'Gannibal' review: Brutality that's surprisingly easy to digest

The Star

02-05-2025

The world has certainly come a long way from the days when entertainment involving cannibalism was made on ultra-low budgets, shot in some "exotic" Asian locale (our own rainforests being a location choice for one notorious example with a certain ex-Bond girl), and drew hordes of the curious to cinemas.
All of them looking kind of sheepish or guilty as they lined up for tickets, to be sure. If we lived in cooler climes, most of us would have been queueing in trenchcoats with upturned collars.
With Gannibal, things have gone decidedly mainstream. Not only is the series Disney+'s biggest live-action hit in Japan, its country of origin, it also boasts some top-notch production values – noticeably higher than the average J-drama's – and at least one big-scale battle scene (so far).
Based on Masaaki Ninomiya's cult favourite manga, which has only just been translated into English, Gannibal is adapted by Oscar-nominated screenwriter Takamase Oe (Drive My Car).
It's set in remote Kuge Village where the people, or at least the members of one large and insular clan, have a peculiar custom.
'Weapons? Violence? Oh no, we're just simple farmers. My friend here with the bandaged face had a ... fruit-picking accident. He's just peachy now.'
The protagonist is Daigo Agawa (Yuya Yagira, the youngest ever Cannes Best Actor winner for Nobody Knows), a disgraced city cop assigned to be Kuge's constable after the previous one goes missing.
While most of the people seem welcoming, Daigo soon runs up against the formidable Goto clan and its leader-in-waiting Keisuke (Show Kasamatsu, Tokyo Vice).
Rather than tiptoe around them, he wastes no time showing them that he is not to be trifled with. (At this point, I feel mortified for citing Tatsuya Fujiwara's characters in School Police and AARO as using excessive force on suspects. Compared to Daigo, those guys were pussycats.)
Gannibal's first season is just chock-full of intense staredowns, challenges to one another's authority, and plain old in-your-face-ness between Daigo and the Gotos.
Adding to the tension is the fact that his young daughter Mashiro (Kokone Shimizu), who has not spoken since her dad did a Very Bad Thing to a suspected paedophile, actually likes it in the village and Daigo's wife Yuki (Riho Yoshioka, the journalist from House Of Ninjas) wants him to get along with everyone so their daughter can recover from her trauma.
But does Daigo listen? No. Maybe it's because early on, a mysterious, towering feral being known as "That Man" locally gave him a gash across the head that needed stitches. Or after parts of his predecessor soon turn up in assorted locations.
Something is indeed rotten in Kuge, but Daigo's frequent run-ins with the Gotos and the admonishments of the other villagers wear thin pretty fast.
This is the one weak aspect of the otherwise fine first season.
'Well, if you knew the twisted s*** that goes on here, holding a gun on the two of you is far from the worst of it.'
The second season, which started streaming in March and had a finale on April 23, sees everyone's gloves come off.
After the previous season ended on a cliffhanger, the second season hits the ground running, introducing even more unsavoury members of the Goto clan.
It does not take long before the situation escalates – and by that, I mean the excrement hits a fan spinning at Ludicrous Speed, as the Gotos prove a far more formidable force than the overconfident city cops imagined.
Season Two also explores the post-WWII history of the Goto clan, as flashbacks show just how its sinister (now-deceased) matriarch dramatically shook things up in the village hierarchy.
It's a welcome change of pace after the scale of the brutality that precedes it, and puts viewers in a comfortable place – well, as comfortable as the material allows – to take in the remainder of the series.
Sure, it's hardly subtle in hammering home its contrasts between rural and urban dwellers, or its themes of how primal impulses lurk in even the most civilised-seeming of individuals, but Gannibal certainly commands the viewer's attention – and not just because most of us here need to read the subtitles. Time to seek out those translated manga volumes....Gannibal is available to stream on Disney+ Hotstar.