S01.E02: A Monkey on a Quest

[Guest]

Quote

Jin is pressured to make a statement after an offensive meme video of him goes viral.

Dropping May 24, 2023

[AnimeMania]

There is a lot of school vandalism, you would think they would increase security or surveillance.

[Camera One]

I didn't realize until I finished that this episode had a shorter runtime.  I'm still not used to uneven episode lengths in streaming shows.

This second episode was still solid, though a bit less focused.

I was surprised we spent so much time with the father in this one, since I didn't expect him to be a major character.  It humanized him, though we still haven't seen a one-on-one scene with Jin and his dad.  Their relationship seemed so distant in the previous episode.  Maybe they could have said he had to travel a lot for business, or something. 

The father could have asked the retiring boss to put in a new word with the new boss, or he could still have promoted him in the last month, couldn't he?  I suppose this could just be the father still not being able to speak up for himself.  The boss was rather dismissive even after the Bon Jovi bonding.

I'm not sure why they needed to have Wei-Chen steal his father's staff, if the consequence is that his father's army cannot protect themselves from invasion.  It was unclear why Guanyin was helping him.  I thought she saw him putting the staff in his ear, so why did she ask where it was?  How was Wei-Chen living on his own and buying clothes, etc. before Guanyin got the apartment?  From the trailer, I thought maybe this would be a flashback but it wasn't.

It was disappointing to see Jin sell out and take the blond kid up on his offer to talk to the coach.  I think the coach would have given him the last spot on the team anyway, despite the weight room mishap.  I think they could have given Jin a better reason for taking the "easy" way to get on the team.

It was nice seeing Jin apologize to that friend who was mad at him.

On 5/24/2023 at 3:37 AM, AnimeMania said:

There is a lot of school vandalism, you would think they would increase security or surveillance.

I suppose the vandalism only happened last week, and schools often don't have a huge budget.

[Guest]

Watching Jin lie to appease those who are racist towards him was difficult to watch but also felt really true to life. 

On 5/25/2023 at 7:23 AM, Camera One said:

It humanized him, though we still haven't seen a one-on-one scene with Jin and his dad.  Their relationship seemed so distant in the previous episode.  Maybe they could have said he had to travel a lot for business, or something. 

Speaking from my experience their relationship is probably is just distant because that is common in the culture. My father was very present in my life but he never opened up and let me or my siblings in at all. There is so much about him I will never know. So much so that we recently found out that his entire genealogy is completely different than we thought. I have no clue if he didn’t know the truth or if he knew all along and just never told us. 

[Stardancer Supreme]

I'm glad Jin is not the only student of color in this high school. It would have seemed really weird for him to be the only one that Wei-Chen could be placed with, even though we know that Jin was chosen on purpose.

I wonder who is going to clean up all the destruction that is in Wei-Chen's wake?