Brief Story Line
Yoji Minamimaru (Kanata Hosoda - One Summer Story etc) also known as Nanmaru was a college student who had unique ability to create small hole in anything. He was also the president of a small club with several members including Aki (Yui Narumi - Unfeigned Happy Ending etc). Yoji was approached by Assistant Professor Sayuri Emi (Mai Kiryuu - Grown Ups etc) due to his possible same lineage with Professor Marukami (Hiroshi Mikami - Premonition etc) who was studying Japanese foklore and focusing on the village of Marukawa.
Together with Emi and two students Tagaya (Tatsuomi Hamada - Ultraman Geed TV series etc) & Sakuragi (Reika Nishihata), Yoji went to Marukawa to search for the Professor. After meeting with the villager Sachiko (Ryoko Fujino - Solomon's Perjury etc), Yoji found out more about his ability and realized that it could be used for positive things. However, everything changed when he met with Sachiko's brother Takashi (Shuhei Uesugi - One Room Angel TV series etc). Things became complicated when strange balls of sphere starting to appear in Tokyo, created by the mysterious Yoriyuki (Takayuki Yamada - House of Ninjas TV series etc) which would endanger all the people.
So what was Yoji's connection with the village? And how would the story conclude? You could find out in this series.
End of Brief Story Line
The opening scenes of this series was quite shocking for me and made me highly anticipate what would come next. When we were introduced with the lead character Nanmaru, I thought OK, this guy did not seem convincing enough. But since it's still very early, I prefer to reserve my judgment till later. As the story progressed, there was a dark feeling when the story focused on the village, although it was kind of refreshing when it was in the college.
The series felt it was going in a rather slow pace and only got exciting when the mysterious Yoriyuki appeared. After several episodes that were so so, finally it came to live by the end of episode 6 and grew better. However, once I reached episode 9, I felt that the background story was a bit too specific and likely better appreciated by people who had prior knowledge of the Tanabata festival. So despite its detail explanation, I was unable to really grasp the concept and it failed to give the wow effect that I believe was supposed to be felt. When I reached the 10th and final episode, it was not exactly what I had in mind. Although it was a good conclusion, but I was expecting something different.
From what I read on the internet, the series was adapted from manga of the same title (in Japanese: Tanabata no Kuni) by Hitoshi Iwaaki whose work Parasyte was hugely popular and had been adapted into two live action Japanese films and one South Korean series. So if you are familiar with his style, you would not be surprised by the strong science fiction feel. Amazingly the manga was released between 1996-1999, which meant it took long time to finally have its live adaptation. Since I have not read the manga at all, I am not sure if the series was already telling all the stories or just part of it. There was no info yet if it's going to be renewed, but the ending was pretty conclusive to me and it was OK if they to leave it at that.
The cast were pretty OK to my opinion, although I was unfamiliar with all of them while the only one I had seen before was Takayuki Yamada who was barely recognizable. And Kanata Hosoda was OK as the lead character Yoji. The visual effects were pretty good at times, however I was disappointed with the make up (or prostethic?) effects as they were rather obvious. Considering it was a Hulu original (released through Disney+ Star in Asia including Indonesia), I would have thought it had large budget and should be having top notch effects.
Overall, this was a series that had an interesting premise but having a lot of focus on drama, the festival and human interactions made it less exciting as a sci-fi genre. It might be more suitable to categorize this as drama series with a bit of sci-fi. With only the 6th-9th episodes that were suspenseful & intense enough and a not so satisfying ending, I felt this was not a series which provided me the greatest experience. So if you are thinking of seeing lots of action, then you will have to manage your expectation. However, if you are interested in seeing the first live adaptation of the manga, then you are welcome to give it a try.
Mike's movie moments rating: 3 out of 5 stars
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