...Fun lovin' criminals!
Nice sympathy move, Shingo. Even if you do look like Huey.
Tonight's SmaStation was a much happier affair than last week's. The theme was where to take the kids for the Golden Week holidays (this show knows its demographic), and Shingo spent the time watching info about aquariums and Alpacas with this week's guest, the extra-kawaii Becky (she's the one in the tutu).
But it all went wrong in the last ten minutes.
There was a mail from a viewer asking Becky whether, shiny as she is, she ever gets sad and in that case how she deals with it. This set Shingo straight off.
Her assertion was that she sees hardship as a lesson from the gods:
"There's something you want me to learn?"
"Okay, I will take it on and I will grow stronger."
Shingo flat out refuses to accept this explanation:
And he presses her again.
"Do you do this even when awful things happen?"
"Sure!"
Shingo is still completely unconvinced.
"But when awful things happen, you do feel this pressure downwards, right? And you do cry, right?"
Becky confesses that she does, of course, cry from time to time, but
...she does so on her own, where no one can see.
But this is not enough for Shingo. The sadness inside must out and so it comes.
He mimics crying very hard. And asks her if she doesn't do this. The obvious subtext here is that Shingo sure does. A lot. And recently.
Becky denies this, clearly getting uncomfortable with the whole thing.
Quite why this is not enough for Shingo, I don't know. I guess he just wants everyone else to suffer too, if he must, or perhaps the pain has made him insensitive to other people's feelings. Whatever the reason, he continues to press on. He really, really needs to know, it seems, if Becky ever cries floods of tears, and so we get...
The second crying mimic scene within TEN SECONDS of the first one!
Finally, Becky is forced to admit that, indeed she very rarely does. "Tamani ne" ("Rarely, innit"), she confesses, and they both break into the most toe-curlingly forced laugh I've ever seen in Japan, and boy I've seen many.
Fake-laughing is like a national sport here. I mean every single smile or laugh in the .gifs and pictures above is fake. But nothing, I think, will ever beat this:
He clearly is still very raw and very sore from the whole Kusanagi affair.
And seriously. That's kawaiso facial hair. Can't wait to see that progress over the following weeks.
