DESCRIPTION

CAST

MANGA DramaNihon Chinbotsu
MANGA DramaNihon Chinbotsu
MUSICKeshiki
MANGA ActionNihon Chinbotsu 2020

REVIEWS

• 

  AnimeDweeb

  60/100
  What Happens When the World Falls Apart Right Under You?

  

  Tragedy hits hard.

  I'm not going to pretend that I've had my fair share of any. People have been through far worse than I could ever comprehend. Yet, I get by. I know it's an arrogant thing to say, but it's the truth. Everyday I ignore all the bad things that happen in the greater world. Wars, poverty, depravity and death. I compartmentalize, I tell myself that the bad things aren't happening to me. These things exist, and there will be people to overcome those adversities when they inevitably knock on their doors. But what happens when you can't run away? What happens when it's time to face the music? What happens when those doors come crashing down, and your whole life along with it?

  I just binged Japan Sinks: 2020 (JS), here are my thoughts. This review will be mostly spoiler-free, but feel free to check out my Tl;Dr if you wish to go in blind. Also, I'll be referencing Devilman Crybaby quite a bit, as I feel that both stories showing up in director Masaaki Yuasa's filmography and their thematic parallels are too important to ignore in this review.

  

  8 minutes. That's all the reprieve you get.

  During this time we meet the Mutou family, the characters whom we'll be experiencing this journey with. Ayumu, the family's 14 year old daughter, is a track-and-field athlete and the anchor for an upcoming meet. Her mother Mari is on a plane about to land at Haneda Airport. Kouchiro is the breadwinner, working his day job in construction. The son, Go, is an epic gamer with his bright eyes set on the future. Set in present-day Japan, life goes on the way you'd expect: the unremarkable hubbub of daily life ensues. Even when the first earthquake hits, most of the populace remain undeterred. People pull out their smartphones and break into excited discussion, as if some mere celebrity scandal got Trending on Twitter. In a place where earthquakes and other natural disasters are almost commonplace, life goes on as usual.

  Here's the thing about earthquakes: the first wave isn't the most dangerous part. It's the aftershocks that hit the hardest. After 8 minutes, all hell breaks loose throughout Japan.

  If it hasn't been made apparent by this point, JS is not a show for the faint of heart.

  The island country is rumored to sink underwater from tumultuous seismic activity, and the scale of this threat looms large in every episode. The elements are a ticking time bomb for Ayumu and her family, as they race to find an escape from the chaos. The Mutou's race against time is powerful and devastating; the tension had me tugging at my hair on multiple occasions. Science SARU's latest outing looks surprisingly grounded (this isn't a pun I SWEAR), and this change from Yuasa's signature art style is fitting for what the show is going for. JS looks detailed and immaculate, with painstakingly well-crafted imagery of the ravaged cities and countryside. But occasionally his idiosyncratic free-flowing animation and pronounced facial expressions find their way into the show, wringing every bit of emotion from several big scenes. Former Yuasa collaborator Kensuke Ushio scores the show and complements those moments with both tense and soft pieces. These elements form a medley in service of hitting me with some of the most devastating moments I have ever experienced in my time with anime. I won't go as far as to say the show is pure nightmare fuel, my momma didn't raise a wuss. However, what I watched felt uncompromising and honest in its depiction. It's not just gratuitous torture porn for four hours, but rather a fully immersive experience which pulls me under the weight of such a disaster.

  

  Audio flashbacks are played at several points in the show. Wildly at odds with the havoc taking place, these monologues serve to demonstrate where the show's real focus lies.

  JS, while dark, is a tale about human nature.

  The show unflinchingly puts humanity front-and-center. Conflict in JS can easily go from the external to more inward. It captures people with a variety of ideologies and goes to lengths to show several ways people respond to the world shattering around them. Much like Devilman Crybaby, JS isn't afraid to show the depraved places people can go to under adverse situations. But while Devilman's take on these ideas were nihilistic, JS acknowledges this capacity for immorality and responds with hope. Even amidst despair, we are given glimpses of this hope. The capacity for kindness, perseverance and love. Tears and loss make their way into many key moments, but they allow for each small victory that follows to mean so much more. Tragedy hits hard, yet it's often punctuated by brilliant showcases of resilience. JS pulls at your heart and fills it up again. It was a tiring experience binging this, but also one made worth it by that hope.

  

  JS is not short of pitfalls,

  and those faults (I really need to stop with the puns) do make this amazing work a tad harder to sit through. The first big issue that would affect your watch is, as I said before, the disturbing imagery and content. While purposeful, it can be really hard to stomach at times, especially during the few instances the show goes unnecessarily overboard. This ties into my next qualm, which is that of doing things for shock value. Some scenes feel like jump-scares and leave far weaker an impression than so many of the carefully built-up climaxes. JS can also be pretty frustrating with its cliffhangers, and there's one or two I found particularly infuriating. Not just 'cause they were cliffhangers, but because the story could have functioned perfectly fine without them. I also find that certain elements regarding the sorrow in the show could have been portrayed better. For starters, I know the score is superb, but maybe don't blast hype Devilman Crybaby music over characters dying? Also, how characters react to some of these deaths feel somewhat disjointed. We don't get a whole lot of grieving in between these moments, which then come across like mere plot points that need to be checked. Saving the worst for last, probably the biggest complaint I could lodge against the show would be its middle stretch of episodes. Our main characters don't have much to do in that arc, and it felt like a footnote happening behind the scenes instead of incidents I deeply cared about.

  

  Tl;Dr:

  Japan Sinks: 2020 is not easy to watch. Suffering and loss, amplified with strong visuals and sound design, permeate the show throughout the journey. JS holds no punches demonstrating the massive scale of such a disaster. But when I watched the show end I wasn't thinking about the earthquake. I was thinking of what we do when the bad things happen. And what we humans do is carry on. There are still things to learn, people to love, futures to strive towards. The human spirit has gotten us through troubles time and time again. There's no stopping what we can achieve, not even if you take the ground away from our feet. 6/10~

  STRAY RAMBLINGS (SPOILERS):

  • A small disclaimer: I'm not all clear on exactly how much of the show as a whole I can attribute to Yuasa. He's a co-director in the project and I'm not clear on how much creative influence he had. But the parallels between JS and Devilman Crybaby seem pretty clear in my eyes, which is why I felt it was right to make those comparisons.
  • Yuasa's adaptation in Devilman Crybaby added the running motif to the original story. Seems like he's a big fan of track, 'cause he brought it back here.

  

  • In Ep 2 the date shows 18 Sep 2020 on the KITE's Youtube video where Okinawa sinks. Fingers crossed that this year doesn't get any worse :s

  

  • Why do they keep making Go speak English every now and then? I kinda see the point, but speaking basic English doesn't make you more of an epic gamer or anything.
  • As detailed as the backgrounds and art are, the characters don't look dirty enough in most scenes. I know I sound like a nitpicking prick but it kinda takes me out of it when a disaster of such scale is occurring and their clothes look like they're fresh out of the dryer.
  • Smoking in a gas station is straight-up dumb, no two ways about it.
  • Ayumu needed to get her leg checked out like, 30 mins into the show.
  • I was super scared for some weird shit to go down when I saw dance lights in Ep 5. We all know what happened the last time Yuasa did a scene in that setting…

  

  • Credit where credit is due, the Shan City subplot is interesting on paper. Ultimately pointless however, Ep 6 is so far removed from the rest of the show. The stuff that went down felt really pointless, I didn't care that much for it.
  • That photo motif breaks my heart. Almost every time a pic is taken, it spells death for a character. Breaking out that Polaroid only got more painful the further we got into the show.
  • KITE became a V-Tuber. Absolute legend.
  • The first episode is probably my favorite. It told the entire story of the show in 20 minutes. The setup before the incident was expertly done, with the most impactful detail being that of Ayumu's track partner making an unfulfilled promise to our anchor runner. I got chills down my spine.
  • BEST GIRL: I don't wanna, not for this show :'(
  • Thanks so much for making it this far! I apologize if the review isn't completely up to stuff, I usually take more time to prepare. Penning this review was an enriching experience, and I look forward to doing more in future. Peace~
  • "Though the sun may set, it will always rise again."
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• 

  animetitle

  50/100
  Japan Sinks: 2020 is not good. Doesn't mean I didn't like it.

  [MODERATE SPOILERS]

  

  If I could somehow give Japan Sinks: 2020 both a 2/10 and an 8/10, I would. So to that end, this will be two separate reviews. Sort of.

  First that 2/10. I won't spend much time here, but the gist of it is that Japan Sinks is not good. The animation nosedives to abysmal depths as early as episode 3, the soundtrack is underwhelming and often poorly utilized, the story meanders and takes absurd tangents, and the tone is as confused as I was in the locker rooms of ninth-grade PE. There's not much, on a technical level, that I can honestly defend about this whole thing, and if you're crunched for time or just not particularly interested, I'm gonna say pass on this one. It's a bad series, and that's my honest take. You can stop reading here, if you like.

  ...But that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy Japan Sinks.

  It starts strong enough, with a first episode that at least somewhat resembles a competent production, even if the faults already start to show: the animation is a bit stiff; the earthquake is rendered with just a bunch of still frames jittering and blurring; weird, stilted pauses jeopardize the moment-to-moment pacing. But throw in a fiercely resilient protagonist and some horrific on-screen deaths and I'm hooked enough to follow through on a second episode. That second episode is noticeably weaker, but a bombshell in the last moment drags me into episode three, where the Japanese landscape is a muddy, CG mess with cut-and-paste trees, character walk cycles average about 3 frames while the models just sorta shrink into the distance like puppets on popsicle sticks, and the gang's reactions to certain traumatic and outlandish events are both underwhelming and baffling. But in the last few minutes our protagonists are dodging arrows in a department store and I'm clutching the edge of my seat and frantically muttering at my screen for this obnoxious little kid to run for cover behind the produce shelves.

  

  This is where Japan Sinks both falls apart and begins to make sense. This won't be a series to make you sob over the loss of beloved characters. This won't be a series with much of anything meaningful to say about tragedy or disaster or the human spirit or whatever. It might try, but any insight here comes out ungainly and awkward. If someone tries to sell you on this show with those tags, just nod politely and look for an exit. No, Japan sinks is not Yuasa's next masterful entry to his dazzling repertoire.

  Instead, Japan Sinks is the animated equivalent of a made-for-TV, B-rated disaster flick that airs on SYFY on a Tuesday night. And in this sense, with this lens, it's an absolute ride.

  That's how I began to love Japan Sinks. The plot contorts and corkscrews and often literally explodes, and it's impossible to justify some of those narrative turns beyond shrugging my shoulders and saying, "Yeah, sure why not? They might as well join a cult in episode four." New obstacles are ridiculous and serve mostly as theme park attractions that will inevitably dispatch a character or two and, oh boy, characters are dispatched frequently and in spectacular fashion. If nothing else, the show is a constant rollercoaster of huge set-pieces and gruesome deaths, and for some that'll be enough.

  

  But more than anything, and most importantly to me, Japan Sinks nails the dodgy, are-they-serious?, naively earnest B-movie vibe. This is an absurd journey told with utmost gravity. Characters make heartfelt exit-monologues before sacrificing themselves to convoluted ends. They wax poetic about the beauty of Japan. They engage in rap battles about the dangers of nationalism. Japan Sinks is starry-eyed enough to make you buy into the delusion that maybe this is a serious matter, and it's that delusion that really sells the better parts of this show, the moments where the animation gets its act together enough to deliver something unexpected and astounding; where the grating optimism of its characters wins you over because fuck, dude, they've earned it, let's give them this, at least; where you cheer for characters who just barely slip through incredible danger and salute those who didn't make it; and where the quieter moments might actually make your eyes wet, just a little. Don't get me wrong, these moments have little to do with legitimately good writing, it's just that Japan Sinks so stubbornly constructs an atmosphere that convinces me to believe in it as much and in the same way as it wants believes in itself.

  It's like rooting from the sidelines of a little league baseball game: on any professional scale, these kids suck. But the bases are loaded and the little tyke at bat has an unpredictable swing and something magical just might happen.

  

  So no, Japan Sinks is not good. It's a show you have to meet on its own ridiculous, hokey, schlocky terms, and even then every moment of its wonky visuals and bizarre plot will warn you against stepping foot on its unsteady and crumbling ground. But if you do that, if you can overcome more than a few rupturing fault lines and look at them not so much as weaknesses but as endearingly busted gears in an inane carnival ride, then maybe you'll come to enjoy it as much as I did, despite your better judgement.

  5/10, because I can't give it both a 2 and an 8 so we'll meet them in the middle.

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• 

  mimicodots

  61/100
  Japan Sinks, Sinks. A waterlogged script that falls apart like it's titular archipelago.

  Imagine my shock when Japan Sinks 2020 goes from an incredibly poignant opener [8/10], to an unintentional comedy [6/10].

  

  To be fair, how could you blame me for getting invested, I don't have 2020 vision.This show started off as depressing to watch, then went to depressing to watch.

  If you just yelled at me from behind your screen, all i have to say to that is ''fair''.

  To start off the list of things that turned my off from this show⁠—I find the character designs to be generally ugly. As much as I am a Yuasa fan, that's one of my reoccurring gripes with his catalog of work. The facial features in this show tend to look very weird.

  The designs are incredibly simplistic and yet instead of being more fluid and expressive, they look wonky. The animation itself isn't much better, with numerous occasions where characters move in clunky ways.

  I get that this is a show about disaster, and plenty of other dark subjects, but the characters are just straight up unappealing to look at the majority of the time.

  

  The fact that the characters usually aren't shaded also contributes to my distaste for the dull visual aesthetic. I also find it sad that the backgrounds left next to zero impact on me (excluding episode 1). The overall production value of this series leaves a bad taste in my mouth.

  One of the few redeeming qualities I did find from this show is the OP, which has gorgeous storyboards, and a theme that might be intentionally far too delicate for it's subject matter.

  

  Contrary to what you'd expect, Japan Sinks is actually pretty funny, and that's part of the problem.

  While the show initially nailed the sense of dread and tragedy, since as early as episode five the show's tone completely disintegrates. I'm not supposed to burst out laughing when a child gets smashed in the head by a piece of the ceiling, while his mother grieves his death.

  This started off as a poignant, hard hitting disaster story of a Family surviving Japan's largest earthquake. And now I just watched a wheelchair bound Grandpa 360 no scope an armed gunman with a bow and arrow.

  No I am not making this up.

  The cult arc is hands down the worst stretch of episodes in the show, and after that point I stopped caring about whatever story the show was trying to convey. To add insult to injury, Daniel joins the cast.

  All that was left is baffling plot points, poorly handled character drama and an attempt to make a point about Japanese nationalism. More-so then perseverance, I'd posit that the main theme in Japan sinks is the dangers of bathos.

  When the boat full of racists sank thirty seconds after Gou hoped that very thing would happen, I snapped and just started laughing

  I'm not the type of person to complain much about perceived plot holes, but Ayumu failing to get treatment for her leg, ending with it getting amputated is exactly the kind of nonsense I was hoping I wouldn't see.

  When it eventually happened in the final episode I groaned, not just because it was contrived, but because it was such a transparently lazy way to have an inspiring visual that did not feel earned. As a whole the climax failed to evoke anything in me.

  Generally I find the cast flaccid, with the exception of racist grandpa and the e-boy Youtuber, but I've rambled about this show enough. Kite is a bad-ass, that has access to every kind of transportation on the planet, and every other member of the cast is less obnoxious than Ayumu is. Nuff said.

  

  Could I honestly recommend this show? No.

  You'd probably be better off watching the rest of Science Saru's catalog or an ad for Japanese tourism.

  Viva the Olympics.

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