Sanctuary: Seiki jdorama review

 

There are not too many sports jdoramas out there. The ones that come to mind are the pretty good No Side Game, Kimutaku's ice hockey dorama Pride and Pro Golfer Hana which I never finished watching. The problem with sports jdoramas is that if the actor does not know how to play the sport, it turns into Buzzer Beater which is a cautionary tale about casting for name instead of ability. 

Sanctuary is what happens when good Japanese directors get Netflix time and money to do what they want and not have to cast Johnnys. The director for Sanctuary is Eguchi Kan who did The Fable movies for Netflix where were fun action movies showing the world that Japan has a very good stunt team and just needed good action actors.

The main character for Sanctuary is Oze/Enno played expertly by Ichinose Wataru. Oze's name changes to Enno when he is given his wrestling name. Oze's family lost their sushi shop to debt, his father does night work directing traffic and his mother gets them into more debt and sleeps around. Oze has no future and the only way out is to train to be a sumo wrestler.

For someone who joined a sumo stable to help out his poor old man, Oze doesn't respect the sumo business. He doesn't take his training seriously and the first few episodes are dealing with his grumpiness and to be fair he is bullied as well.

I love seeing Pierre Taki as the stable master and Koyuki as the wife. I have no idea if Pierre Taki is cancelled in mainstream Japan jdoramas but if you want to cast someone with the Suzuki Minoru aura of don't mess with me, it is Pierre Taki. As for Koyuki, I remember when she was the new IT girl and was cast in Kimutaku's Engine. Now she's playing motherly roles. 

Kutsuna Shioli is a journalist who was kicked out of the political department and assigned to cover sumo.  She is the annoying lived abroad character who complains about everything including how women are not allowed onto the sumo ring. Of course she gets drawn to Oze and slowly comes to appreciate the sport of sumo.

The other two main sumo wrestlers besides Oze are Shizuuchi, a monster wrestler who will become Oze's rival and has a dark past and Ryuki the son of a former yokozuna who is having problems living up to his father's expectations.

I want to say it is so good to see a sports show where you can see the actors really put in the effort to get into sumo shape. You can see it in the training sessions and of course they have real sumo wrestlers as well, at least I think some of them are. Eguchi Kan is great at directing action. There is a great ending to Oze or should I say Enno's match in episode 4 that was beautifully shot. 

Throughout the 8 episodes I kept thinking how well made Sanctuary was. The only problem was there seemed to be a lot of unresolved plotlines and the show just ended abruptly. I was in WTF mode and made sure that there were no more episodes left. End of the day, everything feels like a set up for season 2. All the Koyuki stuff that was alluded to and I am guessing Ryuki will be Enno's rival but bloody hell it was one disappointing ending. I am looking forward to Kutsuna Shioli vs Kyabakura girl battle and will Enno's wallet appear in season 2?

I can't fault everything that came before the ending. If I have one other gripe is that the casting for the bad guy stablemaster Inushima is wrong. He is too scrawny and does not look like someone who was once a sumo wrestler and surely they could have easily found someone. Just cast Makabe Tougi or some wrestler.

I have watched sumo on NHK and it did not interest me but Sanctuary, like all good sports stories made me fall in love with our bunch of underdog wrestlers. I am loving the combination of jdorama talent with Netflix money. World class level of production. Too bad the story is most setting up for season 2 with an unsatisfying ending. Very watchable but not satisfying. Sigh.

I am going to watch as money jdoramas on Netflix as I can in a month and then cancel because it is not cheap.