Translating the Twink Tweet

The problem with having so many twink friends is, half the time I don't know what they are talking about.  Mass culture changes so fast that it's impossible to keep up.  Today one of the twinks I follow on twitter, retweeted a post from Lana Condor, a person I've never heard of, stating "I'M SO EXCITED!!!!' with some emojis, retweeting a post from Rilakkuma, someone I've never heard of:

"New trailer and huge news! We are so excited to announce that the voice of Kaoru will be done by Lana Condor, star of "To All the Boys I've Loved Before" and "Deadly Class.'"

Ok, I get that this person, who has starred in movies or tv shows I've never heard of, will be doing some voice work in a new animated movie or video game produced by someone I've never heard of, starring a character I've never heard of.

Well, at least I can look up Lana Condor's movies on IMDB. To All the Boys I've Loved Before is a 2018 teen romance with Lana Condor as a teen whose letters to boys she had secretly crushed on accidentally get mailed. (There are still letters?).  Lots of boys, played by Noah Centineo (top photo), Israel Broussard(left), Edward Kerwin, Jordan Burchett, and Trezzo Mahori (who happens to be gay).





Deadly Class is an animated tv series set in the late 1980s, where a poor boy is recruited into an elite academy for the children of gangsters.  In the original manga, a boy named Kendall is gay, but he doesn't appear in the series.










Kaoru is a common given name in Japan, so any number of fictional characters, both men and women, are named Kaoru, in everything from The Tale of Genji to Our Two Bedroom Love Story.  How can I ever tell which one she has been cast in?  Maybe the original tweet, from Rilakkuma, is a clue?

Bingo:  Rilakkuma is a Japanese advertising character like Hello Kitty, created by the San-X Company (which is required to produce one cute character per month to put on things to sell to kids).   His name means "Relax Bear": he's a brown bear who appears on stationery, computers, backpacks, and so on.  Here he and his friends appear as McDonald's Happy Meal prizes:





  There are stores in Japan devoted solely to Rilakkuma merchandise.

Ok, so an animated tv series, Rilakkuma and Kaoru, will be streaming on Netflix in April (very short turnaround time for voice artists). According to Netflix, Kaoru is the young woman who takes in Rilakkuma, and then has to rescue him when he is kidnapped.  Other characters include another bear, a bird, and a little boy.  So this is sort of like Winnie the Pooh?

I can see why Lana Condor would be excited to be cast in a streaming video tv series about a Japanese marketing franchise.

But why would my gay American twink friend be excited about it?  Does Kaoru, like, have a gay best friend or something?