The Dark Manual

Perhaps it was my mistake for thinking this was a sci-fi or dystopian mystery, or perhaps a yakuza thriller. Alas, it was none of these and is just a deeply unfocused drama that dips in and out of other genres haphazardly along the way.

What was missing? The writing really needed to be a lot more focused, snappy and charming and frankly, just better. It was far too easy to stop caring about characters through the series and the final episode is no different. The fact you could skip ten minutes at any point and miss essentially nothing of the plot is perhaps most concerning.

That said if you loved the first few episodes you'll likely be happy, as the finale is just more of the same mediocre drama.

I'm going to review this as if it's the first season of an ongoing show, even though, at the time of writing, there's no indication that "Sunny" will return for a second series. Initially, I quite liked the show, but the longer it ran on, the more my interest waned.

Suzie Sakamoto (Rashida Jones) loses her husband, Masa (Hidetoshi Nishijima) and son, Zen (Fares Belkheir) in a place crash. Whilst still struggling to come to terms with the accident, she is presented with a domestic help robot, by a representative of ImaTech, for whom her husband worked. With rumours circulating that a local politician may have been killed by his robot helper, Suzie tries to get rid of Sunny (voice by Joanna Sotomura) but comes to realise that the robot, may have some extra coding, provided directly by her husband.

Whilst I often quite like shows and films that mix genres, I struggled to maintain a handle on what "Sunny" was actually about, as it drifts from black comedy to Yakuza Thriller, to gleeful absurdist fantasy. I liked it whenever Jones was bickering with her mother-in-law, or even dealing with her sadness in the early episodes but as soon as the Yakuza became involved, I just think that the credibility of the story went with it. Even looking back now (and reading the episode summations again) I still don't really understand the dynamics at play in the show, or how the family fit into the Yakuza storyline. Some of that might be on me, for not working harder to stick with what was happening, but some also must sit with the show for (despite the genre changes) not being interesting enough to keep me focused.

I've said this before but, because of how my brain works, I'd probably keep watching if a second season of the show was made, but as I sit here now - I hope it's not.