Definitely don’t recommend. It was one of those things that happened because it was back in the 90's before the internet existed (yeah, I’m in my 40's). Anyway, my buddies and I wanted to watch some of those cool new Anime movies coming out of Japan (sometimes they would show up in the kid’s section because the video…

Kinitra:

I’m surprised to see no one mentioning the reversal of one of the most misogynistic (and pornographic) popular culture tropes. Ji-Ah’s “tails” become tentacles which rip the men she seduces into a bloody mist. It is a role-reversal and image reversal of tentacle anime where male “demons” or “aliens” violate women,…

I mean this in the utmost deferential, non-homophobic way possible... Where y’all get gay from? It seems like a reach.

I don’t think the show is asking us to forgive her (or Atticus), but just to accept them as complicated characters in this story. Kumiho’s are evil, that’s the point. She can be evil and still have feelings, just like many regular humans are monsters and still live complex lives. 

BINGO. Can the Gays survive the horror genre too!? Tsk tsk! I know Misha and Jordan can walk and chew gum.

Kinitraaaaa! Madam! And THAT is just another wonderful reason I am immensely proud to have gone to undergrad at XU, and to have had the pleasure of living in New Orleans. Wowow, what a story! I am glad that the nuns helped out your grandfather, which in turn led to your own origin story. Just amazing.

Thank you for this erudite and informed analysis. I am Korean American, but my family has been in the U.S. for a century — Hawaii from the early 20th century, then the West Coast — so I have only the most rudimentary understanding of Korean culture, mythology and religious beliefs. This helped me understand some of…

“She is essentially doomed as the Sergeant was going to shoot her anyway, making Tic more of an instrument than an active agent”

I also read the Judy Garland fan as queer. In the 50s and up through the 70s, gays referred to themselves as “Friends of Dorothy” as a code to identify one another among straight people. Finding someone who liked Judy Garland was great, but since she was a woman, there was the presssure to, ahem, “perform” later.

I don’t know what kind of layered musical treats accompanied this episode but I have an irresistible desire to hear Salt-N-Pepa’s “Shoop.” It’s sexy, upbeat, has some ’spooky’ sounding melismas and those lyrics: “Don’t know how you do the voodoo that you do.” Please Ms. Green, request a little “Shoop Shoop” from your…

I enjoy the write-up and the comments as much as I do the show itself! I feel like I am back in school working on my history degree again and I love it.

The way they presented it, she didn’t have too much trouble homing in on scumbags in the beginning. By the time Ji-Ah is introduced, the war against the Japanese has been over for about 5 years. Assuming much of the Korean male population has been culled(hence the scarcity) the mother complains of & the Japanese…

So strange. In the plot summaries provided by HBO (or whomever), I kept seeing the name spelled Titus braithwhite, which actually seems more appropriate.

There’s also a parallel to be made with how both were queer characters killed with little followup or consequence for the character development of male leads.

I think treatment of the nurse and of Yahima as essentially NPCs (to use your framing) is intentional. We are meant to see how horrific these acts were, and how disposably these lives were treated.

And in this episode, while it was wartime, Tic’s actions are a burden he carries and speaks on. I would think the nurse’s…

This is a great piece! You really captured much of what I suspected, re: Young-Ja’s “being different” as Queer was interpolation for communism. It was subtle, but I hope they explore these themes more in future. Your discussion regarding the sexual exploitation is also really important, and was the weakest parts of…

The show keeps getting better and digging deeper. How are they going to wrap this all up? I like how they “Cthulued up” the fox spirit but maybe some reverse tentacle porn was a little too much! It definitely terrified me.

Prior to Atticus, are we to assume that the kumiho was ever somehow choosy about her victims other than the original perverted molester? Because I admit I might have missed something, but I found it pretty hard to sympathize with this creature after it more or less committed 99 murders of guys who wanted nothing worse…

I enjoyed the episode. But there were some underhanded narrative tricks used to place Tic’s murder of a random (and presumably innocent) Korean nurse into a different context than, say, Montrose’s murder of Yahima.