Drama digest:
This series tells us about a man, Reiko who is diagnosed with a rare disease. To cure this disease of his, he’s out into cryostasis. When he wakes up five years later, he discovers that a lethal virus has affected the world, which affects only men, causing the death of 99.9% of the male population. The series shows us various aspects of the lives of people not affected by this virus.
The feel-good factor:
The best thing about the series’s story is it’s progressive and highly informative. Due to the depiction of various scientific methods in the series due to a lot of situations happening throughout, we learn about various processes of cryogenic freezing, rare viruses, their cure, usage of artificial intelligence, chances that pandemics could be the cause of human extinction, etc. It’s also progressive because it’s a women-dominated drama as most of the characters are women.
The disappointing factor:
The main issue of the drama is censorship. It cuts out the important scenes, which also causes an obstacle in understanding the story. Even though it’s a women-dominated drama, it promotes misogyny in some form. Women in this series have been used as sexual objects just for reproduction. The main character, Reito, is kind of a boring personality despite the entire story being inclined on his life.
In-depth analysis:
Like many manga series, in this drama Reito Mizuhara, the protagonist of the series, enters cryostasis to treat a rare disease he is diagnosed with. He does introduce the cryostasis state in the year 2040. After this treatment of five years got done, he woke up from that state. As soon as he wakes up, he notices that the world has been affected by an extremely rare virus called the ‘Man killer.’ This virus only affects the male population of the world, killing 99.9% of men. This leaves only 1 million men to survive. As Reito was undergoing his treatment when the virus first broke out, he had become immune to the MK virus. As one million men remained, there were other survivors along with Reito, who all had different life stories. But now, Reito’s primary mission was searching for his long-lost childhood friend Elisa, who had mutual romantic feelings like Reito. As there were 5 billion women compared to 1 million men, the only solution was for the men to have sexual intercourse with the women to reproduce and repopulate the earth with the male population. For procreation, a lot of women started offering themselves to all the men, including Reito, but he had eyes only for his long-lost lady love. Later, he discovers that Elisa had passed away a couple of years ago, and her organs were donated to a clone, named Mira Suo. The series depicts the story of Reito coming to terms and finding a solution to the devastating virus and getting his love back. A lot of other characters in the series revolve around the main character, Reito’s life, such as
- Elisa Tachibana:
Reito’s childhood friend and first love
- Mira Suo:
She was appointed to take care of Reito and a clone of Elisa.
- Akane Ryūzōji
Reito’s lustful nurse.
- Sui Yamada:
Reito’s petite and powerful female bodyguard
- Rea Katagiri:
After Reito fires Mira, Rea is his new assistant.
She has romantic feelings for Mira and hates Reito for being close to Mira.
- Maria Kuroda
A Virologist who helps Reito in finding the cure for the MK virus.
- Mahiru Mizuhara:
Reito’s little sister works at the refugee camp.
Star power:
A wonderful personality in the series is Karen Kamiya, who also plays one of the assistants. Karen is intelligent and uses her intelligence to find solutions to various problems and is one of the only few people who think logically in the series. She’s always ready with plans to deal with everything.
Overall opinion:
The series has tried to have a reasonable plot with a lot of unnecessary scenes. Though the plot is important, a lot of time has been dedicated to the plot alone, which gets the viewers bored.
