Latest / The Bechdel Cast / Swing Girls with Ayumi Shinozaki

Transcript

Swing Girls with Ayumi Shinozaki · The Bechdel Cast

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: On the Bechdelcast. The questions asked if movies have.
• 0:04
  Speaker 2: Women and them, are all their discussions just boyfriends and husbands,
• 0:08
  Speaker 2: or do they have individualism? It's the patriarchy, zeph and
• 0:12
  Speaker 2: best start changing it with the Bechdel Cast.
• 0:16
  Speaker 3: Hey Jamie, Hey Caitlin, do you want to start a
• 0:19
  Speaker 3: little band with me?
• 0:21
  Speaker 2: No?
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Oh, unless uh there's a baseball player I can impress,
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: but twist. I love playing the baritone sacks.
• 0:30
  Speaker 3: And I love playing the trumpet.
• 0:32
  Speaker 1: This movie is so powerful that it got me through
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: some Barry Sacks related trauma. Whoa that I will be
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: over sharing in a bit, please, but I really for
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: years I've hated to test to despise the baritone sex
• 0:51
  Speaker 1: for what it baritone sex, bartones sacks, okay, for what
• 0:55
  Speaker 1: it's done. And actually that was a Fridian slip though
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: shortly makes sense there for what it did to my life. Mm,
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: and now I realize that it's actually a tool by
• 1:05
  Speaker 1: which women can come of age and empower themselves. Yes,
• 1:09
  Speaker 1: and so actually it's amazing when well did properly.
• 1:14
  Speaker 3: So true, so true. I don't have any saxophone related trauma. Brag,
• 1:21
  Speaker 3: thank you so much. And I was in jazz band,
• 1:24
  Speaker 3: and I don't have any jazz band related trauma.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: You were in jazz.
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: Band, yeah, because even though I played the clarinet, not
• 1:31
  Speaker 3: to freaking brag my ass off, no go for it,
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: but I was so good as a sixth grade clarinet player. Okay,
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: the band teacher was like, you should be in jazz band,
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: even though we don't traditionally have clarinets in the jazz band, but.
• 1:46
  Speaker 1: It can be a jazzy instrument.
• 1:48
  Speaker 3: True. True, So I was like flattery, Yes, of course
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: I'll be in jazz band.
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: That's so cool. Wow, how prestigious, I know.
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: And then I quit a year later because I was like,
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: I'm too.
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: Cool for band. Wow. And not to drag you, but
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: you're not. I'm not. I was so wrong about that.
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: No one's too cool for band. Look at this movie.
• 2:10
  Speaker 1: I know, I know that now being a band is
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: maybe the I actually do think that this, and I'm
• 2:16
  Speaker 1: also so excited to talk about this movie and conversation
• 2:18
  Speaker 1: with my favorite movie ever, School of Wrong, where it's
• 2:22
  Speaker 1: just like going to music class will turn you into
• 2:26
  Speaker 1: the world's coolest person, which is not true, but I
• 2:30
  Speaker 1: do like that it is a lie that is pushed
• 2:32
  Speaker 1: in movies for children.
• 2:36
  Speaker 3: Anyway. So today's movie is this Week Girls. Yeah, okay,
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: remember right, my name is Caitlin Derante, comma amazing clarinet player.
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: Period. My name's Jamie loftis comma amazing obo player. But
• 2:55
  Speaker 1: that's not jazz relevant. Yeah, I almost played the clarity.
• 3:00
  Speaker 1: And this is again. I've been talking about SpongeBob so
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: much on the podcast recently. I think the episodes are
• 3:05
  Speaker 1: gonna come out out of order. But I was talking
• 3:07
  Speaker 1: your ear off yesterday about it. And I will say,
• 3:10
  Speaker 1: in elementary school, where they like show you all the
• 3:12
  Speaker 1: instruments and they're like, okay, what instrument would you like
• 3:16
  Speaker 1: to play? I liked the clarinet a lot. But then
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: I was like, wait, Squidward plays the clarinet and squid
• 3:23
  Speaker 1: word sucks, and I don't want. And I was genuinely
• 3:27
  Speaker 1: afraid because I was a tall girl, that if I
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: played the clarinet, people would call me squidword. Wow. So
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: it was anticipatory bullying that kept me away from the clarinet. Oh,
• 3:39
  Speaker 1: it didn't even happen, but I played the Obo and
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: the Obo rocks, so yeah, it all worked out nice. Anyways,
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: this is our show where we talk about your favorite
• 3:49
  Speaker 1: movies using an intersectional feminist lens, using the Bechdel test
• 3:54
  Speaker 1: as a jumping off point. But killing, what the hell
• 3:56
  Speaker 1: is that?
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: Oh my gosh, it's just a media metric created by
• 4:00
  Speaker 3: our best friend at this point, Alison Bechtel, who also sorry,
• 4:06
  Speaker 3: I have to say listeners that there's a lot of
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: commotion happening outside my apartment and in the apartment upstairs
• 4:13
  Speaker 3: where there's a dog who is howling loudly, so you
• 4:18
  Speaker 3: might hear.
• 4:19
  Speaker 1: Commotion on my end.
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: But you know, this is a movie with some commotion
• 4:24
  Speaker 3: in it, true, especially before they get good at music.
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: Also, I love the part of this style of movie
• 4:31
  Speaker 1: when they suck. It's so great. It's so awesome.
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: This movie reminds me of one of my favorite movies,
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: The Full Monty, in the sense that most of the
• 4:40
  Speaker 3: movie is like them gearing up for a performance and
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: them like mostly sucking most of the time. Yeah, but anyway, okay,
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: the Bechtel test, Oh right, Yeah, it is a media metric.
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: There are many versions of it. The one that we
• 4:56
  Speaker 3: use is do two characters of a marginalized gender names?
• 5:00
  Speaker 3: Do they speak to each other? And is their conversation
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: about something other than a man. And we particularly like
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: it when it's a narratively meaningful conversation and not just
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: throw away dialogue.
• 5:12
  Speaker 1: And it's a good day for the Bechtel Test on
• 5:15
  Speaker 1: the pod. Very excited, and it's it's a good day
• 5:19
  Speaker 1: on the pod for so many reasons. Because we have
• 5:20
  Speaker 1: an incredible returning guest.
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: We absolutely do. She is a writer, translator, and host
• 5:28
  Speaker 3: and producer of Sparkle Side Chats podcast. It's Ayomi she Nozaki. Hello, Hello,
• 5:35
  Speaker 3: welcome a man.
• 5:36
  Speaker 4: I'm so so so glad that I got the chance
• 5:39
  Speaker 4: to be back.
• 5:40
  Speaker 3: Oh my god, We're so happy to have you.
• 5:41
  Speaker 1: Yes, and thank you for bringing us this movie. Holy cow. Like,
• 5:47
  Speaker 1: if you are listening and you haven't seen this movie,
• 5:50
  Speaker 1: you're gonna be in such a good mood. You're gonna
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: be in the best mood ever. We're covering Swing Girls
• 5:55
  Speaker 1: two thousand and four, and yeah, amy you this movie.
• 6:01
  Speaker 1: So let's start with your history with it. What's your
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: history with this?
• 6:03
  Speaker 4: Sure? Yeah? So Swing Girls? Well, actually, when I first
• 6:09
  Speaker 4: watched this movie, I literally had no idea what it
• 6:11
  Speaker 4: was because, for anyone who doesn't know me, I was
• 6:14
  Speaker 4: born in Japan, and grew up in the US and
• 6:16
  Speaker 4: then came back to Japan right after college. So that's
• 6:20
  Speaker 4: where I still am now. And when I first got back,
• 6:23
  Speaker 4: one of my first things was like, oh, I really
• 6:25
  Speaker 4: need to try to consume as much like basically not
• 6:29
  Speaker 4: like all the media I missed, because there's simably way
• 6:31
  Speaker 4: too much, but I wanted to watch a lot more
• 6:34
  Speaker 4: basically live action Japanese media because frankly, ninety nine percent
• 6:39
  Speaker 4: of what gets exported around the world, especially in the US,
• 6:42
  Speaker 4: is animation, which is fine. There's a lot of good
• 6:44
  Speaker 4: stuff from Japan, but you know there's more now. In Japan,
• 6:48
  Speaker 4: we still have something called the video rental store. They
• 6:51
  Speaker 4: still exist, So wow, is that I know this ancient
• 6:57
  Speaker 4: ancient technology. But yeah, So I got myself like a
• 7:01
  Speaker 4: rental card or whatever, a membership to my local video store,
• 7:05
  Speaker 4: and I just would wander the shelves looking for TV shows, movies,
• 7:09
  Speaker 4: et cetera. And actually, important note for today's episode is
• 7:13
  Speaker 4: this is still the only way that you can actually
• 7:16
  Speaker 4: legally watch this movie in Japan is going to the
• 7:19
  Speaker 4: video store to get it, oh wow, or to buy
• 7:21
  Speaker 4: the DVD yourself. So I just saw it like on
• 7:25
  Speaker 4: the shelf whatever. I didn't have any idea what it was.
• 7:28
  Speaker 4: I just saw, you know, the traditional cover with just
• 7:31
  Speaker 4: Tomoco on it, jumping, and I was like, okay, well
• 7:34
  Speaker 4: I like jazz music. I myself did not play jazz,
• 7:38
  Speaker 4: though I did play piano as a kid, but my
• 7:40
  Speaker 4: father was in a jazz fusion band when I was
• 7:43
  Speaker 4: like very young in Japan. It was like a band
• 7:46
  Speaker 4: of a bunch of Japanese guys and then my white father,
• 7:49
  Speaker 4: so it's very interesting. And then my brother was in
• 7:52
  Speaker 4: a jazz band in high school. He went to Frank
• 7:55
  Speaker 4: Sinatra High School, so it was a whole like thing.
• 7:58
  Speaker 4: In my family, jazz was very big. So I was like, well, yeah,
• 8:00
  Speaker 4: this sounds like awesome. I love jazz music. I love
• 8:03
  Speaker 4: seeing a movie that's like a bunch of girls all
• 8:06
  Speaker 4: hanging out whatever. And it seems very common. And we'll
• 8:10
  Speaker 4: talk about this with the when we talk about the
• 8:11
  Speaker 4: other podcasts I'm coming out with soon, but like, this
• 8:14
  Speaker 4: kind of media is very common in general, of like
• 8:17
  Speaker 4: a group of kids doing club activities or whatever. Like
• 8:20
  Speaker 4: the other major film that this director did before Swing
• 8:23
  Speaker 4: Girls was water Boys, which was basically the same thing,
• 8:26
  Speaker 4: but it was about a bunch of boys who who
• 8:28
  Speaker 4: created a synchronized swimming club.
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: M Yeah, I didn't realize that this is this seems
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: to be and you know far better than I do,
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: but it seems like this is like a formula that
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: he loves working with.
• 8:38
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I'm not super familiar with all of his other work.
• 8:43
  Speaker 4: It's coming out with a horror movie this year. It
• 8:45
  Speaker 4: was like his first movie since the Pandemic, and so
• 8:47
  Speaker 4: I don't know what he's up to these days. But yeah,
• 8:50
  Speaker 4: that movie water Boys was really huge, Like there were
• 8:53
  Speaker 4: like TV spin offs and stuff, and that was actually
• 8:55
  Speaker 4: based on a true story. So club activities in Japan
• 8:59
  Speaker 4: are like such a major thing. They kind of take
• 9:01
  Speaker 4: over your life. But I think what makes Swing Girls
• 9:03
  Speaker 4: so unique is that it's about a It's it's basically
• 9:06
  Speaker 4: like a rogue school club.
• 9:08
  Speaker 3: Right.
• 9:08
  Speaker 4: They're not official, they're not tied to their own school
• 9:10
  Speaker 4: actually and everything, but they're like legitimized by the end
• 9:13
  Speaker 4: of the story. So I just think that that's part
• 9:16
  Speaker 4: of why I loved it so much. And of course,
• 9:17
  Speaker 4: once like I first watched it, I was just like
• 9:19
  Speaker 4: blown away and would like, you know, like look it
• 9:22
  Speaker 4: up and stuff and just kind of talk to people
• 9:24
  Speaker 4: about it, and it was huge obviously, like an award
• 9:27
  Speaker 4: winning film at the time, but because of its inaccessibility
• 9:31
  Speaker 4: in Japan, like officially speaking, it's really not stood this
• 9:35
  Speaker 4: test of time as far as like basically everyone I
• 9:38
  Speaker 4: talked to who wasn't around for it at the time
• 9:41
  Speaker 4: just has no idea what it is.
• 9:43
  Speaker 1: Oh, that's such a bummer.
• 9:44
  Speaker 4: Yeah, but like it's very I think because it's a
• 9:46
  Speaker 4: tea in a movie of a sort, Like it kind
• 9:49
  Speaker 4: of makes sense to me because like there's always something
• 9:51
  Speaker 4: new for the next generation of teens to like attach to,
• 9:56
  Speaker 4: you know. Yeah, So it's it's kind of like how
• 9:58
  Speaker 4: everyone who has like Disney Channel growing up has their
• 10:01
  Speaker 4: own favorite dcoms that are like, oh, these are like
• 10:03
  Speaker 4: the greatest films to ever exist or whatever. But then
• 10:06
  Speaker 4: if you like talk to someone five years younger, they
• 10:08
  Speaker 4: have a completely different sense of what that is.
• 10:11
  Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, I guess that this really hits because it's
• 10:15
  Speaker 1: like if you were a young girl in the early
• 10:17
  Speaker 1: to mid two thousands, there's just so many.
• 10:20
  Speaker 4: It's a very two thousands movie for sure.
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: She trades her computer for a saxophone. You're like, whoa, Yeah,
• 10:29
  Speaker 1: that would never happen to. Yes, that's so fascinating. I
• 10:34
  Speaker 1: love that there is still a prevalent video culture. There
• 10:36
  Speaker 1: actually is still prevalent video cult. I mean, I live
• 10:39
  Speaker 1: across the street from a video store, but they're you know, yeah,
• 10:42
  Speaker 1: I did watch it for free on YouTube. Ultimately, I
• 10:45
  Speaker 1: will confess my sin same same.
• 10:49
  Speaker 4: It's interesting I did use that to rewatch for this
• 10:53
  Speaker 4: and that is not an official upload. So the subtitles
• 10:56
  Speaker 4: are also not an official translation. I still think it's
• 10:58
  Speaker 4: a pretty decent translation. There's a handful of things that
• 11:00
  Speaker 4: would have probably been checked by an editor. Like I
• 11:03
  Speaker 4: was very alarmed to see that they use the word
• 11:05
  Speaker 4: pow wow in the subtitles. I was like, what, that's
• 11:08
  Speaker 4: not what she says.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I noticed that. Yeah I didn't see that, Okay,
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: yeah yeah.
• 11:13
  Speaker 4: I was like, that is not a word that like
• 11:16
  Speaker 4: even has an equivalent in Japanese. Okay, But but like
• 11:20
  Speaker 4: in general, they're passable or whatever. And it's very clear
• 11:23
  Speaker 4: that like a lot of people like that has tons
• 11:25
  Speaker 4: of us, right, so a lot of people have watched
• 11:27
  Speaker 4: this movie through that, So like maybe it's not official,
• 11:31
  Speaker 4: but like that's like, you know, that's a lot of
• 11:33
  Speaker 4: media is this way, like you wouldn't be able to
• 11:35
  Speaker 4: find it otherwise. And there's just like so much Japanese
• 11:38
  Speaker 4: media that goes like unnoticed, and it's especially media for
• 11:42
  Speaker 4: girls and women honestly that don't get exported as often,
• 11:46
  Speaker 4: at least in English.
• 11:47
  Speaker 3: Right, So sure, I mean to the point that I
• 11:51
  Speaker 3: had never heard of this movie, because to speak to
• 11:55
  Speaker 3: what you were saying, there's not a lot of live
• 11:57
  Speaker 3: action film from Japan that crosses over that gets exported
• 12:03
  Speaker 3: to the US. And I mean, obviously that's true for
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: so much media from so many countries where our own
• 12:11
  Speaker 3: media making machine and a lot of our output is bad,
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: but it does get exported all across the world, whereas
• 12:20
  Speaker 3: we don't import that much media from other places because
• 12:25
  Speaker 3: of our weird US supremacy, which.
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: I think is slowly changing, but slowly changing.
• 12:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, So I was not familiar with this
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: at all, and I had no idea what to expect, really,
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: and I loved this movie. It is so fun, it's
• 12:45
  Speaker 3: so charming, it's such a romp absolutely ten out of
• 12:50
  Speaker 3: ten on the Rompometer. It's like mostly pretty grounded, but
• 12:54
  Speaker 3: also there are moments where it delves into like pretty
• 12:57
  Speaker 3: absurdist territory, which I love, love of absurdist humor. Yes,
• 13:01
  Speaker 3: there's just funny jokes throughout the whole base. It's so
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: great and I'm so glad you introduced it to us,
• 13:10
  Speaker 3: and I'm so excited to talk about it. But yeah,
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: this was my first time seeing it. I had not
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: watched it before like three days ago, Jamie, what about You.
• 13:19
  Speaker 1: I was not familiar with this movie. I saw when
• 13:22
  Speaker 1: I was logging in on letterbox. There were a few
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: friends who had seen it, and they were all like,
• 13:27
  Speaker 1: why is no one talking about this? So I do
• 13:31
  Speaker 1: feel like this is the kind of movie that, especially
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: because of what a wildly thriving market millennial nostalgia is,
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: and like this movie should be playing places. People would
• 13:42
  Speaker 1: flip for this movie because I mean, like you and
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: I connected with right away, Caitlin, like two of our
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: favorite movies have the same formula. It's a classic formula
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: that rarely, if ever, centers teen girls, and like it Happened,
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: it's centered teen girls. Yeah, I also I hadn't seen it.
• 14:00
  Speaker 1: I also really loved it, and it also at first
• 14:03
  Speaker 1: I was like, oh my gosh, it's a band movie,
• 14:05
  Speaker 1: which I feel like in a lot of Hollywood media
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: the band movie outside of School of Rock, but those
• 14:12
  Speaker 1: kids are much younger, so it's different. The band is
• 14:16
  Speaker 1: like I don't know. I was deep into the band,
• 14:20
  Speaker 1: and the band is portrayed as horny and weird and
• 14:26
  Speaker 1: side characters. But what if there were horny and weird
• 14:29
  Speaker 1: and main characters. And that is what Swing Girls explores.
• 14:34
  Speaker 1: But no, I really loved it. I loved being in
• 14:37
  Speaker 1: band as a high schooler. And I dated the baritone
• 14:43
  Speaker 1: saxophone player and he did break my heart. It is
• 14:49
  Speaker 1: very funny how he did it, though, Yes, so I
• 14:52
  Speaker 1: was obsessed with him. He was two years older than me.
• 14:54
  Speaker 1: I played the obo, he played the barry sax and
• 14:58
  Speaker 1: it was an unspoken rule in band that you weren't
• 15:00
  Speaker 1: supposed to date within your section. And we were both woodwinds,
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: so already it was like, oh my god, fascinating, like scandal, scandal.
• 15:07
  Speaker 1: And also he was really really good, like I was
• 15:11
  Speaker 1: like a serviceable second chair oboist, but he was really good,
• 15:16
  Speaker 1: like he wanted to go to college for it, and
• 15:18
  Speaker 1: so I was Also my involvement with him was interpreted
• 15:22
  Speaker 1: as a threat to his baritone saxophone career. Oh gee,
• 15:26
  Speaker 1: his AIM screen name was Barry sax Sex God. Wait,
• 15:31
  Speaker 1: you have talked about this.
• 15:34
  Speaker 4: Incredible.
• 15:35
  Speaker 1: He's kind of iconic, Like now I think he's like
• 15:37
  Speaker 1: married with kids, but like he's icon in my life,
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: it will always be Barry sack Sex God. I will
• 15:43
  Speaker 1: never forget my first AIM notification from Barry sack Sex. God.
• 15:47
  Speaker 1: I was like, oh my god, it's my big day. Anyways,
• 15:51
  Speaker 1: so he went to college for Barry sax He literally
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: measured in saxophone at Music College, question Mark. I don't know,
• 16:01
  Speaker 1: but I was still in high school. And then about
• 16:03
  Speaker 1: halfway into his freshman year in college, he broke up
• 16:07
  Speaker 1: with me and gave me the and said at the time,
• 16:10
  Speaker 1: which I did not believe. He was like, I can't
• 16:14
  Speaker 1: be in a relationship with you anymore. I don't have
• 16:17
  Speaker 1: enough time to practice the baritone saxophone. Like he literally
• 16:21
  Speaker 1: dumped me for the baritone sax which is why I
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: have such beef with this thing. For a long time,
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: I was convinced that the love of my life was
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: taken from me by the baritone saxophone. But I saw
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: him like a couple of years after that, and I
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: was just like, please put my mind at ease, like
• 16:39
  Speaker 1: it was another person, right, like you met someone at
• 16:42
  Speaker 1: college and he was like, no, it was the baritone,
• 16:47
  Speaker 1: and by that point he had no reason to lie
• 16:49
  Speaker 1: to me about it, so I was left for the
• 16:53
  Speaker 1: baritone saxophone a humbling experience.
• 16:56
  Speaker 4: This is a movie, Jamie. You have to write this
• 16:58
  Speaker 4: script like this is so funny.
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: My mom literally let me take the day off of
• 17:04
  Speaker 1: school because which was one of the nicest things she
• 17:07
  Speaker 1: ever did, where I was like too sad to go
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: to school and she was like, yeah, okay, sure, But yeah,
• 17:13
  Speaker 1: my first breakup was literally because of the baritone sax
• 17:15
  Speaker 1: So when I see it, I'm like, hmm, what are
• 17:18
  Speaker 1: you gonna do to me this time? Motherfucker.
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: At least the barry sax isn't super prominently featured in
• 17:25
  Speaker 3: this movie. We see it on screen, but it's the
• 17:28
  Speaker 3: tenor Sacks that really.
• 17:29
  Speaker 1: Gets the tenor the star of the show, and that
• 17:33
  Speaker 1: just wasn't really my type. I'm like, give me the
• 17:36
  Speaker 1: biggest sex fund you have. But but yeah, no, I
• 17:43
  Speaker 1: was very familiar with this scene, and I also think
• 17:45
  Speaker 1: it's really I'm really excited to talk about how like
• 17:49
  Speaker 1: this cultural exchange between Japan and America that like, part
• 17:54
  Speaker 1: of this movie is sort of based around and I
• 17:56
  Speaker 1: did a little research into like how did jazz get
• 18:00
  Speaker 1: to Japan? And I'm just like really excited to talk
• 18:02
  Speaker 1: about all this stuff. But at the end of the day,
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: it's a movie about girls making a jazz band and
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: becoming the coolest people at their school. Like it is incredible, incredible,
• 18:16
  Speaker 1: And there's a token boy.
• 18:18
  Speaker 3: Yeah it's swing girls and a boy, which he writes
• 18:22
  Speaker 3: on a sign.
• 18:24
  Speaker 1: Right, He's like, I demand to be perceived. I'm like,
• 18:27
  Speaker 1: I guess, I guess why not? I guess. Yeah.
• 18:30
  Speaker 4: So by the end the whole the band name is
• 18:33
  Speaker 4: just swing Girl, so he does become a swing girl himself.
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: I think you can say, yeah, it's true, Yeah, swing
• 18:38
  Speaker 3: boy erasure.
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: You actually love to see it.
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: But yeah, let's take a quick break and then we'll
• 18:45
  Speaker 3: come back for the.
• 18:47
  Speaker 5: Recap and we're back.
• 19:00
  Speaker 1: Okay, what happens in Swim Girls? I can't wait to
• 19:03
  Speaker 1: watch this movie again.
• 19:07
  Speaker 3: Yes, Okay. So we open on a group of high
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: school girls taking a summer makeup math class. Among these
• 19:19
  Speaker 3: students are Tomoko, Yoshi and Naomi. Although I don't think
• 19:24
  Speaker 3: they're friends yet, they just all happen to be in
• 19:27
  Speaker 3: class together.
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, it's kind of breakfast club vibes s Yeah yeah.
• 19:32
  Speaker 3: None of them are thrilled to be there, including their
• 19:35
  Speaker 3: teacher mister Ozawa. Tomoko, who's like daydreaming and staring out
• 19:40
  Speaker 3: the window, sees the school brass band load onto a
• 19:45
  Speaker 3: bus and she realizes they leave without their lunches, So
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: Tomoko convinces mister Ozawa to let her and the other
• 19:55
  Speaker 3: girls in the class blow off school and take the
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: lunches to the band, who are playing at another school
• 20:02
  Speaker 3: during a baseball game.
• 20:04
  Speaker 1: One of the.
• 20:05
  Speaker 3: Members of the brass band is Takuo, who is a
• 20:09
  Speaker 3: teen boy who plays the symbols, and he seems to
• 20:12
  Speaker 3: be considering quitting the band. He has like a note
• 20:16
  Speaker 3: that he's ready to give to the band leader. So Tomoko, Yoshi,
• 20:22
  Speaker 3: and Naomi and the other girls hop on a train
• 20:26
  Speaker 3: to head to the other school. They eat one of
• 20:29
  Speaker 3: the lunches along the way, they fall asleep, so they
• 20:33
  Speaker 3: miss their stop, which means they have to get off
• 20:36
  Speaker 3: at a different stop and walk, which means they're out
• 20:39
  Speaker 3: in the heat with all of this food. They're like
• 20:42
  Speaker 3: spilling some of the food on the ground and then
• 20:45
  Speaker 3: like gathering it back up and putting it back in
• 20:47
  Speaker 3: like the bento box.
• 20:48
  Speaker 1: It is shocking that by the time the food gets
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: to the band that it's basically intact, right, But I
• 20:54
  Speaker 1: am headcanon convinced that it is very much the girls
• 20:58
  Speaker 1: dropping the food onto the ground that got the band sick.
• 21:06
  Speaker 3: So what happens is they finally arrive at the other
• 21:09
  Speaker 3: school and pass out the lunches. Taco ends up not
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: receiving a lunch because they're short one because they ate
• 21:16
  Speaker 3: one of the lunches on the way.
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: Oh my god. And then the greatest slow zoom in
• 21:21
  Speaker 1: all of cinematic history, where you know, like everyone is
• 21:25
  Speaker 1: lying about it, And then there's which character is there's
• 21:28
  Speaker 1: a slow zoom into the side of her mouth where
• 21:31
  Speaker 1: there's a single grain of rice. Yes, and that being
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: the initiation for their relationship is so delightful.
• 21:40
  Speaker 4: And he doesn't say anything, he just notices and keeps
• 21:43
  Speaker 4: it going.
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: Yeah, he's not a narc. He's not a nark, but
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: I do think he takes it out on them over
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: like that that lost lunch. There were consequences for Tomokov.
• 21:55
  Speaker 3: Right, But because he doesn't eat one of the lunches.
• 21:58
  Speaker 3: It means that he and he alone avoids getting sick
• 22:01
  Speaker 3: because everyone else in the brass band ends up in
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: the hospital with food poisoning, which means the school is
• 22:09
  Speaker 3: looking for a substitute band and the girls in the
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: makeup summer class are made to join the band and
• 22:19
  Speaker 3: like be the substitutes as like punishment for ruining the lunches?
• 22:24
  Speaker 1: Which does that mean that their teacher just like is chilling,
• 22:28
  Speaker 1: Like is it just no longer teaching a class?
• 22:30
  Speaker 4: Yeah? Basically, I think I think there were other students
• 22:33
  Speaker 4: in the class, so it's not just that, but like
• 22:36
  Speaker 4: it's like basically that whole group of girls, and they
• 22:38
  Speaker 4: were definitely also like you know, doing it to get
• 22:41
  Speaker 4: out of taking class, right, but for sure basically they
• 22:44
  Speaker 4: could be excused, like get a special excuse for missing
• 22:48
  Speaker 4: out on the class by doing this instead.
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: Right, Yeah, which is always what a pre bot. I
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: was like always looking for that excuse. There was an
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: algebra class I took in high school where I couldn't
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: do well, and then the teacher was like, if you
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: write book reports for books you're reading, I'll give you
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: ten extra points on quizzes that you fail. I was
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: like okay, I'll do it.
• 23:10
  Speaker 4: Yeah. The first like the opening scene of the girls
• 23:13
  Speaker 4: all clearly just like fucking around not actually trying to
• 23:15
  Speaker 4: play any instruments, reminded me so much of when I
• 23:19
  Speaker 4: was in junior high school, because in my junior high
• 23:22
  Speaker 4: school you could have like a you would have like
• 23:24
  Speaker 4: what's called the talents class, which was like basically year
• 23:26
  Speaker 4: one extracurricular. So in I think eighth grade, I switched
• 23:30
  Speaker 4: to Latin because I'm a nerd, huge surprise, and the
• 23:35
  Speaker 4: Latin class was clearly like the class that like half
• 23:37
  Speaker 4: the kids were there just to fuck around and not
• 23:39
  Speaker 4: actually study. And it was very frustrating because the other
• 23:43
  Speaker 4: half was like, no, but we actually are here to
• 23:45
  Speaker 4: learn Latin because we're very serious about it.
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: Everyone else is like suete omnes, Wow, that's all I
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: remember that.
• 23:52
  Speaker 4: Yeah, hello, I learned how to play Egyptian rat screw
• 23:55
  Speaker 4: in Latin class. I don't think that was part of
• 23:57
  Speaker 4: the curriculum.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: I know, I really I we took Latin in middle
• 24:02
  Speaker 1: school and high school as well, and I was like
• 24:03
  Speaker 1: I should have been forced to take a Spanish class.
• 24:06
  Speaker 1: Like all I know how to say to this day
• 24:08
  Speaker 1: is stupid boy, futu is poer because that was the
• 24:13
  Speaker 1: only time I used it. Yeah, it was just a
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: yell at boys. Very important in any case, we.
• 24:23
  Speaker 3: See these girls being made to join the band Slash.
• 24:29
  Speaker 3: They're pretty willing to do it because, yeah, it gets
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: them out of their math class. Also joining the band
• 24:37
  Speaker 3: is this like pretty shy, quiet girl named Kaori, as
• 24:43
  Speaker 3: well as two like punk girls who play bass and guitar,
• 24:50
  Speaker 3: Yuka and Hirom. And they all get together and everything
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: is chaos because the girls are all goofing around. Most
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: of them don't know how to play the instrument or
• 25:00
  Speaker 3: how to read music. Brass bands don't even have guitars
• 25:04
  Speaker 3: and basses. And Takua is like, well, maybe we're not
• 25:09
  Speaker 3: a brass band. Maybe we're a jazz band. And I'll
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: play piano because even though he sucks at symbols, he's
• 25:18
  Speaker 3: a good piano player. So the girls start learning their instruments.
• 25:24
  Speaker 3: Tomako on tenor saxophone, Yoshi on trumpet, Naomi on drums,
• 25:30
  Speaker 3: and Krie on trombone.
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: Naomi on drums is so iconic.
• 25:36
  Speaker 4: Yeah, incredible two thousand and four wig on her by
• 25:39
  Speaker 4: the way, just yes, oh my gosh.
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: The helmet wigs like incredible, but there is nothing There
• 25:46
  Speaker 1: is still nothing cooler in the world than a girl
• 25:49
  Speaker 1: who drums. It's just a.
• 25:51
  Speaker 4: Fact, you know, true.
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: And then after a like training montage of them getting
• 25:59
  Speaker 3: into shape because the girls have low lung capacity and
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: they can't even blow into their instruments, so they're like running,
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: they're blowing on tissues against a window, they're sucking air
• 26:11
  Speaker 3: out of bottles, like basically everything besides learning how to
• 26:15
  Speaker 3: play their instruments.
• 26:18
  Speaker 1: Yes, very much. Yeah, this movie is not afraid to
• 26:22
  Speaker 1: get silly. It is so silly.
• 26:25
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And the girls are frustrated at first, but soon
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: they start improving at their instruments, but they also still
• 26:34
  Speaker 3: suck pretty bad. And there's this baseball game coming up
• 26:38
  Speaker 3: that they're supposed to play at, and for a while
• 26:41
  Speaker 3: it seems like the stakes of the movie are like
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: we have to help the baseball team win their game.
• 26:48
  Speaker 3: But just then the other band shows up, the ones
• 26:52
  Speaker 3: who got food poisoning, and they're like, we're better now,
• 26:56
  Speaker 3: we'll take back over, and the girls are like, fine,
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: by me. This will all just to get us out
• 27:01
  Speaker 3: of doing that math class. So Tomoko Yoshi, Naomi, Carrie
• 27:07
  Speaker 3: and the others give their instruments back to the band
• 27:11
  Speaker 3: and they leave. But it turns out they actually loved
• 27:15
  Speaker 3: being in the band and they're very upset not to
• 27:18
  Speaker 3: be playing anymore. There's a scene where they're all walking
• 27:21
  Speaker 3: and like sobbing and wailing. It's very funny.
• 27:25
  Speaker 1: It's a lot, but it's so sweet where it's like
• 27:27
  Speaker 1: and that's like so teenager, too depic I don't care
• 27:29
  Speaker 1: who gives a shit, And the second you step out
• 27:32
  Speaker 1: of the room first like you're like, yeah, I did
• 27:36
  Speaker 1: that a lot.
• 27:37
  Speaker 4: Yes, these are the most realistically betrayed teenage girls like.
• 27:40
  Speaker 1: Ever, yes, you're like, no, this sucks. I actually hated it.
• 27:47
  Speaker 3: And then they also go to the baseball game that
• 27:50
  Speaker 3: they were supposed to play at that the like you know,
• 27:53
  Speaker 3: the brass band is now playing at and the whole
• 27:56
  Speaker 3: thing is a flop, and then school.
• 27:59
  Speaker 1: Starts back up again.
• 28:00
  Speaker 3: The girls are still sad that they're not in the band,
• 28:05
  Speaker 3: so Tomako looks into buying a new saxophone, but they're
• 28:09
  Speaker 3: very expensive, so she sells her computer and her little
• 28:14
  Speaker 3: sister's gaming system so that she can use the money
• 28:17
  Speaker 3: to buy a used saxophone at a pawn shop. God
• 28:22
  Speaker 3: and then she goes to the other girls to encourage
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: them to buy their own instruments, but no one really
• 28:29
  Speaker 3: has any money to do that except for Takuo, who
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: has already bought his own keyboard. And there's comments about
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: how like, ooh, good for you, you come from a
• 28:41
  Speaker 3: rich family.
• 28:42
  Speaker 1: I really like it. We'll talk about like how classes
• 28:45
  Speaker 1: just like effortlessly sort of put into the plot of this.
• 28:49
  Speaker 1: I mean, even though this movie does feel very two thousands,
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: I feel like it avoids so many tropes that I
• 28:55
  Speaker 1: associate with two thousands teen movies. Yeah, another one just
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: like really but the fact that her kid's sister acts
• 29:02
  Speaker 1: like a kid's sister, where I feel like a lot
• 29:06
  Speaker 1: of American like Sun Dance round Coms had like Abigail
• 29:10
  Speaker 1: Breslin giving a Shakespearean monologue about like the nature of love,
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: and it was always really weird. Yeah. I was just like, no,
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: this child has had their gaming system stolen. They're gonna
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: yell I hate you, you know, like it yeah makes sense.
• 29:27
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and we never see the sister again, but I'm
• 29:29
  Speaker 4: sure she's gonna feel like that kind of you know,
• 29:31
  Speaker 4: spite for the rest of her life because oh totally yeah.
• 29:35
  Speaker 1: Because that's what sisters are supposed to do.
• 29:39
  Speaker 3: Yes, So in order to earn money to buy instruments,
• 29:44
  Speaker 3: the girls get a job at a grocery store, but
• 29:49
  Speaker 3: they're goofing around too much. They're kissing mannequins in an
• 29:53
  Speaker 3: elevator fun. They get fired after accidentally setting off this sprinklers.
• 30:01
  Speaker 3: So Tomoko, Yoshi, Naomi, and Kyrie and Takoo start another job,
• 30:08
  Speaker 3: which is gathering mushrooms on a mountain.
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: In Adida's tracksuits. Yeah, they're literally wearing like, oh my gosh,
• 30:18
  Speaker 1: what was the Jane Lynch character in Glee? I didn't
• 30:20
  Speaker 1: watch thee they're wearing. They're all wearing that outfit. Yes, yes,
• 30:25
  Speaker 1: Coach Sue, is that it Seue Sylvester. Yes, they're all
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: rocking to Seue Sylvester before Sue Sylvester.
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: Was Yeah, it's true. So they're gathering mushrooms, but then
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: they realize they're trespassing on private property and so they
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: run away, but then a wild boar starts chasing them
• 30:47
  Speaker 3: in one of the silliest scenes in the movie, and
• 30:52
  Speaker 3: then they accidentally kill the boar via Naomi falling from
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: a tree and landing on the boar's head, Oh my god.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: This did either of you. I covered this on sixteenth minute,
• 31:06
  Speaker 1: and so immediately I was like, but the thirty to
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: fifty wild hogs, of course. Yeah. I immediately was like,
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: thirty to fifty wild hogs and here's one of them.
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: It's just I was like, wow, wild hogs. It's a
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: problem nation like globally. I didn't realize wild hogs was
• 31:21
  Speaker 1: a global issue that a twenty year old movie has
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: a goofy, high octane feral hog problem. Yeah.
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: And because of them accidentally killing this wild hog, the
• 31:37
  Speaker 3: teens are considered heroes because the bore, the hog whatever
• 31:42
  Speaker 3: it is, had been ruining the local farmer's crops amazing,
• 31:47
  Speaker 3: and so the teens aren't awarded money, which is what
• 31:52
  Speaker 3: allows them to buy some used instruments. But the instruments
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: they buy are pretty like and damaged and falling apart,
• 32:03
  Speaker 3: So they team up with the bass and guitar players
• 32:07
  Speaker 3: Yuka and Hiromi, who take them to a junkyard where
• 32:12
  Speaker 3: Yuka and Hiromi's ex boyfriend's slash former bandmates work.
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: Picture this. You show up at the junkyard and two
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: men who are weirdly obsessed with you and your friend
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: won't let you enter like bridge trolls until they recite
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: their horrible poetry. Yes, they really are behaving like it's
• 32:32
  Speaker 1: bridge troll behavior. And then they're doing.
• 32:34
  Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, they're like, babe, why'd you break up with me?
• 32:39
  Speaker 1: I still love you? And also the very two thousand's
• 32:42
  Speaker 1: plot point that they are pivoting from punk to bad
• 32:46
  Speaker 1: folk music. Absolutely you're like ooh two thousand and four.
• 32:51
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, because then they play them a song that
• 32:55
  Speaker 3: these teen boys wrote and then they finally fix the
• 33:00
  Speaker 3: girls instruments, and then they like officially form their band
• 33:04
  Speaker 3: called Swing Girls.
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: Hey, that's the name of the movie.
• 33:09
  Speaker 3: They play a few small gigs which are mostly just
• 33:13
  Speaker 3: like on the street in the neighborhood or outside of
• 33:17
  Speaker 3: a grocery store, and they still suck and they play
• 33:22
  Speaker 3: all out of rhythm, and afterward Carie talks to a
• 33:28
  Speaker 3: mysterious man who tells them that they need swing, they
• 33:33
  Speaker 3: need to be more in rhythm with each other. So scary,
• 33:36
  Speaker 3: so everyone chases after the man for more help and advice,
• 33:42
  Speaker 3: and he turns out to be their summer math teacher,
• 33:46
  Speaker 3: mister Ozawa, who is a jazz officionado, and the teens
• 33:52
  Speaker 3: think that he knows how to play and that he
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: can teach them, but his big secret is that he
• 33:57
  Speaker 3: can't play at all. He's learning, but he's terrible, but
• 34:01
  Speaker 3: he doesn't let them know this, and he ends up
• 34:04
  Speaker 3: being their conductor.
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: He kind of has I like wrote this down. I
• 34:08
  Speaker 1: was like, this isn't quite right, but like he does
• 34:12
  Speaker 1: have like redditor kind of energy right, where like he's
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: really like he's really interested, but he has no skill, right,
• 34:22
  Speaker 1: and he's kind of mean, and these are all qualities
• 34:26
  Speaker 1: of redditors, passion, cruelty, inability to follow through right, right,
• 34:35
  Speaker 1: but he still.
• 34:36
  Speaker 3: Inspires the group to think and play more like jazz musicians. Yes,
• 34:43
  Speaker 3: and there's this fun little sequence where they're like clapping
• 34:47
  Speaker 3: along to the music from like traffic signals and ping
• 34:51
  Speaker 3: pong games and like people beating their laundry.
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: I love that sequence where all of a sudden, jazz
• 34:58
  Speaker 1: is everywhere, like it's really beautiful.
• 35:01
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 35:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, So then they play outside the grocery store again,
• 35:08
  Speaker 3: and this time they're good, and the dozen or so
• 35:12
  Speaker 3: other girls from the summer class who had previously quit
• 35:16
  Speaker 3: the band to go shopping and hang out with the
• 35:19
  Speaker 3: baseball team and stuff. They see the swing girls play
• 35:24
  Speaker 3: and they rush out to buy instruments so they can
• 35:27
  Speaker 3: rejoin the band. Then we cut to wintertime. The band
• 35:33
  Speaker 3: learns about this student musical competition.
• 35:38
  Speaker 1: Festival, and now it's going like kind of school of
• 35:41
  Speaker 1: Rock vibes here, You're like, okay, it's kind of a
• 35:43
  Speaker 1: battle of the band situation happening.
• 35:46
  Speaker 3: Right, And to enter, they must submit a video audition tape,
• 35:53
  Speaker 3: so they film themselves playing, which is followed by them
• 35:57
  Speaker 3: having a snowball fight because these kids love goofing around.
• 36:04
  Speaker 6: Their kids, And the movie realizes that, right, I mean,
• 36:09
  Speaker 6: and all of the best, like teen or comedies for
• 36:13
  Speaker 6: kids have that very simple ask of like kids that
• 36:17
  Speaker 6: are actually acting like kids and making mistakes that make
• 36:21
  Speaker 6: sense for kids and aren't.
• 36:22
  Speaker 1: Like plotty or weirdly adult or whatever the fuck else. Yeah,
• 36:27
  Speaker 1: for sure.
• 36:29
  Speaker 3: So a few days later, after they've filmed their audition,
• 36:34
  Speaker 3: Tomako realizes that she forgot to send in the audition tape,
• 36:38
  Speaker 3: so she rushes to mail it, hoping it's not too late. Meanwhile,
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: Yoshi works on hitting a high note on her trumpet,
• 36:48
  Speaker 3: which she's finally able to do because a rat crawls
• 36:51
  Speaker 3: on her and she's like.
• 36:55
  Speaker 1: With her trumpet, and then I immediately thought, Okay, Remy
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: the rat rat Timber, like we've talked about, wrote it
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: so much on the show that I no longer flinch.
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: I was like, okay, roll that, get the camera out.
• 37:11
  Speaker 1: This is a Pixar movie. Pixar movies are documentaries exactly,
• 37:18
  Speaker 1: so that's happening.
• 37:20
  Speaker 3: Also, Taco finds out that mister Ozawa cannot play music,
• 37:26
  Speaker 3: so their teacher quits being their conductor. He's ashamed and
• 37:31
  Speaker 3: he's like, I'll step away. Then Tomaco receives word from
• 37:37
  Speaker 3: the music festival that their band submitted their audition tape
• 37:41
  Speaker 3: too late and all the spots are full, and Tomaco
• 37:45
  Speaker 3: is too ashamed to tell anyone else. So the whole
• 37:48
  Speaker 3: band gets ready for and heads to the festival thinking
• 37:52
  Speaker 3: that they're going to play, and they're on the train,
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: but that gets delayed due to bad weather and like
• 37:59
  Speaker 3: a tree falling across the tracks.
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: Various hijinks.
• 38:03
  Speaker 3: Yes, a lot of train related hijinks in this movie.
• 38:08
  Speaker 1: True. Yeah.
• 38:09
  Speaker 3: But then the other band, the original brass band, the
• 38:13
  Speaker 3: one who got food poisoning, rescues the swing Girls and
• 38:18
  Speaker 3: tells them that a spot opened up at the festival.
• 38:21
  Speaker 3: And lets them ride on their brass band bus. So
• 38:27
  Speaker 3: the swing girls show up at the festival at the
• 38:30
  Speaker 3: last minute. They're disheveled, they've forgotten their uniforms, their instruments
• 38:36
  Speaker 3: are cold, they don't have a conductor. No one in
• 38:39
  Speaker 3: the audience is taking them seriously. But then they start
• 38:42
  Speaker 3: playing and they're really good. And then mister Ozawa shows
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: up and starts conducting them from like the back of
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: the room. Our friends do various solos. The audience loves it,
• 38:57
  Speaker 3: and that's the end of the movie.
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: I love it, love it so good.
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: So let's take a quick break and we'll come back
• 39:07
  Speaker 3: to discuss.
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: Burber Ber.
• 39:23
  Speaker 4: So I have a surprise for you guys.
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: Yeah, you pull out a barysax.
• 39:27
  Speaker 4: Did you know that this movie can be connected to Shrek?
• 39:31
  Speaker 2: No?
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: Tell us everything, walk us threat, We're open.
• 39:34
  Speaker 4: So mister Ozawa's actor actually is the dub voice actor
• 39:38
  Speaker 4: for Puss in the Shrek movie.
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: WHOA, that is great, And now that you've said it,
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: I see it. That's so cool. Yeah, wow what of
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: what rain?
• 39:56
  Speaker 4: Yeah? Yeah, he's like I mean a lot of the
• 39:58
  Speaker 4: adults in this movie like they were big actors. They
• 40:02
  Speaker 4: have been big actors since a lot of the teenagers
• 40:04
  Speaker 4: because these are teens playing these teens, a lot of them,
• 40:07
  Speaker 4: you know, they have careers on and off whatever, but
• 40:09
  Speaker 4: none of them have like super huge careers, et cetera. Okay,
• 40:13
  Speaker 4: so like you know, but that's like super super common honestly.
• 40:16
  Speaker 4: But yeah, yeah, as far as like the adults go, like,
• 40:19
  Speaker 4: he's a he's a huge actor, and that's one of
• 40:21
  Speaker 4: his things. He doesn't do a lot of dubbing, but yeah.
• 40:24
  Speaker 1: How I'm also saying that his other major dubbing role
• 40:28
  Speaker 1: was Nick Fury in all of all of the Marvel movies. Wow. Yeah, incredible.
• 40:34
  Speaker 3: He's also in the Happiness of the Kategoris, a movie
• 40:38
  Speaker 3: that I have mentioned on the podcast before, a cuckoo
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: bananas movie. Ami, have you ever seen it?
• 40:45
  Speaker 4: I have not seen that particular movie.
• 40:46
  Speaker 1: No.
• 40:47
  Speaker 3: I never know how to describe it because partly I
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: forget what it's about and partly it's just so bananas.
• 40:54
  Speaker 1: When did you see it?
• 40:55
  Speaker 3: I saw it in college. Okay, we'll put.
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: A pin in that.
• 41:00
  Speaker 3: I'll try to find a log line and describe it.
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: But it's a very wild movie. But anyway, he gives
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: a great performance in Swing Girls, yes, as do everyone.
• 41:11
  Speaker 1: I really appreciated that the two teacher. Again comparing this
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: to School of Rock, which is my favorite movie ever
• 41:19
  Speaker 1: but a flawed movie that maybe disproportionately focuses on the teachers.
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: And this movie, I think I was really pleasantly surprised
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: at Ozawa's arc that he had an arc, because he
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: appears as like at the beginning, as a very you know,
• 41:36
  Speaker 1: kind of stock character that checked out teacher, and so
• 41:40
  Speaker 1: giving him multiple beats of an arc of like, oh,
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: there's more to this guy, because he's a jazz afish
• 41:46
  Speaker 1: nado and also he sucks at it. And also he
• 41:50
  Speaker 1: has this like small arc that is mostly just communicated
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: in the performance of like he finds that he does
• 41:58
  Speaker 1: love teaching or you know, we don't know, maybe he
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: used to love it and then fell out of love
• 42:03
  Speaker 1: with it, who knows. But I really like that, and
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: I like that. I also is expecting, again because I
• 42:09
  Speaker 1: was just projecting other early two thousands movies onto the
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: dynamics of this movie, that the other music teacher who
• 42:17
  Speaker 1: does the brass band Yayotami, that she would end up
• 42:22
  Speaker 1: being antagonistic, but instead she is extremely supportive and is like, yeah,
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: this is great, which actually makes way more logical sense
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: than what we're used to seeing in American movies, where
• 42:35
  Speaker 1: it's like there's two teachers and there can only be one,
• 42:38
  Speaker 1: where it's like, if you know teachers, they're never not
• 42:42
  Speaker 1: grateful to have a second person who is like working
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: towards a common goal with them. And it just felt
• 42:48
  Speaker 1: like they were in the movie the exact appropriate amount,
• 42:51
  Speaker 1: and like that the girls were always at the center,
• 42:53
  Speaker 1: which you don't see enough in this format.
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: Totally.
• 42:58
  Speaker 4: There's even like that little hint of the romance that
• 43:00
  Speaker 4: like Ozaba clearly likes her, and like the only reason
• 43:04
  Speaker 4: why there were all those big band records in the
• 43:06
  Speaker 4: band room in the first place is because he was
• 43:09
  Speaker 4: giving them to her all the time and she didn't
• 43:11
  Speaker 4: even think about it, and everyone else was like, Okay,
• 43:14
  Speaker 4: this is very obvious what's going on here. But like
• 43:17
  Speaker 4: it doesn't like none of the romances like come to
• 43:19
  Speaker 4: any fruition or anything because they're not the focus of the.
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: Movie, right, which kind of like made me less bothered
• 43:26
  Speaker 1: by their presence. Where again, like in a movie that
• 43:29
  Speaker 1: comes out in two thousand and four, I kept waiting for,
• 43:33
  Speaker 1: like the romance between Tomaco and Takuo to take a
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: larger place in the plot, and it's referenced in like
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: I think, a very sweet, authentic way, but it never
• 43:46
  Speaker 1: becomes like I'm doing it for him, right, which is
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: I feel like what you see a lot in like
• 43:52
  Speaker 1: teen movies that I grew up watching. Mm hmm. Again,
• 43:55
  Speaker 1: it's just nice being like, oh, music brought them together,
• 43:59
  Speaker 1: but even if if it didn't, they would still both
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: love music.
• 44:03
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah, no, I wrote that down too. As
• 44:08
  Speaker 3: far as any like crushes or flirtations that were present
• 44:13
  Speaker 3: in the movie, they never really come into any fruition
• 44:18
  Speaker 3: or they're only hinted at, and the focus is always
• 44:21
  Speaker 3: the music and the friendships that develop, whether they be
• 44:27
  Speaker 3: between or among the girls, or the friendship between Tomako
• 44:34
  Speaker 3: and Takua. Like, yeah, it's just it's a focus on
• 44:38
  Speaker 3: just like camaraderie in this activity that they're all doing. Yeah,
• 44:44
  Speaker 3: and yeah, it's it's mostly girls in the band. You
• 44:48
  Speaker 3: love to see it.
• 44:49
  Speaker 1: There's nothing cooler.
• 44:50
  Speaker 3: There is the one boy who helps them, And I
• 44:54
  Speaker 3: thought it was interesting that it's written in such a
• 44:56
  Speaker 3: way the movie that the only boy is the one
• 45:01
  Speaker 3: who has all this prior music experience and knowledge, and
• 45:05
  Speaker 3: he becomes the kind of de facto leader of this
• 45:08
  Speaker 3: group of girls. Yeah, And I was like, Okay, well,
• 45:12
  Speaker 3: why couldn't it have been another girl who takes them
• 45:16
  Speaker 3: under her wing and leads them, which I would have preferred.
• 45:20
  Speaker 1: Yeah, but it's a small thing. Yeah, exactly, Like in
• 45:24
  Speaker 1: the large scale of how wonderful this movie is, you're like, okay,
• 45:27
  Speaker 1: you know it was two thousand and four, right, another
• 45:30
  Speaker 1: big you know. When I saw this setup of the
• 45:33
  Speaker 1: dynamic between like the popular girls who are richer, who
• 45:37
  Speaker 1: have nicer clothes, and who I think are like originally
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: in the Brass Band, I also love just like so
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: popular hot girls of course are in the Brass Band,
• 45:47
  Speaker 1: I was like, this is not a trope I'm familiar with,
• 45:49
  Speaker 1: but let's go with it. And they have. They're like
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: dripped out in all the most two thousand forest fashion
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: and the entire world. It's very like my wall covered
• 46:00
  Speaker 1: J fourteen stuff. But that instead of you know, because
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: this is the same year as mean girls of instead
• 46:08
  Speaker 1: of this really toxic dynamic. It starts that way, and
• 46:12
  Speaker 1: they do start by behaving I think kind of like
• 46:15
  Speaker 1: more stock popular bullies. But then when they realize that
• 46:20
  Speaker 1: what swing Girls is doing is really cool. They're like, oh,
• 46:24
  Speaker 1: we're gonna sell all of our like Louis Vutan shit
• 46:28
  Speaker 1: and join the band. Like you're just like yeah, great.
• 46:32
  Speaker 4: Yeah. They're definitely like portrayed as like I don't know
• 46:34
  Speaker 4: if I would say that they're necessarily popular girls, like
• 46:37
  Speaker 4: they they seem to like they have, you know, the
• 46:40
  Speaker 4: modern sense of fashion everything, and.
• 46:42
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess I just associate that with popularity.
• 46:45
  Speaker 4: No, that's fair as fair I mean, and they probably
• 46:47
  Speaker 4: are at least kind of right, Like it's very clear
• 46:50
  Speaker 4: that's when the girls do meet like outside of the
• 46:52
  Speaker 4: summer school like that, there's like definitely like different dynamics
• 46:55
  Speaker 4: going on and stuff. But like for me, I think
• 46:58
  Speaker 4: more than being portrayed as po I think they're portrayed
• 47:01
  Speaker 4: more as like ditsy for the first part of the movie,
• 47:05
  Speaker 4: because like they're very quick to leave the band because
• 47:08
  Speaker 4: like only the main group actually gets kicked out of
• 47:11
  Speaker 4: the supermarket job just because you know, they they're the
• 47:14
  Speaker 4: ones that set off the sprinklers, right, and the other
• 47:17
  Speaker 4: girls are like, well, but we like we're gonna keep
• 47:20
  Speaker 4: working here. We don't have to quit just because you
• 47:22
  Speaker 4: guys got fired or whatever, which is like totally reasonable,
• 47:25
  Speaker 4: you know, and they're clearly already using the money they're making.
• 47:28
  Speaker 4: Now it's a little absurd to think that a supermarket
• 47:31
  Speaker 4: job as a teenager is gonna get you all those
• 47:33
  Speaker 4: designer goods. But that's another, you know, thing altogether. But
• 47:36
  Speaker 4: still like they're just like, okay, we're still doing our thing,
• 47:39
  Speaker 4: and you know, that's why they give up on it.
• 47:41
  Speaker 4: But of course they are inspired by the power of
• 47:43
  Speaker 4: jazz then they you know, they turn around. But I
• 47:46
  Speaker 4: think that it's it is definitely interesting that of course
• 47:50
  Speaker 4: it makes sense you're both comparing these two American teen movies.
• 47:54
  Speaker 4: So like for me, it was a very different experience
• 47:56
  Speaker 4: because I was comparing it more to what I already
• 47:58
  Speaker 4: knew of Japanese media, my expectations of it. Yeah, So like,
• 48:02
  Speaker 4: for example, a lot of media that especially is music centered,
• 48:05
  Speaker 4: so like idle media et cetera, that is about a
• 48:08
  Speaker 4: group of girls, it often doesn't have any boys in it.
• 48:11
  Speaker 4: But also there's a big difference in terms of how
• 48:15
  Speaker 4: this kind of media is marketed. So like this is
• 48:18
  Speaker 4: definitely a teen movie for teens, and you know, probably
• 48:22
  Speaker 4: primarily targeting teen girls, but the fact does a lot
• 48:26
  Speaker 4: of other stories that star teen girls aren't necessarily fourteen girls,
• 48:30
  Speaker 4: and so they're going to be portrayed a bit differently.
• 48:33
  Speaker 4: So there's there was that kind of comparison. So like,
• 48:35
  Speaker 4: for example, we didn't talk about it in the recap,
• 48:37
  Speaker 4: but there is like this one very short little scene,
• 48:41
  Speaker 4: this little kind of joke scene about I think it is, yeah,
• 48:45
  Speaker 4: Naomi getting like her skirt like breaking, because yes, like
• 48:51
  Speaker 4: she she is the fat character. So there is some
• 48:53
  Speaker 4: fat phobia in this movie, and that's kind of the
• 48:54
  Speaker 4: main issue with it.
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: Which honestly didn't even register for me because down yeah right,
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: I mean, and maybe that's like my naivete, but it also,
• 49:04
  Speaker 1: I mean, just brought me back to how rigid body
• 49:09
  Speaker 1: typing was and is now. But in the two thousand specifically,
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: where I can think of other movies where that's the
• 49:14
  Speaker 1: case too, where there's quote unquote the fat character and.
• 49:17
  Speaker 4: It they're not fat fin yeah, yes, yes, but she
• 49:22
  Speaker 4: is like the token she's the quote unquote fat character
• 49:24
  Speaker 4: in the movie. But yeah, so like there's a thing
• 49:26
  Speaker 4: where her skirt breaks, her her skirt falls down, and
• 49:29
  Speaker 4: so we see a boy who's biking nearby, like fall
• 49:33
  Speaker 4: down a hill, humble because he sees her under just
• 49:36
  Speaker 4: completely just wipes out and just keeps going and doesn't
• 49:40
  Speaker 4: say anything, and we never actually see the underwear on screen.
• 49:43
  Speaker 4: But like other Japanese media would not have done that,
• 49:46
  Speaker 4: They would have shown us that panty shot, if you will,
• 49:49
  Speaker 4: So I definitely for me, like that was huge for me.
• 49:52
  Speaker 4: I'm like, oh, somebody gets it. Somebody figured out you
• 49:54
  Speaker 4: can do this without being weird, like because there's a there.
• 50:00
  Speaker 4: It's not a lot of media, but there is some
• 50:01
  Speaker 4: media that does do this, Like I actually just recently,
• 50:04
  Speaker 4: I'm I'm in the middle of watching a Magical Girls
• 50:07
  Speaker 4: show from the eighties where like this is there's an
• 50:08
  Speaker 4: episode where this is a major blot point and they
• 50:11
  Speaker 4: show the underwear and it's like, we don't we don't
• 50:13
  Speaker 4: need to see it. It's not that hard, right.
• 50:15
  Speaker 3: I remember talking about this in the Spirited Away episode.
• 50:19
  Speaker 4: Yes, oh yes, not spirit Away, I think because you
• 50:21
  Speaker 4: guys asked me about the Kiki's delivery service.
• 50:24
  Speaker 1: Oh yeah, yeah, yeah, yes, yes, yeah.
• 50:26
  Speaker 3: Where a lot of those movies and it's not sexualized now.
• 50:30
  Speaker 3: But it's like, why are we seeing all these shots
• 50:33
  Speaker 3: of like little girls underwear is a little jarring.
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, it's a.
• 50:38
  Speaker 4: It's a weird thing. And yeah, a lot of times
• 50:40
  Speaker 4: it is not sexualized but ends up getting sexualized by
• 50:44
  Speaker 4: fans later on, which is the kind of main problem. Right, So, like,
• 50:48
  Speaker 4: for example, with it an animation, you have the cells, right,
• 50:51
  Speaker 4: like the actual physical pieces of like paper that or
• 50:55
  Speaker 4: plastic that have the drawings on them, those get the
• 50:57
  Speaker 4: ones with pannies get sold for a lot more money
• 51:00
  Speaker 4: because people are free.
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: I hate to hear that.
• 51:05
  Speaker 4: Yes, I know, I'm so sorry, but like so yeah,
• 51:08
  Speaker 4: so for me watching this movie and seeing a scene
• 51:10
  Speaker 4: like that, it was like, okay, good so somebody has
• 51:12
  Speaker 4: figured out that this and it's like twenty years ago,
• 51:14
  Speaker 4: we still usually we don't have this problem these days,
• 51:17
  Speaker 4: it's it's definitely been reduced, thank goodness, but it still
• 51:22
  Speaker 4: can be a problem depending on the target audience of
• 51:25
  Speaker 4: the media in question. And I'm trying to think of
• 51:28
  Speaker 4: something else, like there were like a small a lot
• 51:30
  Speaker 4: of small things like that that were like, oh yeah,
• 51:33
  Speaker 4: if this in other Japanese media, it might be a
• 51:36
  Speaker 4: little bit different. Oh. The other big thing for me,
• 51:39
  Speaker 4: it's not necessarily like an important aspect, but I do
• 51:44
  Speaker 4: believe it is Yoshi, right, the trumpet player, like her
• 51:48
  Speaker 4: thing with she has a crush on mister Ozawa and
• 51:52
  Speaker 4: tries to make a move on him, and it's like
• 51:54
  Speaker 4: very subtle, but like he very clearly immediately is like no, right,
• 51:58
  Speaker 4: and he's like he's clearly not interested for one thing.
• 52:00
  Speaker 4: He is he likes someone else obviously, but like a
• 52:03
  Speaker 4: worst movie or worst story would have something happened there.
• 52:07
  Speaker 4: So that like really stood out to me as well.
• 52:10
  Speaker 4: So like I was definitely seeing this in the grander
• 52:13
  Speaker 4: scope of like a lot of other Japanese media that
• 52:15
  Speaker 4: has a lot of issues with their teen stories.
• 52:19
  Speaker 3: Yeah, I was pleasantly surprised that there was nothing majorly
• 52:24
  Speaker 3: problematic in this two thousand and four movie.
• 52:28
  Speaker 4: Yeah, but we still see the girls are like, you know,
• 52:31
  Speaker 4: they're still definitely like you said, they're horny girls their teens.
• 52:34
  Speaker 4: They make out with the mannequin's. It's still one of
• 52:36
  Speaker 4: my favorite teams. Is just peak comedy for me.
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: It's so fun because you know, like.
• 52:40
  Speaker 4: I don't know any teen girl who wouldn't have done
• 52:43
  Speaker 4: that in.
• 52:43
  Speaker 1: That moment, right, Like right, that didn't feel like, oh
• 52:47
  Speaker 1: look how hot this is? It's like it's silly, right, yeah, exactly. Yeah,
• 52:52
  Speaker 1: I guess I'm curious. I was back and forth about
• 52:55
  Speaker 1: it because at the beginning you don't really see a
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: lot of like I think this movie kind of starts
• 53:00
  Speaker 1: more of a slacker comedy and then becomes a different
• 53:02
  Speaker 1: thing as it moves on, and you very rarely see
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: slacker comedies that center girls, especially in American movies, where
• 53:10
  Speaker 1: slacker comedies like it's ninety percent seth broken sure, or
• 53:16
  Speaker 1: it was for a long time, right, Like, there's always
• 53:19
  Speaker 1: kind of a slacker of the moment, And so at
• 53:20
  Speaker 1: first I was like, Okay, like most of the girls
• 53:24
  Speaker 1: towards the beginning are being kind of portrayed as like lazy,
• 53:27
  Speaker 1: lay about kind of kids. But I do feel like
• 53:31
  Speaker 1: there is a like outside of the brass band, who
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: I feel like are more like we're you know, dorky,
• 53:38
  Speaker 1: upstart kids that everyone of all genders are kind of
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: portrayed that way. I don't know, I'm curious what you
• 53:45
  Speaker 1: think of it that.
• 53:46
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I think, Well, one thing I find really
• 53:49
  Speaker 4: interesting is that there's clearly the kind of hierarchy where
• 53:53
  Speaker 4: obviously our hour swing girls are you know, somehow below
• 53:57
  Speaker 4: the brass band, but the brass band is very clearly
• 54:00
  Speaker 4: below the baseball team, right or like the jocks, right,
• 54:04
  Speaker 4: And so it's like we see that dynamic play out,
• 54:07
  Speaker 4: so like there's these different levels to it, but like
• 54:10
  Speaker 4: who knows if those the baseball team is actually cool
• 54:12
  Speaker 4: or not? Right, It's very interesting and again it's just
• 54:17
  Speaker 4: like also just portrayed like this is clearly like a
• 54:20
  Speaker 4: kind of smaller town scenario. There's probably only one supermarket, honestly,
• 54:24
  Speaker 4: and uh, in general, the just like the different dats
• 54:28
  Speaker 4: again like with class and everything, like the cost of
• 54:31
  Speaker 4: things and everything just like super made sense for like
• 54:33
  Speaker 4: the honestly not even like a super like you don't
• 54:35
  Speaker 4: have to actually be like a super poor family for
• 54:38
  Speaker 4: stuff like a PlayStation too to be expensive or whatever. Yeah,
• 54:42
  Speaker 4: I just love like the detail of the computer is
• 54:44
  Speaker 4: so funny because like Tomoco is so like cannot be
• 54:48
  Speaker 4: bothered to figure out how it works that she like
• 54:50
  Speaker 4: clearly like drew all over it or whatever.
• 54:52
  Speaker 3: You put stickers on it or something.
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: Yeah, and then her whole family is like, Tomoco, what
• 54:57
  Speaker 1: the fuck is like.
• 54:58
  Speaker 3: That was expect have yes, yes, but that's part of
• 55:02
  Speaker 3: her arc where Yeah, to your point, Jamie about like
• 55:06
  Speaker 3: slacker comedies, I wrote down like visibility of girl mediocrity
• 55:13
  Speaker 3: right totally. It's really refreshing to see because and they
• 55:18
  Speaker 3: don't stay mediocre. They get good at their instruments, but
• 55:21
  Speaker 3: it's only because they discover this passion they have for
• 55:25
  Speaker 3: music and they practice and work really hard at it.
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: And also it's like connected to the fact that they
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: are not being like I'm trying to think of the
• 55:34
  Speaker 1: less weird word, but like they're not being like stimulated
• 55:38
  Speaker 1: at school at all. Like look at the summer program
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: they're in with and like, of course, you know, thankfully
• 55:45
  Speaker 1: their teacher as Awa, like he ends up kind of
• 55:49
  Speaker 1: waking up. But it seems like so much of their
• 55:52
  Speaker 1: slacker energy is like made out to be like a
• 55:56
  Speaker 1: personal fault when it's like, well, there's a lot of
• 55:59
  Speaker 1: reasons that could be happening, one of which is your kid,
• 56:02
  Speaker 1: and like it also doesn't seem like they're being given
• 56:04
  Speaker 1: a very like any sort of meaningful outlet for their energy. Yeah,
• 56:09
  Speaker 1: and then the ones that the outlets that exist, and
• 56:12
  Speaker 1: this is true for kids everywhere, Like a lot of
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: the outlets that exist there is like a financial threshold
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: and like a barrier to entry, which this movie like
• 56:21
  Speaker 1: is not afraid of talking about, but is also not
• 56:25
  Speaker 1: like we're stopping the movie to talk about something very serious,
• 56:30
  Speaker 1: which is like cool, yes.
• 56:32
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And then again for a Tomaco like, her arc
• 56:35
  Speaker 3: is that she starts out by never finishing the things
• 56:40
  Speaker 3: she starts like she got the computer, and I think
• 56:43
  Speaker 3: maybe there's different other mentions of an activity that she
• 56:47
  Speaker 3: started and that her parents spent money on, and then
• 56:50
  Speaker 3: they're resentful because she never followed through on it, and
• 56:53
  Speaker 3: they get on her case for never finishing anything. So
• 56:56
  Speaker 3: when she asks for money for a saxophone, they're like, no, oh,
• 57:00
  Speaker 3: you're just gonna, you know, drop that after a few weeks. Also,
• 57:04
  Speaker 3: but this is actually something she follows through on, and
• 57:07
  Speaker 3: I thought that was just a really that's a very
• 57:11
  Speaker 3: normal arc for a teen or a kid to go
• 57:14
  Speaker 3: through where you know you don't know who you are yet,
• 57:16
  Speaker 3: you don't know what you're interested in. You explore different
• 57:19
  Speaker 3: things and some of them you find out you don't
• 57:22
  Speaker 3: like after all, And unfortunately that is expensive, but it's
• 57:26
  Speaker 3: very normal, and I feel like you don't even get
• 57:28
  Speaker 3: to see that explored for characters who are women and
• 57:33
  Speaker 3: girls because their arcs are so often like a romantic
• 57:38
  Speaker 3: arc or some other thing that just like doesn't there's
• 57:41
  Speaker 3: no interest in exploring, like what's a pretty standard thing
• 57:46
  Speaker 3: that a teen girl might go through, oh, discovering like
• 57:51
  Speaker 3: trying to discover what your extracurricular interests are or your
• 57:56
  Speaker 3: artistic pursuits, because again, they're so often tied to some
• 57:59
  Speaker 3: like romantic storyline and not that those are inherently bad.
• 58:03
  Speaker 3: And I really like again the way that the like
• 58:06
  Speaker 3: flirtation between her and Takul is represented, because it's not
• 58:13
  Speaker 3: you know, there's a flirtation between them, but they don't
• 58:16
  Speaker 3: like get together at the end and have some big
• 58:19
  Speaker 3: cinematic kiss.
• 58:20
  Speaker 1: It's what we are always saying we want to see
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: in yeah movies, where it's like that romantic interest is
• 58:26
  Speaker 1: an element of her life, it is not the all
• 58:29
  Speaker 1: consuming thing totally. I'm super corny with stuff like this,
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: but just seeing them all become collectively excited in the
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: second act of like, oh my god, music is awesome,
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: let's talk about it, Like I was like, oh so nice.
• 58:43
  Speaker 4: Yeah, we do actually have I feel like, because things
• 58:46
  Speaker 4: like club activities are so important for teens, and I
• 58:49
  Speaker 4: think part of why these girls at the beginning are slackers,
• 58:53
  Speaker 4: is because they haven't found that thing yet. Right, So,
• 58:57
  Speaker 4: like when you're in a Japanese school, clubs usually meet
• 59:00
  Speaker 4: not like for example, like once a week or whatever,
• 59:02
  Speaker 4: it's usually like every day. Often you'll come to school
• 59:05
  Speaker 4: on the weekends to do like one more thing or whatever.
• 59:08
  Speaker 4: Like it's very very invested. And also it's it's a big,
• 59:11
  Speaker 4: big thing because a lot of schools require that like, Okay,
• 59:14
  Speaker 4: if do you want to be in this club, you
• 59:16
  Speaker 4: have to have a certain level of grades, right, So
• 59:19
  Speaker 4: like it's a it's encouraged because kids finding that like
• 59:22
  Speaker 4: interest will help them. And depending on the school, you
• 59:25
  Speaker 4: can really do anything. Like I didn't get to go
• 59:27
  Speaker 4: to a Japanese high school, but my spouse did and
• 59:30
  Speaker 4: they were in bookkeeping club.
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: Oh incredible, right, so you.
• 59:34
  Speaker 4: Can find passions about whatever. It's really interesting to see
• 59:38
  Speaker 4: like and then yeah, I depending on how you know
• 59:41
  Speaker 4: popular your club is whatever, that will affect how much
• 59:44
  Speaker 4: funding you can get and all of that, and like
• 59:46
  Speaker 4: it's all it's one of those things like help kids
• 59:48
  Speaker 4: prepare for adulthood or whatever. But like hobbies, etcetera are
• 59:51
  Speaker 4: like such a big thing that like a lot of waves,
• 59:55
  Speaker 4: and this movie is one of those of like things
• 59:58
  Speaker 4: that like a bunch of teenagers and japan get into
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 4: are often inspired by a piece of media, whether it
• 1:00:04
  Speaker 4: be like a whatever sport is popular at the time
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 4: or what have you, and so like this obviously just
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 4: helped blow chazz blew up for teens because this made
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 4: jazz cool and uh yeah, so like in terms of
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 4: the story, like these girls were looking for something, and
• 1:00:20
  Speaker 4: also obviously Takuo was also trying to find something because
• 1:00:23
  Speaker 4: he was clearly unhappy playing the symbols kind of okay
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 4: in the Brass band, because the hierarchy in the band
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 4: in that band was such that he just was clearly
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 4: like at the lowest rung as well.
• 1:00:35
  Speaker 1: Yeah, so it's.
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 4: Like, yeah, the joys of finding that thing that you
• 1:00:40
  Speaker 4: become passionate about is that is a very common storyline
• 1:00:44
  Speaker 4: in a lot of Japanese media featuring teens, I think.
• 1:00:47
  Speaker 3: Nice in the US, it's what evil bet can a
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 3: man teen boy?
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 4: We still have those two, don't worry, we have a
• 1:00:57
  Speaker 4: lot of We have all the all the same trash meat. Yeah,
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 4: for sure still exists in Japan, don't you worry. But yeah,
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 4: just like there's a little bit more. I think there
• 1:01:07
  Speaker 4: are more variations on like different kinds of stories because
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 4: teens are respected more as a target demographic in Japanese media.
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 3: In my personal opinion, yeah, I also was pleasantly surprised
• 1:01:20
  Speaker 3: at the way that Takoo interacts with the other because
• 1:01:28
  Speaker 3: he's like the soul boy among a large group of
• 1:01:34
  Speaker 3: girls that keeps getting bigger throughout the movie.
• 1:01:37
  Speaker 4: Yes he is the and a boy.
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: Yes he's the token boy.
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 3: And again he's in this position of kind of I
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 3: guess power, not that you know, he's in a leadership
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 3: position over them in the sense that he has this
• 1:01:51
  Speaker 3: prior experience. He sort of wrangles them and like he's
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 3: their coach when he's trying to get them into shape
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 3: and stuff like that. But it's so rare to see
• 1:02:04
  Speaker 3: a like singular boy or teenage boy or man surrounded
• 1:02:11
  Speaker 3: by a group of women or you know, people of
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 3: marginalized genders. And if you do see that, you would
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 3: generally see, at least in Western media, the man or
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 3: the boy feeling super emasculated by being surrounded by so
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 3: much feminine energy, and that he would be degrading and
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 3: or condescending to them.
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: Which he can. He can be condescending to them.
• 1:02:38
  Speaker 3: He is a little bit here and there.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah yeah, when he's like, you guys can't even breathe, right, Like,
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 1: he can be kind of condescending.
• 1:02:47
  Speaker 4: Yeah, he was. Definitely. He wasn't very mean at the
• 1:02:50
  Speaker 4: beginning for sure, right yeah. Yeah, but he was also
• 1:02:53
  Speaker 4: like very much thrown into that leadership role by the
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 4: food poisoning incident and it was those girls fault, so
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 4: I could understand him having a little animosity in that moment.
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 1: I agree. I think we have the proper context for it,
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: and the fact that like as time goes on and
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 1: the girls become more and more invested in swing girls,
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 1: when he tries to buy I mean, there's like that
• 1:03:15
  Speaker 1: great scene that I feel like you get the like
• 1:03:18
  Speaker 1: sort of juiciest class commentary of the movie where you know,
• 1:03:22
  Speaker 1: it's like the conversation about buying instrument secondhand, and Takua
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 1: is talking about, like, well, why don't you just get
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: second hand? It's not that hard, and they're like, oh cool,
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: with what money? With what money? With what money? And
• 1:03:37
  Speaker 1: like so they also, like the girls never hesitate to
• 1:03:40
  Speaker 1: push back once they feel confident that like this is
• 1:03:43
  Speaker 1: something we are committing to and like it's one thing
• 1:03:47
  Speaker 1: to talk down to us when we don't give a shit,
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: but now we do, and like shut up and he does,
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: and he like takes that feedback, which I don't know,
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: it's like it works.
• 1:03:59
  Speaker 3: Yeah, And an act of solidarity, he goes mushroom picking
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 3: with them, even though he doesn't need to buy a
• 1:04:05
  Speaker 3: new instrument. He already has one, but.
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 1: He gets it his so Sylvester suit right along with
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 1: the rest of them.
• 1:04:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yes, and it's you know, this is a little thing.
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 3: But it's not like he has to save them from
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 3: the hog. You know, he's being chased along with them.
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 3: So I feel a lesser movie would have him be
• 1:04:25
  Speaker 3: the one who defeats the wild animals. He's the man
• 1:04:28
  Speaker 3: and they're the girls who need to be protected. But
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 3: nothing like that.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: It's such a funny twist too. Yeah, it's so good. Yes,
• 1:04:37
  Speaker 1: I wanted to just really quickly and I have done
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: very very cursory research on this, so if people listening
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 1: and if people on the call no more than me,
• 1:04:47
  Speaker 1: please pick up. But I was really interested where like
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: two thousand and four in my mind, and then I
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 1: like went back to sort of cross verify this was
• 1:04:56
  Speaker 1: I feel like a huge moment in the US for
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 1: a prob creating Japanese culture, like oh yeah, this is
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: the year of Gwen Stefani Harajuku girls, like yes, yes,
• 1:05:06
  Speaker 1: So I thought it was interesting. I was like, okay,
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 1: so here is not the inverse of this because it
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 1: is nowhere near you know, the same thing, but a
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: Japanese movie about a group of Japanese teenage girls getting
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 1: really excited and into this black American art form. And
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 1: I was interested into like how, like what Japan's relationship
• 1:05:29
  Speaker 1: with jazz is. I got a little bit of information.
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: I just wanted to share it. If people know more,
• 1:05:35
  Speaker 1: please let me know more. And I'm pulling this from
• 1:05:38
  Speaker 1: a scholarly journal Wikipedia. But the two papers that this
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 1: has been built off of are Jazz Journeys to Japan
• 1:05:45
  Speaker 1: The Heart Within by William Minor and Blue Nipon Authenticating
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: Jazz in Japan by Taylor Atkins. So just for some
• 1:05:56
  Speaker 1: fun context, I guess we're not actually not fun context,
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: but context nonetheless is that jazz came to Japan mostly
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 1: through like Transpacific ocean liners, often from American occupying forces,
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 1: but also from Filipino artists who were then occupied by America.
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 1: So it's like a story we're very familiar with where
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 1: this art form is proliferating because of colonialism essentially. But
• 1:06:25
  Speaker 1: once jazz gets to Japan in the nineteen tens, it
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: becomes very popular. It is banned in the nineteen forties,
• 1:06:34
  Speaker 1: but it doesn't work really because at that point there
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: is a whole sort of culture around Japanese jazz.
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 4: And to be fair, a lot of things were getting
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 4: banned in the nineteen forties in Japan, so.
• 1:06:44
  Speaker 1: Right, and not for no reason. But I did think
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 1: it's interesting that like this specifically black American art form
• 1:06:53
  Speaker 1: has such wide reach and is I think, like so
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 1: lovingly hell in this movie that comes out in two
• 1:07:03
  Speaker 1: thousand and four, where in America we are absolutely you know,
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 1: decimating Japanese culture and whitewashing it like it's no one's business.
• 1:07:15
  Speaker 1: But yeah, I just I would like to learn sort
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: of more about that story because obviously it's a very
• 1:07:19
  Speaker 1: complicated one.
• 1:07:20
  Speaker 4: But yeah, yeah, yeah, I mean I haven't read those works,
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 4: I can't speak directly to it myself, but certainly, like
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 4: in general, I mean, even now, jazz is definitely more
• 1:07:32
  Speaker 4: associated with older people anyway. But sure, I think from
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 4: my experience it's been always like I guess one of
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 4: the things about this movie is they do name drop
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 4: some you know, like big people of jazz and all
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 4: of that, but I find that like they don't really
• 1:07:49
  Speaker 4: like show them so much, so you could I imagining,
• 1:07:53
  Speaker 4: like as a Japanese viewer end up not really learning
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 4: about jazz history from this movie, which you know, it doesn't.
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 4: It's not that kind of movie, So that's kind of fine.
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 4: But I do think that it is important to acknowledge
• 1:08:05
  Speaker 4: that there is like the kind of default of foreigners
• 1:08:09
  Speaker 4: even today is still like white people, especially white Americans,
• 1:08:14
  Speaker 4: So you know, there could be a way to incorporate
• 1:08:18
  Speaker 4: things and like one thing about this movie and like, honestly,
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 4: it's you could do this conversation with like all kinds
• 1:08:23
  Speaker 4: of Japanese media, but like the issue of the lack
• 1:08:27
  Speaker 4: of diversity in Japanese media, there is this prevailing myth
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 4: that Japan is like an almost an f no state
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 4: level of like being extremely one race. Like even Japanese
• 1:08:37
  Speaker 4: people as a whole are not just one people, right,
• 1:08:40
  Speaker 4: We have indigenous groups, we have you know, just like
• 1:08:43
  Speaker 4: we stem from different ethnic groups et cetera. But also
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 4: like we have a ton of foreigners, but we don't
• 1:08:49
  Speaker 4: have the data for that because of how the Japanese
• 1:08:53
  Speaker 4: system works. So like, if you want to become a
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 4: Japanese citizen in Japan, you actually have to change your
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 4: name to a Japanese wall so that like kind of
• 1:09:02
  Speaker 4: system just in that way, like erasist people who are
• 1:09:06
  Speaker 4: not ethnically Japanese who become Japanese in nationality and stuff
• 1:09:10
  Speaker 4: like that. So like we do have a ton of
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 4: people from like all over and we have of course,
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 4: you know, mixed race folks are just myself, and we
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 4: have people who are for example, black and Japanese. So
• 1:09:20
  Speaker 4: it could have been and it would have been appropriate
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 4: at the time to have like one of these kids
• 1:09:25
  Speaker 4: maybe be mixed race or you know, have have like
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 4: just even like a little bit of something when you
• 1:09:30
  Speaker 4: have such a big group of girls. One of the
• 1:09:33
  Speaker 4: things about the two thousands is that while it wasn't
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 4: about jazz music being super huge, but like we had
• 1:09:39
  Speaker 4: one of the biggest pop stars in Japan at that
• 1:09:41
  Speaker 4: time was a black and ethnically Korean Japanese woman named
• 1:09:45
  Speaker 4: Crystal Kay who she's you know, she's still doing music now,
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 4: but like the people are there, right, Like it's it's
• 1:09:51
  Speaker 4: not hard to find, you know, the people to to
• 1:09:55
  Speaker 4: help create the kind of diverse cast you might need,
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 4: because yeah, that that is one thing that is a
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 4: little lacking here. But like it's also like not necessarily
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 4: the movie that would like focus on that. It's just
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 4: like a small kind of possible grade. But it's like
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 4: not exclusive to this movie. It's like a general Japanese
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 4: media problem for sure.
• 1:10:12
  Speaker 3: Sure, And similarly, again, there aren't these hugely pervasive romantic
• 1:10:18
  Speaker 3: storylines that are sweeping across the movie and drawing all
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 3: the focus away from the band, But there are these
• 1:10:26
  Speaker 3: little romances and flirtations here and there, but they're all hetero, yes,
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 3: And I'm not surprised because in two thousand and four,
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 3: at least the media that I'm most familiar with, which
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 3: is you know, Western mostly American media, there was a
• 1:10:44
  Speaker 3: huge reluctance to portray queer characters explicitly, or maybe there
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 3: was a small hint.
• 1:10:52
  Speaker 1: Or if they were it was coded, it.
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 3: Was coded, or they were the butt of a joke.
• 1:10:57
  Speaker 3: So sure, you know, I'm not surprised by the lack
• 1:11:00
  Speaker 3: of representation in this movie from two thousand and four.
• 1:11:04
  Speaker 3: But yeah, you know, it's something worth noting for sure.
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 1: But I guess just getting back to the strengths of
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: this movie is it's I feel like a lot of
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: movies say they're focused on friendship among teen girls, but
• 1:11:20
  Speaker 1: then it actually isn't. It's folk Like I think, I again,
• 1:11:24
  Speaker 1: I cannot I'm like compulsively comparing this to American movies.
• 1:11:28
  Speaker 1: But John Tucker Must Die is a great example of that,
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: where it's like the group of girls like become friends
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: through this hatred of this guy, but it really is
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: just a redemption arc for the guy. You're just like, ah, fuck,
• 1:11:42
  Speaker 1: this movie actually delivers on the promise of the thrust
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 1: of this movie is about teen girls for make a
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: jazz band. That is what the movie promises, and that
• 1:11:54
  Speaker 1: is what happens. And it makes you cry and they
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 1: play Benny Goodman at the end, and then it ends
• 1:12:01
  Speaker 1: on Nat King Cole like you're just like, yeah, it's
• 1:12:05
  Speaker 1: the good ship. It's the good ship. It's like the
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: feel goodiest movie that never feels like trite or forced.
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 3: I love that I've gotten you to say thrust No, Jamie.
• 1:12:17
  Speaker 1: I know you've really rubbed off on me, rubbed off. Okay, yes,
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 1: you thrust it off on me, and things are getting hardy.
• 1:12:29
  Speaker 3: I do kind of wish we got a little bit
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 3: more specific about some of the friendships, like if we
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 3: kind of honed in on a couple.
• 1:12:37
  Speaker 1: Of them, Yeah, I agree, Yeah, and.
• 1:12:40
  Speaker 3: Saw them connecting a bit more, maybe about something other
• 1:12:43
  Speaker 3: than music, or just saw them kind of interacting in
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 3: a more kind of intimate way.
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 1: Or saw that. I mean, we really only and again
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 1: this is like getting nitpicky because they weren't really thoughts
• 1:12:55
  Speaker 1: I was having on my first viewing. The first viewing,
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: I was just like whoo whoo. Yeah, but Tomako is
• 1:13:02
  Speaker 1: the only character who we get insight into her home life,
• 1:13:06
  Speaker 1: Like I think that there is room to get Like,
• 1:13:10
  Speaker 1: if we really want to have these are our three
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: main girlies, I feel like we do need an insight
• 1:13:16
  Speaker 1: to their home life or their life outside of the band,
• 1:13:19
  Speaker 1: and that doesn't quite happen in this movie. Yeah.
• 1:13:22
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, Like it's a general friendship movie with girls,
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 4: but we don't get a lot of one on one
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 4: interpersonal stuff for sure.
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I would love to see just I mean, in
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: general more Yoshi and Naomi especially Naomi Yesh, she's my fave. Yeah,
• 1:13:36
  Speaker 1: but you know again, I'm like grading this on a curve,
• 1:13:39
  Speaker 1: on the two thousand and four curve, like really top
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: marks all around, right, yes, and the fact that I
• 1:13:47
  Speaker 1: had to check. But they end up forming like they
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: have a seventeen piece full band, like they did the
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: damn thing. Imagine coordinating seventeen teenagers to do something I
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: cannot imagine. And and it didn't feel again like there
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: was this like inherently capitalist message that was running through
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: it too, because I feel like sometimes when you see
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 1: young people find their passion, it's like and then they
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 1: won the trophy where they got the thing, and it's
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 1: like they harness their love and passion in order to
• 1:14:24
  Speaker 1: sort of achieve this capitalist goal. School of Rock also
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: famously gets around this because they lose the Battle of
• 1:14:32
  Speaker 1: the Band. They do not win.
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 4: Yeah, we don't know, like it's I wouldn't say this
• 1:14:37
  Speaker 4: is like a battle of the bands per se. It's
• 1:14:38
  Speaker 4: more like a recital situation. I don't think there's like
• 1:14:41
  Speaker 4: an actual competition here, right, but we still don't know
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 4: like what the result the ending is the performance, and
• 1:14:47
  Speaker 4: I think that's really good. It's perfect certainly there are
• 1:14:51
  Speaker 4: other stories that would do would get to what happens next, right,
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 4: but like, yeah, I think that's honestly also really common.
• 1:14:57
  Speaker 4: There's like the stories of Dean's doing their best is
• 1:15:01
  Speaker 4: definitely a huge segment of Japanese media for teens. So like,
• 1:15:05
  Speaker 4: I think that it makes sense that was kind of
• 1:15:08
  Speaker 4: the main focus of like and maybe not necessarily like
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 4: like it's basically, they hear a bunch of obstacles and
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 4: here's how they get overcome them to meet the final
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 4: goal of just the basic thing of like performing and
• 1:15:20
  Speaker 4: performing well clearly because like it's it's definitely it's very
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 4: effective because the way that we see their progress and
• 1:15:27
  Speaker 4: like see them practicing, they don't necessarily always sound great.
• 1:15:30
  Speaker 4: And that's also because these kids were really learning how
• 1:15:33
  Speaker 4: to play these instruments, right, and then the final performance
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 4: is like whow, I didn't know they got this good?
• 1:15:39
  Speaker 4: And it's very very satisfying.
• 1:15:41
  Speaker 3: I know, Yeah, does anyone have anything else they'd like
• 1:15:46
  Speaker 3: to talk about?
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 4: Oh, there's one thing, so the what's it called the
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 4: Repair guys the Ex Boyfriend folk group. So the scene
• 1:15:57
  Speaker 4: is definitely peak comedy because like the way that they
• 1:16:00
  Speaker 4: they definitely overemphasize the way they speak, but it's basically
• 1:16:03
  Speaker 4: the Japanese equivalent of like speaking like they're in due
• 1:16:06
  Speaker 4: to Wars, my car or something like that. But the
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 4: thing about that that I didn't really notice, I think
• 1:16:12
  Speaker 4: the first few times they watched, but like preparing for
• 1:16:16
  Speaker 4: this episode, I realized, we don't know how old these
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 4: guys are, and I think they might be adults, like
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 4: young adults, but adults. Yeah, So, like it's because they're
• 1:16:25
  Speaker 4: they're working and have like more or less a more
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 4: proper job than the like what we usually see teenagers have, right,
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 4: but we see like we don't know exactly how old
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 4: the teen girls are supposed to be, Like they're in
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 4: high school, we don't know exactly what year, right, and certainly,
• 1:16:41
  Speaker 4: like typically the way the Japanese system works, if once
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 4: you start your your what would be your equivalent of
• 1:16:45
  Speaker 4: senior year of high school, you're typically already eighteen. But yeah,
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 4: that was just like something that like kind of stood
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 4: out to me a little bit of like, well, these
• 1:16:54
  Speaker 4: girls in this band, the you know, guitarist and bassis,
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 4: like we don't know exactly how old they are, and
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 4: they were in this band with these two guys who
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 4: are like secretly losers but they want to be so cool, right,
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 4: and it's very funny. But like, yeah, like in hindsight,
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 4: I was like, what was happening here, Like, yeah.
• 1:17:12
  Speaker 3: I didn't even consider that because I just kind of
• 1:17:14
  Speaker 3: assumed that they were also in high school. But now
• 1:17:17
  Speaker 3: that I think about it, I'm like, yeah.
• 1:17:19
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess see, we don't explicitly know.
• 1:17:22
  Speaker 4: Yeah, teen boys don't usually learn how to use welding
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 4: tools and stuff like that, so you.
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 1: Know, right, unless there was a great shop class at
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: this school.
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 4: Highly doubt.
• 1:17:31
  Speaker 3: Yeah, but we don't ever see them at school, no,
• 1:17:34
  Speaker 3: that's for sure. So yeah, now that you say it,
• 1:17:37
  Speaker 3: that could be potentially an upsetting, yeah situation.
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, though the whole scenario, it's always shown that
• 1:17:47
  Speaker 4: like clearly the girls are the ones like in power,
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 4: they're the ones that like they dump these guys, right,
• 1:17:52
  Speaker 4: they're the ones that left the band, et cetera. Yeah,
• 1:17:54
  Speaker 4: and these guys are like groveling at their feet basically,
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 4: but like, yeah, it's definitely so it's it's a little
• 1:18:01
  Speaker 4: bit of a weird situation for sure, but it's just
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 4: like something like hmm, this is like the small thing that, like,
• 1:18:06
  Speaker 4: I think they probably wouldn't have realized as opposed to
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 4: for example, with you know, the crush on Misster Rozoa,
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 4: that like it's like that's very clear, like wrong, and
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 4: it's shown that way right the show and is like
• 1:18:17
  Speaker 4: to not be you know, something to to move forward with.
• 1:18:20
  Speaker 4: But with this one, it's just like, oh, maybe like
• 1:18:22
  Speaker 4: it could have been a situation like maybe they were
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 4: all in high school when they started the band or
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 4: something like that.
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: Right, we don't know sure, right.
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 4: So there could there could be ways for it to
• 1:18:31
  Speaker 4: be like okay or whatever. And and I think that
• 1:18:34
  Speaker 4: even now, like honestly, there would be people who wouldn't
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 4: necessarily like blink out the idea of like someone who's
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 4: like young and like of college age, like dating someone
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 4: in high school whatever, like if it's only a few years,
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 4: like that's kind of understandable, but like also just like yeah,
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 4: against it. You know, we don't know the situation at all.
• 1:18:51
  Speaker 4: It's not clear in the story.
• 1:18:53
  Speaker 1: It's not clear. Yeah, I found those characters be like
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: the one off jokes are funny, but it's like again,
• 1:18:59
  Speaker 1: I just was like, I'm not familiar with this stock
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 1: character because I am familiar with the like take me back.
• 1:19:04
  Speaker 1: But then I was surprised that they actually did help.
• 1:19:06
  Speaker 3: Them, right.
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: I was expecting them to be like malevolent and be like, no,
• 1:19:11
  Speaker 1: you have to be my girlfriend again. But then they
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: do help them. But then at the end they're like,
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: but take me back. I was like, all right, I.
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 4: Don't know, right, they're still there. They're at the music festival. Yeah,
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 4: with is.
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: It like banner that says like take me back? Yeah
• 1:19:27
  Speaker 1: I love you?
• 1:19:28
  Speaker 4: Yeah, Like it's actually it's very sweet, how like everyone
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 4: is there, even the supermarket people that fired them or
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 4: in the audience. It's very silly.
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, was there anything else? I love this movie.
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 3: I'm so excited that I have it in my life now.
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 4: Yes. Yes, with all the nidpicking that we've been doing,
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 4: it's still like such a good movie.
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 3: It's yeah, yeah, and as we've discussed, holds up far
• 1:19:54
  Speaker 3: better than most media from two thousand and four. It's
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 3: not perfect, absolutely, but yeah, especially media centering teens, where yeah,
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 3: a lot of stuff usually goes really wrong from this era.
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 3: But yeah, there's not a whole lot to complain about.
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 1: Yeah, no, it was. Every movie has its flaws, but
• 1:20:18
  Speaker 1: if you haven't seen this movie. You're going to be
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: in such a good mood. I'm excited for you. Yes,
• 1:20:24
  Speaker 1: and Amy, thank you so much for bringing this movie
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 1: to us, because yeah, like we didn't know it existed,
• 1:20:28
  Speaker 1: and now it's going to be you know fully in
• 1:20:31
  Speaker 1: the rotation of course.
• 1:20:34
  Speaker 3: And it passes the Bechdel test very handily.
• 1:20:38
  Speaker 1: Boy, howdy does it so much.
• 1:20:40
  Speaker 3: Talk about jazz, about trumpets, etc.
• 1:20:44
  Speaker 1: About computers that you're not using enough? Yeah? I think,
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: like truly, if they had just changed Takua's character to
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: be like a cool, older teen girl, it would be
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: the perfect the perfect film.
• 1:21:00
  Speaker 3: Yeah, we didn't bring it up yet, but that movie
• 1:21:03
  Speaker 3: that we covered a while back, We are the best,
• 1:21:06
  Speaker 3: That Swedish film about the like tweens, yes, who start
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 3: a punk band in the eighties.
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: Great double feature.
• 1:21:14
  Speaker 3: And then and then top it off, if you want
• 1:21:16
  Speaker 3: a triple threat, top it off with some Josie and
• 1:21:18
  Speaker 3: the Pussycats, Oh my god.
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 3: And then if you need a palate cleanser, throw in
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 3: Spice World.
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 1: Incredible, yes, and then School of Rock and then Full
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: Monty and then by that point you're asleep. That's too
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 1: many movies to watch it around.
• 1:21:33
  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I would say, the Bechdel test is definitely
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 4: for me, like a such a Western test that doesn't
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 4: necessarily always work with Japanese media because again, like there's
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 4: so much Japanese media that not only like there are
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 4: shows that have no male characters in them, but the
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 4: target audience is men, and so like talking about like
• 1:21:55
  Speaker 4: what isn't isn't feminist media, it's like so different in Japan.
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 4: Like a lot of like Jeffy feminism like discussions and
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 4: stuff are different in a way that I can't get
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 4: into on a podcast like this, but not in for
• 1:22:06
  Speaker 4: one episode anyway, but like, yeah, like you could have
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 4: shows that like, like this movie is great barely even
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 4: passes the reverse Bechdel test because I think the only
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 4: characters that talk to each other that are guys are
• 1:22:16
  Speaker 4: Takuo and mister Ozawa. But there are other shows and
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 4: movies and so on that are like definitely more for
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 4: the male gaze and only feature women. So like, well, okay,
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 4: sure it passes the Bechdel test, but it's also still
• 1:22:32
  Speaker 4: like very not good.
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: I mean that's true of a lot of movies we
• 1:22:35
  Speaker 1: cover too, Like I think it's ultimately a flawed metric.
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 3: Yeah, right, And We recently covered a couple movies about
• 1:22:44
  Speaker 3: the prison industrial complex that feature predominantly men, such as
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 3: Holes and Shashank Redemption. Yes, and even though there are
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 3: hardly women on screen, especially in Shawshank Redemption, I mean,
• 1:22:57
  Speaker 3: they still generated very interesting conversations. And it's not it's
• 1:23:02
  Speaker 3: a like, as we always say, the Bechdel test is
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 3: a jumping off point. Yeah, sometimes it doesn't apply or
• 1:23:09
  Speaker 3: doesn't mean that a movie isn't exploring intersectional themes.
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 1: Or issues for sure.
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah yeah, yeah, it's just a jumping off point.
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah. Holes is definitely an interesting one for sure in
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 4: that card.
• 1:23:22
  Speaker 1: Yeah yeah. I mean it's just like it's not always
• 1:23:25
  Speaker 1: going to be an applicable test because it wasn't designed
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: to be so.
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 3: Totally so that you know what was though our nipple scale, yes,
• 1:23:34
  Speaker 3: the Bechdel Test nipple scale where we rate the movie
• 1:23:36
  Speaker 3: zero to five nipples based on examining it through an
• 1:23:39
  Speaker 3: intersectional feminist lens. And this one gets pretty high marks
• 1:23:44
  Speaker 3: from me. Look, give it like a four. You know,
• 1:23:48
  Speaker 3: we talked about the various things that pinged ever so
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 3: slightly for us, but you know, nothing too major. I
• 1:23:56
  Speaker 3: love that it is a focus on teen girls discovering
• 1:24:02
  Speaker 3: something they're passionate about and forming like camaraderie and community
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 3: around that. There's no like unnecessary petty infighting among the girls.
• 1:24:14
  Speaker 3: I feel like a lot of like a lesser movie
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 3: would also be like, well, there's a bunch of teenage
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 3: girls together, so obviously they're going to be so petty.
• 1:24:23
  Speaker 1: Well that's what I thought was gonna happen with the
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 1: Louis Vuitan girls. Basically reggae would become enemies, but they
• 1:24:29
  Speaker 1: instead join forces and then have a full band, And
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 1: you're like.
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 3: They so quickly change their mind.
• 1:24:37
  Speaker 1: They're literally like, oh got it.
• 1:24:39
  Speaker 3: They like show up. They see the swing girls, like
• 1:24:42
  Speaker 3: when it's the whatever five or six of them playing,
• 1:24:45
  Speaker 3: they say, oh my god, this is so cool. I
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 3: want to be a part of this. They run to
• 1:24:49
  Speaker 3: the instrument store, they buy instruments, and they come back
• 1:24:55
  Speaker 3: while the swing girls are still playing. So it's been
• 1:24:58
  Speaker 3: a matter of minutes. They do it so quickly. They're
• 1:25:02
  Speaker 3: so enthusiastic about rejoining the band. So yeah, I love that.
• 1:25:06
  Speaker 3: And it's not as though there's not like moments of
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 3: tension among them where they'll get, you know, maybe frustrated
• 1:25:12
  Speaker 3: with another person or impatient or whatever. But it's it's
• 1:25:15
  Speaker 3: never out of like pettiness. It's always contextualized, and it's
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 3: always fleeting, and it's yeah, just such a fun movie.
• 1:25:23
  Speaker 3: I love the absurdist, silly, goofy moments. And again, I
• 1:25:27
  Speaker 3: love that you see teen girls being bad at.
• 1:25:30
  Speaker 1: Something at first.
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 3: I love that you see them diligently working at it
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 3: and becoming better at something. I love that you see
• 1:25:38
  Speaker 3: them being goofy and silly and kissing mannequins and throwing
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 3: snowballs and all the goofy stuff that they do. It's
• 1:25:45
  Speaker 3: just such a refreshing fun movie.
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: It's super fun.
• 1:25:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah, it's available on YouTube. It's also on Internet Archive,
• 1:25:52
  Speaker 3: but I couldn't figure out how to turn the subtitles on,
• 1:25:56
  Speaker 3: so same, same, yeah, but yeah, if you don't know Japanese,
• 1:26:01
  Speaker 3: and if any listeners want to watch it with English subtitles,
• 1:26:05
  Speaker 3: you can easily do that on YouTube. So highly recommend
• 1:26:09
  Speaker 3: four nipples and I'll distribute them among the swing girls
• 1:26:16
  Speaker 3: I'm gonna meet either.
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: Yeah. I feel like we've talked through, you know, the
• 1:26:21
  Speaker 1: places where this movie has like room to improve. But
• 1:26:23
  Speaker 1: I think again for using a two thousand and four Yardstick.
• 1:26:27
  Speaker 1: It's pretty fucking incredible, Like it's really.
• 1:26:30
  Speaker 3: Yeah, honestly, I would give it, like, adjusted for two
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 3: thousand and four inflation, I maybe even give it a
• 1:26:36
  Speaker 3: five nipples.
• 1:26:37
  Speaker 1: But yeah, while there are, you know, valid criticisms of
• 1:26:40
  Speaker 1: swing Girls, it is hard to be too mad about
• 1:26:44
  Speaker 1: most of them based on what a fun watch it
• 1:26:47
  Speaker 1: is and how like again, it's like twenty years later
• 1:26:51
  Speaker 1: and a movie with this kind of joy and centering
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: on teamgirls is still very rare, actually, like teen girls
• 1:27:01
  Speaker 1: that you might actually meet in the world and not
• 1:27:03
  Speaker 1: teen girls that you know. And I love a Diablo
• 1:27:06
  Speaker 1: Cody movie. But but but teen girls don't talk like that,
• 1:27:08
  Speaker 1: you know, So it just still feels like a very
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: rare thing to this day. I just I love comedies
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: about teen girls being passionate about something something to give
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: it four nipples, and I am giving them all to Naomi.
• 1:27:23
  Speaker 1: She's my favorite. She can have her too, and then
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: you know, do whatever she would, maybe two for the drums.
• 1:27:28
  Speaker 1: I don't know, Oh sure, I don't know. She's my
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: favorite character Anyimi, how about you?
• 1:27:34
  Speaker 4: Yeah, I think for me, like, you know, because again,
• 1:27:36
  Speaker 4: because it's two thousand and four, because it's a Japanese
• 1:27:39
  Speaker 4: movie've in two thousand and four. I just love so
• 1:27:42
  Speaker 4: much about this movie and like, yeah, all the little
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 4: like nippicking flausas that are are like the same flaws
• 1:27:47
  Speaker 4: that are were in like basically everything else.
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: At that time exactly.
• 1:27:50
  Speaker 4: Yeah, So yeah, I actually would say for me, this
• 1:27:54
  Speaker 4: is a four point five hell yeah yeah, just like
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 4: everything is. It's just like so refreshing, such a standout film.
• 1:28:01
  Speaker 4: I can watch over and over. I don't know, I
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 4: have no idea who translated the movie on YouTube because
• 1:28:07
  Speaker 4: it's not an official translation, but they did, you know,
• 1:28:10
  Speaker 4: a pretty in stelled job that has made it, you know,
• 1:28:13
  Speaker 4: more accessible to everyone around the world. And I'm so
• 1:28:15
  Speaker 4: glad for that because like it is a movie that
• 1:28:18
  Speaker 4: definitely more people should know about. And yeah, I just
• 1:28:22
  Speaker 4: think it's it's just like such a such an incredibly
• 1:28:26
  Speaker 4: good time and still holds up even though it's still
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 4: varied two thousand and four. The technology and stuff, et cetera.
• 1:28:32
  Speaker 4: Like I tried to imagine, you know, it's reboots and stuff.
• 1:28:35
  Speaker 4: We have the same thing here that you know, it
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 4: happens from time to time, and it's like, could they
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 4: do it now? How would it look different. If they
• 1:28:42
  Speaker 4: did the same thing, would they just set it in
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 4: two thousand and four? Again, there's so many questions, but yeah,
• 1:28:47
  Speaker 4: I just think that it's just a special thing that
• 1:28:50
  Speaker 4: like I'm so I'm so glad exists. I'm so glad
• 1:28:53
  Speaker 4: it was, you know, such an acclaimed movie and an
• 1:28:56
  Speaker 4: awarded and nominated movie here in Japan and everything even so, yeah,
• 1:29:00
  Speaker 4: like the only teenager in my life that I talked
• 1:29:03
  Speaker 4: to recently has no idea what this is. She was
• 1:29:05
  Speaker 4: just like, oh, that's from before I was born, And
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 4: I'm like, oh, why did you say that? Yeah, but
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 4: you know, that's I just think us it's the nature
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 4: of like teen media in Japan as it just comes
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 4: and goes. So yeah, yeah four for me.
• 1:29:20
  Speaker 3: Well, thank you so much for joining us. Yeah, and
• 1:29:23
  Speaker 3: tell us where people can follow you on social media,
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 3: check out your work, and tell us about your new
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 3: upcoming podcast.
• 1:29:32
  Speaker 4: Yeah, of course. So basically on most socials, I'm at iu.
• 1:29:37
  Speaker 4: She knows personally that's a y U s H E
• 1:29:40
  Speaker 4: K N O w S. And the podcast I have
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 4: been doing for the past five years, Sparko Side Chats,
• 1:29:46
  Speaker 4: is all about magical girls and we are going to
• 1:29:48
  Speaker 4: be talking about Magical Girl Friendship Squad later this year.
• 1:29:51
  Speaker 4: I'm very excited about that.
• 1:29:52
  Speaker 5: Oh my gosh, finally, wow.
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: Do I want to know? My gosh, people were so
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: mean to that Shawan.
• 1:30:01
  Speaker 4: Oh, there's the discourse is very interesting. But anyway, yeah,
• 1:30:05
  Speaker 4: so magical Girls, Yes, we're probably never gonna stop talking
• 1:30:09
  Speaker 4: about them, et cetera. I mean, god, with all the
• 1:30:11
  Speaker 4: shows coming out right now, I'm like overwhelmed. But yes,
• 1:30:14
  Speaker 4: if you like magical Girls, even if you have never
• 1:30:17
  Speaker 4: watched a Magical Girl show in your life, it's still
• 1:30:19
  Speaker 4: a good fun time over there. There's something for everyone
• 1:30:22
  Speaker 4: for sure in that genre. And yes, on the socials,
• 1:30:26
  Speaker 4: you can find that at Magical Girl Iu or ayu.
• 1:30:29
  Speaker 4: And as for my new podcast I'm co hosting with
• 1:30:33
  Speaker 4: my friends Aaron and Leon is called charm Point Radio
• 1:30:36
  Speaker 4: and it's all about idle media, so oh, you know,
• 1:30:39
  Speaker 4: basically the Japanese pop star. Though we are gonna try
• 1:30:42
  Speaker 4: to cover other stuff from you know, around the world,
• 1:30:44
  Speaker 4: it's just primarily Japanese. And you know, we're going to
• 1:30:48
  Speaker 4: the history of where the term idol got brought into
• 1:30:51
  Speaker 4: Japanese because that's from a French movie of all things.
• 1:30:54
  Speaker 4: And just like looking at all kinds of variations of
• 1:30:57
  Speaker 4: this genre. TV shows for kids, TV shows for adults,
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 4: and all of.
• 1:31:00
  Speaker 3: That jazz, all that jazz, yeah.
• 1:31:03
  Speaker 4: Well sometimes jazz.
• 1:31:04
  Speaker 3: I hope we haven't covered all that swing.
• 1:31:08
  Speaker 4: All the you know, it is typically going to be
• 1:31:11
  Speaker 4: like you know, your pop music, etc. But the storylines
• 1:31:13
  Speaker 4: are often very similar. But even with that formula, there
• 1:31:17
  Speaker 4: are so many variations and it's just such a fun time.
• 1:31:19
  Speaker 4: So we go through all kinds of weird things. Sometimes
• 1:31:22
  Speaker 4: we get into stuff about horses and sports and whatever.
• 1:31:27
  Speaker 4: There's so many things in the idle genre as well,
• 1:31:30
  Speaker 4: so I'm really excited for that. We don't have the
• 1:31:33
  Speaker 4: official date of release yet, but it should be coming
• 1:31:36
  Speaker 4: out by the time you hear this, because it'll be
• 1:31:38
  Speaker 4: sometime in early June that we launch. But we already
• 1:31:41
  Speaker 4: have social media links up everywhere, so find us at
• 1:31:44
  Speaker 4: chart Point Radio Amazing.
• 1:31:46
  Speaker 1: And thank you again for joining us.
• 1:31:47
  Speaker 3: Come back anytime I would love to, and you can
• 1:31:51
  Speaker 3: follow us mostly on Instagram as well as our Patreon
• 1:31:56
  Speaker 3: aka Matreon, where you get two bonus eppasisodes a month,
• 1:32:01
  Speaker 3: surrounding a brilliant theme. This month has been about men
• 1:32:06
  Speaker 3: in prison, so.
• 1:32:08
  Speaker 1: But also also it must be, it needs be said.
• 1:32:11
  Speaker 1: It is your birthday month, and you chose this for yourself.
• 1:32:15
  Speaker 3: And it's because I believe that men belong in prison. No,
• 1:32:18
  Speaker 3: but but we did Shashank and Oh Brother, We're art
• 1:32:25
  Speaker 3: Bell on the Matreon and then Holes was my big
• 1:32:28
  Speaker 3: birthday episode on the main feed.
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 1: Of course.
• 1:32:30
  Speaker 3: Anyway, check out all of that on patreon dot com
• 1:32:35
  Speaker 3: slash Bechdel Cast. You also get access to our entire
• 1:32:38
  Speaker 3: back catalog of Matreon episodes as well.
• 1:32:43
  Speaker 1: And with that, ooh, okay, final question of the pod.
• 1:32:48
  Speaker 1: What instrument are you picking up? In swing Girls? You
• 1:32:52
  Speaker 1: have been invited, You've been summoned to be a swing girl?
• 1:32:54
  Speaker 1: What are you playing?
• 1:32:55
  Speaker 3: Ooh, I'm gonna play the guitar like hero me.
• 1:32:59
  Speaker 1: Nice? Nice.
• 1:33:00
  Speaker 4: I'm afraid my only instrument is piano, so I might
• 1:33:02
  Speaker 4: have to stick with that. Okay, respect, But does that
• 1:33:06
  Speaker 4: make me the and of boy is the question?
• 1:33:08
  Speaker 1: No? No, you're reinventing the narrative, Jamie. I'm going bariou Sax.
• 1:33:14
  Speaker 1: I'm reclaiming it. Oh whoa, it can't hurt me anymore.
• 1:33:19
  Speaker 1: Hurt Jamie, You're You're healed. I'm barry a sack Sax.
• 1:33:23
  Speaker 1: God now, yes, this very a sax sex god now Wow.
• 1:33:31
  Speaker 1: Okay bye, all right, bye guys.
• 1:33:37
  Speaker 3: The Bechdel Cast is a production of iHeartMedia, hosted by
• 1:33:40
  Speaker 3: Caitlin Derante and Jamie Loftis, produced by Sophie Lichterman, edited
• 1:33:44
  Speaker 3: by Mola Board. Our theme song was composed by Mike
• 1:33:48
  Speaker 3: Kaplan with vocals by Catherine Vosskrosenski. Our logo and merch
• 1:33:52
  Speaker 3: is designed by Jamie Loftis and a special thanks to
• 1:33:55
  Speaker 3: Aristotle Acevedo. For more information about the podcast, please visit
• 1:34:00
  Speaker 3: link tree slash Bechtel Cast