on vacation sometimes. They wear the same clothes they wore a couple episodes ago.

However, they do all this while also wrestling with their unequal status as gay men in Japan. All their discussions about retirement are colored both by Kenji's tendency to impulse-buy ice cream and by the fact that they can't get married. The choices Shiro makes about his job rest both on his desire for a good work-life balace and a fear that his profession would react badly to his coming out. They have to make all the normal decisions expected of men their age, and then they have to make all the extra decisions to compensate for how "normal" doesn't account for gay.

To pick one issue running throughout the story: Shiro is an only child who is himself childless. This comes up fairly often, in fact, as various circumstances make him aware time and again that he's not making his parents into grandparents, and he won't someday have someone to take care of him like he does for them.

The first time the show brought this up, I thought it would be a one-and-done thing, where the conclusion of the episode got to be that Shiro learns to be happy without being a parent, the end. Nope! It isn't a constant stressor, but it never goes entirely away. Shiro is happy with his life, but he's also reminded that he's failing to live up to social standards. He doesn't want to be a dad. Or does he? No, he actually doesn't. But he also doesn't want not to be a dad, if that makes sense. He doesn't want to disappoint everyone by not having a wife and children, but at the same time, that disappointment isn't enough to force him back into the closet. But it's always going to be seen as a failure on his part.

As a middle-aged queer with no kids, yeah, I feel that hard. I don't want kids! But I also don't want to not have kids. I know I'm always going to be a little bit of a misfit in my family compared to my siblings, who are all parents now. Besides, I think about all the things I do for my parents, and all the things they did for theirs, and yeah, it kind of scares me to know I won't have that when I get older. And we're just basic-ass white people! Japan takes filial responsibility to a whole 'nother level!

So I really, really like that this show doesn't resolve that tension. Shiro has chosen what's right for him. It just also sucks sometimes. The honesty of that narrative is refreshing. Sometimes your best choice still kinda sucks. Sometimes the only way to get closure is to say, you failed me and I failed you, so we're even.

It's a frequent thing for the show to present the realities of people's lives and choices, and to say, maybe this isn't everyone's perfect solution, but it's the right decision given what the circumstances will allow, and you are still allowed to be happy despite the imperfections. It's not that you need to settle for less than perfection because you're gay -- everybody settles! Everybody makes choices and then has to live with the consequences of those choices. You'll never know if things could have been better if you'd done something different, but that doesn't stop what you have right now from being able to be pretty damn good.

I'm not going to say you must be a middle-aged queer to watch this show, because did you read the whole part earlier where I talked about how you should consume stories from experiences that are not your own? Right? Right.

I will, however, say that if you are a middle-aged queer, a lot of it's likely going to hit real close to home, and often in uncomfortable ways. I've seen a couple people say they had to take breathers after some episodes. I know I've been left chewing over a few things in the days and weeks since watching. There are definitely parts where you're laughing because you know exactly what that feels like, and if you don't laugh, you'll do something else.

But you know what? I like that. It can be nice to see people go through situations similar to yours and emerge realistically happy. It's nice to be able to laugh about things, or to know that you will laugh about them someday. The world is fundamentally hostile, but there are people who love us and watermelons are on sale this week, so instead of despair, let's have lunch together.

bonus: porn!!

I want to make it clear that the mangaka isn't some erotophobic dishrag who fetishizes gay men so long as they don't have any of that icky nasty smex. Oh no. The proof that NaniTabe's sexlessness is intentional is how Yoshinaga Fumi made six fairly explicit pornographic side stories that fill in some of the sexy gaps in the larger narrative. You can read all six volumes scanlated right here! ...though if you want to avoid spoilers, I'm going to recommend you wait to dig in until after you watch the show and/or read the actual manga to the appropriate points.

Enjoy the confirmation that Shiro is a freaky size queen (at least in theory, as is the case with maybe most freaky size queens).

Are you hungry for this show yet?

Tragically, this one's a little hard to watch. If you're in Japan (or you have a VPN that can fake it), you can see the first season on Netflix. Otherwise, the preposterously named GagaOOLala is probably your best bet. The watch order goes like this:

Season 1

the New Year's Special

the Movie

Season 2

While the two movies and the second season require a subscription, the first season is available for free. So if you want to give it a try, you've got a whole twelve episodes to see if you like it!

Maybe it'll get a third season someday? We can hope! After all, there's still much more manga left to adapt! All I know is that I'm very sad that I've run out of new installments of it to watch, and I look forward to going back and starting again from the beginning soon.

...Boy, it's funny to see behind-the-scenes shots and think, wow, they're so much snugglier in real life! That's how not-snuggly the show itself is! You think I'm joking but I'm not!

#きのう何食べた？#kinou nani tabeta?#what did you eat yesterday #rec post #i made this #nani tabe #nanitabe

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iloveboysinred · 6 months ago

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Miracle [Keith Kogane]

18+ angst|Keith Kogane x reader

synopsis; During a battle with the Galra you and Keith are cornered, you give up your life to save Keith, and leave him a gift to remember you by.

cw; fem reader, angst, character death, sad Keith, mentions of blood, violence, strangulation, stabbing, heavy grief, survivors guilt.

this will probably be the last angst request I'll write given that I'm not the best at it and i hate putting out work I'm not proud of ;/. Hope you enjoy anon!

masterlist - ask

Adrenaline pulsed through your veins as you ran down the dark halls of a Galra ship. It was an endless labyrinth of walls and turns, the darkness suffocating. You'd swear you were running in circles; every time you thought you'd found another way, you were just met with another band of sentries, shooting at you, chasing you, hunting you down. You tried to keep up with Keith, his hand wrapped tightly around your wrist, but your legs were starting to get tired, and your mind was foggy and confused. You didn't know how much longer you could endure. "Lance? Pidge? C'mon guys, where are you?" you heard Keith shout, trying to reconnect his damaged helmet to the others, but to no avail.

Your mind flashed back to Earth for a second. To when you and Keith were garrison trainees. You were close, seeing through his cold exterior and becoming friends quite quickly. From then on, you have always been there for each other. Supporting each other in training and comforting each other through the good and the bad. So of course, when he had come to you for support after he caught wind of Shiro's re-appearance, you had gone with him. Never expecting to be where you are now, fighting a galactic war and constantly putting your lives at risk.

"Fuck!" Your heart dropped to your stomach when you stopped, staring up at the wall in front of you. It was a dead end. You glanced behind you; they were gaining. Keith pulled you behind him, activating his bayard. You stared in fear when the sentries parted, a large Galra soldier advancing towards you. "It appears the universe has granted me a gift," he sneered, stopping a few feet away from you and Keith. His ugly yellow teeth peeked out from under his lip in a menacing snarl, his glowing yellow eyes pinning you with unsettling malice. You felt Keith tense, his grip on your wrist falling, raising his bayard defensively. "Lord Zarkon will be pleased when I bring him the heads of the red lion's paladin and his co-pilot." He got into his own defensive stance. He was big, standing about 5 feet above you; his body was strong and muscular. His teeth shone in the dim lighting, sharp as blades. "This will be fun. I think I'll take you first, Paladin. Your death will be just the beginning of the end for Voltron. How will your pathetic band of earthlings form Voltron if they're one paladin short? It'll make it all the easier to take you out one by one." You narrowed your eyes, reaching into the band of your boot and gripping the concealed dagger you'd made sure to bring, just in case the situation got dire.

"Cmoooon Keith. Let me drive!" You whined, leaning over Keith's back, trying to reach for the controls of his cruiser. "No way, y/n. Knowing you, you'll drive us into a cliff. "Oh, come on! You doubt my skills that much??" Keith gave you a blank look, shrugging you off. You grumbled, sitting down and wrapping your arms around his waist. He smirked, revving the engine and taking off. You flew through the desert, sand spraying in your wake. The air whipped your hair at the speed you were going exhilarating. You grinned, blood roaring in your ears. "Oh shit!" you cheered every time Keith dodged an obstacle. You gripped his waist tightly, pressing your chest against his back.

"Keith? Keith!" You heard Lance's voice ring through his helmet, the connection glitching. "Lance! Where are you guys!? We're kind of in a situation here. The Galra have me and you cornered." "Don't worry, we know where you are. We're coming to get you in just a tick." The connection cut off once more, the radio chatter blocking out anything else being said. The Galra soldier ran towards you, swinging a large blade right towards you and Keith.

"Y/n.. I have something important to tell you." You and Keith sat in front of his house; the night sky was clear, and the moon was shining down on you. "yeah?" You looked up at him from your bowl of noodles, your cheeks full to the brim. Keith's eyes softened in adoration. "Well, I've been picking up a lot of chatter on my radar. A space vessel is approaching Earth, and I think it might be Shiro." Your eyes widened, and you swallowed your mouth full, leaning toward him intently. "Really? that's great! But... what do you think you should do?"" "Well, I was hoping we'd find the landing sight and go see for ourselves." Keith blushed at your close proximity, looking away from you, bashful of your eagerness. "Oh my gosh, we totally should! When do you think it'll land?" "My guess is that in two days, will you come with me?" You gaped at him in disbelief. "Of course I will! Are you kidding?" Keith smiled at you. You leaned forward, pressing a warm kiss on his cheek. "We're in this together, okay?" "Okay."

You flinched as Keith's body hit the floor, quickly blocking the Galra's attack with his bayard. He had him pinned to the ground, his face a few meters away from his. "I have to admit, you do put on a good fight. I wouldn't expect anything less from a Paladin of Voltron," he snarled, bearing his teeth in a sneer. His tail slapped the bayard from Keith's hands, the weapon clattering as it hit the ground a few feet away. The sentries aimed their weapons at you, stopping you as you tried to run towards them. You stood there, helpless, as you watched Keith struggle. Then, the ground shook as the wall behind you suddenly rumbled, the blue lion appearing from a newly made gap. "Cmon guys, we don't have much time. Galra fighter jets are coming quick!" Your eyes locked on Keith, and your heart raced as the blade inched closer and closer to his throat. Grabbing the dagger, you ran at the soldier, narrowly dodging a sentry blade. Using as much weight as you could to knock him off Keith, trying to give him time to escape. You slashed as much as you could, drawing blood from any skin you reached. "y/n!" Keith shouted, running to try and come to your aid, but a sentry slashed at him, causing him to fall back, holding his side where he had been hit. "K-Keith! Go! Get out of here!" you screamed, trying to hold the Galra soldier down as best you could. "No! Not without you!" he grunted, trying to stand up. You felt your body hit the ground as the soldier flipped you off of him. The air escaping your lungs from the impact. You couldn't catch your breath; the soldier was holding you down by the neck. All you could hear between Keith's shouts and the footsteps of more sentries crowding you was the fast beating of your heart. "KEITH! WE HAVE TO GO!" Lance's voice rang in your ears, but you couldn't move; your neck was starting to ache. You kicked and scratched at the galra, but the lack of oxygen was starting to weaken you. Mustering as much strength as possible, you clumsily gripped the dagger, driving it into the soldier's side, but it did little to penetrate the armor covering his body. "Even if I can't bring him the corpse of your little boyfriend, Lord Zarkon would be just as pleased knowing it's one paladin down. Ever closer to wiping out all of Voltron," the soldier purred, putting more weight down on your neck.

"You know I love you," you murmured, pressing your lips to his in a sweet kiss. Keith turned his head, pressing his lips harder, holding you close to him. You threaded your fingers through his hair, smiling as you pulled away. "I love you more," he whispered, gazing into your eyes with so much emotion that it made your heart flutter. "Pfft, big softy." He glared at you, pulling you to his chest and laying back on his bed with you.

"y/n! We can't leave her, Lance! we can't-" "Keith. We don't have time. You'll bleed out; we have to go!" You felt your vision begin to blur, and the grip on your neck felt heavier. You glanced over the Galra soldier, watching as Lance hauled Keith into the blue lion's mouth, shooting at any sentry he could. "Lance, let me go! Let me fucking go!" Keith shouted, struggling against his hold. But he was weakening; the blood streaming out of his wound was making him dizzy, and his movements were uncertain. As his vision became more and more unclear, his panic increased. Where were you? what's happening? The last glimpse he got of you was your unmoving body and the sentries crowding around you. His eyes teared as he struggled against Lance weakly, his fists clenching when Lance pulled him into a hug, constricting his arms. His vision blurred both from his tears and the blood loss. Sobs racked his body as the blue lion's mouth closed, flying out and away from the ship.

You glanced blankly at the ceiling, refusing to look the soldier in the eye as your life slowly faded. "I love you, Keith; don't worry, I'll see you again," you thought, your body going still when your breathing ceased, your heart's beating coming to a stop.

Keith might as well have been dead himself. At least that's how he felt. His heart was hollow, his mind swirling with thoughts of you and how you had passed—to save him. He couldn't even hurt anymore; he didn't feel anything most of the time. Most days where he was stuck in his head about you, he would feel pure, unbridled rage, lashing out in training sequences, pushing himself harder than he ever did before. On nights where he suffered your absence the most, he felt cold grief grip his heart so strongly that he struggled to breathe, becoming inconsolable. Tears fell heavily from his eyes when he cried. He would scream, gripping his chest through his shirt. Shiro would rush in, enveloping Keith in his arms, and he would thrash around in his hold, slightly settling down when he started to tire. Shiro comforted him, assuring him it was going to be okay. Keith couldn't hear him, zoning out and staring blankly at the ceiling with glistening eyes. Going on missions felt like torture. His attacks were uncoordinated, and the team had to make up for his lack of focus. The arguments that ensued between him and Lance almost broke into full-blown fights, Keith's heart only building more and more resentment for everyone in the castle.

Months later, here he stood, watching as Allura pressed a final kiss to Lance's lips, tears falling from their eyes, trying to savor whatever they could before they ran out of time. "Keith, look," Shiro whispered, placing his hand on Keith's shoulder. He paused for a second, the bitterness of the situation making it hard to care about what Shiro was saying. But he glanced up anyway, tears rising along his waterline. The Paladins of old—Allura's father and Zarkon's family—stand right in front of them. He felt his heart squeeze as you appeared from behind the crowd, smiling sweetly at him. You looked so beautiful. A sight for sore eyes to Keith. He ran towards you, his eyes shining with so much love and so much pain. You welcomed him into your embrace. Holding him close as he hugged you, burying his nose in your hair. You quickly pulled him into a kiss, savoring the feel of his lips one last time. "I miss you so much, Keith," you whispered, cupping his face in your hands. Keith felt his heart stop, drinking in every feature of your face, knowing he wouldn't see it for a while. "I miss you every day of my life. I love you, Y/N. So much," you smiled, pulling away from him and keeping his arms in your hold. "I love you more." "I wish you could come back to me. I should've been there with you. I'm so sorry." you shushed him. "We'll be together again. Hopefully not any time soon though!" Keith chuckled, the weight of his grief making his voice shaky. "But I've got to go, Keith. I have a gift for you. Please, heal, and forgive. I'll always have you in my heart." Keith's chest ached as you pulled away from him, taking your warmth and scent with you. "I love you." You smiled at him sweetly, Allura following you. Slowly, you disappeared again, dissipating into the air and leaving everyone feeling bittersweet.

Keith was taken aback when he felt something shift in his arms, looking down to see a moving bundle of cloth. He heard muffled babbling, making him hurriedly unravel the bundle in shock. A pretty baby girl stared up at him; somehow she looked like you, having his dark hair and nose but your eyes, lips, and eyebrows. He gaped down at the baby, holding it close to his chest. "What ?? Where did that baby come from??" Pidge asked, coming up to peer down at the child. "Y/N left her; she's the gift." Keith whispered, his eyes crinkling in a bright smile, pressing a kiss to the baby's forehead. "She's mine. The baby's mine," he whispered, rocking the baby in his arms. The little girl glanced up at him with wide eyes, soft babbling and cooing coming from her as she happily laid in her father's arms. "How is that even possible?" Hunk whispered, glancing down at the baby, adoration in his heart. "It's a miracle." Lance whispered, standing next to Keith. Keith glanced at him for a second, mixed emotions coursing through him. He felt resentment and hatred for the man. Grief still swelling in his chest, but your words echoed in his mind: "Heal, forgive," and he gave Lance a ghost of a smile. "Yeah, she is."

The story of both you and Allura's sacrifices became sensational, with old allies of Voltron helping construct statues of you and the Altean princess standing side by side. Every once a year, the team would unite and visit the statue, sharing updates on each other's lives and recounting old missions. At every meeting, Keith would bring his daughter, making sure she was present for every story the team would share about you. "Y/N and Allura should be here. But it's because of them that we can all continue to keep peace in the universe. I can't imagine anyone braver than them." Coran sighed, glancing up at the statues with bittersweet love in his gaze. Everyone solemnly agreed, toasting to both you and Allura's legacy. Keith glanced down at his daughter, snuggled up next to him in her own chair, staring up at the statues with shining eyes and wonder. He smiled, knowing that as long as he had his miracle, he had something to live for, and some piece of you was still with him here on earth.

#{anonask ੈ✩‧₊˚ ฅ^. .^ฅ}#keith kogane x reader #keith kogane #vld keith #voltron legendary defender #vld angst #❥iloveboysinred

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cosmosnout · 3 months ago

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KH OC WEEK

Day 5: Unique

I’ve had a liiiittle bit of a miscalculation with how long making these entries would take, so I’ve decided to jump ahead a bit. Dreams and Connections ended up being such important themes for all my characters that I wanted to spend a bit more time on both haha.

Appearance

Appearance-wise a lot of my guys have a bunch of fun little details about them. Both Shiro and Merin carry many scars from being the most active fighters (and for being the most reckless ones).

Shiro bears a X shaped scar across their face that they acquire from fighting master Aced during the keyblade war. (There’s a scene in KHUX during the keyblade war, where master Aced manages to land some hits on the player before Ira comes to their rescue.)

They both also noticeably have small streaks of white in their hair along with dark veins overtaking their arms, which are caused by long exposure to darkness.

Another shared trait within the group is The siblings matching dyed hair, with Viktor having teal and Aiko pink-colored hair. This later on changes after a small time skip where they decide to swap colors.

Aiko also has a small heart tattoo on her shoulder and a bunch of moles covering her body!

Skills

As keyblade wielders each character of course has their own unique style of fighting and using their keys.

(Shiro is getting favorite child treatment sorry LMAO)

Shiro, as the oldest and most experienced fighter, has various different spells, keyblade forms, and abilities at their disposal. They’re most keen on melee fighting but are also quite the talented spell caster. (They especially enjoy fire magic)

Merin is the second-most experienced fighter and often calls upon darkness to assist her in a fight. (Even though Aiko strongly urges them against it, old habits die hard, I guess.) She is also decently strong, even without her keyblade, and uses her brute strength to get through enemies.

The rest of the group are actually not the biggest fans of fighting, but I’d say Aiko holds herself the best when it comes to using her keyblade.

Tähti does, however, possess a unique skill that allows her to listen to the hearts of others. This mostly manifests as different kinds of melodies emanating from the person they’re close to (displaying their current emotional state or just overall vibe) and occasionally as quiet whispers of the person's inner thoughts.

Other stuff

I think of Tähti as being autistic due to them having many neurodivergent traits that I relate to. (Feeling most comfortable being nonverbal, feeling easily overwhelmed, having a difficult time with social cues, etc.)

Tähti also appears a lot smaller and younger than Merin due to their previous person having an imbalance of light and darkness in their heart.

The darkness that spreads through Shiro’s and Merin’s arms begins at the dominant hand. (the hand they hold their keyblade in)

Shiro’s multicolored eyes represent their lost state of identity and also the balance of darkness and light in their heart. (Their original eye color is green, but it gets mixed with blue and yellow to represent light and darkness.)

Merin has a scar on their upper right arm, just above where the darkness is spreading, due to them attempting to sever their arm as they feared the darkness would spread further. Aiko thankfully managed to convince them not to go through with it.

I do also think that the darkness can eventually fade away as the person's emotional state gets better / once they stop using darkness for long enough.

@khoc-week

#art #digital art #my art #fanart #kh #oc #kh oc #khocweek2024 #kh oc week

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yuusishi · 2 years ago

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Hiya~ I love your works 🥺 May I request a headcannon about Sectoral heterochromia!Reader (The reader have a pink w/ mint green colours eyes OR A yellow w/ purple) i don't mind any genders

'They never show their eyes and always wear a mask (like Gojo's) until one day,after they became *the characters mention* s/o they decided that they're ready to show their eyes'

w/ Vil,Azul,Jade and Rook

Ignore this if you want,If you DO do this then Thank you!!

~Shiro

Vil, Azul, and Jade With a Reader With Sectoral Hererochromia!

pairings: Vil Schoenheit, Azul Ashengrotto, Jade Leech x gn!reader (separate)

genre: fluff

cws/tws: ooc Jade?

a/n: hi anonnie I didn’t include Rook in this (for once) cuz in my rules I said I’ll only do 3 characters per request! Also I’m still not totally familiar with how Jade acts so he might be pretty ooc

¡ Vil Schoenheit !

He was amazed when he first saw your eyes, one being one-toned then the other two-toned, he’s rarely seen anything like this on social media much less in real life.

Was definitely happy that you trusted him enough with something that you usually cover up from other people!

Whenever you two are alone in either Ramshackle or in his room in the Pomefiore dorm he always faces you in bed just to admire you, whether or not you’re awake.

He loves you a lot and thanks the Seven for letting him meet someone as unique as you.

If someone suddenly bursts in the room (usually one of the Adeuce duo or Grim if you’re in Ramshackle) either one of you rush for the blindfold to cover your eyes again if you don’t want to show others yet.

This doesn’t happen at all if you’re in his room in Pomefiore though because everyone knows how to knock there <3 that’s why he prefers for you two to spend time in Pomefiore.

¡ Azul Ashengrotto !

Azul’s deathly aware and experienced in things such as insecurities, he was over the moon when you let him see your eyes for the first time because that means you trust him a lot and that makes him happy!!

The tweels tease him sometimes for being the only one in your little friend group without a form of heterochromia to which he just scoffs at.

If you two are just sitting in his office or in one of each other’s beds I feel like he’s the type to just suddenly pinch your cheeks impulsively

“What was that for, Azul” you whined while you rubbed your cheek ‘You just look too cute for your own good’ was what he wanted to say but what came out was “I just wanted to” as he buried his face on your shoulder, but you got his message either way.

I WENT OFF TRACK WAIT

If you two are in the same class he likes to just sit and stare at you lovingly but as discreetly as possible if the teacher gives some free time, not just admiring your dual colored eyes but the entirety of you in general.

Does the same thing as Vil where he rushes to cover your eyes if someone suddenly comes in, but in a less panicky way to not cause the other person to ask any questions, especially if it’s a person that you’re not comfortable seeing your eyes yet.

¡ Jade Leech !

Jade knows when it’s time to joke around (though a lot of his jokes end up sounding like threats) and when to be serious, and of course trusting him enough with something like this is something he’ll take seriously.

He thinks your eyes look like the painted pebbles that somehow survived to sink to the depths where he and Floyd live, they look beautiful.

Heterochromia couple!!

Respects the fact you’d rather hide your eyes from others, though he doesn’t understand why since he thinks it’s the prettiest thing he’s ever seen but even if he doesn’t get why he won’t pry for an answer.

Even if you both have heterochromia he thinks yours is so much more beautiful because it looks like one of your irises is painted which makes you so much better!

I feel like he’d keep accidentally covering your eyes with his hand instead of your blindfold if someone suddenly walks in the room without knocking, it takes him a while to go for the piece of cloth first before his hand.

Whenever he goes out shopping by himself he’d sometimes buy you one or two blindfolds that have designs on it unlike your plain black one to just change things up a bit, but of course no design that would make you look like a fool, he doesn’t aim to humiliate you.

If someone keeps overstepping your boundaries and constantly asking to see what’s under your blindfold Jade’s there in an instant to stop that person, by force if needed <3

#twisted wonderland x reader #twst x reader #disney twisted wonderland #vil schoenheit x reader #vil x reader #azul ashengrotto x reader #azul x reader #jade leech x reader #jade x reader #twst fluff

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halfagone · 1 year ago

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Is it bad that I don’t necessarily agree with what seems to be a lot of people’s headcanon of Danny not being straight? Obviously people can headcanon whatever they want, but I myself strictly adhere to the rule that if there is no explicit evidence or implications from canon that prove otherwise, that I just assume a character is straight since that’s statistically what is most common?

You had me in the first part but you lost me in the second, unfortunately. You said it yourself, people can headcanon whatever they want. If you prefer him being straight, then that's really up to you! But that last line you just said is a little something called 'heteronormativity' and I'm not going to explain that here.

Moreover, I would definitely say that it can be very tricky to use 'explicit evidence' for reasoning, because it's a very slippery slope.

I'll use some other childrens' cartoons as examples to make my point clear here: In The Legends of Korra, Korra dates only guys for almost the entirety of the show. But in the very last episode, she and Asami become a couple. I know a lot of people say that they just threw that out there, but if you do some research you'll find out that the showrunners fought so hard to get just that scene in the show. If they could, they probably would have added more elements to their relationship and gave them more obvious on-screen chemistry. But they weren't allowed to.

In Voltron: Legendary Defenders, we find out in Season 7 out of 8 that before the Kerberos mission, Shiro had been engaged to a man named Adam. While the two ultimately broke off their engagement because Adam didn't agree with Shiro's decision to go on the mission despite his illness, we do see in the series finale that Shiro gets married to Curtis, who was a member of the Atlas crew.

Probably one of the more famous examples, The Owl House! As we know this is a Disney channel show, but the wonderful creator Dana Terrance made it beautifully, openly queer. And Disney didn't quite like that, so they cancelled the series. After which, the showrunners essentially decided for the final abbreviated season, "Fuck it!" And did whatever they wanted, as far as they were allowed to go.

Dave Filoni has said that he shipped Ahsoka Tano and Barriss Offee and we could have seen a romance from the pair. (And yes, this does make the betrayal that much worse.) I could use Steven Universe as an example, but I think I've made this section of my point clear here.

We only see one side of the show. We get to see the finished product, not all the hard work the showrunners and writers and artists and producers put into getting what queer representation they could. We probably wouldn't have seen any of this from Danny Phantom as a show, because we all know Butch Hartman is homophobic as fuck, but that doesn't mean there was nothing there that we as a fandom couldn't have taken to mean something else.

In the episode, "One of a Kind", there's a scene where Danny and Tucker are seen cuddling comfortably in each other's embrace. Of course friends can do this too. Hell, they can even be in something called a ✨ queerplatonic relationship ✨ but that is still queer. Even still that can easily be argued that Danny is just as attracted to guys as he is to girls. You never see Danny act like that around Paulina or Valerie while they were dating.

In "Fanning the Flames", Sam kisses Dash to break Danny out of his mind control. Except... This episode's summary explicitly states, "Danny and Sam find their platonic relationship turned forcibly romantic through the powers of Ember..." Over the show's seasons, we do get bits and pieces of evidence that Sam had a crush on Danny, but it's not until "Frightmare", episode 9 of the last season, that we get a scene where Danny realizes he might have a crush on Sam. I'm sure there are other bits and pieces of evidence, Jack had a ring for some reason in "Girls' Night Out". But "Frightmare" is where we get the first evidence of a possible relationship from them, which is a huge deal because this show is primarily from Danny's perspective.

But that is, quite literally, two seasons apart. So who is to say that- that first time Sam kissed Dash- Danny wasn't jealous of Dash but he was jealous of Sam. Here's what I'm talking about: in "Frightmare" we see in Danny's dream sequence that he wanted to be friends with the A-Listers and that's probably primarily because he likes the idea of being popular, yet in that episode and "Attack of the Killer Garage Sale" it's always Dash that Danny wants to impress and please. In the latter's episode's case almost if not equally as much as Danny did with Paulina, a girl he freely shows his crush on. And yet this is the same guy that makes Danny's school life hell and whom Danny antagonizes on many occasions. This could easily be a case of 'pulling someone's pigtails' and considering Dash's admiration of Phantom, that's not hard to believe on his side of things either.

In general, Danny's entire secret identity can just as easily be a symbolism for queer identity. All of Danny's Rogues know who Danny is, what he is, where he lives, and where he goes to school. And yet it's his parents he has to hide himself from. If you switched out the word 'ghost' for 'gay' or 'queer' in some of the Fentons' anti-ghost rhetoric, it would have been unabashed hate speech.

The Danny Phantom phandom has a lot of queer folks. We've done polls, I've seen the numbers. You said it yourself, anyone is free to headcanon what they want. But considering the community, I am not surprised that Danny being anything but straight is so commonly headcanoned. And maybe that's still not for you, but it's not as shocking as you might expect it to be.

Danny is only 14 years old at the start of the series. While we don't know the exact timeline of the series, and how long it's been when the shows ends, we can comfortably put Danny at 15 or even 16 years old at most. But there are plenty of people who don't realize they're gay or lesbian or bi or ace until they're much, much older. Yeah, we didn't get to see that in canon for obvious reasons, but who's to say we can't show that instead?

#halfagone replies #danny phantom #character analysis #show analysis #deconstructing headcanons #with yours truly :D

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wen-kexing-apologist · 5 months ago

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POLL TAG- FIVE FAVORITE CHARACTERS

tagged by @telomeke, @lurkingshan, @happypotato48

I have not been on tumblr much so my apologies for not getting around to this until now.

Challenge: make a poll with five of your all time favorite characters, and then tag five people to do the same. See which character is everyone's favorite.

The spiel

Shiro

Shiro is so often serious and when we first meet him he is still really weighed down by his internalized homophobia. But he loves Kenji so much and there are so many of these little moments of joy and lightheartededness in him that so clearly show not only why he and Kenji work well together as a couple but also how desperately in love with Kenji he is. Despite the fact he has never been and likely will never be able to say those words aloud. Watching how much growth he has had especially in Season 2 makes me so emotional even just thinking about it and I love him so much.

Miki

I do not expect Miki to win mostly because I do not think a lot of people have seen Joshi-teki Seikatsu but oh my god I am so in love with her. She is so confident in herself and such a catty, slutty little bitch and she is perfect. I mean, incredibly flawed as a person, which tends to be a requirement for a lot of my favorite characters but she knows who she is, she knows what she wants, and she is really taking the "my-cishet-childhood-best-friend-who-has-two-brain-cells-to-rub-together-moved-in-with-me-and-I-am-trying-every-day-not-to-kill-him" situation in stride.

Qian

Let the fact I have barely written any essays since Unknown finished airing be a testament to both the fact that my life has been exceedingly busy the last few months and the fact that Qian and Unknown have been sticking with me. Another flawed character just trying his best to keep himself and his siblings' heads above water. He's done what he needs to do to survive and he has made a beautiful life for himself that he can finally feel safe, comfortable, and supported in. I love this man.

Myung Ha

I desperately owe this show a re-watch with the knowledge I gained at the end of it. Myung Ha is trying so hard to give Yeo Woon the love and support he deserves and I really love how they wrote all of Myung Ha's interactions with the teenagers in this show because he does act like a thirty year old who is back in high school and dealing with a bunch of kids who are trying to exert power through a form of bullying that most grown adults are not susceptible to. He cares so much for people, he's wonderful.

Koichi

THIS BOY MEANS THE WORLD TO ME. HE IS RADIANCE AND SUNLIGHT AND SADNESS AND CARE AND HE LIVED SO FULLY FOR TOO SHORT OF A TIME. I need to rewatch this show as well as I am far overdue for my heart to be ripped out of my chest and stomped on and then lovingly sewed back underneath my ribs.

tagging: @solitaryandwandering, @ginnymoonbeam, @emotionallychargedtowel, @so-much-yet-to-learn, @he-is-lightning-in-a-bottle

#tag game #eien no kinou #koichi #joshi-teki seikatsu #ogawa miki #kakeru shiro #what did you eat yesterday?#kinou nani tabeta?#love for love's sake #wei qian #unknown the series

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harukamitsuki · 6 months ago

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Hello, I saw your tumblr pop up and I saw that you are very critical of lances character. I mean absolutely no harm and want to have just have a conversation.

I’m not going to bash you completely because that’d get absolutely no where. I understand a lot of the points you’ve made. The way Lance treats his other teammates (especially Keith and allura) are to say the least… not great.

His one sided rivalry is terrible especially because Keith really is just a kid. He’s got a lot of family issues and now he’s being hated on by some kid he doesn’t even remember/recognize. Allura is dealing with 10,000 years of guilt not being able to save her planet and especially her father. Then ofc Lance comes in and immediately flirts with her.

Neither of these are good things. However, I’d argue that it helps in largely with his growth (if the writers actually cared).

In the first episode when the trio get in trouble Iverson immediately states to Lance that he’s only here because Keith isn’t.

And considering how easily he says this it very much feels like something that’s said often to him.

I don’t think Lance just started the rivalry because he just decided to hate Keith’s guys but because he’s having to be reminded that all he is, is a “cheap replacement” in a sense.

If they (writers) explored this idea more thoroughly I feel as though it would’ve made lances character more understandable. Not better (because even tho something happens doesn’t give anyone the excuse of whatever) but more to show that he’s human.

I would’ve loved to see an apology to Keith for this but obv it never happens.

I will say he does grow more with Allura though. Yes he still flirts but considering in season 5 the scene where Lance is comforting Allura really shows a change in lance.

I feel as though he really changes but the thing is Allura treats him in the end almost as a rebound (not bashing on her or anything). She clearly is more in favor of Lotor and even kisses the hallucination of him and never tells Lance when they’re together.

Moving on, I believe you’re characterizing Lance a little too unfairly. He does not get everything on a silver patter. He gets to be a fighter pilot because he’s the only thing closest to Keith’s record. He is constantly made the joke to the point where even Veronica his older sister find out that they’re being killed because she thinks Lance is an idiot (despite actual evidence mere 5 seconds ago proving it wrong). The whole bob episode makes fun of him. The team kinda leaves him behind. Hunk who’s supposed to be his best friend rarely interacts with him and is more pidges best friend than anything. Season 5s whole thing with Kuron and Lance gets scrapped instantly.

Is Lance a flawed character? Absolutely. But he is very much not given everything. In all honesty I believe Keith is the one who is the most “spoiled” in the show.

Season 1 and 2 lovely. However when shiro dies everything kinda changes.

I understand what the writers were going with but in truth Keith is by far (in my opinion) the worst option for being the black paladin.

Yea Keith has a fucked up backstory. He didn’t want to be the black paladin. he was forced into it.

But that doesn’t mean he is the right one. When he starts he almost kills everyone. Yes he’s starting out but afterwards he doesn’t become his own leader. He just steals shiros character.

When the clone comes in he dips. Sure ita because there isn’t space anymore but considering how easy it is for him to leave is what makes me think of him as spoiled.

The others don’t get an out. If the others had to leave they couldn’t. They don’t have galra genetics that can make them a marmora. They don’t have a space mom to travel with.

They’d have to stay in the castle because there is no where else to go for them.

Keith in the other hand gets an out. He is half galra he has a mom out there in space.

We never see him interact with the others again or even think about them. He only ever thinks about shiro.

When he comes back all of a sudden everything that the paladins have been working on is flipped on their heads. Now Keith has to save the day. Kuron goes bonkers and instead of using all that build up with Lance it’s Keith.

Keith leaves the team defenseless and without Voltron to deal with Lotor.

Gives absolutely no remorse on killing Kuron and just allows shiros mind to be put into his body.

Then he doesn’t give a rats ass about shiro anymore. He never gives him the black lion back (despite that being the original reason he left in the first place)

Shiro becomes a cardboard cutout of who he used to be. And to top that off despite the buildup between shiro and sendak Keith kills him off (despite shiro not even getting injured)

Now as a shiro fan yes I am biased. But, even then this doesn’t give Keith the excuse of being a Mary sue.

The mission where Veronica calls Lance stupid is the one where he leaves the team again to do his own thing.

Despite him agreeing with the others to take off the armor their tracking to run and hide the next scene we see is all of a sudden him being the savior of the episode.

no one else gets this. especially not Lance.

Yes lance is selfish. But I’d rather watch him be the black paladin than Keith.

Because in that Lance can learn and grow. Show that yea being a leader of a team isn’t as “cool” as you think. I wouldn’t loved the paladins being mad at him and him having to actually learn to grow up and be better.

Keith being the black paladin is just him being a recycled shiro.

I wish in all honestly that we got to see the characters be more flawed. and see them ACTUALLY grow instead of being either a carbon copy of another or just completely being thrown.

I hope you see this and I’d love to see your feedback.

Okay. At first, I was really liking this ask. I agreed with a lot of your points about Lance. While I have been heavily critical of him, that's only really because of how much people adore him and are afraid to criticise him. I've already stated, in my original 'Lance bad' post, that I didn't have an issue with Lance in season 1. I liked where his character started, but it was only in later seasons that I started disliking him.

I liked that he was insecure, but there was no pay-off to it. Maybe there were a few times he was reassured by someone, whether it be Allura, Shiro, Keith or whoever, but it feels like less of a trait/flaw and more of a way for him to be comforted. There's no scene in which Lance's insecurity puts the team in actual jeopardy, which would be a great way for his character to develop and to put some actual meaning to making him insecure.

I liked that he was flirty and goofy, because the cast needed a balance between the serious characters and the comedic ones. I liked that, even though he was goofy and comedic, the staff still tried to take him seriously. (Unlike Hunk).

So, yeah. There is stuff I do like about Lance, which is why I'm still treating him as fairly as possible in my rewrite. His insecurity is alluded to early, he's actually best friends with Hunk and it's not just saying that, he at least tries to defend his friends against Iverson, he is quite protective of Pidge, and he is capable of speaking to Allura (in SEASON ONE) without flirting every ten seconds.

But. In canon? I can't stand him. You say he doesn't get everything handed to him on a silver platter, but I don't see your point being proven. Instead, you point out how he's the constant butt of a joke. In season 7 and season 8. Yes, he's made fun of, but that doesn't mean he's not spoilt?

You also say that Keith is spoilt the most, because he gets the Black Lion and 'gets an out'. I feel like you just wanted to see Lance in the Black Lion more.

You claim that Keith is the worst option. That just because he has a fucked up backstory and was forced into it, it doesn't mean he's the good option. Um. That isn't why the Black Lion chose him?? Keith was the only one who didn't have selfish reasons for entering Black. Pidge and Hunk were basically goofing around but they're mostly comfortable where they already are. Lance wanted Black for selfish reasons, to prove himself. That's fine and all but it's not what Black was looking for.

Allura and Keith are the only ones who didn't want the Black Lion for themselves. A lot of people think Allura should have been the Black Paladin, which is fine but I honestly prefer Allura in Red and Keith in Black. Keith only went into Black's cockpit because Shiro wanted him to and the universe needed a Black Paladin. He did it for selfless reasons.

Onto your next point. About how Keith led them into danger and near death when he started. Um. He's just started out? And nobody has comforted him about losing Shiro (AGAIN). Instead, we have Pidge calling him a loner, Lance accusing him of using Shiro's death for his own gain, and everyone just being overall mean and nasty to Keith, RIGHT AFTER SHIRO DIED.

Honestly, I'd love to see you try to lead a team that seems to hate you. At least Keith gets his head screwed back into place before long. And calling him a B-tech Shiro? Should I remind you of: "You want me to lead Voltron? This is how I lead!" The whole point of that was to show how different their leading is. Shiro would rather play it safe unless he's emotionally compromised like at the end of season 1. Keith would rather hold nothing back and go at it 100 percent.

Also, I seem to keep having to bring this up. When Shiro was still there but was knocked out or unavailable, guess who was the one issuing orders? Yeah, that's right. It was Keith. Keith was always the first to ask Shiro what's wrong and then issue orders until Shiro gets back. He was always meant to be the Black Paladin, it's you guys who refuse to see it. I mean, if you look at his clothes, you will very quickly notice that it's not Red's colours. Mostly black with some red, white and yellow? Hmm, that's-- Oh yeah! That's Black's colour scheme. He was always meant to be in Black.

Also saying that Keith is spoilt because he 'gets an out' is stupid. Yes, I am insulting you because that's so far from the truth? Lance could have been dropped off on Earth while Allura stays as Blue and Keith goes back to Red. Allura could have taken a step back and let Lance go back to Blue and Keith to Red and Shiro to Black. Shiro could have stayed dead like he was supposed to and let nothing change.

That first episode of season four? Voltron are doing parades. The BOM are searching for important information to take down the Galra Empire. What, did you want Keith to do the parades? Surely, the people could understand that the Black Lion is out on a mission. There's no need for all five to be there. But, no. Of course, Keith is in the wrong. Regris dies right in front of him and he nearly dies out in space and he's doing incredibly dangerous and important work. But when he gets back, surely the others will be there for him after a fellow Blade died and he nearly did? Right? Nope. They just glare at him because there was an attack nobody could have predicted.

Keith leaves and nobody stops him. Keith leaves so Lance can stay happy in Red and Allura can stay happy in Blue and Shiro can get Black back. He leaves, not because he gets an out or is spoilt. The work he's doing is arguably MORE dangerous than Voltron's work. He isn't hiding inside a Lion, he's doing all this in person.

Saying that he gets to go around on Space Whale with his mother? The same one who abandoned him? While reliving past memories such as his father's death? While having to go through future scenarios again and again, essentially dying over and over to Shiro. His brother.

The whole point of setting some stuff up between Lance and Kuron is to compare with Keith and Kuron. Keith who would have been able to hear Shiro. He would have heard Shiro be cruel and snappy and he would have been on that case immediately. He would have done everything to find out what the hell is happening.

Keith is not spoilt. Lance is not spoilt either. Yes, Lance is given mostly everything he wants, but he still suffers. It's not directly correlated to what he wants/gets, but he suffers nonetheless. Keith is the furthest from spoilt. The only time he can get to relax? Um... He doesn't. Not even in the two-year time skip on the Space Whale because he's constantly suffering from images of the past and the events of the future.

Also, it's ironic that you call Keith a carbon-copy of Shiro, even if they're completely different. Because that's what viewers want Lance to be. They never admit or outright say it, but they want it. They want him to be traumatised, kind and serious, and they want the Galra to take something from him (like, say, a limb), and they want him to struggle to rely on others. That's Shiro. They want Lance to be Shiro but Cuban.

Lance would be a horrible pick for Black Paladin. As I've said time and time again. The reasons are in a pervious post if you want to find it. I've only just woken up at the time of writing this. It's kind of funny to me that I can provide a good reponse to this while I still have sleep in my eyes and I can barely remember the multiples of seven.

If Lance was white, I wonder how many people would still love him.

#vld #voltron #voltron legendary defender #character analysis #lance mcclain #vld lance #voltron lance #anti lance #anti lance mcclain #anti bp lance #anti black paladin lance #black paladin keith truther #black paladin keith #keith #vld keith #voltron keith

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the-conversation-pod · 10 months ago

Text

OM NOM NOM: The What Did You Eat Yesterday? Episode

And we're back! Ben and NiNi finally sit down to talk about their favorite food BL, and unpack all the ways that What Did You Eat Yesterday? made them grapple with queer mortality and long-term commitment. Grab a snack and a drink, and join us for the discussion about our favorite Comfort BL.

Timestamps

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

00:00:00 - Introduction 00:01:15 - What Did You Eat Yesterday?: The Granddaddy 00:12:08 - Favorite Episodes 00:19:22 - The Show that Keeps Coming Back 00:24:57 - Season 2: Mortality, Family, and Hets 00:43:10 - WDYEY is So Gay and Found Family 00:50:54 - Let’s Talk About The Food 00:56:36 - Final Thoughts (And A Moment to Drag Nobu)

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 (Coming soon thanks to @wen-kexing-apologist). 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!

00:00:00 - Introduction

NiNi

Welcome to The Conversation About BL, aka The Brown Liquor Podcast.

Ben

And there it is. I’m Ben.

NiNi

I’m NiNi.

Ben

And we’re you’re drunk Caribbean uncle and auntie here sitting on the porch in the rocking chairs.

NiNi

Four times a year we pop in to talk about what’s going on in the BL world.

Ben

We shoot the shit about stories and all the drama going into them. I review from a queer media lens.

NiNi

And I review from a romance and drama lens.

Ben

So if you like cracked-out takes and really intense emotional analysis…

NiNi

If you like talking about artistry, industry, and the discourse…

Ben

And if you generally just love simping…

NiNi

There is a lot of simping on this podcast…

Ben

We are the show for you!

01:15 - What Did You Eat Yesterday?: The Granddaddy

Ben

And we're back. Finally, my time has come. [NiNi laughs] NiNi has finally set down some time for us to talk about my favorite show after they embarrassed me in the Clip Show.

We are finally talking about What Did You Eat Yesterday?

NiNi

We are. You must know by now, dear listeners, that this is the granddaddy. This is the show of all time for us, this is the yardstick by which things are measured. What Did You Eat Yesterday? is an article of faith for Ben and I.

Ben, why don't you tell the people what What Did You Eat Yesterday? is about?

Ben

What Did You Eat Yesterday? is a slice of life food drama from Japan that is about two gay men in their forties-approaching-50, and it's about the daily challenges of their life as they try to maintain a long-term relationship with each other, and grounded around the meals they share at their dinner table.

NiNi

So simple a description. So, somehow, deep and devastating a show.

Ben

NiNi, how about you try describing our leads in this show?

NiNi

Hoo! Okay, let's see! So our two main leads are Kakei Shiro, played by Nishijima Hidetoshi; and Yabuki Kenji, played by Uchino Seiyo. These two are legends of the stage and screen, and it shows in the show. There's a cast of fun characters that surrounds Shiro and Kenji.

At Shiro’s job—Shiro’s a lawyer—there is Mom-sensei, Mom-sensei’s son, and various other lawyers in the office. At Kenji's job at the hair salon, there is his boss, who is a serial philanderer; his wife who he runs the salon with; and a cast of other hairdressers and assorted hangers on. And then you've got their friends who steadily become more and more important to the show as they go along. Shiro's friend Kohinata and his partner Wataru, otherwise known as Gilbert. There are a lot of other characters around. There’s Shiro and Kenji's families, there's their neighbor, Koyama. There's so many, so many fantastic characters in this little show. Each of them so distinct, each of them so fully fleshed out and human in a lot of ways.

I don't know how to talk about this show. I love it so much. It goes so deep for me. Like I said, it's an article of faith, almost, and I just get a warm feeling when I think about it. When I watch it, when I see all the characters on it interact, from the intensely important characters like Shiro's parents, all the way down to the lady at the supermarket where Shiro and Kenji buy their groceries—who is Shiro's partner in keeping his food bills down by pointing to the sales without speaking to him. Ever.

[both laugh]

Ben

I love their dynamic. It's so funny.

To talk about What Did You Eat Yesterday?, let's talk about BL, and why What Did You Eat Yesterday? feels unique in relation to BL. In BL, you're in traditional romance. You got two pretty people. They looked at each other. They liked what they saw. And they gotta figure out if they can be together. In What Did You Eat Yesterday? we're past the figuring it out portion. They decided they want to be together and now they're navigating what that means. Unlike in a traditional BL, where your ongoing arc is, “Are these two going to finally kiss?” this show is structured episodically, where each episode is about something going on in their lives that they have to contend with, and then we move beyond that particular issue.

There is an ongoing throughline about these two coming to a greater understanding of each other, learning to love themselves better, building more intimate relationships with the people around them, and building their relationship. But that's so different from the rest of BL. What Did You Eat Yesterday? episodes, in a lot of ways, can stand on their own. You can go back for What Did You Eat Yesterday? and watch some of your favorite episodes individually in a way that I don't think is as accessible with a traditional romance.

NiNi

I think what it is is that it's a traditional situation comedy. So it's not necessarily a serialized story, although there are elements that you keep up with—runners that go through the story—it is more of a “There's a situation. They deal with the situation. Sometimes there are hijinks, sometimes it's more serious. There's always some kind of a heartwarming moment, and they always cook something because food is the center of their home.”

It's lovely and predictable in that way that you know what you're going to get in a What Did You Eat Yesterday? episode, but also, you never know how things are gonna turn for Shiro and Kenji. Not in the sense of, “Oh, are they gonna break up over this?” Not something like that. But you never know if this is the moment that one of them is going to have a revelation, or there's going to be a moving forward in their dynamic. You just never know if that's gonna happen. So there's parts of the show, particularly around Shiro’s very complicated relationship with the closet, that sometimes you think it's gonna zig and then actually it zags and you're like, “Oh, my God, Shiro is growing.”

It's so fun to watch, especially at my age, to know that you can still grow, and learn, and change, and learn to adjust and compromise for other people if you care enough to do so. You ain't dead yet. [laughs]

Ben

I think what makes this show special for me is it doesn't exist in the bubble, and the issues that they have are specific to gay men.

The very first issue that we encounter for them is how closeted Shiro is compared to Kenji, who is a flamboyant hairdresser. Kenji and Shiro's first fight that we experienced, Kenji brags to one of his clients about his boyfriend, and he gets a little racy about it. And then later, when Kenji and Shiro are walking down the street together, they encounter that client, who comments on the details of their relationship that she gleaned from Kenji and embarrasses Shiro, who is deeply-closeted and doesn't want people walking around talking about his business. Kenji gets really upset about this and begins to cry and asks, “Everyone else gets to talk about their families and everyone they love that's important to them. Why am I not allowed to?” And Shiro doesn't really have a great response to that, because he knows he's in the wrong, and so instead he just makes some of Kenji's favorite food. [laughs] Which is one of the ongoing ways they solve their issues.

So much of this show is about the long term impacts of the closet and homophobia on gay men, and the ways it informs how we make bonds with each other. We mentioned Kohinata and Wataru earlier. They only meet Kohinata because Shiro has an encounter at the grocery store with a woman who also wants to take advantage of a sale on watermelon, but the watermelon is too big for their refrigerators, and so they decide to split it. They become friends. And, in time, they introduced Shiro to one of their other gay friends. And they do that thing that's kind of annoying from straight people. They're like, “You're both gay! Go, you know, mingle with each other.” And like, that's super awkward as hell, but it ends up being genuinely helpful. They do actually become friends. They start hanging out as couples together.

There's a really good examination about the fact that Kenji is not exactly Shiro's type per se, but Kohinata is, and Kenji gets worried that if he leaves Shiro alone with Kohinata, something might happen. And they have a really sort of ugly breakdown where Kenji admits this jealousy is in him, but he feels like he's wrong in that regard because he once cheated on a partner, so he doesn't have the moral high ground here. But it's still something he's deathly terrified of because he loves Shiro so much and doesn't want to lose him.

What's so special about this show is when they introduce something interesting in an episode, they're able to use that later, where you benefit from having seen that interaction earlier, but it doesn't matter if you don't remember all of it. You don't have to remember all those details about how he and Kayoko met to appreciate that they are grocery friends now, who take advantage of sales together and like to cook things together when there's a way to benefit. There's a beautiful examination of the mundane in this show that is really heartwarming.

12:08 - Favorite Episodes

NiNi

I wanna get a little bit into this idea that you had about the episodic nature of this and maybe do a little fun thing. Do you have a favorite episode of What Did You Eat Yesterday?

Ben

Depends on my mood at the time.

NiNi

What are some of your tops?

Ben

I think, in the first season, I really like the Christmas episode, they host Kohinata and Wataru. We had already seen Shiro make that meal for Kenji as the first thing he cooked for him. He tried to make the best dishes he could make the first night Kenji moved in with him, and that just sort of became their Christmas tradition because it just happened to be the holiday season. And I liked him sharing that with other gay people. That's also the episode where Shiro says plainly that he wants to take Kenji home so that his parents can see that he's not a sad person because Kenji's at his side. And that gets me.

We've seen the Christmas moments three times in this show now, because we have Kenji first moving in, their dinner with Wataru and them, and then we had Christmas again in the second season. But in the second season, they end up changing their menu because of their changing health needs. That was really well earned because we, the audience, were primed for another Christmas meal and we're excited to see it, but it was really lovely to see them unpack that their Christmas traditions are something that they have control over. This is really significant for me as a queer person, because we have to create our own traditions.

We don't get to have all of the same ones that straight people do. Some of us are not necessarily welcome with our partners around our families. We don't necessarily go home to see them. We often do events with other people at the holiday season. One of mine is getting other local homos together to watch the seminal classic by Rob Williams, Make the Yuletide Gay, a not great film from 2009, but one of my favorite films.

The other episode I really like is from the first season, the episode where Kenji invites his friends to meet Shiro to talk about adult adoption, particularly because we had follow up on that episode in the second season. Adult adoption was the right choice for Kenji's friends, but Kenji later in the second season refuses to be adopted by Shiro, because he wants to hold out for marriage. Once Shiro adopts him, marriage is not possible, and that is what he wants. For pragmatic reasons, older couples have to choose adult adoption to protect the younger partner from family members that the older partner does not like. But adult adoption is not marriage. Gay people want to partner with the people that are most important to them, like other people do, and it is kind of shitty that we have to do all this roundabout stuff just to protect the people we care about.

What about you? Do you have any favorite episodes of this show?

NiNi

I always like the episodes where Kenji cooks. Because Shiro is the one who does the majority of the cooking for the two of them. It's how he shows he cares, and he enjoys it, and he's good at it. And Kenji is always incredibly appreciative of the meals that Shiro makes.

But I always like when Kenji cooks for Shiro. Sometimes he cooks for himself because Shiro was not there, and those will be times he indulges himself and makes something that he knows that Shiro wouldn't necessarily approve of because it's unhealthy. But I always like when Kenji cooks specifically for Shiro, because he's so deliberate and thoughtful about it. There's one episode in particular when he makes some kind of soup for Shiro when he's sick.

Ben

Okay, that one is so funny because Shiro’s so independent, Kenji never gets the chance to take care of Shiro. So the way we will run around excited about BL tropes, like, “Oh, someone's sick. Oh, let's get some lukewarm water. It's time to fucking get this boy a sponge bath!”

[both laugh]

That's the moment that Kenji is having. Shiro is really sick and so has to be cared for. And so he's really excited to make a simple meal for Shiro and take care of him. But he's such a nervous wreck about it. We get to watch Shiro listening in the whole time. Like, “What the hell is happening up there?”

NiNi

[laughs] Shiro is so particular about everything and Kenji knows it, and so it's going a little bit badly. It's a little bit of a disaster. He pulls it together in the end.

Ben

Kenji actually did a good job.

NiNi

Kenji always feels like Shiro does so much for him, and Shiro doesn't let him do things for Shiro, and so he will always grab the opportunity to do something. He's always like, “Oh, we need something? I'll run, I'll go get it. I'll do this. I'll do that.”

Ben

Kenji cares about Shiro, so he takes care of their home.

NiNi

There is a situation where the washing machine overflows and part of the apartment gets flooded. Kenji notices that this is a thing that is continuously happening, and he goes out and buys a hose and says, “Well, you know, next time this happens, you can just drain it into the sink rather than it flooding the thing.” And that's when Shiro stops and he looks around at all the things that Kenji does to keep their home running, and he starts to cry. It's a very heartwarming moment, because you don't get the sense that Shiro takes Kenji for granted at all. That's not what this is about.

But it's just one of those moments where you really stop and take stock of how loved you are and it just overwhelms you. And that's the moment that he was having. But that moment was so earned by all the moments that had come before, where you see all the small ways that Kenji tries to take care of Shiro, and how Shiro feels like it's his responsibility to take care of himself and Kenji. And he doesn't like it when he doesn't feel like he's taking care of them. Well, he's realized at this point that, “Yeah, Kenji can take care of me, too in some big and small ways, and I knew he loved me, but I really feel like he loves me.” It's just a really lovely moment.

19:22 - The Show that Keeps Coming Back

Ben

This is our fourth outing with What Did You Eat Yesterday? I've been pretty close to this show the whole time it's been airing. What's it been like for you seeing the show come back three times now?

NiNi

I could watch this show forever. That's honestly how I feel about it. And the way that the show is set up, as long as Nishijima and Uchino want to keep doing it, I think we could get this show basically forever. It feels like meeting up with old friends every time you see a new bit of it, whether it's the special or the movie or new episodes.

It always feels like you have these friends, Shiro and Kenji. They've been living their lives. You haven't seen them for a while and then, boom. They’re here, and you're so happy to see them and you just want to know everything that's been going on with them. You wanna sit up at night and chat and catch up with their lives. Every time the show comes back, that's how I feel about it. I can't wait to sit down and catch up with Shiro and Kenji, and see what's going on with them now.

I feel like there's more stuff that maybe you're more aware of regarding the cultural significance of the show and what it means for Japan to be doing a show like this. So why don't you get into some of that stuff?

Ben

So the first show airs, and it's decently popular. Like it performs well in its time slot, which is one of the late night time slots. “Here's a quiet, easy to watch show. Now go to bed. You have to work in the morning.”

Uchino and Nishijima are veteran actors. Both of them have well over 100 credits. They are very successful actors who are sought out and are busy. And it was really surprising that they agreed to be part of this. I cannot overstate how significant it is for queer TV… talented, veteran actors are willing to play gay characters in a gay way, and are really proud of that work, and want to keep coming back and doing it. Uchino and Nishijima say plainly all the time: They are longtime fans of the manga and were very determined to bring it to air. They worked to rearrange their schedules to make sure that this show could keep coming back.

[Nishijima] is an Oscar winning actor now. He's becoming more internationally famous because of Drive My Car. So it's not like these guys are getting less busy. Both of these guys are so good.

If you've only seen Uchino play Kenji, you owe it to yourself to see Uchino play a veteran Japanese historical military leader or a fucking yakuza. He is so good. You get a small flash of that when he wears the suit in the movie, and in I think episode 3 of Season 2 where he flashes the macho thing. That's Uchino teasing the rest of us about the rest of the work he's done. He's played some intensely macho characters in his career, so it's really fun seeing him in particular playing someone as flamboyant as Kenji.

What's so surprising is the show keeps coming back. Like season one, we go from the fight in episode one, where Shiro yells at Kenji for even telling someone else that he's in a relationship with him, to them meeting Shiro's parents in episode 12, and Shiro reassuring Kenji that he doesn't want either of them to die, that they're gonna eat well and live a long, happy life together. I would have been okay. It would have still been one of my favorite shows if we just ended at episode 12.

The arc of season one is so strong of Shiro letting go a little bit and not being so stiff. He can't give Kenji all the things he maybe wants, but he can be a little less stiff about some of these things. And then they announced the fucking New Year special and I'm like, what the fuck is going on? And they're like, “Oh, yes. We’re going to a whole new year special.” What's it about? “Well, Shiro's really busy at work, so he's not gonna be home a lot.” And I'm like, oh my God. [laughs] This is so much fun.

We got to see Kenji and Shiro dealing with separation anxiety and missing each other. That was so much fun. We got to see Kenji trying to play the role of brave housewife for a while. We got to see Kohinata and Wataru's internal dynamic for a bit. That was a really fascinating thing for us to get to experience. We got to see Kenji tell Wataru straight up, “Stop testing your partner. They're going to fail eventually. And then what? Stop holding back. You ain't brave. You ain't doing nothing.” Great stuff.

And then we get the movie! And I was not expecting the movie either, and the movie ended up being heavier than I expected. The movie ends up having Shiro's parents regress and say they don't actually want Kenji to come over anymore. And that was a huge pain point that played out in season 2. I was not expecting them to hold on to that as long as they did. The delivery from Nishijima when he tells Kenji, “I know you're hurting over this,” was so good.

24:57 - Season 2: Mortality, Family, and Hets

Ben

Let's talk about Season 2, NiNI. What were the big things for season 2 that stuck out to you as sort of the big ideas?

NiNi

There was a definite throughline about mortality. There's a lot of death, and discussions around death, and inheritance, and family, and the next generation, and what happens when you are gone. That really sort of permeated the second season. But not in a melancholy way, more in like a contemplative way, a way that makes you think about who are the people who are important to you? What do they need? What do you want to share with them? What do you want them to have of you when you're gone? What matters about your relationship with them now? Those are the kinds of themes that the show used that runner to explore.

Themes of moving forward and growing up in certain ways, because one of the things about Shiro that comes to the fore at work, Shiro is the kind of person who has avoided too much responsibility at work. He's avoided being promoted. He took the job that he took because he would be able to leave work on time and go home and have dinner.

This is culturally related as well, because he's seen as a little feckless at work because he's not married, because Shiro’s not out at work, at all. He is becoming more out in other aspects of his life, but he is completely not out at work. So as far as anybody at work is concerned, Shiro’s a single man, and the idea of a single man of Shiro's age in Japanese society and culture. It's seen as him being sort of flighty and irresponsible, which is the opposite of Shiro, which is just so funny to me.

One of the things that he does this season, because of the nature of what they're trying to explore through this idea of mortality, is that he starts taking on more responsibility at work. His boss tells him that she wants to retire and she wants him to run the law firm. This is something he would have never agreed to, never even considered before now, but because he's in a place where he feels stable and secure in his life, things are good with him and Kenji, he is coming to an accord about things with his parents. He feels stable, he feels like his life is good, and so he's more willing to take on that additional responsibility at work.

I found that to be a really interesting part of this season, how the discussions of mortality threaded its way through the season and manifested in different ways. What about you? What are some of the things that you took away from this season?

Ben

Before I get into that, I really want to follow up on one of the things you mentioned about Shiro taking on this responsibility at work. This was a runner because it comes up about four times this season. I like that the thing that finally pushes Shiro over the edge is Kenji taking on more responsibility at work. Once he realized that Kenji was going to be a manager, and wasn't going to be home at normal times anymore, and was embracing this new responsibility in his life, that inspired Shiro to also do that as well. I really like that it was Kenji just accepting this sort of thing and being brave about it, that pushed Shiro. And I like how Shiro did it because he wanted to also help Osamu.

You get the sense that Shiro intentionally took a job in this law firm because he wanted to work in a small law firm where there wasn't a lot of room for growth and promotion, where they wouldn’t be constantly expecting him to take on more responsibility and deal with juniors coming up underneath him. He wanted to work in a small family law firm where the mom had a son who was intended to inherit and take charge of the firm so he wouldn't be expected to. You get the sense that he was surprised that he was asked to take on partnership in this, but it ends up being something that's positive for all of them because he likes and respects Osamu. But Osamu's passion is criminal defense law, which is not very lucrative for their firm, but it's what Osamu's passionate about.

We got to see Shiro and Osamu work together this season, and that this is not something that Osamu is being, sort of half-assed about. He got super worked up for one of their clients. I think in the first season, I thought of him as maybe a little lazy, being able to take it easy because it's his mom’s firm and Shiro’s really determined, but it was really nice to see that Osamu had his own backbone as a lawyer about things that were really important to him, that he wanted to do professionally. And some of that involves him not necessarily being hands on with the firm as he's not as good about these things.

I really liked that Shiro is able to extend his tendency to want to help people in a more accessible way this season. He gets so scared about the gay thing that he just ends up hiding from so many people. I really enjoyed seeing Shiro be more flexible this season. He took the fact that his vision is getting worse almost completely in stride. [laughs] Even though he was so grumpy about having to spend a bunch of money on lenses.

I actually liked the through line about how they're getting older and things are changing. I liked that the first episode this season was about them having to change grocery stores because Nakamuraya closed, and that was devastating for Shiro. That was the grocery store that he liked and trusted the most, and he had to go and find a new grocery. Thankfully, we find the same clerk at that one who is still helping them out. Speaking of her, we mentioned her earlier. I love that she has a completely distinct relationship with Kenji and Shiro, where Kenji’s like, “She talks to me all the time! She's great!” and Shiro’s just like, “What? She only ever glares at me.”

[both laugh]

NiNi

She speaks to him one time in the entire show.

Ben

I love it.

NiNi

That's when he goes to the grocery store and she sees him in his glasses for the first time and he's self-conscious about them. And when she sees him, he takes them off really quickly and she goes, “I think they really suit you,” and that was it.

Ben

I love it. [laughs] I almost cried! I was like, yes!

NiNi

I was like that's your friend! She cares about you! [laughs]

Ben

I think she also commented once this season that the fish is actually good at the new store. She actually protected Shiro once. She was being told to go around and mark a bunch of sketchy food off that needed to go, and she saw Shiro eyeing her with the sale button, and she didn't put it on the food that she didn't think was gonna be safe for them to eat because she knew Shiro wouldn't take it if it wasn't on sale. [laughs]

I really liked in this season how Shiro was really trying to accept that things were changing in their lives. I love Shiro accepting that Kenji was going to take on this role of manager after the whole thing with the philanderer friend of Kenji's, whose wife, now that their daughter has graduated, was like, “I'm leaving this man. I can't be with him anymore.” And then he decides to fuck off to Vietnam, and so Kenji's left running the store.

I like that Shiro accepted that they're getting older and that their food needs and eating habits are changing. That Shiro, despite his determination to save up as much as possible for their futures by being really pragmatic about their food budget, and probably other things in their lives as well, because he and Kenji never seemed to buy a lot of new things or go shopping a lot. Shiro increased their food budget in response to inflation and in response to the fact that Kenji’s cholesterol was maybe a little high, and wanting to make sure that Kenji ate the right food so that he would stay healthy.

I really liked the final conversation with Shiro's parents where they talk about how they want to make sure that Kenji is in their will, that they accept him as Shiro’s other half. That they chided him not to fuck things up with Kenji.

NiNi

That they found a columbarium that would have enough space so that Kenji could be with them.

Ben

Right, and Kenji took this as the peace offering it was from Shiro's mom and started thinking about himself as the beloathed daughter-in-law. [laughs]

NiNi

It's so funny because this is basically Shiro's mom saying literally over my dead body, but in a nice way, like.

[both laugh]

“Over my dead body,” but that's the acceptance? It was just so funny because all the things she's talking about, the columbarium, the inheritance, it's all well after I'm dead. But she's fine with it? Basically? This is the way that she's chosen to accept him. And he immediately understands that and he takes it absolutely in the spirit in which it's meant.

Ben

I love the way that they do it is the only way that Shiro and his family could. “Well, it's very cost effective for us to buy into this together right now. They're having a sale, so.”

I really like that his parents were very stern with him about it, but they're like, “We're not going to move to the nursing home that's closer to you because it's more expensive. “We will deal with the hassle of being further from you because you're 50 now. We don't know how much longer we're going to be around, but if we're here for a long time, we want to make sure that there's something for you to have to make sure that you're okay as well.” And I liked how Shiro had to learn to accept that from his parents, not as a knock against him for being a bad son, but as for them trying to do right by him as his parents. I thought that was a really significant move from the show, considering how much the idea is that the kids are supposed to put everything they can into taking care of their parents as they get older. I thought it was really inspired for aging parents to be like, “No, we wanna make sure that we are not a burden to you in our final twilight years.”

NiNi

The relationship between Shiro and his parents is so fascinating from the very beginning of the show up until this bit that we've seen so far. Not just in terms of the way that they are learning and growing, and finding ways to accept who their son is, and he in his own way, finding his ways to accept who they are without losing himself.

The structure of their relationship is also so culturally interesting to me. It just feels very Japanese. I don't know how else to explain it, the way that they deal with each other, the way that his dad never lets Shiro pay for anything for them, just things like that. His parents are so traditional. For a long part of the show, his mother would only wear kimono. It's only later on in the show that she stops wearing kimono all the time.

Ben

It's a really subtle thing with the costuming choice, but every time that she takes a step forward, she's not wearing traditional clothes.

NiNi

The dynamic is also interesting because Kenji's relationship with his family is so different than Shiro's relationship with his family.

Ben

Oh, let's talk about that episode, since you brought up Kenji's mom and sisters.

NiNi

So Kenji is the only son of a single mother, and he has two younger sisters. His family is very comfortable with Kenji being gay, with everything around that. He is very open with his family, he talks to them about Shiro all the time, but still his family have never met Shiro. With all the death-flagging that was going on around this season, his mom was just like. “Oh well, I, I want to meet your Shiro,” and he immediately starts panicking. He's like, “Are you dying?”

So they have the meet up. Shiro picks this really nice restaurant for them to meet up. He's very considerate and thoughtful about how he chooses the restaurant in terms of what distance they'll have to go, and he wants it to be a nice experience.

Ben

It’s also the restaurant that Oo-sensei took him to the first time when he started working at the firm.

NiNi

Yep, he picks the restaurant with a lot of things in mind, basically. And so they have this lovely meal, and then Kenji's mom explains why she wanted to meet him. A friend of hers, her son died, and she started thinking about what would happen if Kenji died and Kenji's like, “What the hell?” and she's like, “No, no, no. Just listen to me.” But basically, she didn't want it to be a situation where, if anything happened to Kenji, that Shiro would not be able to stand with them as Kenji's family. So she figured at the very least if they met once, then they're not strangers and Shiro has the right, then, to stand with them if anything happens to Kenji, and mourn him as part of the family, basically.

Ben

That was so touching. I legit sobbed after that episode ended. [laughs] I'm getting hot right now thinking about it. That was such an incredible episode. Oh my God.

NiNi

It was so much. Kenji's family is so the opposite of Shiro’s family. They're teasing and they're chattering a mile a minute.

Ben

They're leaving the restaurant and his sisters and trying to take the receipt from Kenji so that they can pay part of their share and he's like, “Go away. Stop it. I'm the oldest. Let me do this.”

NiNi

It's a very different dynamic than Shiro’s family, and it's not one that Shiro’s necessarily entirely comfortable with yet, because he's so much more stoic than Kenji is. But he is starting to lean into it a little bit. He's still kind of on the outside of things in that regard, but they're teasing him and he's doing his little shy smile thing. He's not entirely comfortable with them yet, but you can see how he will possibly get there. I don't think he'll ever be the one who's teasing back, but he will become comfortable with them. You can see it. And that's what Kenji's mom wanted. That's the ball whe wanted to start rolling. She wants Shiro to feel like family with them.

There's so much of that in this season. This season is just emotional hits after emotional hits in that regard. There's so much about family, and caring for people. Like, thoughtfully caring for people, not just absentmindedly caring for people, which is a big thing for me. Putting thought into how you care about somebody, and how you show that care for somebody, it's a big, big thing for me and something I enjoy seeing.

Ben

I really like how this season made me get super invested in a bunch of heterosexual characters. Like I ended up super invested in Osamu and his desire to become a prosecutorial educator for criminal defense attorneys. That was a big deal for him that he really wanted to take on this educator role, even if it didn't pay well, because it was really important to.

I got weirdly invested in the sort of flaky hairdresser. The other guy who works at Kenji's shop, and his relationship with his girlfriend who can't cook.

NiNi

Incredible. So incredible. I love that so much.

Ben

There are so many layers to this whole thing.

NiNi

And the fact that you thought it was just a one-off thing, but then later in the season it comes back.

Ben

Oh my God. So, Kenji is invited to hang out with one of his coworkers, and Kenji at first is nervous. Like, “Is this hot young guy trying to get me into his house? I'm a married woman, sir!” and he's super nervous about what the hell is going on? But it's—like his colleague’s really intent on him coming over, and he talks about his girlfriend, about how they didn't work out because she couldn't really cook that well. He didn't like her food, and then one night he just got tired of it and made a really nice pasta, and she got super upset about this because she tries so hard to fill this role that she feels like she's supposed to, but she's just not a good cook. And she's never gotten the experience of someone enjoying her food, and they just didn't work out.

I'm like, okay, well, that was a really cool story, but it’s a little bit sad. And then five episodes later in episode 9, we get the reveal that he missed her and they tried to work it out. And he tried to teach her how to cook more effectively. And then he decided to settle on baking. Somebody who’s such a stickler for details as her, “salt to taste” as an instruction does not work for her. So she picks up baking and ends up being really good at it, and then she has this moment where she gets to react to the first time of seeing someone smile and enjoy the food she made. And, besties, I ugly cried.

NiNi

It was a Capital M Moment.

Ben and Nini [in unison]

It was so good! [both laugh]

NiNi

I wept. I wept! It was so beautiful. And you now see that they figured it out. They figured it out through food!

Ben

The biggest thing about What Did You Eat Yesterday? is it is the kindest show.

43:10 - WDYEY is So Gay and Found Family

Ben

What Did You Eat Yesterday? is so explicitly gay. Everything about this show is gay. The fact that Shiro doesn't want to be a super successful, high-powered lawyer is unusual. He does not fit the mold of a traditional Japanese man, despite all of the other things about him. He's just so unusual as a Japanese man that despite all of his attempts to closet himself, he ends up looking weirder to people the longer this goes on. It's so awful for guys like Shiro.

For Kenji, everybody's gonna clock his ass right away, but Shiro’s not going to get clocked right away. And so often the fact that he doesn't get clocked makes him seem creepy to people. Like, there's that whole moment in the first season with the apprentice lawyer that gets assigned to him for a while, where that interaction ends up kind of a mess because Shiro's misreading signals from her, doesn't want her glomming onto him too much, and ends up accidentally really upsetting the girl by making her think he was trying to hit on her.

Oo-sensei is like, “Shiro, what are you doing? You've been a bachelor the 20 years I've known you. What the hell is going on? Please do better.” [laughs] And it sucks because he's doing so good, but he won't tell her exactly that.

Oh my God. Speaking of her. I love her so much. She got Shiro a portable induction burner.

NiNi

I want one. I absolutely want one of those.

Ben

They are so fucking useful. You can cook stuff on your dinner table without worrying that the whole fucking table’s gonna burst into flames.

She lies to Shiro that she got it as a gift from someone else, and she's just trying to downsize some of her stuff, cause she's realized she's getting old and has too much shit in her house. And so she's like, “Yeah, Shiro, I need you to take care of this for me so that I can get rid of it.” “Well, I guess if I have to do a favor, it would be rude not to accept the gift under these conditions.” I love her so much. She can do no wrong. She is my favorite.

NiNi

She knows him so well. I wouldn't be surprised if she has already dialed in to what's going on.

Ben

She absolutely knows.

NiNi

I think she knows he's gay.

Ben

She also knows that he eats with someone. She asked very politely in the first season if he has someone to share meals with, and Shiro said yes, and she just said very good. That was very tactful, ma'am. I approve.

Let’s talk about Kyoko a little bit, because we haven't talked about Kayoko much.

NiNi

I was just about to say all the women around Shiro are so great and Kayoko is definitely one of the greatest. Sorry, before we get into her, I just love the way that she ran into Kenji at the grocery store and acted like she was meeting BTS or something. [laughs]

Ben

She was so excited to meet Kenji, and Kenji's like, “Huh? What do you want?” I also like that Kenji was low-key kind of bitchy [laughs] at the grocery store with this weird woman rolling up on him. We see the version of Kenji where he is home with the man he loves and is loud about it all the time, or we see him at work where he is ON for his clientele. It was so refreshing to see Kenji as just another dude in a grocery store being like, “Why the fuck is this woman looking at me like that?”

NiNi

[Laughs] It was so delightful. I love Kayoko as a character. She doesn't pop up a whole lot, but every time she does, it's truly a delight.

Her main story in this season is she and her husband finally, finally getting to meet Kenji, and they're both so excited about it. And it's this whole event. When Shiro and Kenji go over there, Kayoko’s husband is talking Kenji's ear off and wants to know everything. Everything! He wants to know how they met. He wants to know everything about them. They're just so enthused about their friend's partner, because they know that this is somebody that Shiro loves, and they love Shiro. So they want to love whoever Shiro loves.

Ben

It's really fascinating with the way some of these dynamics play out. Kohinata and Shiro have been friends with Kayoko and her husband for years. Kohinata even longer. But they've never met either of their partners. Shiro has talked so much about Kenji that they feel they know him. But it's notable that it seems like there's this sort of line they can't cross and say, “I would like to meet him.” There appears to be some sort of etiquette line that everyone's toeing here, where they want to meet Kenji. It's impolite to ask. It means that there's some sort of gap in their closeness.

But they are just so happy that Kenji's finally showing up. They have this little dinner party together. And what is his name? Let me pull up his name real quick. Tominaga-san. He is so enamored with Kenji. He is resting his hand on his chin. He is batting his eyelashes at Kenji, he is like, “Please tell us. Tell us the story of how you met Shiro.”

It was fun for us as the audience because Kenji immediately begins retelling the story we heard Kenji say to Wataru and Kohinata in season one, and so we know the story, and so we can roll our eyes with Shiro when he says he looks like Kaiba Ryu again. And Shiro’s like, “Okay, whatever, bro.”

[both laugh]

City Hunter. It was so much fun.

One of the things I really like this season: we got a sense of the relationship between Wataru and Kohinata, that Wataru had a crush on Kohinata when Wataru was still very much a minor, and Kohinata basically refused to acknowledge it for like five to eight years because he thought it was inappropriate. That Wataru was so gay that he was basically disowned by his own family. That's a really painful thing for the two of them. I was really glad that we got some insight into those details. I also like that Shiro and Kenji were doing the math on their relationship and they were like, “Wait, hold the fuck up, bro.”

NiNi

They were like, “Hold the phone. What did you? What?” He's like, “No, no, no. Nothing happened until he was old enough.” And they're all like, “But still!”

[both laugh]

That is something that felt very gay to me.

Ben

That was very real. I was like, “Ohh, gurl.”

NiNi

I have friends who are with people that they met when they were in high school, who were much older and they're still with them now. Now that they're in their late 30s and 40s it’s not so scandalous, but they've been together a long time.

Ben

Yeah, absolutely.

NiNi

That felt very gay to me.

50:54 - Let’s Talk About The Food

NiNi

This show is so good! It's so enjoyable, and we haven't even started talking about the food yet. Oh my God. The food on this show.

Ben

What are some of the favorite things you've seen made on the show?

NiNi

Mmmm…Shiro did something. He made, I think it was a version of khao man gai with chicken thighs in the rice cooker. I looked at that and I immediately thought, “I have got to try that.” That and the sushi pizza.

Ben

I have made Shiro's lasagna.

NiNi

How was it?

Ben

It's very good. His steps are really traditional. I think that's the big thing I learned when I've been copying some of his stuff. Shiro’s cooking food that you would find in like a basic recipe you would find somewhere else. What Shiro’s really good at is balancing his time for all the dishes he needs to make so that you have all of the four or five side dishes he wants to have every time you sit down, which I don't like to do. That's too many dishes. [laughs]

NiNi

That's very much Japanese cooking, though.

Ben

Five different bowls per person. Hell to the no. I am a Creole food home cook. It's all going in one fucking pot.

NiNi

[laughs] They do some one pot stuff sometimes, though. It's really good.

Ben

They do! Like, they have curry.

NiNi

They have curry and the same thing, the same khao man gai that I was just talking about as well. That was all done in the rice cooker, basically.

Ben

I liked that pasta that Kayoko made. I haven't made it yet, but I think about that one every time it's hot. I really liked that slapped together sushi that Shiro put together when Kenji's friends were coming over.

NiNi

That was good. I am also, like Shiro, not good at hot oil, so I paid very close attention to the tempura recipe to see if maybe I would have the wherewithal and the bravery to try it at some point.

Ben

I like that Shiro, despite being really determined about his own skills, how easily he collaborates with other people in the kitchen. I thought Shiro would be the kind of cook who was difficult to cook around, but he shares space in his kitchen so easily with Kayoko and Kohinata and Kenji when they help him out. Shiro admits that he's not very comfortable cooking with oil. Like, he's not very good at doing tempura, and he let Kayoko teach him when they hung out again. I like that he's willing to learn from other people.

I liked in the movie when Kohinata and Wataru's fridge went out, and they brought a bunch of food over to them, they had like a mini feast and brought some stuff for them to save. They invited Kayoko over to help them make some stuff. In this season, they were like, we really want to get these special type of cheesy pancakes and Kohinata and he are just working through the recipe together, which let us have a really cool moment where Wataru seems like he's also starting to mellow out a little bit. He's just vibing with Kenji and they're gossiping about their boyfriends with each other.

NiNi

I love that demon twink.

Ben

[Laughs] He is a demon twink. He's like, “Is Shiro turning 50?” He convinces his well meaning rich boyfriend to send like a whole party package to them with a big ass balloon saying congratulations on 50.

NiNi

I don't know how well meaning Kohinata was? Because in that same episode, where they're making the pancakes, he says, “I'm so sorry about the 50 balloon,” and he looks Shiro dead in the eye in this kind of way. [laughs]

Ben

But that's not Kohinata being aggressive. That's Kohinata being alarmingly earnest. He very much needs to see you forgive him in that moment. It's the same thing that happened when Wataru kicked him out with the clams thing.

NiNi

The way that I read it, because Kohinata is very into his fitness, right? He looks good. He's very toned and muscular. He exercises a lot. He's got a great body. He doesn't look anything like whatever age he is. And while Shiro looks good for his age, Shiro does not look like Kohinata. And Kohinata’s very proud of his body. He shows it off, like the things that he wears, and all those kinds of things. So I just thought there was just him being a little bitchy as well, but in a nice way because he's Kohinata.

Ben

I’m gonna think about that. I’m gonna rewatch it and see how I feel about it with that in mind. I don't think that's what he's doing. I don't think that's who he is, but I’m gonna think about it.

NiNi

But yeah, it's not just the food. The food always looks good and I'm always like, “I gotta try that. I gotta try that. I gotta try that.” But just the process of watching them cook in this show, the way that it's filmed, it feels very comfortable. It feels like you could actually make these meals. It doesn't feel over complicated. It doesn't feel stressful. It feels like just this calm time in the kitchen and it makes you feel like you could do it, too.

Ben

We've talked to Japanese friends of ours that mention that the food Shiro makes is actually very simple and normal for Japanese people. He's not doing anything spectacular with the food, but that's also, I think, part of the charm. He's doing something really normal really earnestly every day as a way to let his partner know that he still matters to him.

56:36 - Final Thoughts (And A Moment to Drag Nobu)

Ben

This is my favorite show, and it will probably always end up being my favorite show. I say a lot that as much as I like BL, I like the silly little stories about gay boys falling in love with each other. I really do appreciate stories about gay boys staying together. That's why I'm really glad that we're seeing more sequels. We talked about this in an earlier episode this year, I believe, how we feel about sequels, and I do want them to keep trying to tell stories about gay people trying to make their lives work. I really like that this show keeps coming back and has more things to say—that it feels like everyone grew between both shows.

By the end of season 2, we know that Shiro and Kenji have been together for at least eight years. I really like how they feel older. It's been almost five years since the first show released, and Nishijima and Uchino have changed in that time, and it was really cool to see the two of them exploring what it means to get older through these characters as well. There is room in this genre to tell stories about beloved couples growing together, and I am so glad that we have such a high bar of a show to refer to when we tell people we want that.

NiNi

You're talking about having this show to refer to, and refer to it you do, sir.

Ben

I do.

[both laugh]

NiNi

One of the things that I really enjoyed about this show is watching other shows come behind it in the same spirit, but not trying to do the exact same thing. Two in particular that really have felt like they came off the spirit of this show were Our Dining Table and She Loves to Cook, and She Loves to Eat. I want to see more shows in this general vein.

Ben

We called episode 6 of Tokyo in April Is… the What Did You Eat Yesterday? homage episode. There's a moment in I Became the Main Role of a BL Drama that we called the What Did You Eat Yesterday? moment where we thought that one actor was channeling Uchino's performance as Kenji when he was enjoying the curry that he was eating.

NiNi

As you said that, watching Kenji eat the food is almost as much fun as watching Shiro prepare the food.

Ben

We got some manga insights from our friend, Turtles. We were hoping to bring her on for this episode, but she's so busy. I love you, girl, but we gotta find a better time to work with you. She talked about how when they first moved in together—they didn't capture this in the show—Kenji was not as animated about enjoying Shiro's food, and Shiro got a little bit stressed about that, because Shiro's trying to communicate that he cares about Kenji through the food and he wasn't receiving a lot of feedback for that. Kenji picks up on this and starts being more animated and more forthright about enjoying the food because he knows it's important to Shiro.

Speaking of partners recognizing what's important to Shiro, let's talk about that motherfucker that Shiro used to live with.

NiNi

Oh my God. Nobu. Oh my God, what the hell?

Ben

I hate that man so much.

NiNi

He's so cruel. It is shitty behavior—absolutely shitty behavior—to not acknowledge and be grateful for somebody cooking for you. I don't care if you like the food or not. If somebody puts effort into cooking for you, you at the very least say thank you.

Ben

And when you use a shared kitchen, you clean up after yourself, goddamn.

NiNi

Cannot stand that character. The actor that they got to play him was so good, though, I really hated his face. Like—

[both laugh]

Ben

It’s the same episode we talked about earlier with the washing machine continually getting clogged and not draining properly. This happened years ago when Nobu was still living with Shiro. Nobu didn't offer to help at all. He was just like, “Clean this up right away before you cause problems for the people underneath us and they want us to pay for it.” And it's like, bro, this is his fucking house. And then he's like, “Whatever, I'm leaving. I'm gonna get me some chicken.” And I'm like, brah, you going to Popeyes right now? Come on now.

NiNi

And you're not even going to the Popeyes for the two of us.

Ben

That's the thing, too! It's not like he realized that Shiro was gonna be dealing with a pretty serious headache, and he's like, “Well, I'm gonna go get some cleaning supplies, and I'm gonna pick up some chicken on the way back.” He comes back like, like, “Oh, so you're still dealing with this. I'm hungry. You need to make some food, too.” I hate that man, so much.

NiNi

It really gives you an understanding, though, of how much Shiro has grown, because part of Shiro’s growing has been learning to love and accept himself. And you could tell in that flashback that Shiro did not love himself, and how much Kenji becoming a part of his life has encouraged him to love himself.

One of the things that I noticed about the flashback with Nobu is how he shrank. He didn't argue with him. He was thinking things in his head, but he didn't argue with Nobu. He just kind of shrank away, and he would never do that with Kenji. He will always fight it out with Kenji, and I really appreciate that. Not only does he feel comfortable in this relationship, but he is also becoming more comfortable with himself. I thought that was a really neat sort of juxtaposition to see how Shiro used to be and how far he's come.

Ben

What I want to reiterate, after musing on it so much, is how genuinely special it is to have an episodic show about the lives of gay people in our list of shows to recommend to people.

NiNi

You know I'm not so much on the recommends as you are, but I will sit and watch this show anytime, any day, anywhere, starting at any point. I will watch one episode. I will watch seven episodes. I will skip around in time. I'll watch the movie. Because for me it's about just sitting and having that moment with these characters that I love. It's like a warm hug. I like this show, I love this show. Long may it reign. Hopefully they come back again. Not too far away.

If I'm talking about a thesis statement of how I feel about this show, it is that What Did You Eat Yesterday? is a show about just going along through life with the person that you love. And that's all it is. There's nothing more to it. It's very simple, but in that simplicity there is so much.

Ben

I really hope we get to talk about this show again. I really hope that Uchino and Nishijima and friends are able to come back together for this show again. I will totally understand and respect if they can't, or don't. But I really hope they do! [laughs]

NiNi

I hope that we get What Did You Eat Yesterday? episodes every other year for the next decade.

Ben

If you have not yet watched What Did You Eat Yesterday? It is available on GagaOOlala. Please go watch it. I hope you enjoy it. If you are a member of our pod team and you are reading this transcript—[NiNi laughs]—and you've still not watched this show, I am begging you, please watch this show.

NiNi

She's gonna get a kick out of that.

[both laugh]

Right, so that is going to wrap us up on Om-nom-nom, our What Did You Eat Yesterday? episode. We out. Say bye to the people, Ben.

Ben

Peace.

#podcast #lgbtq #what did you eat yesterday #kinou nani tabeta #what did you eat yesterday?#kinou nani tabeta?#japanese bl #ben and nini's conversations #the conversation #on art #season 5 #winter series

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