BAD PHARMACYcurrently outside the Japan top 100
かわいいのバッドを考える
When Hirose's taxi got stuck in a Roppongi back-street roadblock and he ducked into a Lawson for lunch, he found no Lunch Pack or any other third-party brand — just the store's own private-label products. That small frustration opens a chain of connected complaints: konbini homogenization, Mister Donut's new Mocchyurin, the permanent dominance of kawaii in Japanese culture, the clunky Japanese website for the film Backrooms, a review of the drama and film Wazawai (わざわい), and the controversy over the Ministry of Justice × Love Jouto (ラブ上等) collaboration poster.
What this episode answers
What has been lost as konbini shelves go fully private-label?
Konbini lost their select-shop appeal — the pleasure of different brands coexisting under one roof — and the surviving range has tilted so far toward polished options that junky, chaotic items have disappeared entirely. Small specialized supermarkets like Giga Mart and Aeon's My Basket are now absorbing the diversity that konbini gave up.
Has there ever been a period in Japan when 'kakkoii' (cool) topped 'kawaii' (cute)?
Kawaii has essentially always dominated; there was no period when kakkoii came out on top. Even in the 1980s, Timberland boots were called kawaii, and cool performers like King Gnu's Iguchi-kun find themselves placed in the kawaii position the further their careers progress.
Why is the Japanese marketing for the film Backrooms a problem?
The Backrooms is built on a minimalist, eerie cool, but the Japanese official site is over-explanatory and visually clunky — distributors face a dilemma where explaining the concept drives away core fans while not explaining it fails to reach mainstream audiences.
How was the drama and film Wazawai received?
The theatrical film is more fully realized than the slow, anthology-format drama, and watching the drama first before the film is the recommended order. Kagawa Teruyuki plays roughly six roles in this psycho-horror where people die suddenly with no murder scenes ever shown.
Why does award-giving and collab work look like 'laundering'?
Awards like the Jeanist Award go to whoever is selling well at the time regardless of actual merit, making it a form of mutual laundering in which each party borrows the other's credibility and audience reach, leaving only a line on a Wikipedia page years later.
What Konbini Lost When the Select-Shop Era Ended
Hirose's taxi got caught in a roadblock on a Roppongi back street. Umbrella-less, he walked to the nearest Lawson and went looking for lunch — only to find the shelves stripped of Lunch Pack and every other third-party brand, replaced wall-to-wall with the chain's own private-label products. Konbini once had a select-shop quality: the pleasure of different brands gathered under one roof. Now, led by FamilyMart, chains have gone fully in-house, and the range has tilted so far toward sleek, polished options that the chaotic, junky items have simply vanished. Hirose ended up, by process of elimination, grabbing an oversized koppe-pan. "This is not what I wanted" — that reluctant laugh is where this episode's bad begins.
On the supermarket side, there are signs that the diversity konbini abandoned is being absorbed by small, low-price, purpose-built stores like Giga Mart and Aeon's My Basket. The conversation also touched on Suntory's "Nope" — a high-calorie, guilt-embracing brand — which neither host has seen surface in their algorithms or daily routes since its launch.
Mister Donut's Mocchyurin and the Logic of Kawaii
Talk shifts to Mister Donut's new product Mocchyurin, described as the brand's greatest invention since the Pon de Ring. It sold out every time either host visited — including on a typhoon day — and the one who did manage to try it called it "halfway between a gummy and a donut." The fact that it has no hole yet is still called a donut, its cute name, and its knack for presenting a high-calorie product with an innocent face were all praised as excellent mimicry.
That opens the door to a broader theory of kawaii. Has there ever been a period in Japan when kakkoii topped kawaii? The answer is essentially: no. Even in the 1980s, calling a pair of Timberland boots kawaii was entirely normal; calling a cool man kawaii has been a cultural constant throughout. The example given is King Gnu's Iguchi-kun: the more cool credibility he accumulates over his career, the more audiences want to place him in the kawaii position. The hypothesis — Japanese audiences want whoever stands at the very top to be the most kawaii.
The analysis extends further: the guilt-tinged kawaii of a thirty-something carrying a Hello Kitty bag, and the darkness-infused kawaii of Chiikawa (ちいかわ), share the same explosive cultural power. The argument is that kawaii only reaches that force when a shadow of unease is baked in — a structure that holds equally in fashion and content. Hirose firmly declined to go any deeper on Chiikawa itself, so the hosts moved on.
The Backrooms Japan Site and the Over-Explanation Problem
Researching the film Backrooms ahead of its September 4 Japan release, Hirose found the official Japanese website design embarrassingly clunky. The Backrooms as a concept is built on minimalism and an eerie aesthetic cool — yet the Japanese distributor, judging that general audiences need everything spelled out, went with an over-annotated design that undermines the very world it is trying to sell.
"Explain it and you lose the core fans; don't explain it and you never reach a mainstream audience" — this dilemma runs parallel to the long-standing problem of Japanese posters for Western films becoming excessively literal. For Hirose, who has personal experience of something he found cool being handed off to a sales team and returned unrecognizable, this is an extension of a tension he has felt for years: his own sense of cool and the market's sense of cool exist on parallel tracks that rarely converge.
Wazawai, VIVANT, and Love Jouto
The drama and film Wazawai — originally broadcast on WOWOW, later distributed on Netflix — is a psycho-horror in which Kagawa Teruyuki plays roughly six roles. People die suddenly with no murder scenes ever depicted; the drama is slow-paced and anthology-format with no clear ending, but the theatrical version is more fully realized. The recommended order: watch the drama first, then the film. There was also a note of regret that a performer of Kagawa Teruyuki's caliber is currently unable to appear on mainstream stages.
VIVANT Season 2 was dismissed in a single breath — "the AI elements, the content, the dual-role setup, all of it was a no." On the Ministry of Justice × Love Jouto poster controversy and its subsequent withdrawal, the view put forward was that reforming the laws around yakuza exclusion orders and building a system that allows people labeled antisocial forces to reintegrate after a set period would be a more meaningful first step than a PR collaboration.
The episode closes on industry awards: prizes like the Jeanist Award go to whoever is selling well at the moment, unrelated to genuine merit. Each side borrows the other's credibility and audience reach — mutual laundering, in the hosts' phrasing — leaving only a line on a Wikipedia page years later. The term gyokai-shuu (業界集 — industry congregation) was offered as the summary.
Takeaways
- As konbini shelves go fully private-label and lose their select-shop variety, small specialized supermarkets are stepping in to absorb the diversity left behind.
- Kawaii has always sat at the center of Japanese cultural taste, and the cooler a career gets, the more inevitably its owner ends up placed in the kawaii position.
- Japanese marketing for niche content is trapped in a fundamental dilemma: explain the concept and you lose core fans; don't explain it and you never reach a mainstream audience.
This article is edited from a machine transcript of the first 30 minutes of the episode. It is not an official summary — please listen to the episode itself.