Japan Sinks: 2020

Episode 3

I debated on whether to do these reviews in two-episode chunks given that it's all available on Netflix and I'm sure plenty of people have binge-watched the entire show at this point. After tuning into episode three, I've decided to keep it at one review per week because each 20-minute episode is jam-packed and I'd rather spend more word count on analysis than trying to briefly describe all the plot beats. For instance, just in episode three we have the follow-up on the death of the Mutoh family patriarch, an attempted sexual assault, the death of yet another member of the group, a paragliding YouTuber, and an outbreak of The Most Dangerous Game inside a grocery store.

Japan Sinks: 2020 is starting to feel too ambitious to the detriment of the characters' emotions. To put it another way, if no one reacts to the shocking events occurring in front of them the suspension of disbelief fails and you're left with flatly optimistic characters trudging through the Japanese wilderness. Maybe someone will die, but we'll keep walking. No time for tears here, folks.

That's exactly how the episode opens following the death of Koiichiro in episode two. Ayumu was very close to her father, far more than she is to her mother, and obviously isn't handling him being blown to pieces on her behalf because she refused to eat boar meat very well. Mari doesn't have time for tears, or really acknowledging that her husband is dead. Nanami shows no reaction besides blithely trying to keep people going. Shut-in Haruo remains absolutely silent. It all feels incredibly abnormal and this is one time during the episode where Ayumu's emotions feel justified. It seems like both of her parents are (were) survival competent. Whereas Koiichiro knew a lot of roughing it outdoors, Mari's works as a member of a rescue team overseas. At least, I assume that's what Ayumu meant when she told she said "if you're so good at saving other people's children, why don't you save your own?"

Mari is trying to save her kids, of course. The entire group is without money (admittedly, I find this a little hard to believe. Japan is still a very strong cash society. If anyone made it out with their wallet, wouldn't they have some loose cash?), food, or transportation. Finding shelter and provisions is of utmost importance and she definitely doesn't want them dying off due to exposure. However, from one mother to another, her blatant lack of sensitivity is really appalling. There are ways to keep the family moving without toting out tired lines like "is sitting on your ass going to bring him back?" He died like, what, a few hours ago? The character never shows the kind of vulnerability that would excuse that sort of outburst as a deflection of her own pain. I mean, I assume it is, but that kind of depth isn't supported in the episode.

As Ayumu is sulking, the group is picked up by a drunken truck driver creep who immediately sets off alarm bells. The camera does a lot of leering on his behalf and it becomes clear even before they pull over at a gas station that he intends to attack Nanami. Honestly, the shot of inserting the gas pump nozzle was uh, a unique case of foreshadowing. When Nanami finally realizes that the douchebag intends to act on his "rule breaking" rhetoric, we get a pretty uncomfortable fight scene. Nanami lays into him and eventually Mari and even Ayumu join in too but not before truck bro gets in quite a few punches. Nanami's head is kept off screen but the violence is still pretty apparent.

Also, I get that Haruo is a recluse forced into a group at this point but holy shit the guy who promised to keep you safe just got blown up and now all three female members of the group are in an out-and-out brawl with a rapist maybe you could fucking do something?

This episode really tested my patience with the cast. The core family barely seems like there's any emotional bonds between them which hurts the overall emotional stakes. After commandeering the creeper's truck, the group drives until they hit a landslide and have to get on foot once again. At the top of the hill, Ayumu seems bothered by the attention Nanami is giving to Haruo and, perhaps purposefully, plans to interrupt by feigning injury only to tell Nanami she needs to pee. Up until this point, Nanami has been somewhat of a mother hen and attempted to dote on all of the kids. She offers to go with Nanami to find a bush or something. But then she dies.

This was complete tonal whiplash for me because about five minutes prior I was watching Nanami fight off a rapist. It was an intense scene where the stakes felt real. She curbstomped a dude into the pavement. Cut to a hillside and she's face down in the dirt from accidentally inhaling noxious gases released from the moving of Japan's tectonic plates.

WHAT?

I can see the argument that it's the whole point. It doesn't matter how strong or awesome you are, you could accidentally dig up a bomb or wander into an invisible cloud of poison. But one death immediately following another, both due to unforeseeable mistakes, lessens both of their narrative impact. Might as well not get too attached to anyone because their efforts could just as easily be in vain. Ayumu of course blames herself when in swoops star YouTuber KITE to fill in the empty party slot.

Ayumu is pretty insufferable here as she accuses KITE of being "fake news" when he literally videotaped Okinawa sinking into the ocean. She's very much attached to the idea that "Japan will never sink" which seems like a broader patriotic way of thinking about her home country. It feels too early to say, but there feels like there's an underlying nationalistic message behind some of Ayumu's behavior that's different than the general optimism (as in 'we'll survive') that Nanami and Mari display. Ayumu seems to be denial of what's happening (Japan is physically and socially collapsing) and some of her outbursts towards her mother take on different connotations when viewed in that light. I initially thought that Mari was a different ethnicity than her husband based on the characters' skin tones, Mari and Gō's ability to speak English, and that she was introduced as returning to Japan via an international flight. That could still be the case but it hasn't been stated outright. What we do know is that Mari spends time abroad helping other communities and her daughter doesn't "look" like her. Keep that in mind when their argument at the beginning of the episode includes Ayumu criticizing Mari helping "others" over her "own" as well as insulting her mother about "her face."

Go does resemble his mother and has an active interest in other countries. He doesn't want to live in Japan and dreams of moving to Estonia where KITE is from. He watches KITE's videos to teach himself English which he uses regularly; I'd say he prefers it to Japanese. Ayumu has never been shown speaking English. Her primary goal up until the disaster was to train hard to represent Japan in the Olympics. I'm not trying to paint Ayumu as a stand-in for nationalists but nationalism does seem to play a part in the conflict within the Mutoh family and of the remaining members, Ayumu is now outnumbered.

I'm not even at the tail-end of the episode where the family comes upon a grocery store that still has working electricity. While shopping they're attacked by the owner with a bow and arrows who's convinced that they don't intend to pay for the goods. He brings down a hail of sharpened wooden arrows on the family from the catwalk, impaling Go. Yes, we might be down a third family member but my bets are on that his bag took the brunt of it and he's fine. Probably.

This episode had some problems, primarily it's stuffing so many events into each episode that the characters aren't given time to display the depths of the emotion I would expect given the events occurring around them.

Rating:

Lynzee Loveridge is the Executive Editor of Anime News Network, an anime fan over 20 years in the making, and probably a ghost.

Japan Sinks: 2020 is currently streaming on Netflix.