Apple TV’s ‘Sunny’ Continues to Integrate Japanese Culture Into American TV
Humans, robots, and everything in between
In the past year or so, Japanese culture is heavily infiltrating America through the small screen of Hollywood. That's hardly a complaint, though. It's more like a win-win situation for long-time fans of Asian cinema and peak TV, as blending the two has already brought us such epics as Blue Eye Samurai and Shogun recently. Treading on similar territory, Apple TV+’s new sci-fi comedy-drama Sunny — created by Katie Robbins and based on Colin O’Sullivan’s novel The Dark Manual — takes a more light-hearted approach while throwing us into the near future of Kyoto and its alarmingly friendly, if pretty useful, domestic house-bots.
Suzie (Rashida Jones in another much-deserved leading role) is grappling with grief due to the disappearance of her husband Masa (Hidetoshi Nishijima) and their son Zen in a recent plane crash. What makes it even harder for her is that their bodies haven’t been found yet. She’s gradually losing that last bit of hope that they could still be alive. Almost completely alone in a country (save for her insufferable mother-in-law) that can’t quite accept her, she’s as lonely, helpless, and sad as anyone would be in her shoes. So the curious delivery of a white, five-foot-tall, granular domestic robot called Sunny (voiced by Joanna Sotomura), apparently made for her by Masa, is the last thing she wants right now. Yet it's the strange and off-putting little machine that steers her on a path to begin investigating her family’s case by revealing key information about her husband she had no clue of.
Though Sunny has no memory of Masa, its very existence is proof that Suzie didn’t know her husband as well as she thought. She was under the impression that he worked in the refrigerator department of a tech company designing and making fridges. Because of the bot, however, Suzie finds herself going down a weird and dangerous rabbit hole, slowly discovering the secrets her beloved spouse kept from her all these years. On her journey, she befriends a young bartender and mixologist, Mixxy (Annie the Clumsy), who helps her navigate the various districts of Kyoto while following and seeking clues. And the deeper she digs the more confusing the truths get as she finds out that Masa’s real job aroused the interest of one of the city’s feared yakuza family. Was it really an accident that made Suzie a widow or there’s a more disturbing explanation of what happened to her son and husband?
Creator Robbins constantly tries to implement a sort of dark humor around the show’s central mystery, even though it’s the least effective element that works in its favor. At first, Suzie's snarky and harsh nature is likable enough (thanks to Jones' convincing effort to play an insufferable yet intriguing character) to relate to and invest in her emotionally. But the more time we spend with her the less bearable her antics get, turning Suzie into a rather irritating and bickering protagonist. It’s a tone issue the script forces on us throughout the season instead of leaning on the mystery and our ever-changing relationship with technology, which Sunny undoubtedly excels at.
Initially preying on our growing fear of AI and robotics, Robbins eventually (and confidently) turns the series' main and most appealing theme into a thought-provoking conversation. She plays with our subtle but underlying suspicion about whether Sunny (and robots in general) is harmful and manipulative toward its owner, leading her to something sinister, or its programming is genuinely to help Suzie get closer to the truth and find closure. Unfortunately, the overly dramatic friendship between Suzie and Mixxy often derails this intriguing aspect through childish and dull arguments for… drama’s sake. Yet, surprisingly, the show finds a way back to this enthralling theme in its final episodes and offers us something special.
Episode 8 (easily the best one of the season) marvelously and single-handedly breaks down our fascination and core relationship with AI and technology, highlighting an unusual and unique thought behind it. What if robots can help us rediscover our humanity and the emotions that make us who we are without posing a threat to mankind? This is a lovely and curious notion to ponder, and the writers explore it thoughtfully with nuance through Masa’s younger self who feels lost in life and is consumed by anger and depression. There are multiple hints throughout the season that he’s a more complex, layered, and compelling character than he's given credit for, which makes us wonder whether the series would have been better with him in the lead, front and center.
Everything about Masa’s past and the culture he grew up in strikes as more gripping than the common trope of an American woman living abroad and having a family there. Some of the most absorbing moments in Sunny come from the traditions and way of life in Kyoto, whether they involve local citizens with regular jobs or the inner workings of an organized crime family. Focusing on Masa and his complicated relationship with his parents and the robots he developed could’ve given us more of that, but that might've been an entirely different show — perhaps one with a less enticing premise for a largely American audience. Thus we’re lucky to even have all this in another TV show that concerns itself greatly with a rich cultural representation, even if it's embedded in a narrative built around an American expat. Plus, I can't really protest against something that’s simply being loyal and accurate to its source material.
Still, as good as Sunny is, I feel like there are certain ideas in the series that remain unexplored despite their great potential. But who knows, maybe if it gets renewed for a second season, we’ll get to see those blossom, too.
The first three episodes of Sunny are available on Apple TV+. New episodes arrive every Wednesday.
This week, I reviewed Peacock’s latest sword-and-sandal show, Those About to Die, which despite its large scale and high budget can’t quite deliver on its premise. Last week, for Paste, I wrote about Netflix’s Exploding Kittens, a fun, if forgettable, animated series about Gods who are also cats.
Thanks for reading, and please share the newsletter with someone who might be into it, too. It always helps.