Kaso Girei (2023)

A premise: I'm not a religious person per se (as in, I don't belong to any cult) but that doesn't mean I'm a non-spiritual, materialistic person; I usually define myself as an anti-Trotskyist Socialist and a Confucian, and as such, I recognize religion as an important aspect of human life (the only difference I make being between "positive" religions - as in, those encouraging a peaceful and harmonic coexistence within society - and "negative" ones - those doing just the opposite and creating instead a toxic social environment - but that's going too deeply into details...let's just say I respect religions and religious people, as a general rule).
So it was with some (heck, a LOT of) caution that I started watching this "Kaso Girei". The plot reeked of 21st Century hyper-materialism ("There's nothing other than money, so stop having spiritual thoughts and limit yourself to the only things that matter: produce-consume-rinse-and-repeat") but I had hopes that the producer being NHK would mean the topic would be treated intelligently. And for sure, I know that sects can be a problem in Japan, so I would've been fully ready to accept a non-shallow critical view on this matter.
Alas, it's not what this series' all about.
All in all, the final message of this drama appears to me to be "religious/spiritual people are all weirdoes/nutjobs", hence "stop having spiritual thoughts and limit yourself to produce-consume-rinse-and-repeat". Pure Hollywood.
Huge let down. 4/10

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