Getting hit in the balls is always at least somewhat demotivating for a guy. But getting hit in the balls while Snuka is nearby is so much worse. It casts a pall over your whole relationship with the universe. “Has the universe stopped targeting Snuka, its favorite chew-toy? Is it looking for a new chew-toy, perhaps? And could that new chew-toy be me?” Not the kind of thing you enjoy having to wonder about.
And as a goth, Usazawa doesn’t have that many mental pick-me-ups at his disposal to deal with this sort of crisis of confidence. So he goes straight for the flashback to the Training Camp from Hell. It’s a card he would have had to play sooner or later, anyway, so why not now? Saving it up would mean risking to give the universe a reason to hit him in the balls even worse later.
Fortunately, his experiences in the camp weren’t as bad as it was for some others. First they tried whipping and wax torture, and once they realized that that wasn’t getting them anywhere with a goth, they instead switched to torturing him with light-hearted and cheery TV shows. Yes, they do inflict horrible mental pain and can cause your brain to shut down, but they do not leave permanent damage. Usually, you forget almost all about them within five minutes of the episode ending.
I tried to pick a representative sample for that sort of show. I can’t really say whether I actually watched that one. It would have been more than five minutes ago, so…
More on Thursday.