Fukushu no Mibojin (2022)

Disappointing mediocre story with flat characters but a talented lead actress.

On paper the premise of this drama sounded great. I love a good femme fatale or revenge story but it just didn't do anything particularly new or exciting.

The main problem is that the story just really never goes anywhere shocking or particularly interesting and the ending felt very flat. The characters are very underdeveloped and some I'm barely sure why there were even included as they don't really contribute much. It's all a bit of a shame because the lead actress plays her role fantastically and with better writing this could have really been something special. I really wasn't a fan of the writing in general. It was full of smug sort of random exposition to make a cheap call back later. Lead makes a random out of nowhere long info dump upon seeing some bats flying, "oh look bats. Did you know that bats will put their lives at risk to save other members of their group" etc. 15 minutes later this is being called back. It's just lazy and forced.

Most episodes were short and episodic focusing around revenge on a particular individual. But this tended to lean into characters being introduced briefly for one episode and then left underdeveloped or forgotten about after. The reasons and motivations for revenge on many felt unearned and excessive. Overall it had a sort of caricature feeling about revenge. I realised after it was based on a manga and it showed. I gather the manga was still being written at the time and presume the drama did it's own thing. While watching it, it did have the vibe of a manga sort of story. I'm not sure this translated well into a short live action mini series.

All that said, the music used in the episodes was actually really really good and made so many thrilling scenes that much better.
It wasn't especially awful but there are many many better options to watch instead.

Lees verder