AWTY 233 - (s)hitman (Hakata Tonkatsu Ramens)

In anime. I'm your anime idiot. Tess Dugan.

I'm your anime expert, D Hollander Gonzalez.

And I'm Brendan McCullough. Your anime bowling for soup.

There's 104 days of our vacation. That was the first thing that came to mind and not 1985. Weird.

Springsteen. Madonna.

Raven. I loved that song when I was, like in third grade inexplicable I have.

Nostalgia for none of these things.

I could tell you one song they've done and it's a cover. And it was in the movie sky high.

Oh, yes.

Might be the second week in a row I've mentioned sky high. I don't know anymore.

I don't think so. But I could talk about sky high. I love sky high.

It comes up surprisingly loud for me. That was a good movie.

You love that girl.

It's always lingering just below the surface.

Yeah.

It was formative for so many people. It's got Mary Elizabeth Winstead and the guy that played war in peace. I don't know his real name.

I get it, though. But you're right.

War in peace is such a cutie.

Kurt Russell. Oh, him too. That's in there for some people.

Jeez.

Yeah. That's where he got his big break.

It's in the credits. Introducing Kurt Russell.

Oh, god. Outlandish.

Well, we have a show. It fluttered to us in the wind because possibly bad bookkeeping. We have a recommendation, but there was no name on it. Is that on us? 100%.

We're going to view it as a fun little mystery.

Happy little accident.

I'm getting up the exact title of the show and opening my notes like a responsible podcaster would at the top of a show we're watching. Hakata tongkatsu ramens.

Hooray.

There it is.

Yeah. So it looks like this came out 2018. Is this a series either of you are familiar with?

Not at all. I've never heard of this program.

If you could tell by my absolutely relevant opener. I know so much about this show.

I do love Tonkotsu Ramen.

It's very good.

Very good. And creamy. Slurp. Slurp. Slurp.

I hope it's a cooking show.

That would be nice.

The dream from my brief search. No, it seems like it's more of a Brendan type series of assassins and police and investigation.

The way you say my name feels like an insult and it's never good.

I mean, you're the person who gives that word meaning, so I want you to reflect on that.

I'm out here living my best life and that's wrong, apparently.

Great. I know nothing either.

I've never bit us in the ass before.

Yeah. So we're jumping right in. Let's not beat around the bush any longer. We're watching the first three episodes.

Let's do it. You take me away.

I love Natasha Beddingfield.

Take me away thank you.

Take me back from brain. We're all singing.

How embarrassing. You know, I'll take it because I feel like it's not usually me that gets embarrassed. So that's okay.

It's truly a game of roulette of when we'll come back.

Love it. It's good every time. Even if I'm the bug.

Is it mostly a game for us? Yes. Is it fun for the listeners?

So episode one, that's not important right now.

So we start out with a montage of a cityscape people doing city things. And we see Bonbas private investigation and a girl needs help. So we cut away from that and we see there's a girl who's knocking on someone's door. And a woman answers. She's like, oh, I'm looking for the guy here. We had a steamy relationship. And the woman's like, what? Oh, you poor sweet summer child. But she's like, oh, I'm here to beat him up too. I'm also mad. But when the woman opens the door so they can cuss him out, she attacks and kills the woman and breaks and enters.

What?

This is not a cooking show.

No, I mean you've watched Hannibal. It could still be.

Now you got my interest.

But the guy comes out and he's like, oh whoa, you murdered my babe babe. And this woman that broke in is a man in drag.

What?

And they're not going to let you forget it.

Their identity confounds me because they say they just wear the outfit because they like it. To which I'm like, you go, buddy. And I used they them pronouns for them the whole time I took notes. But then everybody else is like, that's a man. And I'm like, I mean, yeah, but I don't know. I'm giving the show too.

Yeah, because also when she'll be like, who the fuck are you calling a girl? And it's like, okay, sure.

It truly just seems like a straight CIS man but just dresses like a woman.

And there's no but all the time.

Which is it's all the time.

This is the hypothetical trans woman that conservatives are afraid are going into battle. Or just the assassin trans who's just doing it cuz for a cover to be an assassin. But she's like, yeah, you stole from Club Miwa and they hired me an assassin to make an example out of you. And so they do. She's walking down the street. He's getting a phone call from Zhang, her contact, and she's told your next mission you got to go after a detective. And she's like, I'm not doing it for you. I'm doing it for stairs into the distance, her wistful. And we get a flashback of him leaving in a truck and her running after it. And I'm clearly a child sibling left behind. So we then see red rum ink.

God.

What do you guys think this company does sell?

Wine? Red wine, sugary, liqueur.

Oh wow. Did you both really miss it? Wow. Then I'm glad they did spell out that it should be murder ink every 10 seconds.

How can this be?

I made a note where I'm like, wow, this is so on the nose. And then they flat out say, like, it's murder.

You missed it, you fucking idiot.

I'm like, oh, my God, I want to drive an ice pick through my skull.

Like, I'm sure language translation, it was more clever. But then you're still just referencing one of the most popular movies of all time in a very blatant thing. Anyways, we don't need to get too caught up in it. And we see, oh, man, starting a new job there. He's like, oh, but it doesn't suit me. Could you imagine me an assassin for hire? This episode is just cutting back and forth between scenes that then get expanded upon in the next few episodes. So right now, there is just a lot of what is seemingly random jumping between different characters. They all sound the same in the dub.

Okay. I'm glad we all agree on that.

Yeah. It's truly so difficult to distinguish. It's truly, like clothing. I know. None of their names.

And it was so hard to give them a signifier of like, at first I was calling the mandress is a woman is named Lynn. And at first I was calling them just Hitman. And then that obviously fucking fell apart. Naive hitman. And I was like, I can't just keep doing this.

Blank hitman. Add descriptor hitman. Yeah. Also note.

But even then, it's like, gray hitman. No, there's several suit hitman. No. Goddamn.

When they introduced the Red Rum inc. They also revealed that 3% of the city's population are Hitmen.

Insane statistics.

That's not a job industry. That's a killing games. We're in The Hunger Games with just a dumber plot.

Don't compare this to that.

You can't have that many people who are professional assassins all working in the same place. You would decimate the population within a year. Like, that's not a job industry. That can function on that scale.

It's just not good.

Also, the job market, the economy.

Economy.

Anyway, it's going to be a lot.

Of that this episode.

Just get everyone's killing everyone. So Lynn goes to the detective's home to scope it out, but it looks like he killed himself.

Done and done.

Clearly, that's what it is. Anyone who's a professional killer getting a job to kill someone showing up on the scene, and they're dead by strangulation. But then they left a note that said they killed themselves. You should take that at face value all the time. And they do. We then see this blonde guy, a new character who killed a girl during sex.

Fucking can't with this shit. I won't elaborate.

He's, like, bad.

He's, like, bad. He's, like, really bad. And it makes me want to die.

Yeah, because all our heroes are killers. We got to really ramp it up for this guy, this shitty child. Yeah, cool. Yeah, we see. I got lost. Excuse me? There's a labyrinth in my notes. We see the bonbas private eye talking with a buddy, and they're discussing the details of the dead detective. And oh, there was a shady meeting last night, and someone slipped this photo under my door. And OOH, the mayor's meeting with the crime lords, and we got a photograph. Coincidentally, the mayor is having a campaign rally 3ft away from us. And they're like, that girl up there, is she a bodyguard or a secretary? So they pop a balloon to see her reaction, and she's calm, cool, and collected. She's a hitman, of course.

Everyone's a hitman in the city. It's 3% of the population. It shouldn't be surprising.

Yeah. And it doesn't pay well because the market's so diluted that she has to get a second job at the mayor's office, apparently.

Yeah.

So we see that woman. She's meeting some other sketchy individuals in a parking garage, and they're discussing the killing of the detective. And they're like, oh, yes, you made it seem like a suicide. Yes. Only a real idiot who doesn't know how to kill wouldn't have seen that. But they get a call from the blonde boy who killed the girl, and he's like, can you get someone to clean up the mess made? Uh, when will another girl be here? And they're it's you have to not be suspicious. You can't just kill a girl every other day. We would appreciate more of a heads up. So Bombas goes to his nerd contact.

Just some I fucking hate this character. There's something about this I'd said it before. I was just use it as a descriptor. This shitty computer guy. I hate him. It's something about his voice. It's bad, and I hate him.

Yeah, there's usually, like, a hacker Odicon of I'm in like, guy in the van. This is just an insufferable, smarmy little prick of a child. And it's like, that is the worst personality to give this character, because there's nothing else redeeming about them.

Yeah, just, like, going into basically an Internet cafe with, like, a little private booth, and he's like, all the information I already know you're just asking me for it. Shut up.

I'm actually surprised he doesn't speak in Internet slang of, like, saying lol out loud and stuff, because that could be the only thing I'd imagine would make him worse.

So they're like, oh, yeah, that girl working for the mayor, that's Asakura Draco, and she used to work for Red Rum. Might as well call him Murder.

Right? Am I right?

What an allegation?

And he's like, oh, interesting. Anyone else who left Red Rum might as well call it murdering. Anyone else leave there around five years ago as well, who's known for strangling, and they're like, oh, yeah, this big half Russian, half Japanese guy.

Yeah, the bikini bottom strangler.

Yeah. So this big Russian agent is named Ivanov. Of course, couldn't name him anything, so they go and remove the body, and they're like, hey, you brat, be more careful. Your dad won't like it. He's like, but okay, fine. I'll lay off the killing. So I made this YouTube video of me and my friends just beating the shit out of foreigners. I'm going to post it to YouTube.

Because dumb, it's so outlandishly evil that there's no reasonable explanation for why any of this exists.

Yeah.

Even in a fantasy series like this.

Yeah, it's basically like the TikTok blackout challenge of like, yeah, we're just going to punch out a random guy. No one's actually doing that. That's for local news, is to scare grandmothers. So we see one of these victims, a guy who got beat up in a bar telling his story, and he wants his revenge. And he's at the right place to hire an avenger because this city's economy is based on killing people. You may want to get revenge, so you may want a hitman specifically for revenge. Yeah. And they're told, watch out, there's a hitman killer who only hunts other hitmen. The opportunistic samurai is what he's called. That's not a catchy name.

Honorary. They change it immediately.

So Bombus, the investigator is chatting with someone, one of his contacts. He's like a pickpocket. He shares the photo of the mayor doing the shady meeting. He's like, hey, who are these guys? And he's like, well, one of them's dead because he was stealing from the club. The guy from the very beginning. And he's also like, hey, you have a James Bond spider too, right? Yeah. So I have this little fake spider. It's got a GPS. It's going to be very confusing. Cool. And they're eating Ramen, like the type. So they're leaving, and we see Lyn walking by, and the pickpocket pickpockets her. And he's like, whoa, you touch my ass. Punch and like, teeslers. And yeah. So apparently Lynn only got paid a little bit for that detective getting killed, which she did nothing on. She did not do the job and is complaining that she got paid a little for that job. So, yeah, we see the new guy at Murder, Inc. Prepping for the killing. But there's a knock at the door. It's a man. It's hitmen. They're only hitmen.

That's all they are.

Yeah, this is kind of like a side character that comes in who's truly at this point, we're like, why is this just like a side hitman thing happening in the middle? It gets tied in later. But this is Saito. He's the new guy. And they kidnap him. Cool. So Lynn calls her boss and is like, hey, why'd you pay me so little for that job? And he's like, hey, because you're a shitty assassin. You thought that detective killed himself. Only an idiot would think that. You're bad at your job.

So yeah, be happy you got paid all for doing nothing.

True.

He's like, hey, there's this bonba guy who's doing some investigating. He's getting a little too close to stuff. Maybe go after. So we're back at the beginning with the girl meeting with private investigator. And he's like, I'm here to kill you. Except just kidding. I'm here to protect you because people want to kill you. And that's where we end episode one.

Great.

I'll just say now on the bingo card, I checked off Unlikable main character. I don't know who that is. They're all I hate them all.

Yeah, doesn't matter. I will also say, I don't know if you could hear it in our call or if it gets picked up by my microphone for the podcast, but like, an ice cream cart guy was just riding around honking a clown horn for a little while, and that just.

Feels like it fits the right time for this.

I want you to be very careful. Are you certain it's not an assassin?

Now, I can't be wrong.

Well, have you ripped off any clubs or murdered just any random women lately?

Shit. No. Just kidding. Anyway, episode two. We see Lynn yeah, we see Lynn tell their boss that they're going on strike because they didn't get their money and that's why they're not killing bonba. They tell bonba that they expect another hitman to show up soon, and bonba asks them to leave. Then we get the opening, which was the ending of the episode before. And I think the funniest part of the opening is that they show bonba, like, tearing out in a Mini Cooper. And that's just, like, not the kind of car that you see that happen with. They fall asleep on Bonba's couch and he takes a picture of them. Okay, sure.

I think it's used later to get information on oh. But we don't see him use that picture later, so it does just seem creepy.

Yeah. Saito, the new guy from the last episode, he wakes up gagged and tied to a chair. Another man is in the same room, and he's being tortured to death for killing a cat. So weird spectrum here of crime. Not that I love cats. Nobody should kill a cat. But this guy okay, here's the fucking thing. So there's a guy in a suit and a bald dude suit guy tells Saito that they work in Vengeance, and is there anyone who wants to get vengeance on him? Saito's freaking out. They take the gag off of his mouth, and he says, he's not the guy they were looking for. He was waiting in that apartment to kill the same guy they want to kill. And I'm like, why are there two hits sent out against one guy? That just doesn't seem convenient for anybody.

Yeah, that's such a shitty way for these hitmen. I'm just so upset about the economy of this town where someone's like, yes, let me use my tens of thousands of dollars of assets to go after this job. He's dead. Fuck.

Shit.

Well, I can't cancel the ice cream truck. I was going to camp out in D. I still think it's want you to be on your toes for the rest of the episode.

Okay, I'll be careful.

I will say real quick, two of hitmen were going after this one guy. One was hired by the mayor's team to clean up the shitty kid's friends who this was, and the other was hired by the victim of the shitty kid. So that's why they're two assassins. It doesn't really matter. But that is why, as long as.

Someone can get something cohesive out of this, I appreciate it.

So thank you. I'm used to this. This is where I live. I don't like it, but I'm here.

So they take Saito's business card, they put a flame under it and turns from red rum to murder. Oh, my God.

More like murder.

You get it?

Yeah. They wonder where their actual target is. We see a car explode. A guy with glasses calls someone and says that three dudes, including the target that the other guys are talking about, have been taken care of. So these three dudes are the shitty kids friends that beat up the foreigners, and he's with the is that the Russian guy?

That he yeah, there's, like, an explosion guy, and the Russian guy.

Okay, he's with the Russian guy. My next note after that one is, I think I hate this, so just want to get that in there.

It lasts longer than I did.

The mayor assistant lady is with a guy who has an eye patch, and she asks if it's done. And now they've been told to get the shitty sun women so he doesn't keep killing just, like, regular civilians.

Whatever the eye patch guy says, the mayor's orders are not to be questioned. He's a fucking mayor, not a king.

Or a god mayor.

He's just some fucking mayor.

It's a town. That's a city thing.

It's insane.

But I guess if you're the mayor of a town of hitmen, maybe things are different.

I feel like the turnover rate's got to be huge because you would just assassinate the mayor whenever he pissed you off.

Yeah. Who would want that job? Who isn't insanely corrupt? And everyone would know that going into the election.

Yeah.

So Saito is let go by the other guys. They give him a business card. bonba tries to leave his office. Lin doesn't let him leave. So bonba gives them money to go buy a particular kind of fish, and he yells at them to go get it and get it right. They say they'll do it, and they tell him not to open the door for anybody. While Lin is looking for this food, banba goes to see the shitty computer guy to get more info on them. And this is where we find out that their name is Lin and they were born in China. Computer guy guesses that they work for a Chinese organization as a hitman. And he also knows that Lin is about to get beat up somehow. He just has that information. He has the scheduling for every hitman in the fucking city, I guess.

Yeah.

And the bald guy from earlier, we see him punch Lynn, and Lin fights back, and the bald guy says he was only told to punch Lyn once, not to kill them. And then he gives them a business card, which you put a flame under it, and it says he's a torturer. He doesn't work for Murder, inc. If you could believe. He's an independent contractor.

It's a freelancer. I am so wildly not interested in this world of hitman and so deeply fascinated by this world of business card makers that always have a double sided, heat activated secret code, because that seems to be all the business cards, and I got to figure out why. If a third of the population of the city are hitmen, why is this a secret?

So this guy, bald guy, was hired by the guy that pickpocketed Lynn because Lynn punched him, and that made him upset. And then we see shitty computer guy give bonba Lynn's wallet, which the guy did take from her. How did shitty computer guy get it?

I couldn't follow the guy pickpocketed Lynn yes. Took their wallet and then used the money from their wallet to hire the Avenger guy to punch Lynn. And then the bald guy gave it to the computer kid to find out who Lyn was.

So stupid.

There is a line here. It's just a God awful one.

A line is not the word. I would say a meandering self looping.

A Jeremy baramy of events.

Exactly.

It's the same sense of a line as in the line the guy took in 127 Hours, who then almost died and had to cut his own arm off like he got there, but God help you, it was a fucking awful way to get there.

Bonba takes the wallet. He sees the picture of Lyn's little sister in the wallet. He gets back to his office, and Lyn is mad that he left because a hitman did come. But luckily, Lynn was waiting for him, and bonba makes them let the hitman go. They argue about the spicy grow, the fish that he wanted, and Lyn gets their wallet back. Eyepatch guy is talking to Lynn's Boss. He's getting a woman from him. Cool. Instead of money, the boss man wants Eyepatch Man to run. He says, like, run. Lynn out of town, but he wants them dead. bonba and Lynn have some ramen together, which is actually the hakata tonkatsu Ramen. They said it in the show.

It's the titular character.

The titular character. They have banter. Lin hates Tonkatsu Ramen. They ask bonba if he's ever been hungry enough to eat off the ground and then doesn't elaborate. Which, you could be like, oh, tragic past. Lynn had to eat garbage at some point because they were homeless. Or it could just be like, you ever drop a cheeto on the ground.

And you're just so fucking hungry, just.

Making what's your stance on the 5 seconds.

It fully could be either side of this. We don't know.

Yeah, but they eat the ramen. And lyn likes the ramen. How nice.

They like it now. It's an allegory for growth and the desperate.

The mayor assistant lady is with the terrible son. Eye patch man tells the glasses guy and the Russian guy to take Lynn out. They talk about what the fuck. They talk about the hitman who kills hitmen and his name. They talk about why he's called that and I didn't care to write it down. I'm really sorry.

It's not important. But I do got to stress that.

It'S a different name now.

It's something else. Samurai. It's not opportunistic. That's different now.

Yeah. Also, he uses a katana. Katana.

Samurai.

Samurai. Saito gets a call from his boss. His boss thinks he's the one who exploded the car with the shitty guys in it. And Saito calls suit guy to see if that was his work. But we know it wasn't. And they talk about, like, the other guys who died too. They both know it wasn't an accident. And Saito wonders if he should do the good thing and return the money. But he doesn't. He goes nuts on food and drinks and fuck in bonba and Lynn are watching baseball. There's a lot of baseball shit also. And it's like, what's happening with the baseball stuff? But they're eating again and Lynn is mad that baseball interrupted their stories because they like to watch soap operas.

She said, I want to watch soap operas to know what the common every man is doing.

That ain't going to do it, babe.

I just want a simple life where my husband dies at sea but his twin brother comes back and poses as him for 13 years.

I want to see what it's like to be a regular citizen. That's why I watch Riverdale.

I never got to be a regular high school girl. So I watch Pretty Little Liars. Bomba lets them know that he knows who they are, he knows their identity. And he wants to know why Lynn became a hitman. They say it's because they need money. He says that he'll pay their whole debt if they give him information. And they're like, okay, you have ¥5 million. And he just does.

No explanation. Just got that money. Just got it.

Yep. Bomba asks who they work for. Lynn says, A bunch of exiled yakuza who went to the Chinese mafia. And they make money from human trafficking, which we saw before. He shows Lin a picture of the mayor sitting across from another guy. And you see the back of the other guy's head. And he asks Lynn if they recognize the back of the other guy's head. And they're like, oh, yeah, that's the leader of the organization. He does have a very distinct so, um, saito wakes up the next morning in a hotel room with a girl in the bed. She's dead. He freaks out and leaves because he doesn't remember what happened. Banba asks Lynn what they'll do now that they can pay off their debt and they'll be free. And they say, I'm gonna go home. And bonba says, you can call me if you need anything. Lynn calls the boss man to gloat that they can pay off their debt. Boss man says, Guess you haven't seen the news. Luckily, just then, Lynn is walking by a TV that shows the news. Turns out the girl that they gave to the terrible son and that was dead in Saito's bed this morning was Lynn's little sister, who is lynn is using her name. So whoever Lynn is, that's not their actual name. But I was sad about that. I was like, this is something. Something happened. And I like, that's something. It made me feel away. Wow, it's been 40 minutes since I felt away.

And then boss man, I was very shocked because they don't give an age range. So you see the flashback of Lyn with their sister, and then it's present day. It's like, oh, that's their little sister. It's been over a decade.

It's been a long time. Yeah. Boss man says that Lynn should have been more cooperative. And Lynn is just like, I'm going to fucking kill you all. And that's the end of episode two. Keep the ball rolling. Keep the fun times going.

This sisyphysian ball going up this hill. Cape Bush running up that other stuff.

I'd running up that road, running up that hill.

Episode three starts off I'll be fully honest, you guys kept saying Saito. I didn't know who that was until, like, just now.

Great.

Yeah.

I never learned his name.

I also had a note that just said, oh, his name's Saito.

Okay, I didn't learn anyone's names. For the courtesy of the listeners, I'll keep Lynn and bonba going, but those are the only ones.

Good luck.

Starts off with newbie. Saito, seeing the news article on his phone in the street, looks like he's framed for murder. And they got security footage of the elevator he was running out of, and he's like, oh boy, I'm in trouble. Cut to the mayor's team, the gray haired eye patch guy and the mayor's assistant lady saying that their ploy worked out well and they set him up for the murder. They are the ones that framed him because they work with the mayor's shitty murder son. Cut back to newbie. For some reason, they cut away from him. He finds a business card in his pocket for Bar Babylon. What's this about? No idea. Cut to bar Babylon. It turns out this is the base of operations for the boss man that hired Lynn before and fucked him over. So Lynn's here to pay back the respect and murder everyone. And despite how much Lin is an incompetent, amateur shitty assassin, they kill everyone without breaking a sweat. Just so easy. Everyone else. In this organization is also shitty. They're getting revenge for their sister. They ask who the boss sold their sister to. Boss says it was some rich guy who likes cutting girls. And that he also gloats saying that all that money that Lin's been sending back to their family to their mom back in China, the boss guy here has been pocketing it for Ha.

What?

He's gloating, because the whole time, he says this Russian guy's behind the door and grapples Lyn from behind and says, Take care of him for me, and walks out. So Lynn starts fighting back against Russian guy, pulling out knives from different places, stabbing him. He's like, Ha, that would work if I could feel pain.

Okay. God, okay.

What a fucking wild thing to just throw out now.

You forget, I am Russian. I have no nerve endings.

I guess there is a condition where people have, but it's bad.

No, there's no justification. Truly. He's just like, you stabbed me. That won't work. You need to try a second thing.

And Lin happens to have one. Lyn's able to break free and hold a knife out on him. He's like, It doesn't work. I don't feel pain. Lin's like, Got it, and shoots them with the knife. Gun they got saying guns come in all sizes these days. It's like, I can't gun, knife.

God, knife. You brought a gun to a knife fight? You brought a knife to a really fight? It's so versatile.

It's got three chambers, and it's still a regular sized knife. Like, I can't it's so much. And of course, just point blank, like in the brain. Russian dude's dead instantly. He might not feel pain, but he feels bullets in his brain, and it.

Cuts through steak like butter.

Like butter. Ron Popel here saying shoot him.

I just love that she was ah. You must be a shitty assassin to not know this knife was a gun when you got so easily ambushed by being distracted by your tragic backstory.

Again, the industry's diluted. The quality of hitmen are just way down these days.

I'm realizing now, this man is dead. We will legitimately never get an explanation for why he doesn't feel pain.

I thought he was a pretty prominent character. I guess fucking not.

He is one of the first that we're like, oh, background. Okay. This is one of the major players, like, co conspirators with a woman working for the man dead. Okay, cool. Bye.

Because he's in, like, a lot of episode one and two. Right after the fight, surprise, surprise, bomba shows up.

Hey.

Turns out he slipped the red back black Widow spider tracker on Lynn and tracked him here. And he takes the tracker off and pops it on the dead Russian guy to track him because he's going to be getting all over the place. And then helps Lyn escape from the bar. Babylon Club in the car, Lynn's in the backseat. The Russian guy stabbed Lyn. So they're recovering from the stab wound and starts crying because Sister's dead. And Bomb is like, Now's not the time to cry. And Lyn's like, I'm not crying while they're crying.

Stop it. Don't look back here. Don't look at me.

Meanwhile, we cut to newbie at the Avengers bar. I don't know how they got away with that name so much. And Newbie explains how he got in the situation, how he's framed for the murder and he didn't do it. And he wants revenge on the people that did this to him. And he says we see him looking at a baseball poster earlier at the office being like, Baseball, anyway. And then at the bar here, he's like, I've never killed anyone. But I did come close to killing someone one time back when I was playing baseball.

What?

He was a pitcher, and his catcher told him to bean this guy. He said, got it. I'm going to throw a baseball at his head and try and knock him unconscious. Dick move. So he hits the guy. He's wearing the helmet. So the guy lives. But he's never been able to throw a ball at anyone ever since. What a heart wrenching and tragic backstory for fucking this guy, I guess.

You know, right before I started watching this show for the podcast, I watched the episode of Futurama where Leela becomes a blurns ball player specifically because she just hits people with the ball. So this did not have the emotional impact they were going for at all. I'm sure it didn't for anyone because Wild, that he's like, I can't throw a baseball now. I'm got to be an assassin I really want okay. I feel like there's a middle ground.

It's insane. The bartender is like, ah, so that's probably why you got hired by Red Rum, murder, Inc. Thank you.

More like Murder, Inc. Because he told.

Them this story, and they're like, Ah, you have a killer instinct. A third of the population's hitman. I'm pretty sure it's super easy to find someone with killer instinct and not some fucking baseball player. So they hired him by mistake because he's not really a hitman. Back at Bar Babylon, the boss man and the Mares team, the guy with the eye patch, are teaming up. They find the Russians body, and the boss says they're changing their orders now. They want Lynn alive to teach them a lesson. So they send out another bounty on Lyn's head. Cut to Lynn waking up in Bonba's place again. Their wounds are treated and patched up. Blonde wants to go just called Blonde the whole time. Lyn wants to go after their sister's killer, obviously. And Bamba starts lecturing them, saying he can help. And they got to slow things down and can't just run in head first, all gung ho. And Bamba says he'll find Lyn's killer for a price. That price. Five years of spicy pollock ramen or row whatever. Fucking fish. It's a gimmick. It's a bit. He's doing a bit. Cut to the Mares team. The guy with the eye patch and the lady. What with the Mare's team? The son. Oh, they're on the phone with the mayor's son. He's asking for another victim to murder because he's a sociopath. And they hang up saying they can't do that. You got to calm down. We're going to go buy you another woman. And they speculate if Lynn is the niwaka samurai.

Wow.

That's the new name.

They gave it down.

I wrote it down because I was mad. But Eyepatch says, no, that can't be Lynn because the Samurai only uses a katana. Remember this specifically says, only uses a katana. And then Eye Patch tells a story about how he was trying to do a hit on another hitman once, and he was up on a building far away with a sniper rifle. He sees the Samurai come up behind the other Hitman and kill them. And then the Samurai sees them, sees Eyepatch on the rooftop and throws a knife at him out of katana, and it hits him through the sniper scope into his eye. And that's where Eyepatch got the eye patch from.

Stopped paying attention because I don't remember this. That's the funniest fucking thing I've ever heard.

It's insane.

You want to know how I got this eye patch?

And they specifically say no one's ever seen the Samurai and lived here's a fucking guy who has, apparently. Here he is. He got an iPad. He got a souvenir, because I genuinely.

Was ready for it. Be like and then he looks at me dead in the eye through the scope, and I was like, Now I know not to mess with. He's like, no. And then he threw a knife a mile and hit me in the eye.

The reason no one knows the Samurai's identity, because he's got spiky brown hair and wears a tiny little eye mask with the rest of his face exposed. It's Robin from Batman. Who could it be? We'll never find out. Cut Two, the boss guy at Bar Babylon saying he's going to hire the Samurai to hunt down lyn. He's got to get the best he needs to get revenge on Lynn. Cut two. bonba and his cop buddy from episode one discussing the murder case that was pinned on the newbie, and they're reviewing the facts and security footage and all that. Then they bring in hacker kid, and they review the data and the security footage and stuff that they got off of the spider tracker they planted on the Russian guy's body.

And they listen to the audio this town of Hitman has. You would think at least one of them would be better at thinking about fucking security footage, because I feel like the shitty computer guy is constantly like, I found security footage from this place that pins them at this time. And it's like, I'm confused. Isn't this your profession? Don't you work for Red? Rum?

Minus will be called murder inc. It's like when you're more like murder.

Sorry, I looked down for a SEC.

It's like when your grandparent like you help your grandparent with their email and they're like, wow, you're good with technology. You should work for Bill Gates. It's like, do none of you know what a security camera is? What are you doing? So they listen to the audio they got from the spider tracker they put on the rush guy's body. They hear about the mayor's team and how they're buying women for the mayor's psychotic son. And they come up with a plan. And reviewing the security footage, they see that Newbie was escorted to his hotel room by the mayor's aide, by the assistant. So like, ah, the mayor's team is involved in all this shit. And they see the Russian guy showing up with the suitcase, which is where the dead body was. Yada, yada yada. It's all connected. And they come up with a plan because they hear on the recording that the mayor's team is looking to buy another girl. And Lynn says, I'm going to pretend to be the girl they buy so I can find this guy and kill him, but I need a seller. And that's where Bomba comes in. He's going to be the human trafficker selling me to them. And then Bomba gets a yeah, Bomba gets a call from the Ramen food cart guy they talked to briefly for a hot second.

How is this still happening?

It's still going, yeah. He goes to meet with them. He says, hey, I got a call from this mafia boss guy. He wants to put a head out on you because you keep investigating his clubs. And they also ask me to hire my best guy, the samurai. It turns out the Ramen guy is the samurai's contact and he wants me to put them on Lin's case. So I wanted to give you a heads up because I know you're working with Lynn. And the Bomba says like, yeah, go ahead. Go ahead and do that and play along with it. I think it'd be best if I play dead for a while. Wink. Don't know what that means. Doesn't come up. Cut to hacker kid being shaken down at the internet cafe by the mayor's team. He explains exactly how they found him. They said if you're so smart and knew we were going to find you, why'd you let yourself get caught? Valid point. Fuck this kid. He goes into just a rant about the spider tracker he had and why he made it a black widow with the red back and why the red back is cool. It doesn't fucking matter. I don't know why it's in this show. It's just so mad they spent so.

Much time wondering about it. Shut up.

They devote a lot of dialogue to the specific. Like the red on the back of the Spider robot, and it's just so nothing. It's because he thinks it's cool. I'm losing it. Hacker rats out Lynn and Bomba, saying that they're planning on being the girl that the mayor's team is buying them from. So he tells the mayor's team what they're doing, so he sells them out. The hacker kid sucks. They ask when the deal is going down, and they said that's up to you because you're the buyers, so you just got to fall for their trap and set it up. Cut to Bomba going to the doctor he took Lind to earlier to get them patched up. Turns out this doctor also friends with the Avenger bartender, and turns out Bomba is also friends with him. Cool. Great. Relevant? Never. The Avenger bartender brought in a body for the doctor. While looking at the body, for some reason, bomba gets a call from Lynn saying that the deal is made and they have to dress up and look nice because they're high end clients. Cut to them making the deal with the mayor's team. They're all dressed up and fancy. What's this? Bamba's hair is different and spiked upward. It's almost like he's identical to the samurai we saw earlier. What?

No.

He also mentioned a lot how he goes to the batting cages and brings his own personal bat fucking. What? We've never seen him at the batting cage. And that case that he we actually have actual katana.

We have actually seen him at the batting cage. I hate to say.

How dare you? Correct.

How did you not keep that straight? That was so important.

How dare you correct in front of this show? I fully don't remember that.

It was like in the beginning of the first episode. We didn't know who he was at that point.

Okay? Oh, you're right. I do. Yeah. So they do establish an alibi for him not being the samurai.

Wink, wink.

And we see him right before they make the deal. He gives Lynn the spider tracker, and then they go inside to make the deal. Baba hands over a suitcase to the explosive guy we saw earlier with Russian guy. I'm assuming Lynn is in that suitcase. It's not clear.

Probably.

And then we see hacker kid watching the deal go down from a security camera. I guess he's on it. In on it, too. That's episode three. Are we there yet? I'll let you fucking guess from our tone.

Yeah, it's not yeah. Just convoluted so many details just for the sake of having details and cool elements. Cool factor does not weigh.

Is there a cool factor?

The attempt at a cool factor is not that attempt should have gone to other places, but yeah, no, thank you.

It didn't work for me.

I couldn't follow it. I didn't know what was happening most of the time, and maybe I'm dumb.

No, don't do yourself like that. Don't do yourself dirty like that. This show hasn't earned it.

No, I know. I just was like, it's too much and I'm tired and I don't want to watch it anymore. And it's so hot right now.

It's so damn hot.

Hated it. And I'm sorry if you recommended this, I'm sorry. Why do you like this?

If you recommended this ironically, just so we'd shit on it, like we are, good for you. You know what the show is. If you recommend it, genuinely, I don't feel sorry for you. Get better taste. It's objectively bad. I will say one thing I was pretty impressed by was in the English dub, how they were able to achieve every single male character sounding the same, because that's actually just impressive.

Milk toast white man, please audition.

Because a lot of these voices are in golden ConWe and they are very distinguishable, they're very unique. I don't know how they fucked this up. Wow. It's a rough one.

I'm exhausted.

It is a rough one.

If you have less rough shows for us to watch, you can send those recommendations to our email areweebaria@gmail.com, or reach out to us on Instagram, TikTok or Tumblr. Areweeb there yet is where you can find them on all those places.

Yeah, you can find me on Instagram and TikTok at honeyperiod or on Twitter. Not Twitter. Don't follow me on Twitter. How dare you follow me humbler at Honeyd. Honey is spelled H-U-N-N-I-E. We've already had.

A rough enough time as it is. I'll spare these two my Twitter name. So go on any social media platform and look at the ongoing strike. How about them, people? Because eat the rich.

Eat the rich.

Yeah, absolutely. We stand in solidarity with every strike. There's too many to list at this point, but specifically, most direct for us is the WGA sagstrike. So, yeah, if you have money, give it to them. Entertainment, community, fun. Thank you.

But there's an ice cream truck near me now and I'm actually oh, my God.

Let's get the fuck out of here. Thank you to Camille Rowley for our artwork. Thank you to Louis Zong for your theme song stories. You can buy all Louis music at Louisong bandcamp.com.

Thank you and we hope you'll join.

Us next week as we learnt he's got a knife.

Gun.

Thank God.

Please end me.

Thank God. I don't feel.