Re: The End of the Tiny World: Half A Year Later (2021)

This mini-series (it's only 3 eps, 30 or so minutes each) takes place half a year after the movie The Master Plan / The End of the Tiny World and you really need to watch that first or this one won't make much sense to you. From the looks of it, the mini-series was much more cheaply made, it's more like a web coda, and it tells the viewer what happened to Kida after his world came crashing down on him.

First, if you're sensitive to topics like that, you need to know that at the beginning of the mini-series, Kida is suicidal and at one point, he is honestly tempted to just end it - before he's stopped by a chance encounter with a young prostitute who, in the end, after all it's done, prods him into moving on.

But honestly, Kida's state of mind is more than understandable. He lost everyone who ever mattered to him, he even handed his best friend the proverbial loaded gun and couldn't save him in the end. So all he has left is an empty apartment and his work for the mob. That's it. He has no friends left, no family, no real connections to the human world. The only person who actually cares about him is his boss and that's it. You can feel his emptiness.

My favorite moment was when Kida decided to negotiate for the young prostitute's release and he needed 100 mil. yen for that. And he went to his boss who didn't want to let him do it, especially after he told Kida that if he wasn't careful, he could die, and Kida replied that he knew that. And then his boss said, "You're the breadwinner of our company. It'll be troublesome if you die. If you can't come back alive, I can't allow you to go." And only after Kida promised him that he had no intention to die, his boss not only let him go but gave him the 100 mil., too! I loved the way his boss tried to make it sound like he only cared about Kida because he was their "breadwinner" as he called him but he was so worried about Kida because he knew that Kida kept doing dumb stuff for other people - first Makoto in the movie, now the prostitute - and he kept getting hurt because of it. And no matter how many times he told Kida that "dangerous bridges are meant to be crossed for your own good," Kida just wouldn't listen to him!

What I also liked was the ending. It wasn't really happy. It was more realistic. Kida decided to move on, certainly, but that didn't mean he became happy overnight. He still only had his empty apartment and his mob job and no real friends so...

I honestly love this "universe" the movie and the mini-series set up. I really wish we could see more of it. But I don't think we will.

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