Netflix Review: Why are panties called shorts in Japan?

Commentary and Review of the "HK: Forbidden Super Hero" Series

Text by Rintaro Takechi (Cult Film Critic)

For the first time in a while on Netflix, I thought this from the bottom of my heart.
This is truly terrible.
And, it is terribly beautiful.

I think it is far too sloppy to dismiss "HK: Forbidden Super Hero" as merely a one-joke movie. Of course, it is a one-joke movie. There is no way it wouldn't be, given that a muscular man wearing panties enforces justice. But the abnormality of this work does not end there. The real substance lies beyond that.

The lead actor, Ryohei Suzuki, does not make this absurd premise work by playing it for laughs. It is the opposite. He plays it straight, as a form of madness that can only be realized by taking it seriously. The sculptural realism he achieved through blood-sweating pump-ups miraculously makes the dangerous balance between the vulgarity of the original work and its heroism work on screen.

1. The Chain of 'Cult Mania' in Box Office Performance

When the first film was released in 2013, it was a small-scale release on only 12 screens. Despite this, it hit an extraordinary average from the first week, eventually surpassing 100 million yen in box office revenue.

What is important here is that this work was not a 'movie to be laughed at,' but a movie to be talked about.

When people encounter something inexplicable, they want to talk to someone about it. Moreover, the less a work can be summarized as 'good' or 'moving,' the more it stimulates the desire to verbalize it. What on earth is that? Why does it work? Why is it so stupid, yet strangely passionate? Such questions become word-of-mouth.

In other words, 'Forbidden Super Hero' was an apparatus of abnormality structurally designed to go viral.

In the Japanese film industry before the social media era, there were not many works that had such a clear structure where 'the sense of discomfort itself becomes the promotion.' It is not just about laughing and finishing. You want to explain it after watching it. In that one respect, this work is extremely strong.

2. The Transborder 'HENTAI'

A Paradigm Shift in International Film Festivals

The fact that this work, including its sequel 'Abnormal Crisis,' was enthusiastically supported at events like the Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival cannot be ignored.

Hollywood superhero stories are fundamentally tales of ethics and justice. How to control power. How to take responsibility. What to protect for society. What exists there is a modern view of a hero.

But 'Forbidden Super Hero' breaks that framework from the start.
The hero of this work is driven by impulse, not ethics.
Before justice, there is a fetish.
Before a mission, there is perversion.

And strangely, that perversion, rather than causing the entire work to collapse, creates a unique purity instead.

What is here is not something as lukewarm as postmodern deconstruction. This is a rebellion of the body itself, which civilization has long concealed.

Even if language is not understood, muscles are.
Even if logic fails, the pose holds up.
Even without ideology, the latissimus dorsi is eloquent.

The reason this work was accepted overseas is actually simple.
It is because it overwhelms the audience not with meaning, but with the physical substance itself.

There is no need to explain Japanese culture through context. A man wearing panties stands there with an eerie sense of conviction. That fact alone is already a movie. In recent Japanese cinema, it is quite rare to find a work that crosses borders through physicality alone to this extent.

3. General Review: Ryohei Suzuki as 'Live-Action Special Effects'

What is worth noting is Ryohei Suzuki's physical performance, which does not rely entirely on CGI. The expansion of his latissimus dorsi and the separation of his rectus abdominis exist there not as 'created imagery,' but as a 'real body.'

It is no longer acting. The human body itself has become a special effect.

The terrifying thing about this work is that it purifies the social taboo of perversion through the beauty of a well-trained body. A premise that would normally just be vulgar starts to look strangely divine at a certain point. The absurdity is pushed through by the sincerity of the physical body.

This perverse catharsis is the core that elevates this work from mere horseplay to 'cinema.' Ryohei Suzuki is not playing a role. He has created the physical reality required for the role to exist with his own body beforehand.

That is why the audience, while laughing, has to admit it somewhere. This is certainly terrible. But it is also certainly a movie.

4. And then, no one could explain the meaning of 'shorts' anymore

Now, in this work, panties are strictly called panties. This is actually quite important.

This is because the word is a relatively decent loanword that is understood as is in the English-speaking world. At the very least, it is not a word that has undergone a mysterious, unique evolution in Japanese.

However, when we turn our eyes to Japanese society, a strange phenomenon can be observed.

For some reason, panties are called 'ladies' shorts'.

Let's be calm for a moment here.

What are 'shorts' in English? Originally, they are short trousers.

In other words, from the perspective of their original meaning, 'shorts' in Japanese is a mysterious buffer word that vaguely wraps around any cloth covering the lower body.

Even stranger is the bra. Although it is 'bra' in English, 'brassiere' is still alive and well in Japanese.

This country shortens 'celebrity' to 'celeb.' It shortens 'convenience store' to 'konbini.' It shortens 'remote control' to 'rimokon.' It shortens 'personal computer' to 'pasokon.' It shortens 'department store' to 'depato.' It even trims 'smartphone' down to 'sumaho.'

Yet, 'bra' gets longer.

At this point, you already understand. Japanese loanwords are not decided by rationality. They are not decided by the accuracy of their meaning. There was never any loyalty to etymology to begin with.

All that exists is the feel of the word, the atmosphere, and how well it fits on the sales floor.

Up to this point, it's still fine. It still wears the face of an 'abbreviation'.
But the problem starts here.

Word processor.
Claim (complaint).
Salaryman.
Notebook PC (laptop).
OL (office lady).
Mansion (condominium).
Paper driver (licensed but inexperienced driver).
Baby car (stroller).
My car (personal vehicle).

Around this point, English gradually loses its original form and mutates into a different kind of linguistic organism that has evolved independently within Japan. It is not a loanword. It is half-annexation.

And the ultimate example is 'terebi' (television).

Terebi.
This word, while appearing to be a representative success story of Katakana English, is actually quite a strange existence.

If you say 'terebi' in an English-speaking country, it is almost never understood. They say 'TV' or 'television'. In other words, the Japanese 'terebi', while appearing to borrow from English, is actually an independent vocabulary that has subtly drifted away from the very heart of English.

Moreover, in Japan, a television is not just a home appliance.
It is a medium, a cultural device, a memory of a generation, and sometimes even life itself.
But if you take it outside as it is, it disintegrates into thin air as 'a sound that seems like an abbreviation'.

This phenomenon is not a coincidence.

Harassment proliferates into power harassment, sexual harassment, and moral harassment.
Pants are trousers, and at the same time, they are underwear.
In this country, even the concept of the lower body is ambiguous.

And that ambiguity is not negligence.
On the contrary, it is a kind of refinement.
There is a sense that the Japanese language has evolved not to speak accurately, but to blur things just enough.

It is too raw to call them panties.
It is too dull to call them underwear.
If you call them 'shorts', they are somehow elegant, somehow easy to place on a sales floor, and somehow the embarrassment is diluted.

This 'somehow' is powerful.
Japanese often runs not on definitions, but on atmosphere.
That is why 'shorts' works.
Not only does it work, but almost no one questions it.

The only people who question it are those who, after watching Hentai Kamen, somehow started thinking about the wholesomeness of the word 'panties'.

5. Conclusion: What are 'shorts'?

'Shorts' is not English.
It is not a translation.
It has nothing to do with accuracy.

It is a linguistic filter that the Japanese language invented to process shame.

It is too raw to call them panties.
It is too blunt to call them underwear.
A safe zone of ambiguous meaning that drifts in between.
That is what 'shorts' are.

In other words, Japanese Katakana English is not English. It is not a translation. It is not even a loanword.
It is a second mother tongue that Japanese has redesigned on its own using English as raw material.

The grammar is Japanese.
The nuance is also Japanese.
Only the appearance is English.

This is less of a language and more of a cultural interface.
And that interface is optimized by prioritizing the avoidance of shame, the atmosphere of the situation, and a 'sort of' feeling over accuracy.

Panties become shorts,
trousers become pants,
television doesn't translate,
and yet, no one is bothered.

That is because this language was not created for the outside world.
From beginning to end, it is designed for Japanese people to misunderstand each other just enough.

There is no consistent logic here.
There is only one thing.
The cultural dynamic of vaguely obscuring things that are vaguely embarrassing.

By the way, the concept of 'shobu shitagi' (lucky underwear) also becomes quite precarious the moment you translate it into English.
What is contained within it is neither function nor purpose.
It is expectation, fantasy, and self-suggestion.

In other words, Japanese is not a language for hiding things.
It is a language for wrapping up emotions.

And today, once again, someone quietly rephrases it.
It is not panties.
It is shorts.

Shorts is not English.
It is air.

And that air is created so that people can live just a little bit more easily.

Japanese is a language for accurately sharing misunderstandings.

I want to keep picking up these 'things that I can't explain, but for some reason, keep bothering me' from here on out.