Stream It Or Skip It: ‘The Days’ On Netflix, A Fictionalized Account Of The Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident
By Joel Keller @joelkeller Jun 1, 2023 at 6:00pm
The Days Official Trailer
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THE DAYS (2023)
Powered by ReelgoodThe Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident in 2011 was unique because it was started by a natural disaster: a massive earthquake which touched off a tsunami. A new drama about the disaster goes into lots of details about the critical decision-making in the accident’s aftermath.
THE DAYS: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: A scene of a man walking down a hallway. “How do I begin talking about those events?” says a voice.
The Gist: As we see scenes of the devastation around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant, plant manager Yasao Yoshida (Koji Yakusho) sits in front of a committee. In voice over, he says, “March 11, 2011. The span of days that began on that date… for me, no, for Japan as a nation, what could they possibly be?”
That date started as a normal day, then a massive earthquake hits, enough to send file cabinets flying and breaks glass. In the plant’s control room, shift supervisor Maekawa (Yutaka Takenouchi) quickly takes control and, even though power has been cut off to the plant due to the earthquake, that the diesel backup generators are on, to keep the reactors cool. With aftershocks a possibility and a tsunami warning issued, the workers at the plant are forced to escape to a building on higher ground, but the workers in the control room remain.
As a few workers check out the reactors in person, a massive tsunami, about 40 feet high, approaches the plant. As it swamps the plant, the diesel generators shut down due to the damage from the rapidly-incoming saltwater. That not only takes the reactors offline, meaning that they’re not being cooled, but the control room goes completely dark. Maekawa and his crew have no idea what’s happening in the reactors, and they can’t communicate with Yoshida.
In Tokyo, Prime Minister Azuma (Fumiyo Kohinata) isn’t getting a lot of information from TEPCO, the company that runs the plant. Meanwhile, Furyua (Fumiyo Kohinata), a TEPCO executive, drives to the plant to survey the damage.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? The Days has the matter-of-fact tone that Chernobyl had; there isn’t much more you can do that would trump a nuclear meltdown.
Our Take: One of the reasons why it feels like creator Jun Masumoto is telling the story of The Days without a lot of dramatic muss and fuss is because the Fukushima Daiichi accident starts with a dramatic event — one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded, which created a massive tsunami — and just continues to be dramatic as decisions are made or not made in an effort to prevent a meltdown.
There isn’t going to be a heck of a lot of character development, because, like Chernobyl and another “decisions were made” disaster series, Five Days At Memorial, the characters are fleshed out through those decisions. You’ve got the people at the site trying their best, but going up against the government and TEPCO, who likely don’t want to foment panic. So decisions on when to evacuate the nearby town, how to cool the reactors without a generator, and even the specter of just what the consequences might be if an accident releases a massive amount of radiation make for more than enough drama.
Sure, you may know that the disaster devastated the immediate area but didn’t end up spreading to population centers like Tokyo. But there were a lot of eventful moments between the earthquake and the end, and The Days takes as uncritical a look as a fictionalized account can of such an unprecedented disaster.
Parting Shot: The entire lower part of the plant is under water, then the screen suddenly blacks out.
Sleeper Star: We’ll give this to directors Hideo Nakata and Masaki Nishiura for showing how frightening the tsunami was to the people who were working at the plant, and doing a good job at showing how devastating the force of this water can be.
Most Pilot-y Line: None that we could find.
Our Call: STREAM IT. The Days is tense and harrowing, just like the days after the Fukushima Daiichi accident were for pretty much the whole population of Japan.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.
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japan
Netflix
Stream It Or Skip It
The Days (2023)
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