Tuesday, October 10, 2023

The Days jdorama review

 

The Days is another Netflix show on my list. It is a series based on the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Plant starring some of the best actors in Japan with Yakusho Koji, Takeuchi Yutaka, Kobayashi Kaoru and Kita Yoshio.

I have watched Chernobyl and Fukushima 50 which is a movie about the same subject and the first two episodes could not catch my attention. It left like I had seen everything before and I could not get invested. 

I powered through 2 episodes contemplating dropping The Days and episode 3 woke me up a bit when the men realised that they were all going to die from radiation anyway. Yakusho Koji did his best to alleviate the material as the station chief who worked with no sleep and had to deal with management who were too afraid to back his decisions

I enjoyed Kita Yoshio as the Prime Minister whose advisers cannot even give him advice at a time of national crisis but in the end the script was too dry and the directing was too by the numbers. You sort of have to watch The Days as a sort of blow by blow of what happened but I was bored most of the time and wished that they had done a documentary instead.

I don't know how the writer could have made it better since it was based on the book but definitely better pacing, and visually it needed to look different, especially the camera work. I would have made it more intimate and showed the audience more of what Yukusho Koji was thinking.

Very disappointing and its a shame such a great cast could not produce something better. Please watch Fukushima 50 instead. So much better. Very meh. Yakusho Koji's acting prevents me from giving it a do not watch but unofficially do not watch The Days.

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