Pachinko Review

Pachinko*, AppleTV+’s stunning adaptation of Min Jin Lee’s novel, is the next great television series from the emerging streaming network. Telling the story of three generations of a Korean family, the series jumps throughout the 20^th century, taking viewers from Busan in 1931 up to 1989 Tokyo as we learn about the path that brought Sunja – the story’s central protagonist, played by Jeon Yu-na as a child, Kim Min-ha as a young woman, and by Oscar winner Youn Yuh-jung as an elderly woman – from her mother’s boarding house to her own home in Osaka fifty-some years later.

*Pachinko is the name of a mechanical arcade gambling game in Japan. One of the characters within the story – Baek Mozasu, the son of Sunja, the main protagonist – owns a Pachinko parlor.

While the story weaves throughout the different moments in time – the bulk of it taking place through the eyes of Kim’s version of Sunja in the 1930s, as she deals with the Japanese rule over Korea and her subsequent move to Japan where even more difficulties await, as well as in 1989 through the eyes of Solomon (a great Jin Ha), Sunja’s grandson who live in New York City, works for a major company, and doesn’t truly understand the sacrifices that occurred that allowed him to achieve such lofty goals in his young life – it’s always crystal clear just what is happening when and why. The series also jumps between languages – utilizing English, Japanese, and Korean, all of which are easily delineated by color-coded subtitles (yellow for Korean, blue for Japanese), helping this critic understand not only what was being said but also how and why each language was being utilized.

While the story is about the journey of a single family, it’s also about the atrocities inflicted on Koreans by Japanese occupation – and the lingering racist attitudes and tension that continued to bleed into the subsequent decades as Korean immigrants to Japan had families who grew up and assimilated into Japanese culture. I’m embarrassed to admit that I knew absolutely nothing of the Korean-Japanese tensions as a Westerner who was only ever taught the bare minimum when it came to Asian history (and almost always through a Western lens, exploring the impact on America and Europe and never on the Asian nations involved), so Pachinko provided a great jumping off point for starting my own study of 20^th century Korean and Japanese history to better understand the socio-political elements of the series.

But even if you aren’t particularly interested in diving into Korean history, I urge you to take the time to watch this incredible series. Watching Sunja’s story from childhood to old age is nothing short of sensational. The performances are incredible, with Youn, Jin, and Kim providing the series’ emotional anchors and Lee Min-ho turning in the series’ most complex performance as Koh Hansu, a shady Korean figure whose story has turns you wouldn’t initial expect following his auspicious introduction. The series is also gorgeously shot – with sweeping visuals of the Korean countryside mixed with the large, unforgiving Tokyo city center, it’s impossible to not be drawn into the story through the visuals provided for us. And there’s also a great opening credits sequence that will give the Peacemaker credits a run for their money at the Emmys this year.

It’s rare that I finish a series and wish there were more episodes to continue telling the tale (the eighth episode is labeled the season, not series, finale, so I have hope that Apple will renew the show for a second season – something that would be warranted from a story perspective as well), but that’s exactly how I felt with the credits rolled on episode eight. There’s just so much to love about the show – the performances are layered, the characters complex, the visual point of view is clear and gorgeous. This is a show that will burrow its way into your heart and make you fall in love with these incredible, complicated characters.

Pachinko premieres with its first two episodes on Friday, March 25. Subsequent episodes will be released weekly. All eight episodes of the first season were provided for review.