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[Weekly Update] Asian Dude is Now Sexy?
🕑 Added 2025-08-26 02:15:22 +0000 UTCOnce again, I'd like to remind everyone that App Store charges extra fees for Patreon supporters. You can avoid this fee by supporting content creators directly via Patreon's website.
Also, Patreon apparently lets free members preview part of the update. So, hello everyone! Welcome to the weekly update. Every week, we talk about what videos are in the work, and also talk about random media topics. This week, I talk about Manny Jacinto in Freakier Friday, and how he's character impressed me.
CHANNEL UPDATE
Next Video: Apothecary Diaries
Our next video was an unplanned video. I took notes while watching The Apothecary Diaries as part of the research process. But I ended up nitpicking it so much I had enough material to make a standalone video. This turn out to be kinda a mistake, because the editing process was way longer than it needs to be. But I'm proud of what I made, and you'll be able to see it this Friday.
Honestly the hardest part is saying "Apothecary" with my accent.
"Apopokari"
"Apopokari"
"Affo-- f*ck!"
Video After: Be the Chinese the Japanese Think You Are
This was the video I planned to make, which included Apothecary Diaries as the intro and outro. The video is now a few weeks in the making, and I'm close to finishing the script. It'll contain some spoilers, though the only movie that's really spoiler worthy is The Go Master, which I do recommend checking out. The other two is Kingdom, and Shaolin Girl, both are action movies you can enjoy even knowing the story.
Well, maybe some of you will not enjoy Shaolin Girl. But I did.
Plans After:
As we are horribly behind schedule, I have to catch up with shorter, simply videos (I said, as I over edited the Apothecary Diaries video). So, I'll be reviewing individual films, which likely includes:
Ashiap Man: Voted the worst Indonesian movie by our Indonesian viewers from a few years back. I finally finished the movie and the third act almost redeemed it for how bad it suddenly gets. But it's too brief and not worth suffering through the entire movie just to see it. I suggest waiting for our video.
Godzilla Minus One: Now that the hype is completely gone, it's time we check out this movie with a clear head. I actually wrote a video about this film back when it was still in theaters, but shelved it because discussion surrounding it was getting toxic. I have some basic storytelling critique about its metaphor, but also a lot of praise about its depiction of a sentient and malicious Godzilla.
Kwaidan: This is going to be a Halloween video, and we'll focus on the film's immaculate use of color, a technology still somewhat new at the time, and how it brings in visual aesthetics from Kabuki theater.
The Legend: I haven't even finish reading the Wikipedia article about this film and I already had so many questions. Often voted as the worst Tamil language film from India, I have a feeling this film will be the death of me. That's why I'm saving it last for before I take my vacation.
MEDIA TALK
So, I went to watch Freakier Friday.
I think my expectation has been ruined by The Naked Gun. Overall, I think the movie kinda drags for the first two third of the film, but then redeems itself in the third act, when the movie stops trying to be funny and let the characters be themselves. At that point, the movie gets quite emotional, and I can hear the audience getting really affected by the turn of events, which I will not spoil here. Needless to say, we didn't realize how much we like them, until the movie lets us. And for that alone, I'll give the film a thumbs up.
The thing I really want to talk about is... Jesus Mother Mary and all that is holy, Manny Jacinto is hot, and I mean more than his physical appearance.
I'll be perfectly honest, I was not impressed with him in The Good Place. Sure, his acting is great, but I just didn't seem him as the young and attractive idol who has a lot of fangirls. I guess I just wasn't into the TV world.
But now, dude is 38, has trained to achieve a body of a movie star, dude looks like he'll cause so many divorces among middle age couples.
In the film, Jacinto plays a single father and love interest of Lindsay Lohan, who is now a single mother. Jacinto is, in a way, a mirror of the cool step dad character from the original, but better. He is cool. He is caring. He is genuinely in love with Lohan. He does what he can to make the family happy. And best of all, he also has a vulnerable side, which remains invisible to us until very late to the film. That's one of the thing that I mentioned really affected the audience emotionally.
It is a brilliantly well written character for essentially a himbo with limited screen time, performed so well by Jacinto. Through the main character's eyes, the film presents him as a man to be desired, a hot single father. And Jacinto plays that aspect so well.
You can imagine how surreal it feels to see an Asian men being presented not only as attractive, but emotionally real, with vulnerabilities. This is especially unreal, since the original Freaky Friday depicts Asian people as magical restaurant owners. The contrast is jarring.
In recent years, there are many romance films that feature Asian men as the love interest, though pretty much never the POV character. But most, and by that I mean pretty much all, of them are just trophy himbo for the protagonist. They are rarely flawed, never the dashing rogue like their white male counter parts are. While Jacinto isn't a POV character either, it's good to see more than just a pretty face with a hot bode.
And yes, I did feel myself becoming more popular in the last couple of years... It's weird. But maybe not as weird as the OTHER himbo character who flirts with... You know what, I'll let you watch the movie to find out.
Anyway, that'll be the update for this week. I don't think I'll go see a movie this weak. Both Nobody 2 and Relay don't exactly interest me too much. So next update is gonna be a different topic than movie reviews. But before that, I'll see you with a new video on Friday.
![[Weekly Update] Asian Dude is Now Sexy?](https://img10.runfaps.com/storage/1/ro/ot/e9630c-019e86f1-a670-70bc-abe9-847835f9c7ed.jpg)
Comments
Tim Hammack
https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0052713/ This a 1950s Hollywood film that surprised me: Samuel Fuller's "The Crimson Kimono" (weak title...). It co-starred James Shigeta as a Japanese American detective and went to some trouble to feature a lot of LA's (then) Japanese cultural areas, including a local Buddhist temple. Shigeta's character falls in love with a (white) artist (a character witness for the murdered white woman) and IIRC he "wins her heart" (there is a love triangle with Shigeta's white detective partner) at the end.
Tim Hammack
You're probably familiar with Sessue Hayakawa? (Silent film star, 1910s-1920s Hollywood). Ironically, despite being a Japanese expat, he is purportedly Hollywood's first "national heart-throb". Though white male jealousy eventually led to him by 1917 finding fewer and fewer jobs. He then was cast as the Japanese commander of the POW slave labor camp in "Bridge on the River Kwai" as either the producer's token of respect for his former stardom (or else because Hollywood had no Asian-looking actors due to not supporting their careers...)
Oliver 'Kannik' Bollmann
Haha, I also mispronounce apothecary all the time! (I swap the c and the th) And with our current D&D game I get to say it wrong several times per week. :P
Andrew Denton
"Be the Chinese the Japanese Think You Are" I am anticipating learning that the Japanese exoticise the Chinese as much as the west does. Wait. If China is west of Japan, is this Occidentalism?
