Vivant Episodes 1~3 jdorama review

Vivant has to have the biggest budget ever in jdorama history. No I am not talking the big names but rather the scale of the story. It is an international espionage story set it the fictional republic of Balka which looks very much like Mongolia.

Sakai Masato aka Hanzawa Naoki works for this company Marubishi and accidentally transfers too much money to a foreign company and goes to Balka to recover it. Sakai Masato is mistaken as an agent of Vivant, gets involved in an explosion klling Balka police and he meets Abe Hiroshi who works for foreign affairs and Nikaido Fumi who is a doctor and as they are chased by Balka Police.

WHAT I LIKED

+ The scale of the story is huge. Usually TBS likes to shoot an opening scene with 100 extras and call it a day. Episode 1 has a huge hospital scene, beautiful Mongolian scenery with horse riding scenes and cars getting knocked around. The amount of effort for a 1hr 30 minutes episode is crazy. I was thinking about how many months they must have taken to prep for the first episode because it was basically a movie. I think shooting in Mongolia helped a lot with the cost but it must have been a difficult shoot and definitely not the type of action you normally see in jdoramas because of the cost.

+ Whatever happens I admire the ambition of TBS to spend this insane amount of money and try to do this sprawling story.

+ You have two of the greatest Japanese actors in Abe Hiroshi and Yakusho Koji in the same jdorama. Nino is also in it and he and Yakusho Koji are Balka people so story will most likely circle back to Balka. I would think it is much cheaper to shoot action scenes there than Japan.

+ Did I mention Mongolia is beautiful?

+ For once the English dialogue does not sound like it was auto translated from Japanese.

WHAT I DIDN'T LIKE

- Nikaido Fumi's doctor is bloody annoying. I wished they had left her in the desert. There's something about the character that makes me think why is she here? Probably because she has no chemistry with Sakai Masato.

- I don't understand how the Balka character Drum can have his thoughts come out of his mobile phone. It would have been better to make him a mute character and have him communicate with his eyes and gestures.

SUMMARY

Vivant is a TBS show so I can't get too excited. It could still collapse under its own weight spectacularly but I am liking the immense effort they took to make this show. What Vivant if you want to see one of the most ambitious non-Netflix jdoramas ever in terms of scale. Vivant is being subbed by SARS fansub who have risen from the ashes and can be downloaded from drama otaku. Back in the old days SARS were the premiere fan subbing group.