did you know that if you rewatch a good show multiple times then you can actually end up loving the characters more and more and get sadder and sadder when they die even if you know it's coming? extremely fucked up phenomena, someone should write a paper about this
Han Joo Won: Like I care?
I’m still getting my thoughts together on the way the series uses multiculturalism and multilinguism, because it once again circles back to performativity as resistance but also to untranslatability as resistance, even if not in the traditional academic sense. It mostly applies to Lee Chang Jin, but I like that they did also show how it applies to Han Joo Won and how it’s not clear what is happening until he talks to his father at the end of the episode and reveals that he did grow up in the UK too. He’s using English to fend off Hyeok but also because he emotionally connects to it, and he’s not hiding his sadness but he is hiding the reasons behind it - even if Hyeok understands English, he can’t understand the reasons behind his “Like I care?”.
Kwon Hyeok: The massage parlor’s illegal immigrant was charged with prostitution. That’s nothing, Joo Won. Someone like you, who is true and honest, let that hold you back?
And what better way to show Hyeok doesn’t understand him at all and that no one will ever get him like Dong Sik does than saying all of that!
Kwon Hyeok:-- you get used.
Lee Dong Sik: So why can’t I, Han Joo Won, cut it out?
Kwon Hyeok: What did he say? You can tell Hyung.
Again, extremely sad that even someone who genuinely cares about Joo Won and is close to him still doesn’t understand him, just as how it’s extremely sad that Hyeok is so enamored with the idea of the Han family than he’d rather sacrifice himself and the relationship he could actually have with Joo Won. This conversation is such a good example of people talking at each other.
And of course, overlapping the line about Joo Won being prey of people “grown into the wilderness” like Dong Sik with the line about Joo Won secretly believing and wanting human relationships? A++.
Also Hyeok directly comparing himself to Dong Sik to pose himself as Joo Won’s big brother figure who can totally protect him so he should trust him, right after he said all of that about Han Joo Won and Lee Gum Hwa - of course Joo Won didn’t listen to any of that and focused instead on how he can totally fix this break up.
Old Ladies: What good is to be comfortable with us? How will you get married?
I love this scene so much too, Jae Yi does get to go to Busan and attempt to live as she had always dreamt of, only to find herself again back on familiar territory, but now it’s her choice. Jae Yi was forced to grow up very fast and she can’t get those years back, but she can get to explore and decide for herself if she enjoys the life she’s living and it’s not something that has been forced/thrusted upon her. Of course the years and the trauma will have always taken something from her and made her into a different person - but Jae Yi still has the chance to heal and her own choices to make.
(On a side-note, the pressure on the marriage thing here is interesting considering most people in the Manyang's gang aren't married and it's not something they ever ask about each other.)
“Oh, Nam Sang Bae is in the same position Lee Dong Sik was at the start of the series, if we had seen him from an outside perspective, having to do something alone even if the optics are terrible in the name of justice! This is such a cool narrative choice which will have no tragic implications whatsoever!”
Nam Sang Bae: Twenty-one years ago, I should have… I’m sorry.
Lee Dong Sik: If you’re sorry, why are you here like this? Do I have to see something bad happen to you?
I hate how it’s obvious that they have been each other’s family for twenty years and how they truly understand each other and they love each other AND THAT’S HOW IT ALL ENDS IN TRAGEDY. Sang Bae reassuring him so gently because he knows exactly what “he did to Dong Sik” and has no intention to do it again, and then he does it and it’s entirely out of love and guilt and that’s the guilt Lee Dong Sik said he shouldn’t feel and the one Nam Sang Bae said should never be forgiven - that’s why he can’t help himself- I’m throwing a brick.
And only two episodes after we saw Jae Yi confront Dong Sik on how it’s unfair to just make sacrifices for other people assuming it wouldn’t hurt them and also on how Dong Sik’s loved ones are sick and tired to see him put himself through this.
I added this screenshot entirely because I love the composition of the scene.
And I added this screenshot because since the first time I saw this episode, I couldn’t stop asking myself: why is he cutting the zucchini like that. I might actually make a separate post on my personal tumblr because like. Why is he doing it like that.
Han Joo Won: I don’t understand why you thought you are one of them.
This is how you know that Joo Won has never lived in a small town (and also that he has never belonged anywhere and now let’s all pretend I never said it so this is less sad).
Aside from the very obvious “You don’t belong with them, join ME” subtext (...subtext?) I am already thinking of the such strong contrast that we see when the same theme comes back in later episodes. Because here Joo Won is taking this personally he isn’t really in a place where he understands AND knows how to talk to Dong Sik the right way, which is why it’s so easy for Dong Sik to pretend to brush him off (the people of Manyang…). Like Joo Won obviously could do go at this in way better ways, but this is full on Hot Winter Joo Won that we are talking about.
Lee Dong SIk: You’re making a fuss to make me waver.
[...]
Han Joo Won: That’s not a debt.
Man, the things that must be going through Don Sik’s head
I don’t know what it says that when Joo Won talks about principles is always when he is at his most personal and emotional and when instead he’s clearly being personal and emotional in later episodes BUT in a way that doesn’t cloud his judgement, it’s when he stops bringing this up. Like once he and Dong Sik team up for good he doesn’t have to talk about justice, obviously, because they share a goal now, but all their conversations are way more personal and emotionally charged. Like once they are truly partners, Joo Won can talk both about the case and his personal feelings without tying them all up together as one indissoluble bundle.
Does that make sense.
On a cheerful note you know that Dong Sik truly loves that man, because all of this also gives me so much second-hand embarassment.
This scene hits completely different once you know that Park Jeong Je hearing the deers crying is how Do Hae Won remembers the moment that she realised she had broken him. This is her being hit over and over with the knowledge of her guilt - not just of what Jeong Je did that can never be revealed or she’ll lose him, but how she made him like that.
Yoo Jae Yi: Then maybe you should check—
Lee Dong Sik: It is Han Joo Won.
sick and twisted that han joo won run away to busan and everything and in the meantime the people he left in manyang did believe in him all along. yoo jae yi fucking egged him and she is the first one who doesn’t believe han joo won would have blackmailed her
Nam Sang Bae: You put me in, then come to get me. Chief Han must’ve tight you well.
If Nam Sang Bae would have survived the series and found out what the FUCK Dong Sik and Joo Won had spent all of it doing, he would had given them the speech of a lifetime.
I also love the obvious (metaphorical) punch he’s throwing here to see if it lands and Joo Won truly is an accomplice. He gives Joo Won a lot of grace at the starts of the series, but now that he’s fully locked in in trying to understand how Dong Sik got fucked over, he’s reconsidering a lot of things - especially since again, Han Ki Hwan is the one who pushed not only for Dong Sik’s arrest but for using police brutality against him. Nam Sang Bae was the one who actually, physically, ruined his life, but he’ll never forget who else was involved.
And you know, Joo Won did come to Manyang months ago to target Dong Sik specifically.
The show is so good at humour, it’s such a careful balance to keep to hit the right note but they always manage it.
Han Ki Hwan: I ask of you. It’s my wish. It’s your father’s wish, Joo Won.
[...] There is always one case that’s like destiny to people who have this job.
I like that this conversation, aside from showing some very interesting sides of Joo Won including his character growth (the way he confronts Han Ki Hwan here is so different than how he does at the start of the series) is also really works as foreshadowing for Han Ki Hwan’s flaws that will lead him to his eventual downfall: because relationships and feelings to him are purely instrumental or performances, because people are simple and the world is supposed to go in a certain way, he just. Says shit like this. Like there truly is any possibility that Joo Won would believe it - and I’m sure that Han Ki Hwan said things like this before, and thought they worked, either because Joo Won was too young to do otherwise or because Joo Won just humoured him and Han Ki Hwan never bothered to think more of it.
Which is super interesting because Han Ki Hwan DOES manage to become Police Commissioner so like, he’s good at politicking! He’s interested in politicking! He should be able to manipulate his son in better ways than “idk I’m his dad he has to do whatever I tell him” or “Oh yeah we are also policemen, let’s talk about that”.
Of course the reason behind it is that his son isn’t a person, it’s his son, but like.
Han Joo Won: I’m not like that person who fell for your show, married you, gae birth to me, then died.
I’d love to know if this was the way Joo Won in the show thought of his mother all along or if this is already progress towards the end point where he actually finds her grave, just because I’d love to know which part does he consider as "falling for his show”.
Their marriage was famously an arranged marriage - does he think she was tricked into thinking she’d have a glamorous life? That Han Ki Hwan was a good man? That they could be happy? Like he’s clearly addressing how Han Ki Hwan can’t use claims of love to use him as a tool, is that how Han Ki Hwan did it? He told her that they could one day grow to love each other? That he even if there was no love involved, there could be care and respect and affection?
This scene always get me, there is something so terrible and wrong in the way Yoo Yeon’s body, that Dong Sik has been looking for so long and held so tenderly, is now the subject of an autopsy and Dong Sik, in order to bring her justice, is forced to look at her clinically as just a murder victim. It's a common pattern with Dong Sik - like the way he tells Nam Sang Bae that he’s come to the station because Yoo Yeon is dead and can’t get any more dead but Nam Sang Bae is in danger, or the way he tells Joo Won to be careful because Nam Sang Bae might already be dead but Joo Won is whole and alive and he should stay that way first and foremost - and usually I love what it says about Dong Sik as a character, but this is still a lot.
Registered Message: The phone is off. After the beep you’ll be transferred to voicemail…
sick and twisted that all those feelings and rawness were given TO LEE CHANG JIN IMMEDIATELY AFTER HE KILLED NAM SANG BAE, SICK AND TWISTED
Gods this shot. The way Joo Won begs forgiveness to a dead man and then Dong Sik begs him to wake up and Joo Won has failed to do everything else tonight but at least he can. Hold him.
Following the announcement of a new Shinkansen type due to enter service on the Tôhoku Shinkansen in 2030, let's have a quick look at the oldest trains on the line, that will be replaced.
The E2 is the oldest high-speed train type that JR East owns, and many examples have already been retired. Built for the slower Jôetsu route to Niigata, they operate the Yamabiko and all-stop Nasuno services.
The E10s will also replace E5 sets. This sounds unreal to me, the E5 is the pinnacle of Shinkansen, still the only train running at 320 km/h in Japan (coupled with the E6, when the couplings work), and still young, having been introduced in 2011! Granted, by 2030, the first E5s will be nearly 20 years old, but they're probably not going to disappear completely in one go.
Photos taken at Utsunomiya station (as far North as I've ever been in Japan).
