Netflix keeps on trying to get me to watch “Old Enough!”, a reality show of extremely young children (we’re talking 2-4 year olds here) being sent alone on errands for the first time (likely because I’ve watched other Japanese content and it doesn’t recognize the genre differences in foreign material). Not my kind of programming.
Anyway, sitting here contemplating the whole thing- if this were to occur here in the USA, several things would happen simultaneously:
If the child was even allowed to use mass transit or to walk into the stores (many stores and malls here ban all children under the age of 18 without a parent), the cashier would not sell to them, and likely delay them and call the police, who would turn them over to child protective services and the child would be put into foster care for parental neglect. That is, if the child gets to the store at all and wasn’t kidnapped by a violent pedophile along the way.
Netflix recommended that I watch a Japanese TV show called “Old Enough!” Initially, my main concern was that it would be badly-disguised paedophilia like 90% of Japanese pop culture but thankfully they managed to stay away from those vibes.
Although masquerading as an “adorable” show about unsupervised children, in fact it’s a race-supremacist montage for a science fiction horror movie they’ll release in 2035 about how Japan took over the world.
Somehow, footage of a covert research and development programme run by the Japanese government (called Operation Okunoshima, after one of the islands where the experiments are conducted) was edited together to give the series of disjointed episodes some narrative cohesion. They were then subtitled by Lewis Williams, who has thankfully avoided explaining every Japanese word in copious footnotes.
In this documentary, some “parents” (obviously scientists) are planted by the government as minders to a genetically-engineered generation of super-toddlers. Tasks are given to the little emperors and they conduct themselves with admirable efficiency.
One of the most sinister aspects of this show is that every child and every “parent” insists on speaking Japanese at all times. Maybe this is because they only Japanese movies I’ve ever seen are Akira,YojimboandRingu, but it fill every scene with a dark dread and a sense of a melancholy afterlife.
What can you expect from a country in a mind-binding psychosis due to an inability to be honest with itself about the horrific fascist war crimes perpetrated against everyone else on the Pacific Rim during World War II? A psychosis buried so deep that it comes out in a pop culture that’s 70% post-apocalyptic demonology and 70% (there is a massive crossover) shitty high-school drama?
Whose fault is this? Who is to blame for this show? Should you watch it? Why not?
A Star Wars edition of Old Enough - Grogu goes on an errand for Mando to get some parts for the ship. He gets distracted along the way and picks up some unsanctioned frog juice while the Jawa camera operators watch on.
I know it’s a reality show and they alert almost everyone in the vicinity and do a lot of prep and the kids are never actually alone but the kids don’t know that
