User Reviews

The series kept me interested just enough to continue with all eight episodes but it also kept me yelling at my TV whenever the characters gawked, moved slowly, stared aimlessly, walked instead of ran, paused for no reason, and um'ed and uh'ed whenever they were asked a question. I was going out of my mind at the sheer stupidity. Oh, there's a giant tsunami wave coming? Let's stare at it for a really really long time. We're standing in a heavily radioactive area, let's walk out of the area. I think we were meant to feel this sense of frustration because of how absolutely bumbling the entire process was surrounding Fukushima. That or Director, Tsai Ming-liang is really terrible at pacing.

I will never forget watching video of the city of Fukushima being engulfed in the massive tsunami back in 2011. Huge ocean ships being washed inland like toys in some 1960s Japanese film about Godzilla. The most heartbreaking parts of that video were the vehicles trying to flee the onslaught of the wave, helpless and hopeless, there was no chance for most of the people caught in the relentless deluge.

We heard news reports of the brave, heroic efforts of the people there who were trying to stabilize the reactor situation, but we never knew the details of how much sacrifice and courage were being offered for the sake of their people and the world at large.

This series is a monumental testimony to the events of that catastrophe, much of which is still ongoing, and will continue to be for several more decades.

It is a grave warning to the civilized world about how we all take resources like electric power and running water for granted, as if they are always at our fingertips and can be depended upon to protect us and solve all our problems.

This is a lie!

In truth, humans are helpless in the face of so many of the forces that we arrogantly believe we are masters of. Nuclear radiation is the most dangerous of these. In our arrogance, we have created the potential for catastrophes that are so terrible that they can create situations like those within the cores of the Fukushima and Chernobyl reactors: radiation levels at or above 50 sieverts!!! For reference, radiation levels at ground zero in a nuclear explosion are measured at being from 1-5 sieverts!!!

Electricity and running water are very fragile resources, and, as the Fukushima disaster shows, they cannot be relied upon in the face of earthquakes and tsunamis!!

Before we take for granted being masters of our environment, we should use this great historical series as a profound warning against the cost of human arrogance and hubris.

Like many others, I was quite interested in this after seeing HBO's Chernobyl. While this is similar, they're two very different shows conceived in two very different ways.

The acting is what you'd expect with any other Japanese drama. Seemingly emotionless characters, long awkward silences, and lots of staring. The one exception to this is the Prime Minister. Never before have I wanted to strangle a seemingly innocuous character. Constantly berating everyone who can't give him answers which are impossible to give without being on the ground (he expects absolute certainty and then blows his top when his expectations are not met). I'm not entirely sure if this was supposed to be an accurate representation of the actual Prime Minister at the time of the real incident, and for the sake of the real people involved I hope not.

A good thing is the cinematography. This show is absolutely gorgeous. However, in between beautiful yet harrowing establishing shots, 70% of the series you're locked in a dark control room. I also HATE when shows use first person views with gas masks on. I understand they're trying to depict the actual struggles and claustrophobia / confusion or the operators, but it makes the show a confusing mess to the audience. Every time characters need to enter the reactor buildings, they choose to show this. Everything is dark, the masks are filthy and you can't see a thing, I actually found myself fast forwarding through the scenes by the third episode. I have to admit the first episode is by far the best. The tsunami effects were well done, even paying attention to small details like water rushing out of small cracks.

I'm just going to tell it how it is - this show didn't need to be 8 hour long episodes. 3 of the episodes are literally focused on characters struggling to enter reactor buildings / turning valves. I can understand putting it in a single episode to show the conditions these characters struggle with, but episode 3 - 6 can literally be skipped. Watch one and you've seen them all.

There's almost no character development, but I honestly expected that. This is a very factual depiction of events. They've even depicted the most small and monotonous of details. I feel like there is literally so much they're trying to cram into the series that it just ends up bloated.

I'd definitely recommend anyone who's interested in man-made disasters (specifically nuclear) watch it, but be aware that it's a slow burn and drags on, and on, and on.

The actors been selected fit the original model in the real part, and the visual for tsunami is also good, they also got the blueprint!

Standard Japanese acting, I am not sure if it's only me or Japanese actors sometimes got a little too "stretched" when expressing strong emotions, which makes me feel a little bit of "dude that's a little bit too much", It's something I found in multiple shows.

The historical side.... hmmm the stupid moves from TEPCO were ignored in some scale, they wasted time, didn't design the plant well, no enough technical people on site but a lot of contractors (the contractors did really good). I didn't see the exausted head officer of the plant tho, he was not sleeping for days so he was not able to handle what was going on.

The story is too long, everything suddenly poped up in the last episode, the USFJ support, Chinese mega pump truck. The most funny thing is the last scene, that "human couldn't defeat the nature", yeah it's true, but there is something called human mistake, that can be avoided.

How embarrassed I am reading some of these reviews, all about how the reviewers wished that things in this excellent docuseries were different. How it was too slow or too detailed or I suppose, too Japanese. I am embarrassed because most of these reviews have completely failed to appreciate the true art of this series, and sound like they come from a perspective intolerant of anything unlike what they're used to. That is a shame.

With that rant said, I was completely bowled over by this show. If it matters, and I think it does, I watched it in its original Japanese with subtitles, and I simply can't imagine it any other way. I have to admit that I know little of the Japanese people, but if the people portrayed here are examples of their citizenry, I would bow to them every chance I got.

Some have said that the people that worked at Fukushima were heroes, and although they seem that way from a Western perspective, I never had the impression that any of them thought they were being heroic. They were doing their jobs, and not shrinking in the face of this disaster. As I saw it, they were mostly being honorable, not heroic. People were scared, but they didn't hesitate in what they had to do to work through this disaster.

While government officials were concerned with "saving face," they were concerned with the survival of the Japanese people in the Fukushima area and all of northern Japan. Everything they did pointed to that, from staying at their posts for days and working the problem as best they knew how, to making sure that, at the end, the fires and radioactivity was as contained as possible. No one complained or shirked their duty. There were no scenes of someone off in a corner loafing. EVERYONE participated until most of them needed to be evacuated, and some left very reluctantly. Everyone in that plant, from the control center to the emergency operations center were some of the most honorable people I've ever seen. There were scenes that brought me to tears several times because the expression of honorable actions combined with the sacrifice that people would be more than willing to make was breathtaking. When procedures or fixes failed to work, individuals took on the blame themselves even if they were not to blame. Most felt as though they had failed Japan. It's very difficult to wrap my U. S. head around that, but that's what I saw. Breathtaking.

The most refreshing thing about the series is that it was a straight telling of the story. There were no tangents to a secret love story or a spy working behind the scenes, or anything else that Hollywood might want to toss in there to keep the popcorn crowd happy. CHERNOBYL, although excellent and also a 10, injected "extra-added drama" in these ways that were unnecessary to tell the story. Maybe it's me, but with a story like this, I want to see and hear the closest thing to what actually happened as possible. In THE DAYS, or CHERNOBYL, or even TITANIC, you don't need any extra drama, it's all there in the story itself. This is a solid 10 for me and highly, highly recommended in the original Japanese.

I doubt that people getting dosed up at a rate that will kill in seconds will pause in the middle of a reactor to argue about how much dose they're getting. Sort of like soldiers getting out of a WWI trench and arguing about who should go first. Not too mention one man struggling to open a valve while his buddy reads an indicator that says the valve is opening - but can't figure out he could help.

I know screenwriters need to pad occasionally to make the budget but let's be real. There was lots of opportunity for real drama in real time in this - and lots of footage that could have been used. Many things happened here - they missed most of them it seems.