Bohemia Bunny

Takeshi Talk, Part Two

July 24th, 2008 by lynnylchan under Humour and Leisure

This is episode 2 of God Please Give Me More Time, in which our heroine Masaki goes in search of the bastard who infected her with HIV. It’s a pretty annoying episode because she keeps having flashbacks to her experience in the doctor’s office when she’s being told about her condition. Cop-out!

She is in a train, returning from the doctor’s, when the reality of her life being cut short hits her and she collapses in a sobbing heap in the train. I like how the dude nearest to her just turns, looks, and goes back to his paper. That’s a very accurate portrayal!

After we’re treated to the bonus opening MV, the scene cuts to Masaki, sitting alone in her home’s dining hall as the clock ticks away the seconds of her life. Then her friend calls her out to go clubbing, and she goes! What a surprise, I’d have thought she would just hide under the covers. At the club, Masaki comes across a poster for a charity concert against AIDS, featuring our dear Keigo.

Meanwhile, where is Keigo at this point? He is backstage at the recording session, thinking of the girl who reached out to his poor lonesome self. Masaki passes by the building just as Keigo is coming out. There’s a stampede of crazed fangirls for the door, and Masaki falls down. Do Japanese schoolgirls not have to do homework? Why are they so free to chase after idols all the time?

Back in the white van (yes that one), Keigo’s lackey-cum-driver tells him that the girl from the rainy night was out there, along with the others. So of course he has to go back and pick her up from where she’s sitting on a parapet, holding a hanky to her bleeding elbow. Oh, my knight on a white horse van! Although frankly, I prefer his black roadster. Mmm.

They go back to his bachelor pad, but this time she just stands outside. He turns to her and sees her injured elbow. When he reaches out to take a better look at it, she rejects him and we cut to a shot of the hanky lying on the floor. As if we didn’t know she was bleeding already. Then Masaki goes on and on about how she really loved him and wanted to get to know him, and that she doesn’t regret sleeping with him at all. (Something tells me she was referring to the emotional investment and not the physical side of things.) The silly female then decides to walk home, and the ever-suave Keigo sits on his couch looking at her bloodied hanky. No, this is the RIGHT thing to do! Don’t chase after women! It’s just part of their game!

Masaki rolls out of bed, refuses breakfast, and only her mother seems to care. Her father cares more about his golf game, and her mugger brother runs off for his first-period test. Masaki decides to skip school to visit Hibino (Ah Beng) to tell him to take an STD test. Hibino’s female colleague mentions that Masaki hangs out at a club frequented by girls who do “sex for money”, though what is this supposed to indicate, I have no idea. Would the club be like a go-go bar?

There follows a PSA (public service announcement) in the form of scary words like “painful”, “death”, “sexual transmission” and the like jumping out at Masaki as she flips through a book on AIDS. Thanks for further stigmatizing people living with HIV and AIDS!

Enough of Masaki’s emo-tizing, what’s Keigo up to? He’s reminiscing about his late girlfriend, who died from some disease in hospital! Oh, how he held her cold dead body and lamented her passing! Boo hoo hoo! Then he decides to give Masaki a ring. To tell her that he doesn’t care if she drops dead. Because she has no idea what is means to live or die. “You don’t know what it means to die! Or to love someone!” And who made YOU the expert, Keigo-san? After she hangs up, her terribly unperceptive friends show up to drag her to the club. Again.

What follows is just a lot of Masaki being emo and pushing away the people who care, such as Hibino and her mother. So we go back to Keigo, who is sitting in on a rehearsal. On his own accord. Kaoru (the singer) remarks that this is unusual of him, because he doesn’t usually care about others. “Have you suddenly started taking an interest in others?” Again, cue flashback to Masaki saying… something. It’s not important what is it anymore, is it?

We get to watch some neighbourhood soccer before Hibino shows up to tell Masaki that he tested negative on the STD test. “What about the HIV test?” He digs out another piece of paper. “Negative means I don’t have it, right?” So Masaki lashes out at him, because it wasn’t negative for her, and isn’t this what she deserves for engaging in compensated dating? Hibino, being the stalwart man (and also a bit of a doormat) comforts her by telling her (essentially) that he will still be her friend.

Okay, so now we know that it wasn’t Hibino who infected her. That leaves 2 candidates! Although the way this story is going, you should have known from the start who was the culprit.

Still in denial, Masaki calls up the hospital late at night to ask if there could have been a mistake. The doctor stalls by telling her to come to the hospital, and Masaki eventually gets it. There wasn’t any mistake (because that would be a really cheap copout).

While she lies in a miserable heap on the bed, her phone rings. It’s Keigo, surprise surprise. What is this, a booty call? You tell her off and then call her up like nothing happened? Although, I don’t think I’ve heard anything sexier to come out of a cellphone than Keigo’s “ore dayo” (it’s me). The unlimited arrogance! I like.

She’s still puzzling over this magic of someone’s voice coming out of her phone, when a *beep beep* sounds from outside her window. Okay, so it’s more like *honk honk*, but it’s still kinda a cute sound, not *pooon poooon* like the lorries do in Malaysia. Girl apparently has enough brains to put two and two together, and opens her window to look down into Keigo’s convertible, which so conveniently has its top down. And of course her bedroom window is conveniently above wherever he decided to stop his car, otherwise Masaki’s dad might have been the one throwing golf clubs at Keigo for making noise late at night.

In an expositional move, Masaki asks how he got her address. I mean, dude may be a superstar, but he’s not psychic nor does he have access to central government databases… I hope. Answer: She is a member of Kaoru’s fan club, so he got her address from there. Quite a good move, not terribly slick but it got the job done. It’s something I would have done, with my data-mining capabilities. He gives her back her biohazardous hanky, and follows this up with… a cigarette. Man! Totally gratuitous smoking.

The hanky reminds her that Keigo is doing some AIDS charity concert, so she asks if he ever got tested. Keigo replies that his agency made him get tested, as part of the campaign. A lorry rumbles by as he reveals that he tested… positive. OH NO!

He keeps a straight face for about 7.5 seconds before breaking into his first grin of the series. PSYCH! So he’s not going to die from AIDS. Because at the rate he’s puffing, lung cancer will get him first. “So it wasn’t you,” Masaki mumbles, to which Keigo gives the most adorable “huh?” I have ever seen in a grown man. [Updated: Keigo is KIDDING! He doesn't have HIV, so he's not the culprit. Anyway, this is a run-of-the-mill romance. Your hero cannot be the cause of the heroine's disease!]

They drive up to some hill overlooking the city, and Takeshi basically stops acting for this part. He is essentially telling his own life story as Keigo tells Masaki how he spent time in LA and feels neither here nor there, with no sense of belonging. “Alone and yet wanting help.” He turns back to Masaki. “Isn’t that how you feel?”

She gathers up her courage to reply. “Keigo, I…” and her grip tightens on the musical-note-patterned paper cups they’re drinking out of. Such a cute and kitschy design! You wouldn’t have thought that a serious musician like Keigo would use such things! The romantic music builds up as Keigo leans in for a kiss, then cuts off abruptly as Masaki pulls back and tells him not to be kind to her.

Having now distanced herself from him (and also because we’re coming to the end of the episode), Masaki finally does the big reveal. “I slept with a man for 50,000 yen!” Keigo: “Sou ka (I see).” Then she gets on with it. I have HIV! I’m gonna get AIDS! And I didn’t want to tell you, but I have to: I may have passed it to you!

HAVE YOU PEOPLE NEVER HEARD OF CONDOMS?! Seriously, even if there wasn’t any HIV, do the words “unwanted teenage pregnancy” mean anything? And you, Keigo, you’re supposed to be the adult! You should know better, because she could slap you with a child-support suit anytime, dude. Sheesh!

Keigo’s expression of shell-shocked horror is probably a PSA in itself. I wish it also meant that he was regretting his promiscuous past, but that’s probably too much to ask. Frankly, just vicariously absorbing his shock, fear and horror is enough to make me celibate. Too many evil germs out there.

What pisses me off is that it took her so long to get around to telling Keigo, when he was the one at most risk of getting infected by her. I mean, when he brought her to his apartment after she fell down, she had plenty of chances to tell him, but instead she just went beating round the bush about how she doesn’t hate him. Yeah, you don’t regret sleeping with him, but if you passed it to him, he’s going to have a lifetime of regrets for sleeping with you! And how come we’re never told how he feels about sleeping with her? Are we supposed to assume that it was just another one-night stand for him? But it’s obviously not, so how come Keigo isn’t allowed to contribute to this romantic fantasy? He just stands as a blank screen for females to project their own romantic fantasies. Takeshi’s great in this role, but I think the actress had more chance to show off her acting skills.