(Netflix)
Haru Tawara (Kento Kaku) refills vendings machines for a living and lives in a run-down old Japanese home compound with his motley family. Despite his father Soichi’s (Yosuke Eguchi) claims that they are a normal Japanese family, all evidence suggests otherwise. His sister Nagi (Aju Makita) steals and returns museum artifacts for fun. His mother Yoko (Tae Kimura) shoplifts for thrills. His grandmother Taki (Nobuko Miyamoto) delights in confusing their youngest Riku (Tenta Banka) with her inexplicable antics. It’s painfully obvious to the audience that they are a ninja family hiding their abilities from the world while poor little Riku, the only uninitiated one, wonders why the dimensions of their house don’t add up to the living space inside.
The series embarks upon revealing the reasons behind their comically suppressed ninja skills and the world that wants to exploit them. They soon find that their ninja calling simply cannot be avoided as old ghosts come back to haunt them.
Anyone who loves ninjas and ninja lore will get a kick out of this whole show. While Japanese dramas are mostly made targeting Japanese viewers, being Netflixed produced in Japan probably resulted in this particular series having many of the story structure and elements that are common in Japanese media packaged in a foreign friendly style, so generally it is broadly consumable and also widely available to anyone with a Netflix account, regardless of region.
In my humble opinion, the star of the show is really Grandma Taki who clearly was a talented and unapologetic assassin in her day while still retaining most of her murderous skills and her equally venomous crony with whom she can still carrying out full conversations without uttering a sound. Though there’s no news of a second season in sight, I’d love to see a prequel starring the adventures of Grandma Taki dominating the world in her prime.
