What a view | Japan Sinks: 2020, heart-wrenching disaster series from anime master Masaaki Yuasa
- The show strikes a chord as it follows a Tokyo family’s struggle for survival after an earthquake
- By tackling the subject from personal and universal angles it is sure to find global appeal
However sheepishly, its creators probably found the coincidence serendipitous, but thousands of others wouldn’t have been able to see past the appalling irony.
Japan Sinks: 2020 arrived on Netflix as parts of Kyushu, the country’s third-largest island, were swamped by deadly rainstorms, flash floods and mudslides. For all its post-war economic miracles, pop culture triumphs and (fast receding) extended moment in the limelight, Japan, the world’s most earthquake-prone country, hardly has it easy when coping with natural upheavals; the word “tsunami” is a regrettably familiar Japanese export.
And now here comes the apocalypse again, in what looks like its natural habitat. Based on Sakyo Komatsu’s science fiction-flavoured disaster novel Japan Sinks (which has already spawned a television show and two movies), Japan Sinks: 2020 is another thought-provoking winner from animator and director Masaaki Yuasa and his Science Saru studio.
With much of the rest of the world also in semi-disaster mode, this challenging 10-part story, which can be emotionally wrenching, is certain to find global favour, approaching the subject of survival from personal and universal angles simultaneously.
Torn asunder by a cataclysmic earthquake and its aftershocks, Japan disappears beneath the waves, leaving the populace refugees in their own cities as they start to troop away in search of sanctuary on high ground.
In moments, lives are lost or rendered meaningless, families try to stick together through their endurance test, although it soon becomes clear victims will regularly fall by the wayside. In a Covid-19 calamity climate, Japan Sinks: 2020 has something for everyone whose reasons to exist have recently been upended.