Matsumoto and Eri, II

Ha! Free time! Whoo!

For today, we have "Matsumoto and Eri, II" which is the second chapter in a fake love story between our ever loved Matsumoto and Eri, his girlfriend. In the first episode, we find that Matsumoto has a "girlfriend" that he brings to the set, and the two of them go on a spree of shirking their duties and making the audience laugh in the process. The episode ends with Matsumoto having a small argument with Eri, but eventually "reconciling". Today's episode occurs about six months after that point, while the Gaki members are preparing for a contest against another group of comedians.

But first, housekeeping on this old dusty blog!

• From one "Eri" to another, I've done some updating on one of my non-Gaki related posts regarding Eri Hiramatsu, and the song of hers which I am entranced with.


• If you haven't noticed, there's a new poll up. I'm just curious to see what the viewing habits of this blogs readers are. Being cynical, I kind of stereotyped other Gaki viewers, but I decided to use the polling feature to get to know you all more.


• Fixed subtitle files and provided some insight to clear some confusion regarding the end of Itao's Car Crash, regarding the removal of the wife's facial blurring. Matsumoto asks "You aren't Itao's wife, are you?" to which she replies "Of course." This "of course" meaning along the lines of "of course not". Since she's not really Itao's wife there's not need to protect her identity and they remove her face censoring.


• Cleaned up the General Request Post, and updated the status of my "scheduling" basically to "whatever happens, happens". Also, I know you're probably bubbling to find some subtitles to the new Batsu game, but they won't be coming from me. I have hardly any time, recently.
  

Well, now that all the maintenance is done, on with the show!

The show starts like most others. The whole Gaki team is lounging in their dressing room, making smalltalk and just generally joking with each other before taping. The staff gives a debriefing of the plan to do their third "Breath-Holding" episode, which usually feature the Gaki members taking on a group of their comedian friends.

However, mid-preparation, Matsumoto gets a phone call. The flirtation begins and suddenly Eri reveals that the just happens to be in the neighborhood, and she wanted to come talk to Matsumoto. Given that they still had some time before filming, the staff and crew allow it, and seconds later Eri pops into the dressing room.

Expecting another adventure after taping, Matsumoto's mood brightens up. However, Eri drops the "We have to talk" bomb. It's from there that she drops the "We have to talk because we're breaking up" bomb. In an effort to stop his personal life from being shown to the entire viewing public, he scrambles to get the cameramen to stop filming. They keep filming, of course, or else it wouldn't be much of an episode, now would it?



Seeking explanation, Eri drops the "I've found someone else" bomb, which from scientific reports is about eight times more devastating than the "I'd like to be single" bomb. Eri lists of reasons why she's decided that it's time to move on, which Matsumoto tries to get Endou to strike down as complete crap. Endou, wanting absolutely no part in this lover's quarrel, smartly just keeps his mouth shut.

However, the part that's killing Matsumoto is Eri's refusal to answer if it's someone that he knows. Therefore, he just generally assumes that he knows the person. Suddenly, the ever timid director Akihiro Oonuma interrupts and tries to get Eri to spill the beans. Connecting the dots, Hamada figures out the reason why Eri refused to say if Matsumoto knew the other man and why Oonuma is referring to Eri in an close, affectionate way. (If he had no relation to her besides the show she filmed 6 months ago, I probably would have attached some sort of polite form of verb when commanding her to talk and/or attached a respect-showing suffix to her name.)

Enthralled by the juicy gossip, Hamada proceeds to extract all the details of the affair from the two in the guilty party. Apparently the whole thing started when Eri came to the show. Damn, Oonuma, you're a player. Apparently after the little spat Hitoshi and Eri had, Oonuma managed to work his way into the little crack in the relationship and started to push Eri away from Matsumoto. As Endou points out, they are even wearing matching necklaces.

Producer Suga, wanting a generally happy work environment, feels it is his job to step in and keep the "expendable" staff from pissing off the stars, so he confronts Oonuma, and scolds him for messing with a taken woman. Oonuma responds with a polite version of "I don't give a damn". Matsumoto, still reeling from the blow, wants to see if there's any chance of reconciliation but cannot put any words together. Hamada, probably sensing his partner's distress leaps in, and prods Eri to get her to give a status on how she really feels about Matsumoto, and how deep the relationship with Oonuma really is. Luckily for Matsumoto, she's still got a place in her heart for him, and could possibly be won back.

It's around this point that I started to think that in his younger days, Hamada might have been "the other man" a few times. He seems to know just what to say, like he's used to this situation. When Yamazaki and Tanaka try to force Eri back over to Matsumoto with a guilt trip, Hamada just tells them to shut up because this is Eri's decision to make, not theirs. Suga, sensing that Eri can generally go either way, gives Matsumoto a way to win Eri over by suggesting that they compete in the Breath Holding event for Eri's love. Since Matsumoto has experience in it, he probably figured he'd have the advantage. Both men agree, but just to get a grip on the magnitude of the situation, Matsumoto asks how far the two have gone in their scandal. Refusing to give up that information, everyone assumes that Oonuma's managed to hit a "home run" and score. However, Endou tries to pry the info out with "If you did it, you should just be a man about it and say so."

irony - (n.) When a man who would later get kicked to the curb for his wandering eye and general refusal to admit the details to his wife, tells another man that he should just admit it when he's having sexual encounters with someone he shouldn't be.

Now that both competitors are ready for battle we move on to the competition itself. Eri takes over as host of the segment, and has me laughing at her mannerisms. The arm flailing when she tells "Hiro-kun" to "STAAAAA~TO" just cracks me up. However, something unfortunate happens, and Oonuma is no longer to compete, and has to be pulled out of the water. Eri, finding that she truly loves Oonuma, performs mouth-to-mouth on her true love.



We then cut to a montage of how Eri and Akihiro's love for each other blossomed, accompanied by "Itoshi no ELLIE" by the Southern All-Stars. The song is a pretty special song in Japan because it was later covered by the great Ray Charles. It's praised as one of the few songs from Japan, along with the likes of "Sukiyaki" by Kyu Sakamoto and "Shima Uta" by The Boom, to get worldwide recognition in more than the niche "Otaku" market. This song helped set off a boom of Japanese naming that with names that were both common to Japanese and other languages, usually English or Chinese. Names like Eri (Ellie), Erika, Dan, Jun, and Reina which were also names in languages like English, Chinese and French, gave parents that "Hey, my child's name is now acceptable worldwide!" feeling.

Anyway, by the end of the montage, the audience as well as Matsumoto realize that there's no way for Hitoshi to win back Eri's heart. Endou and Hamada try the usual "You can do better" and "Those two nuts belong together" bits, but Hitoshi's little heart is still broken.

This episode hadn't yet been put in my big chart of Gaki episode summaries and rankings. If I had to choose, I'd give it 4 stars on my wonky rating system. It's not the greatest episode, but some parts are non-intentionally pretty funny, like Oonuma's Rapist Face when he meets Eri during the montage. I'd say it's only slightly less funny than the first episode, which I'd have to find and dig out of the pile of episodes. Unfortunately, there are some videos on my hard drive that aren't named correctly to let my find them quickly, so I'd have to wade through most of them to find it. So, I probably won't be putting that up anytime soon, sadly.

As a general conversation sparker, have any of you out there ever been "the other man/woman"? In middle school, I was, in a way. While the relationship between myself and this girl was strictly platonic in my eyes (partners for a school project. Nothing more.), she viewed it as more, and essentially left her boyfriend for me. After being confronted by her huge, jock boyfriend, the girl and I had a little talk about what the word "platonic" means. She generally lost all feelings for me after that, but I don't think the two of them ever got back together. Oh well.