I have a lot to say about this one, so buckle up. Spoilers ahead.

Before watching this drama, I had my reservations, but I was overall optimistic. It had a high standard to live up to, its source material being a classic piece of western literature which did an excellent job of shedding light on serious issues such as the way society treats the mentally disabled and the ethics of scientific innovation.

Now, allow me to preface this by saying that I am very aware that the climate surrounding these kinds of issues is very different in Japan than it is in America. I know that awareness and tolerance for such things is not nearly as high; Japanese culture is one built around appearances, social status, and, above all else, homogeneity. It is encouraged that you do not stick out of the crowd, and many who do are punished for it. Thus, it follows that even if the writers were making a noble effort to spread awareness, cultural bias was still pervasive throughout the entire series. Therefore, while I appreciate the writers’ effort to make something meaningful and respectful towards the mentally disabled, I have to admit that the entire point flew completely over their heads.

Flowers for Algernon is extremely and undeniably ableist. The writers tried to frame it as though his disabled self was still valuable, and that he brought a special something to the table that no one else could, but in the end, this is not at all what they accomplished. His return to his normal self at the end of the series was very much portrayed as a terrible, awful thing, and even Sakuto himself asked his associates to “keep Haruka (his love interest) away from him” because he wouldn’t want her to see him in such a state. Furthermore, in the closing lines of the show, Sakuto, now back to his previous self, still says that he “wants to become smart.” It is clear that no lesson was learned--his mentally disabled self is still a shameful thing that, in his own words, needs to “run and hide away” from others.

However, I can see how a few pieces of dialogue near the end of the series could be unconvincing. Let us take a look at perhaps the most egregious offense, then: Sakuto’s death, or lack thereof. In the original story, Charlie, the main character, is implied to have died at the end as a result of the medicine having an adverse effect on his body, like Algernon. Sakuto, notably, did not die. While happy endings are nice, what the writers of the show failed to grasp was that Charlie’s death was a statement that spoke to the overall theme of the work in a very powerful way. Charlie’s death was not just his own; it signified the death of innocence, a consequence of trying to change something that never needed to be fixed in the first place. It was a punishment for those who tried to force their version of “normal” on him. However, in this universe, where everyone gets a happily ever after, including the arrogant and manipulative Hachisuka, there are no stakes, there are no consequences to treating Sakuto like an object of pity. No one suffers when the mentally disabled are mistreated.

Even Sakuto’s mother got a redemption arc and a happy ending, despite being quite irredeemable. Sakuto’s mother was verbally abusive and neglectful of him as a child because he was disabled. She routinely told him that she “hates stupid children” and showed obvious favor for his sister, and when she could no longer take it, she sent him away to live separately, with his father. She completely and irreversibly disowned him, even telling Haruka, “Sakuto is not my son,” years and years later. She was never there for him, never cared to show him love, never cared to help him feel as though he was just as good as everyone else. Instead she put him down and threw him out of her life for something he could not help, inflicting what I could only imagine would be a truckload of emotional trauma upon a child who did literally nothing wrong.

And what do the writers do? Of course, they redeem her. They go out of their way to make her seem sympathetic, to frame Sakuto’s rejection of her as wrong because they are, after all, “family.” Here’s where my own cultural bias seeps in, but I firmly believe that anyone who throws you out of their home for being different, for being something that one cannot control and no one can be blamed for, can ever be considered your family. His mother even disowned him, to drive that point further. “Family” should be the people that raise you up and are there for you, no matter what. She did not contribute to raising him, nor did she ever care for him, but over and over again, she is credited with his upbringing, and they claim that “she was having a rough time, too!” when clearly, she was nothing more than inconsiderate and discriminatory towards the mentally disabled.

She even makes a comment to Sakuto in the last episode as he gives up the last time he has left as a genius to save his ailing friend, Rio, saying “You’re so selfish! Don’t you ever think about your family?” This was horribly, awfully ironic coming from her, who threw her child away in an act of what I’d argue to be unforgivable ableism and child abuse. However, she is afterwards rewarded with a hug from Sakuto and sent on her way, “redeemed.” Sakuto’s forgiveness of her completely undermines the entire theme of “People should treat the mentally disabled like people,” making her actions appear forgivable when, truly, they are not. It was never Sakuto’s obligation to allow her back into his life after she shut him out of hers for no good reason.

This, however, brings me to my next point: Flowers for Algernon is extremely and undeniably sexist. All the female characters were either twisted, selfish, manipulative, or weak and uncontrollably emotional, with the exception of Rio, who was simply naïve and quite airheaded despite the writers’ attempts to make her multifaceted and deep, and Mai, who was quite literally there just to give Yanagawa a romantic interest (because everyone conveniently had to pair up with someone--even Kokubo!). As previously mentioned, Sakuto’s mother was a witch, but so was Yanagawa’s mother, who was exceedingly materialistic and delusional and took money from her working son on a regular basis. Additionally, so was Hiyama’s mother, who denied that she was running from her ex-convict child by moving to another city with her new partner but was obviously ashamed to be associated with him.

Furthermore, Haruka was nowhere near the strong female lead the writers tried to make her. Instead, she was constantly overcome with emotion, foregoing logic and reason and acting completely on impulse over and over again, committing dastardly deeds like some kind of saboteur instead of choosing the less roundabout and more admirable way of dealing with conflict: honest confrontation. First, she releases Algernon, who is, by the way, extremely valuable and the heart of the entire team’s research, in order to “save” the head doctor (who she was, at the time, head over heels for) by pinning the blame on a coworker who wanted to stop him from taking the medicine they had been developing to clinical trials. Then, she tried to destroy all the medicine when she realized that it was taking away Sakuto’s humanity (which, by the way, it didn’t, in the end? In the end, he was just a kind and considerate genius, which also served to undermine the whole “artificially-induced intelligence is not preferable to your old self, who was completely fine to begin with” theme), and she was promptly fired. And again, she tried to sabotage Sakuto’s friends when they asked if Sakuto could work on a cure for Rio, lying and saying that Sakuto had never mentioned having any friends at all to “protect him.” She never learned her lesson throughout the entire course of the series. Overall, she was a mess of poor decisions and sexist writing, crying and pleading and even fainting at every turn, an unlovable and selfish woman at the complete mercy of men who showed her little to no kindness (Sakuto was pretty awful to her up until the point where they started living together).

While Haruka was generally terrible, there was one thing they got right with her: consistent characterization. She was consistently terrible. The same cannot be said for characters like Hiyama and Takebu. Hiyama was wary of Rio for Sakuto’s sake; he didn’t trust her, and he thought she had bad intentions with him. Tensions came to a head when he confronted her about using Sakuto for selfish reasons, hitting the nail on the head, mind you, about why trying to romance Sakuto was wrong and a terrible thing to do (which the drama did not, in fact, end up treating like such a terrible thing, because their definition of “Treat the mentally disabled better” happened to be “Everyone needs a girlfriend to be happy”). Then, in the very next scene that they appear in together, he makes a complete 180 and starts asking her if she would date him instead of Sakuto, despite their little spat having had no resolution in the slightest--or, at least, no substantial one. As a result of such writing choices, their relationship had only the bare minimum of emotional development, having almost no chemistry and making very little sense overall.

Takebu was, simply put, all over the place. He was erratic, vacillating between wise uncle and angry and impulsive in the blink of an eye. One moment, he would be calmly talking down his rowdy employees, and the next, he would be exploding in his rage, throwing punches, kicking flower pots, and yelling angrily, before calmly returning to his soft, fatherly self. Thus, not only did he have moments where he acted completely out of character, but those moments were so abrupt and so extreme that I was constantly left feeling very, very confused. It was jarring, to say the least.

Thus, the sloppy characterization in tandem with the complete and utter nonsense that sputtered out of any character’s mouth whenever anyone tried to talk about their feelings simply goes to show that the writers of this show truly have no idea how humans actually interact with each other, or how they even work on a fundamental level, emotionally speaking. It was completely unbelievable and made for extremely unrealistic characters that I could not, in any way, sympathize with.

Overall, there were just so many obvious plot-holes, leaps in logic, and other poor writing choices that the staff made. It was clear the writing team did little to no research on anything about neuroscience, scientific methodology, or even bothered to take two seconds to consider basic anatomy (AKA: that one time Hachisuka tried to commit suicide by injecting ALG into his brain but tried to inject it through his scalp, which, sorry to say, has a thick layer of bone underneath called your skull that’s kinda there to protect your brain from stuff like that). To be honest, this might just be the worst piece of fiction I’ve ever consumed, and were it not for the fact that I had to watch this for my Japanese class, I do not think I could have sat through its entirety. I think I about doubled the show’s runtime by pausing to laugh out my pain every few minutes. Please do yourself a favor and… just… don’t watch it.

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