AWTY 89 - Soccermoto (Clean Freak: Aoyama-kun)

Hello, and welcome to our weed variat, an exploration and education and anime. I'm your anime idiot, patrick dugan.

I am an anime expert, dana hollander.

And I'm brenda mccullough. Your anime Tender Hands raw from the countless hours of washing. Sure. Because of the rona because quarantine. It was either that or a very specific Scrubbs references. But I don't know if everyone knows dr. Kevin Casey, played by guest star Michael J. Fox.

Of course I do. That heartbreaking scene. Yeah, you should have led with that.

The one time I didn't think you would know the reference, I bailed on it.

I've watched that. He grew up, so I don't remember it.

Michael J. Fox plays a doctor with OCD. And then there's a heartbreaking scene where they go into the hospital after hours, and he's like, I've been scrubbing my damn hands for hours because I can't not.

It's it's that it's a rough it's a rough episode.

Well, anyways, a real, real downer note.

Bring us up from that note. Yeah. What?

What do we have going on this week?

Shit. I didn't bring up the notes. I did that intro. That terrible intro. Because today we're watching Clean freak every it takes me a second. Ayama clean freak. Ayama kun. Because it was a recommendation from dora review on Twitter.

Oh.

Oh, no.

Oh, boy.

Oh, God. Our nemesis.

Hey, now we're kidding. We love you.

No, sorry.

Don't bring that past baggage with us. You leave that at the door. But yeah.

Does anyone know what the show is?

I feel like I've heard of it, but I've never watched it, so I'm.

Guessing it has something to do with the boy that likes being clean. That's about all I got.

Yeah, the context clues is all I'm working off of.

Yeah, it sounds like a clean time squeaky clean, boys.

I looked it up briefly, and it looks like the main character is also a big soccer player. So it's like germophobe also forced into a situation where he gets dirty or physical contact a lot. Otherwise it would just be howie mandel, the anime. So they got to have some hilarity ensues wacky hijinks about a guy with a very specific mental condition. Hilarious. I'm sure it'll be funnier than we are right now.

Yeah. Shall we dive on in? We're going to watch the first three episodes.

Great. I'm covered in dirt. Let's get clean.

Rub them. I'm sterile. Let's do this.

Don't touch me. I'm steryl.

That's it.

That's the show.

That's the whole thing.

That's the whole promise wrapped up.

Don't touch me, teammate.

Don't touch me. Eye. Boundary issues. That's a different show. Yeah. The plot of the entire show is in the title, so there you go.

Well, I mean, from the title, soccer.

Player Jeremy Folk, you wouldn't know that.

He'S a soccer player, so that's a little something.

Little twist for you. You got to dig into them.

Yeah, because going into it, I was like, okay on the art. They all are holding, like, cleaning supplies. This is, like, about high school. Teen made service, right? No, soccer. Okay, sure.

That it's not far fetched enough to believe. Yeah, this is a show about a maze high school. It's made service. Yeah, that'd be an anime. Why wouldn't it?

It's like, yeah, no, that's highly in the realm of what we would want that up.

Get that on the list or write it out.

I'm not saying it clean my neighbor's house. Oh, no, I found the body. Boom. It's a rear window. I got perfect.

Bringing culture back to Anna.

That's what it means.

Back to it. That implies there was some anyway, we start off with a big old soccer match between Germany and Japan.

I don't know. I couldn't tell.

I saw flags on the uniforms. And I think we get, like, a little flashback in a later episode. And this is like a junior high international championship or something. It's. Like what? Because this does the turkan anime thing. They're middle schoolers, and then we see him in high school, and they look identical. And the one dude is like, ripped a holy hell. And he's like, yeah, I looked like this in middle school. It's. Like what?

No, don't.

You're like a 29 year old dude. The one character just confuses the hell out of me, and I hate them. So, yeah, we're in a soccer tournament or a big finale, and there's a penalty kick and color. The main character. Ayama alyama ayama aliyama. I don't know why my brain is dumb, but it is. Goes to kick the ball for the penalty shot and wins the match for Japan. And everyone's cheering, and everyone goes to hug him and celebrate, and he just dodges. And nimbly avoids all of them because personal Space 6ft don't Touch, no touchy. And then we see cuts to a girl watching on TV, alayama saying, like, she's always cheered him on. She's always been rooting for him. So that's his stalker. We'll get to know her a little later, and she said, he's always been such a clean freak. And that's the show. So then we get the opening sequence, and I notice in the opening is, it a clean freak. So I guess I was a localization.

That's so much better.

It's a little tougher to say, but yeah, I think it's a more interesting title than just Clean freak.

Look in the sky.

It's gladly this boy versus, like, someone walking down the street. Look at that freak. Look at that clean freak. And then we come back to Aliyama cleaning the classroom, and he's just wiping the windows down and wiping his desk down, and everyone's amazed by him. fuck knows why. He's just cleaning. He's a pretty boy, but he's just cleaning.

Yeah. I feel like this was probably my biggest problem with this show, is the obsession over him is completely unjustified.

No matter how good of a soccer player he is. It doesn't warrant this.

Yeah, like, when we had Sokomoto everything he did was at the end of the interaction, you're like, oh, that changed my life.

I loved him, but this is like.

Oh, he plays soccer good.

He kicked that ball real time good.

Okay. I assume there's a lot of them that do on that soccer team of there.

That's the point. I hope they'd be good at it. Yeah. I was getting real strong having you heard him sakamoto vibes from the show. But yeah, it's not as absurd as sakamoto. sakamoto is, like, avoiding his friend's mom and, like, crawling on the ceiling like the exorcist girl and jumping behind a TV, pretending like he jumped into that movie and some insane stuff. And this was just kind of like, he cleans a lot, and everyone fucking.

That's another thing. sakamoto was nice to everybody. Alyama is kind of just not he doesn't talk to anybody. Yeah. What do you like about him? Just because he's handsome. Who gives a shit?

He just hasn't met me yet.

I can fix it. I mean, he is a germophobe, so I understand the distance, but like yeah, he's just he's blank no Name jrpg protagonist. Like, he might as well be silent because he talks too little. So even besides that, he doesn't have much of a personality anyway. His teammates come and get him. He's cleaned the whole time, so he's late for practice, so they come and get him. And he's a little tired just from cleaning all day. So he's like, don't be worn out before practice. And we see him before practice washing his hands, because he washes before and after. There's going to be a lot of exposition of just us saying he's cleaning stuff, so we can wrap that up real quick. And, yeah, he's playing soccer, and there's just a hoard of girls on the sideline just screeching, just going fucking nuts. And I don't get it. And then we see the coach pull aside this one this one player who's we find out he's not the captain. And, like, he's not the best player. So he's just this asshole he gets.

A lot of attention for. So not the captain.

For not the captain, not the best player, not the goalie. I think he's a forward. Like, he's not remarkable. Besides, he's rich, and for some reason, he hates sakamoto. Well, I mean, he's aliama he hates lots of same characters.

You ever have a protagonist so boring, you mix them up with a more interesting character?

We miss takamoto so much.

Please. Like, I guess I get why people love we love takamoto. Yeah. This character is named Koichi, and he just hates Ayama, and that's it. He's just rich and hates him. But for some reason, he's almost the main character. To the point where I almost crossed off unlikable main character on the bingo card because I thought he was for a while because they focused so much on him.

Like, same thing with sakamoto. They start off with his rival, and it's like, oh, we're going to watch him change. And no, he's still just rich asshole throughout. I honestly forgot I missed that he wasn't the captain. So in my notes, I just wrote down captain for him.

There you go.

He's like, given that importance on the team, he's like always taking charge and shit. So I was like, oh, yeah, you know the captain.

No, just some asshole. And so he's just annoyed by Alyama. And the coach kind of gives him shit, being like, hey, Aliyama is good. Shut up. So try to get along with him. Koichi like the rose. Aliyama a water bottle. Like, hey, heads up. Make sure you stay hydrated. And of course, Alyama just lets it fall because he touched it. It's dirty. So he gets annoyed by that. And then the coach gives Aliyama a new bottle, and we see him still cleaning it. And then during practice, the two of them are going for the same ball. And Kuchi jumps up to try and get it because he's a little taller. So he's like, I'll get there first. And Aliyama just stops dead in his tracks and just lets him take it. He's like, oh, I wonder why he let me have the ball. And then he gets collided by two other players on the field. So showing that Alayama didn't want to get touched by those guys, so he'd let the ball go. And then we see another character because this is like a penalty. They have to throw the ball into the game. And we see another player throwing it in for Aayama because he doesn't want to touch the ball. So the premise of the show and kuiji is getting mad at everyone for coddling Aliyama, saying, like, you're doing too much for him, you're coddling. I'm like a baby. And everyone just snaps back. And I'm like, no, you're coddled more than anyone else, you've rich son of a bitch.

This is the best part.

Whoa.

This came out.

Look at your cleats. Look at your cleats. They're brand new. How much did that cost? Money bags. Yeah, richie Rich, how much did that cost? I was like, some good value. Good.

I liked this part.

This is fun. It's rare that the rich kid isn't like, the main character in the most popular. Like kaguyama loves war. And instead, it's just like, look at this rich piece of shit. And they're like, bullying him for it.

You think you're better than me?

You ain't nothing. You're garbage. We're doing the New York accent again.

Quit being fucking ghost, kid just a ghost.

And I like that. We get one shot of kuiji going to run up to Alyama to grab him, kind of yell him. And as he's reaching, the coach grabs his arm and like, judo throws him over. And they're just like, ah, that's our coach. A third don in judo. I was like, that's a specific piece of information I don't know if we'll ever need again, but fair enough. And then as they're walking home, kuchi says that he'll never accept allayama never on his team, he doesn't work hard enough. And we see a girl trying to sneak into the club room, trying to make like, a copy of the key from the lock. And then the coach shows up and she scurries off and yeah, coach says he hates awa for not taking the game seriously. And then the coach points into the club rooms like, look, it's Aliyama. He's cleaning all the balls in the club room meticulously because he loves the game so much. He wouldn't be playing the game if he doesn't love it so much because it's so hard for him as a germophobe. So get off his case, koichi get dumb rich kid. Yeah, it basically just talks him down. And then the next day we see a rival soccer team show up and it's the rich snooty kids but school mipsy. My money bags are dude, that kid. And he's there to try and recruit Aliyama because he's one of the best soccer players in the area. And they actually played on the same team in that international game or whatever. And he's like, why did you come to this poor peasant school? And Aliyama basically says, he's like, there's something unique about the school that made me want to go here than any other school. And then I just call him like, grease ball and all my notes. The rich kid, I call him ABS boy says, yeah, that's fair. He starts talking to him every time he starts talking. At a certain point, he just lifts up his shirt and shows off his ABS. At first I was like, ha ha. reoccurring joke. And then it kept going. But then the sound effects and the pulsing they give to his ABS when he's like, flexing is borders on repulse body horror, at least where we stopped watching it because it's like throbbing like a monster's throat that just consumed somebody else. Just like, oh, I don't want to look at it anymore. It's gross to me now. And yeah, he's basically just showing off his ABS any chance he gets. And he's talking about like, oh yeah, if you think you're so hot shit, you can tell me why you picked the school after we beat you in a game of soccer. So we cut to them playing and we see Allyama just blowing past everybody and scores on the goalie easily because he's very good and everyone was just reflecting on how good he is. And then we see rich kids getting all upset after the first half of the game. He's like, he scored on us twice, but God damn it, I'm so proud of him. He's so good. Why? It's one of those where he's so masterful at it. It's beautiful. And it makes me weep from the sheer joy of watching him just perform. It's like, calm down. Calm, calm your ass. And we see kuichi getting off pissy, and he tries to make a play for the ball. He kicks it, and it just fucking goes a mile off. It's just like out of the schoolyard entirely because he sucks ass. He's just the worst character ever and is only there to be a foil for Aliyama. And then it starts to rain all of a sudden, and everyone's like, yeah, okay, we're going to keep playing in the rain. We care enough about this one. Practice game. And Risk kid tries to recruit Aliama again. And then the coach mentions the Kuychi that Aliyama is moving. Weird check up on him. He might be injured. So Koichi goes up to him and he's like, hey, what's going on? Turns out he's just avoiding the mud because it's raining now.

Shocking.

That makes sense. He's a clean freak.

Oh, wow.

And then Kuchi to get pissy again, and rich kid tells him to take the shot, and Kuchi jumps up and blocks the shot with his face. And you know what? It's a slow day. That was enough for me to check off nosebleed on the bingo card because it cracks him in the face and starts bleeding out.

I guess I'll allow it.

It doesn't say nosebleed for perversion. It just says nose bleed. So we're there.

Pull your way into it.

I'm the only one doing it. I'll fill it out how I want.

Fair enough.

And kuiji asked, he's like, what happened here? I jumped ahead of my notes.

Where am I?

What happened?

Who are you?

Something shiny just flew by. I got distracted. There was a bird or something out my window. Yeah. After guji head busts the ball and has it going down the opposite way, he rallies like the team, and they get all pumped up and it's like, yeah, let's do this. We're going to take a shot on the goalie. And as he kicks it, the goalie barely hits it with his fingertips and blocks a shot. But then Alayama comes out of nowhere, flies in, shoots the ball, scores the goal, but then it gets all money by doing so. kuwait is like, you got dirty. I thought you hate being dirty. And Aliyama says, yeah, but it's the last five minutes, so I care about it now. All the sun. Because the only thing I hate more than being dirty is losing.

What a guess.

Sure. You didn't seem passionate about anything else at this point, so I guess you are a big competitive nerd. So they win the game, and Kuchi gives the hug. Aliyama, who dodges the hug again because no touchy. And then Kuwichi gives him his jersey, saying Aliyama is more deserving of the number ten jersey than he is, which I guess in sports, number ten is a big deal.

Question the position thing like we talked about in Coroka. No bosque numbers are the positions or something, right. align for soccer?

Yeah, I think it all depends on the sport as well. So I don't know what.

And once again, Aliyama says, no, thank you. I don't want to touch your filthy ass jersey. Why would I? Why did you think I would want to touch that? How long have you known me? So he keeps trying to give him his jersey. He keeps avoiding them. And then all the girls are running after Aliyama again. It's just this is the show on the train homes, the jokes on the train home. We see the rich kid on the train with his teammates and they're wondering like, what? Of course he's on screen for 5 seconds. So he's showing off his ABS again in a weird back breaking position. And he's wondering what Alayama meant by the school's unique. Something about that unique school drew him to it. And then we cut back to Alayama after the match in the bathroom, cleaning the toilets in the whole bathroom and has this little bedet feature where it's just spraying water up out of the toilet to clean your asshole. And he says every toilet should have this feature. So, yeah, Aliyama is in the bus stuff, apparently.

I don't think.

Get real clean. Did I misinterpret that when someone comes for their vehicle?

No, I don't think that's it though.

Howie all is in the rim jobs. That's what we've learned.

Maybe. I don't know him. You know what, though? If he was a germaphobe, I feel like he wouldn't want anybody doing anything down there with their mouth. You know what I mean?

But if they did, it would be spotless. He's ready.

It'D be impressive. And then we get the ending, which actually caught me off guard because the ending is like it's just aliyama, like, filling up his water bottle. But then it just fades into an old timey, like astro Boy cyborg, like, nine style anime like ending. And from, like, the 60s, it caught me really off guard and I was like, it's weird.

Yeah, it was weird.

Yeah. I have trouble with this show. I don't know what it's supposed to be like, is it supposed to be funny? Because it's not like it has its moments, but also, like, the way, like, you're like, is him being a germaphobe, like, is that supposed to be part of the comedy? But then, like, the way the coach treats it, it's like, this isn't funny. This is his life. And it's like, well then what is happening here? How am I supposed to feel about this boy?

Yeah, honestly, I was thinking of the scrubs episode. I thought that was a trajectory. It was going to go, oh, this guy is like a neat freak. It's kind of annoying. And then at the end they're like, no, OCD is like a big thing and a very negative factor in a lot of people's lives. And you go, oh, okay, so we can deal with them a little bit more, but we don't get that sort of nice moment of like, no, he's struggling. It's like, no, he just really wants things to be clean.

Yeah. I can't tell if it's like if he actually has OCD or if it's just he prefers stuff that way because he does get dirty the last five minutes of a game. So he's like, I can get over it. I can suppress it enough.

Yeah, we'll get to that part. But yeah, that really cemented it to me. What's happening then? Why the premise if you're going to abandon it? Anyway, that's an episode later from now because we're on episode two. It's pretty one note, so I'll go through this pretty quick. Well, two notes, because it's two separate stories, of course. So that stalker fan girl that we see, we're going to get her backstory because she had gone to grade school with aoyama and she is obsessed with him ever since, even though they've had one interaction, spoke, but have one time.

Seen him, and she's been harboring those feelings. Yeah, I don't get it.

That perfectly normal, bull cut, sexy, completely average boy. He tried touching a cat with mediocrity.

He tried to touch a cat. And I fell in love with him instantly because sure, we need to for the plot.

So there's a bunch of she alludes to something happening in fifth grade, and that's when she fell in love, blah, blah, blah. So we see a bunch of fangirls that practice, just watching A yama, kicker balls around.

Sure.

Kicking the ball, doing the sport. So they wrap up. He's kicking the balls into the bin so he doesn't have to touch them. Sure.

I will say, in one of the flashbacks with the stalker girl, because we have established she is a stalker for Harvard feelings for years for no reason. But in one of the flashbacks, she's sitting on the ledge on the second floor of the school outside of the window while watching Alayama. And there's a teacher in the window, like, yelling at her like, hey, what the hell are you doing? It's dangerous out there. Get back in. Like, I did enjoy that part.

You are seven whole years old. Get your ass inside.

Yeah, yeah. It wasn't just like, yeah, people do this like, no, it's like, this is super dangerous. Get in here, kid.

So, yeah, they clean up after practice. They go into the locker room. Ayama is cleaning it and talking about the whole team is like, all these fans here, they're here for me. I'm so beautiful and wonderful. Everyone has a crush on me. And they go in the next day to the locker room, and they find everything spotless, and they're like, ayama's at it again. But when they go in into their lockers, they see that everything is folded and brim pressed and all that. So neat and tidy. And everyone's like, he took it a little far until Ayama comes in, and he's like, I didn't do this. We should lock the door to the locker room from now on. Everyone's like, yes, sure.

I'd rather die than touch your filthy clothes. Yeah.

So every day for that week, they keep coming back even though they're locking the locker room. Everything is spotless. everything's so clean and perfect, just the way Alyama would want it. And he's also getting stuffed cats put into his locker. Stuffed animals, I should say. That would make this a horror show.

Hey, that'd be interesting. That'd be a weird way to take it. Yeah.

More interesting than this alienate.

I kill cats and stuff them for you because you like cats, right?

Oh, no, they'll be clean forever. So every day they're coming in, and every day it's clean. But he's also getting a bigger stuffed animal cat put in his locker every day. Clearly it's the girl, but we get a flashback to the vague single event thing, and the whole thing is her name is mocha. It doesn't come up until the end of this, but sure. mocha is looking out the window in fifth grade and sees Ayama playing with a cat and just, like, playing my favorite game of trying to get it to bat at your finger, but pulling your hand away at the last second. So you're just playing keep away. It's cute, but he's just like, I don't want to touch this cat, but I want to play with it.

Yeah, I want to touch the pads. You got to touch those pads. But also, germs.

Get them. Get them beans. She goes out and is like, hey, that's not how you play with cat, but you can play with this stuffed animal I made. And he's like, gross. Wash it and bring it to me.

I could.

Based on that one interaction, she fell in.

She never brought him the cat.

She went home to wash it, and they never spoke again until high school.

So, like, three years later at minimum.

Yeah. So that's not a good basis for your romance, but sure.

Very good.

He's a pretty boy. Main character. So whoever gets the job done, right? But, yeah, they finally catch mocha in the locker room doing all the cleaning, and she's like, I'm so sorry. I just want everyone to like me and just blubbers. And everyone falls in love with her, and she's like, do you want to be our team manager so you can officially clean our room to break in and lost kicking to get in here? So, yeah, she's now the team manager, and her job is to protect Ayama. There's literally a bumper between that and the next section saying, like, this is her role now.

This is her purpose. I did, like, when they were looking at their clothes that were all folded in the lockers. koishi looks at it. He's like, oh, mine is folded too, but I get it dry cleaned every day. So they didn't really have to do this for me. Everyone's like, what? You get it dry cleaned? Yeah. Doesn't everyone like, no, you rich piece of shit. This is why rich people suck. That's actually a quote from one of the guys, like, in the background.

I can dry it on a gee.

Tee for dick you bought.

Yeah. Part two. Even weirder.

It gets weirder.

This is a very much a one note part. So I will go through this quick.

We still got to make an app.

I don't think we have to for this one.

Fair enough. You edit it. So it's up to you.

Yeah, he smells good. That's the premise of this half. So everyone gets obsessed with how good his towels smell. I mean, yeah, I could end there, but episode three. Episode three. So but yeah, they're on break at practice. Everyone's talking about Ayama is so popular. Everyone's showing up to practices to see him. He's in the shower because they're like, he's such a clean freak. He takes a shower before practice and after practice. Weird. So after practice, they're in the locker room. The glasses teammate sees his towel hang from his locker. And he's like, even his towels smell good. Wait, his towels smell really good?

Smells really good.

And gets super intense about it and becomes obsessed and starts tweeting and being like, oh, my god. You motherfuckers don't even realize how good those boys foul smell.

He's hitting up his Aliyama newsletter he sent out to everyone in the country.

Yes, 50,000 subscribers to that.

It's rare that we see the eda character be the edie.

Yeah. So everyone is like, holy shit, these do smell good. Everyone on the team except for I wrote them down as captain. fuck it. Who cares?

There you go.

Captain rich Boy is the only one who resists. Everyone starts sniffing them. But mocha, now the manager of the team is like, it's my job to protect these towels and Au yamaha. So as everyone goes to sniff them, she has the elegant solution of making a nail bat. She just stands next to the bench with a nail bat. And it's like, oh, you going to sniff something, motherfucker?

Try like this.

Oh, you have a weapon. My manager. Okay, goodbye. I'll go back to practice now.

Feels good. Like, flower and bear stickers all over it.

So, yeah, she is now the sole defender. But rumors are spreading around the school about how good his towels smell. And literally everyone in the school, the regular fans, they say, like, the new fans, like the people who are just there looky lose. Like, everyone in the school is there. So during a practice yeah, even a cat heard the rumors on Twitter.

Me at Twitter?

Cow.

Yeah, that's the more important storyline. We should. Be talking about, but no laundry. So during a break, everyone rushes the field, going to smell the towels. It's literally a mob going to smell these things.

Let me get a huff.

But Ayama just keeps dodging and dipping and weaving and just avoiding all of them as they try to get close. And then finally, Captain is like, all right, everyone, fuck off. We're in the middle of practice. Are you fucking kidding me? chill out. And then everyone leaves. Everyone's like, oh, fucking rich kid. Ruined it.

Naturally ruined our fuck. Yeah. I like that they say like a few people say, I'm not scared of kuiji. He sucks ass. But his family is rich, so I am scared of them.

His family will make me disappear. Yeah, but yeah. So after that practice, everyone's out of there. The captain's in the locker room alone. Like, everyone's an idiot, and these towels don't even he can't smell that good, right? And then a gust of wind from the window knocks Ayama's towel over. He goes to catch it, and in doing so, accidentally gets a whiff and has such pure nostalgia sense memories of his mom that he's like, this, like, brought her back from the dead. I don't know if she's dead or not, but that was a vibe I was getting. I mean, yeah, she's anime protagonist, so probably dead. Close enough. Cool. But of course, in that exact moment, Yama comes in and is like, that's fucking weird, bro.

And leaves. Are you a purve?

Yo, chill. Yeah, I know there was a mob here that I acknowledged an hour ago, but.

You'Re the freak. He's sitting there with a towel in his face being like, A Yama smells like my mom. That's a little weird.

But you know yeah, that's true. And then we get one last little joke where Mocha is wearing a Yama for Life shirt. And she's like, oh, I shouldn't wear this practice. Everyone else on this team is also my subject, so I can't play favorites.

Weird.

I like that when he grabs it at first, he doesn't smell the tile right away because he grabs it when it falls. And he looks at he's like, I'm not a pervert. I'm like, yeah, man, if you have to say it out loud, like, too late.

Everyone got to that point of being like, I'm not weird, but this smells like translucent blue. But yeah, that's episode two.

In episode three, we start with the trio of boys. It's like the glasses boy, a chubby boy, and another guy. There's nothing special about him, but they're on a train. And they're like, oh, yeah. Doesn't like taking the train, so he's going to have trouble making it to our next game. And then they see him riding a bike outside, and there's a pigtail girl on the train, and she seems like she's scheming. But that doesn't come in until much later in this episode. So the three of them are going out to dinner with Rich Boy before the next match. They're like, yeah, it's a tradition to have dinner before a game, like the day before a game. And he's going to treat us because his family is rich. And he's like, I am not. And they're trying to get Aliyama to stay. And he's like, nah, I'm going to go home. And then it starts raining. And they're like, oh, you don't want to bike home in the rain. You have to hang out with us. And they go into, like, a diner. And I thought it was so precious that those three boys were so excited to make, like, mixed sodas. They just go up to the soda fountain and make mixed beverages.

I think it was like melon soda with cola. And then a bag of Boy did that, which I mean, I try.

Let me tell you my favorite. I like to do fruit punch and sprite with cola. Like, whether it's pepsi or a coke, it's very good.

What's a shirley?

A shirley temple is bright and grenadine. So cherry. I do love shirley temples as well. Anyway, alyama is cleaning everything. Of course, he's just scrubbing stuff. And they're about to do a little toast when ABS Guy appears. And he's like talking shit about their school loud enough to hear. And then he's like, oh, didn't see their losers. And then he shows them his ABS again. Yeah. And then they start yelling at him. And they're like, we know you've been watching us at practice. And he's like, my disguise, though, even though it's just a pair of sunglasses.

I do like how they call him out on that and be like, yeah, that's a shitty disguise. He's dumb. itty he's the only one pulling his own pulsion.

And he's like trying to intimidate them, but it's not really working. And he just ends up making a scene. Like everybody in the diner is just looking at him. And then their food comes. But Ayama doesn't eat in restaurants because other people touched that. Why would he want it? But ab's Guy is making it a big deal. He's like, oh, he doesn't eat from restaurants. He only eats nutritionally balanced meals that he makes himself. And the guys on his team are like, nah, it's just because of his germ thing.

Stop looking too much into it.

And then to bother him because he's just there to bother them. They order him food and then him and the chubby Boy, who I affectionately call bearboy, they have an eating contest. And they're going for speed. But they're also, like eating every dish on the menu. So they're on the last dish. It's Korean rice and ABS, boy. And his brain is like, I can't have another bite, but I have to impress Alyama.

Who just does not give a shit.

And we get some backstory and we see them. They played on the national team together. And ab's boy just loved playing with him so much. He got the perfect pass from him, and he wants to experience it again. And then Abzboy finishes the last bite of curry. But Awyama reminds them that there is a huge strawberry parfait dessert that they have to eat. But ab's boy can't do it. And Bear Boy wins.

He already ate it by time they looked back.

And at this point, the rain has stopped. So Alyama is like, well, goodbye.

I'm out.

This was I hated every second of it. I'm going home.

I didn't want to be teammates.

Fuck off. And then they're at the game the next day at a different school, and Rich Boy is mad that Ayama isn't there. And we see him washing his hands because of course, yeah, and Pigtail Girl is there. She's washing her water bottle. And then once she's done, he takes it from her and looks at it and then cleans it better. And she gives him mischievous look. And she's like, oh, you like cleaning stuff? You should come with me. And I'm just like, what the? He knows he has a soccer game to play. He supposedly loves playing soccer. Like, what's happening? But he goes with her.

He's young and full of.

Clorox the leash.

So the other team is, like, ready to play. We see them just having a talk, and they're concerned about Ayama. But the captain doesn't seem too worried, so he's in on this. Whatever. She's scheming. So she took him to clean the boys locker room, and then she closed the door and locked it from the inside. I was just like, can you just get past her and open the door?

Then you'd have to touch her and the door.

You were literally dodging a mob an episode ago. You can't get past one person.

And there's like a huge crowd there and cameras, and they're all there to see Alyama, but he's not there. So people are, like, disappointed. And the coach is a little worried because the team that they're playing against will rough up the other team. She's like, oh, no, we need Alyama here to win or else these people are going to beat up my players. I'm like, I think they do that anyway. But so this is where we find out about Pig chill girl's plan why he can't just leave. Because she takes off her shirt and she's like, oh, now if you try and leave, I'm going to scream. And then people will come and think that you're assaulting me so you can't leave. And then Awyama is like, I'm locked in here. Oh, no. And he lays on the ground, and she's like, what's going on? And he's like, I just thought about being locked in here, and now I'm scared. And she's like, Are you also claustrophobic?

This boy sure did.

She and she's like, why do you play soccer? And then we see the other team is winning. Oh, no. This girl had mentioned her boyfriend before. He's like, the captain of the other team. And Ayama is like, does he know about this? And she's like, no, I did this on my own. I wanted to make my boyfriend happy. And then Mocha arrives because she had been looking for him. She arrives with her nail bat and her lock picking skills and gets in there.

I love how quick she is to pull out the nail bat just at any moment of confrontation at all.

She's ready to fight. Raised swing.

You know how everyone is ready to murder for their high school crush? You know that very normal, healthy thing?

We already established she's psychotic, so it just follows suit.

But it's not just her.

I don't know if other people would.

Yeah, I don't know if other people.

Would kill for him, but she definitely would. So he arrives to save the day. There's only 15 minutes left in the game. Will he do it? Yeah. So the game happens. They're playing soccer. It's happening. And then at one point, he like, dodges everybody doing his dodgy no germs thing, and then he gets thrown. Oh, no. And the guy that threw him got a yellow card. Even though people have been tossing people around all game, people just love how yama they just don't want this boy hurt. Fuck everybody else. This guy can't he his beautiful face.

He touched my son yellow card.

So Captain Boy is mad about it. Well, rich boy, he's mad about it. And I'm just like, because your boyfriend got hurt? Because obviously people must ship them. Obviously. And then Ayama, after he gets back up, he's having trouble playing, not because he's injured, but because he's dirty. And it's starting to look hopeless for our boys. But since there's only five minutes left, ayama decides to go buck wild, and he scores three points, which is I hate it. It's like, why you got dirty before? Why don't you just go buck wild after that anyway? Because you were already dirty. If you don't care about being dirty in the last five minutes and you're already dirty, just go buck wild. Aren't you tired of being nice? Don't you just want to go apeshit?

Don't you just want to go ape? It reminds me very specifically of the Fairly Odd Parents episode where they play to save the dimsdale dimmedome. And timmy is a basketball player, but the magic wears off at the last five minutes of the game because it's the only part of the game anyone cares about.

Yeah, but the whole premise of the show is, this kid cannot get fucking dirty unless he wants to. Then why make that the premise of the show if you're going to throw it away whenever it's not convenient?

Yeah.

Why couldn't this just be a soccer anime?

Yeah, it could have just been. Haven't you heard I'm good at soccer.

Haven't you heard that?

But yeah, so he pulls it out because he hates losing. He hates it more than being dirty. So they win, and then the other team goes to their locker room and they find it super clean. So I guess while he was in there, he cleaned it. Or maybe Mocha cleaned it. It was unclear. But that's the end of episode three.

Yeah, I think the captain of the team kind of implies that, like, oh, ayana would have showed up like, five minutes late to the game if he just left when he got out. But instead he spent, like, another 20 minutes cleaning their locked room or something. And that's why he's late until the very end.

Maybe it's that.

It turns out he doesn't care about losing more than cleaning. It turns out he'll definitely risk losing the game in order to clean the room.

That's not even him for people he doesn't know.

They're breaking their own logic and then still going. Just kidding. No, he still likes cleaning. And it's like, what if you, the writer, can't give us, like, consistent shit? Then why do we?

Yeah, well, I mean, it's like, say if you make, like, a D and D character just based off of a really dumb pun and the name, but for, like, twelve episodes, and that's what these short form animes are.

But even then, if you're like, my jokey thing is I'm like a golf caddy, but I'm a bard. Except I'm going to drop this whole persona when we actually get into a fight that matters. It's like, then you're not doing a joke character. You're doing a bit. You're doing a bit that's not your character.

It's just a recurring bit just comes up over and over again.

Well, anyway, I feel so weird about this because it was fine. Like, it wasn't terrible or anything, but it was just kind of boring and inconsistent and nothing happened. And it's just like, all right. I never consider myself a fan of sports anime, but Run With the Wind is a good sports anime because the characters are likable and well written. But this is just a weird thing where it's like, this is a soccer anime, don't get us wrong. But also main pretty Boy germophobe. But also, it doesn't matter because you can't tell if it's supposed to be funny or serious. So here it is.

Yeah, they can't decide on the tone. If they just committed to one thing, it could have been good if it was like, we see him cleaning a classroom. It didn't need to exclusively revolve around soccer. If they're like, oh, this high schooler is a clean freak. And then we get sakamoto style. Just like, he has to avoid every dirty situation. Like, oh, someone spilled milk in the cafeteria, and he has to deal with that, that would be a more interesting show. Then it's kind of about cleaning. It's more about soccer. The teammates are there, so it's like, an ensemble show, but they're there for, like, five minutes per episode.

We don't even know any of their names. Yeah, we know the rich kids names and that's it.

Yeah. In that bumper where they're like, mocha must protect ayama now they literally had to flash the other teammates names to be like, we don't tell you. Here's how we're telling you. Learn from this. It's. Like what?

It's the three guys from along. Yeah, you don't need to know their names. Yeah, it could have been funny if they lean into the cleanliness thing where he'll even avoid conversations if they're dirty. Like, someone makes a crude joke and he leaves.

That's comedy, baby.

You can't be around anything dirty. that'd be fun.

Like, you can have fun. Stuff like that.

Yeah, I don't think they really lean too hard into, like, oh, they definitely did in moments. But I think this really feels like a show where someone came up with the basic premise of, like, wouldn't it be funny if someone was in dirty situations and it was like a neat free and they reworked it? backwards from there. And they built it around that because yeah, everything else just kind of seemed like here's this ABS character we're throwing in in the first episode and shoehorning him in in every moment because he's so insane and ridiculous. He's the butt of every joke. Like, any situation he's in, it's like, cool. He doesn't go to the school, though. He has no reason to be here. Why is he in a different school? Like, that was added in later when they realized this was kind of dull with just our soccer team. We need to spice it up a bit or something.

Hey, guys, wasn't this supposed to be a comedy? Oh, shit, you're right. What if we added him? We forgot all the likable.

What if he was a dumb, mean, rich himbo? It wasn't like, oh, this show was awful. But it's just like, the jokes they have are kind of like beating a dead horse. It's the same joke told over and over again in just different situations. Granted, there were some funny a lot of funny visual stuff that we really couldn't convey. Like, when gotcha Pond was breaking into the clubhouse to clean it, she shoots out lock picks from her sleeve and it looks like wolverine claws. And I was like, that's kind of funny. It was like a funny visual gag real quick.

Yeah.

And I thought there was a lot of those where it's just like, that's funny and that's it. But, like, story wise, it was just lacking a good bit and, like yeah, I don't know what they were trying to convey. You don't have to worry about him losing because he's apparently the greatest soccer player that has ever existed. So there's never a threat of him losing.

It sort of gets into that because we keep going back to sakamoto because we're like, okay, we found a show of this that does it well, because the whole premise is everyone is like, everyone's obsessed with this guy. He can't be that cool, right? But everyone subsequently finds out, oh, no, he is amazing. Okay. There's a reason everyone loves him. It's just those, like, weird parasocial relationships where it's like, we're obsessed with this one kid out of school because he is good at soccer. Is he nice? Is he fun? Is he interesting? No, he actively avoids everyone because he hates everyone because they're all dirty. It's like, okay, so this guy's an asshole, and why is everyone obsessed with him? And it asks the same questions of, like, why do we love him? But we never get the reasons why.

We should love him.

Yeah. All in all, it was fine. And.

Even the endearing moment where it's like, oh, we saw the typically cold, isolated character having a soft form moment with, like, a lost cat or something. Like, oh, doesn't that endear him to you? Even then we didn't get it because he couldn't touch.

Yeah.

We could have had something where he was like they say how he makes all of his own food. Like, what if we got a shot of him, like, preparing bento lunches at home, and then he gives us to grade school wars or, like, a charity or something. There could have been another way to show, like, he does care about people in his own way because of his condition. But we didn't get that. He's just a soccer pusher.

Yeah, because, like, it's his like, germophobia is mostly selfish. They go into, like, oh, he cleans the locker room. That could be, like, a nice thing. Like, oh, he cares about his teammates. He's like, no, no, he just refuses to be in a dirty locker room. And it's like, okay, so he's avoiding practice. He's avoiding teammates so he can clean for himself. And it's like, all right, sure. This is a cute quirk, I guess.

Yeah. It's never shown as serious enough as actual OCD where you feel, like, sympathy for him. You got this terrible burden because he does stop whenever he really wants to. He can push it on. So it's like, is this a burden for him or is this just a weird fascination for him or something? So he doesn't draw a sympathy, at least from me, didn't draw much sympathy for me. And it was more just like, this guy's just kind of weird and annoying.

Yeah. I truly in that third episode when he just turned off being a germophobe, went from, yeah, this is all right, to just fuck this. Why? If the whole premise of your show can go away because you want it to, then don't make that your premise.

There's no conflict, I think, without realizing it, because we didn't know what sakamoto was. I think we watched the satire and parody of this type of show before. We watched this type of show. So it'd be like if we watched One Punch Man before watching Dragon Ball Z, and then we just shit on Dragon Balls. The show is dumb and it's like they just scream and punch stuff all the time. It's like, yeah, that's what One Punch Man was doing. But better because it was a parrot. So it kind of undercuts any impact the source does or the real material does.

Yes, we watched it.

Hey, we love you. We love you so much. I love doing your choices of show are valid.

I think this is more of a recommendation just because of the cleaning and we're in corn time more than anything else.

I feel like this has been I need to check, but I feel like this has been on our list for a while, though. Pre cleaning.

Well, anyway, we appreciate your contribution.

Yes, thank you. So what do we have going on next week?

Well, next week we have a guest. We have invited our pal maureen Price, voice actress, and she chose the show barackman. So we're going to be watching the first three episodes of that. I've never heard of it, so I'm excited to give it a go.

And if there's a show you the listener would like us to watch, you can send your recommendations to us through our email. Are we there yet@gmail.com? Or you can reach out to us on Twitter or Instagram are we there yet? On both. You can find me on Twitter and Instagram at mrpatrick.

You can find me on Instagram at queen. Period weebu, and on Twitter at queen underscore weebu and Queen underscore Weebu art.

You can find me on Twitter at aBTS as Brendan. It stands for Almost Better Than Silence, which is a video game podcast. I mostly do it at shit on video games. I'm playing god damn it. It comes annoying that's two weeks in a row I'm playing a lot of it.

Thank you to camille ruley for our artwork. And thank you to louie zong for theme songs stories off the album beats. You can find all of louie's music at Louisong bandcamp.com. Thank you, and we hope you'll join us next week as we learn to.

Live with a remember to wash your hands.

David beckham.