Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
American expat Suzie lives in Japan, loves anime, hates robots, and isn’t very fond of humans either. When her husband Masa Sakamoto and son disappear after a plane crash, she refuses to believe they are dead. Suzie begins investigating Masa’s past after receiving a home-bot from his company as a parting gift—a robot they claim Masa helped build, although Suzie thought he worked in the refrigerator division.
Created by Katie Robbins, Sunny stars Rashida Jones as the primary protagonist Suzie. However, it’s the white-plastic-looking home robot Sunny, voiced by Joanna Sotomura, who steals the show. Spanning ten episodes, Sunny opens with an intense, violent prologue where a robot is seen murdering a human, immediately establishing mistrust among viewers against AI. After the intro song, Suzie is seen answering questions about her husband Masa (Hidetoshi Nishijima) and son Zen (Fares Belkheir) to an officer to help identify their bodies after the plane crash.
“I hate them. One of them killed my mother,” Suzie tells the officer when asked if a home-bot accompanied her husband and son on the flight. “She’s being dramatic. It was a self-driving car. Deemed user error,” her mother-in-law Noriko (Judy Ongg) immediately contradicts Suzie in Japanese. The scene wittily establishes the catty relationship between the two women and Suzie’s deep hatred for robots. So when she receives Sunny, a home-bot, from Masa’s company Ima Tech, she is shocked to learn he led a division that helped build them. The next few episodes see Suzie reluctantly team up with Sunny and a new bartender friend, Mixxy (Annie the Clumsy), to find out why Masa was hiding secrets from her. Along the way, they learn that the Yakuza are stalking them and might have had a hand in Masa’s disappearance.
I don’t think I’ve liked a robot character as much as Sunny since Wall-E from the 2008 Pixar animated movie. Despite its simplistic exterior, which resembles a basic robotic toy, Sunny the home-bot can have intelligent conversations, do all household chores, including fixing you a drink if you’ve had a bad day, and bringing you breakfast in bed to cheer you up the next. Suzie’s first instinct is to throw Sunny into a closet, but once Sunny proves to be stubbornly helpful and useful, Suzie allows Sunny to help her investigate Masa’s past and if he had any connections to the Yakuza. The evolving relationship between the asocial Suzie and the owner-pleaser Sunny is the strongest theme in the series, which ultimately explores human-AI bonds in a dark comedic thriller setting. Language, cultural, and emotional barriers are also key themes, with Suzie clearly standing out as the “outsider” amid all the other Japanese characters.
Rashida Jones reminded me of Cate Blanchett and is instantly likable as Suzie, a grief-stricken woman grappling with the disappearance of her husband and son, both of whom are assumed dead. However, as the show progresses, the character starts displaying traits that will divide viewers. Suzie is passionately selfish, self-centered, constantly wallowing in her own grief, expecting a stranger she’s just met (Mixxy) to drop everything and help her. You might not like the character by the end, however, Rashida Jones is brilliant in depicting the stormy Suzie. Judy Ongg is low-key hilarious as her equally egotistical mother-in-law Noriko, whose subplot takes an unexpected turn in the second half and is never properly explained. Actor You’s portrayal of Hime, a Yakuza boss-woman tracking Suzie, is exaggeratedly entertaining, as if she jumped out of an action-anime, complete with the high-pitched voice women characters often tend to have in anime shows. The Yakuza angle adds quite some violent tension to Sunny, and well, there’s the “killer robots” opening, which also keeps you suspicious of the helpful home-bot until the end.
Hidetoshi Nishijima as Masa gets substantial flashback chapters in the last few episodes to help explain why blood-thirsty criminals were looking for him. Masa’s own past is sad, capturing modern loneliness and the deep psychological impact difficult parents have on grown men, which leads to his unique relationship with robots. Sunny, the home-bot, is his parting gift to Suzie, but will Sunny truly help Suzie or break her is the biggest mystery of the show.
Episode nine, the penultimate installment of the series, is its weakest link, featuring Sunny in the midst of an existential crisis. Presented in the style of a humorous Japanese variety show, some characters from the series appear as hosts, while Sunny takes the stage as a contestant, grappling with difficult existential questions. The episode’s extended format may entertain some viewers but bore others (me), though it delivers a key twist that pushes the plot forward. The climax is satisfactory and finally explains one of the biggest anomalies of the show—a suspicious character whose actions made little sense. Suzie is finally able to crack the mystery of who her husband really was and gets a triumphant “crazy American woman creating a ruckus at a Japanese festival” moment, which helps her outwit the Yakuza. Sort of.
Visually, Sunny is a quirky blend of a retro 80s aesthetic with a noir-like neon palette, as if it’s a sci-fi futuristic film made decades ago. Even the musical score is eclectic, mostly comprising quirky Japanese tracks, a lot of which are decades old, and even the new songs sound like they’re from a different era. For instance, the theme song of Sunny is “Suki Yo Ai Shite” by Atsumi; it was released in 2003 but sounds like it’s from a 70s romance film.
Overall, Sunny is a fun cinematic experience. Its pace dips now and then—it’s on the slower side of thrillers—so even though it’s not exactly binge-worthy, the series is a great pick to watch leisurely over the course of a few days.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 stars. You can stream Sunny on Apple TV+.
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