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Sunny
Based on The Dark Manual (Betimes Books, 2018) by Colin O’Sullivan
Created by Katie Robbins
Executive producers: Katie Robbins, Lucy Tcherniak, Ravi Nandan, Jess Lubben, Rashida Jones, Nancy Won
A24, Twenty First City, Babka Pictures, Poppycock Pictures
Staring Rashida Jones, Hidetoshi Nishijima, Joanna Sotomura
(Apple TV+, 2024)
Streaming on Apple TV+
TV–MA
[Editors’ Note: This review contains spoilers for Sunny.]
The first time we see Suzie Sakamoto (Rashida Jones) in Sunny, she is sitting sullen at a desk opposite an airline worker. The woman asks her to detail the last thing she saw her husband and son wearing. Trying to remember through her cloud of shock and grief, Suzie closes her eyes and pictures her husband, Masa (Hidetoshi Nishijima), and her son, Zen (Fares Belkheir), as they say goodbye and turn to walk to their plane. In between her comments, she unceremoniously bites the heads off Christmas cookies.
Sunny premiered on Apple TV+ in July of 2024. A television adaptation of Colin O’Sullivan’s novel The Dark Manual (Betimes Books, 2018), it mixes elements of a dystopian, not-so-distant future Japan, with a crippling presentation of the real-life grief of tragedy.
An expat from America, Suzie struggles with dyslexia, making it difficult to converse with native Japanese speakers without the help of a translating earpiece. This heightens the tension and confusion as Suzie navigates the aftermath of finding out that her husband and son were presumed dead in a plane crash. Soon, Suzie’s grief overtakes her. She lives in a country where she has no friends in a sprawling house all alone, and the only family she has left, her mother-in-law, Noriko Sakamoto (Judy Ongg), diminishes her pain at every turn. Suzie looks to alcohol and isolation for solace. That is until she is presented with a new, unwelcome houseguest: Sunny.
Sunny, voiced by Joanna Sotomura, is a robot built specifically for Suzie — a gift from her late husband, Masa. But Suzie hates robots. And she thought her husband was a refrigerator engineer. None of this makes any sense to Suzie. Her quiet, sad isolation is interrupted by a cheery, loud, persistent AI assistant. With the arrival of Sunny, Suzie’s life turns on end: not only was her husband probably never coming home, but everything she knew about him is questioned. Did she know her husband at all?
The storyline of Sunny vacillates between dark comedy, sci-fi, and crime thriller, with new, shady characters appearing throughout who are linked to the organized crime syndicate, the Yakuza. Suzie simply cannot get to the bottom of what happened to her husband and son — and what her husband was up to before his death — without turning to unlikely friends: Mixxy (Annie the Clumsy), Sunny, and Yuki Tanaka (Jun Kunimura). It is only through their persistent help that Suzie is drawn out of herself and finds herself back in the real world. But the real world, she finds, is a scary, dangerous place — she just wants to find out why.
While Sunny presents the future from a sci-fi perspective, it also reveals some hard truths about human nature. It shows how isolating grief can be, how friendship and family are integral to surviving the hardships of this life, and how real friendship is deeper than any AI, robot, or computer, can process. A Christian worldview can help us navigate these themes with clarity and hope.
BECOMING HIKIKOMORI
When grief hits a person, it can be incredibly disorienting. Your life, it seems, will never return to “normal” again. In this kind of pain, it can be easy to withdraw and find solace in vices and isolation. We learn that it’s not just Suzie’s present that’s full of grief and isolation, but that grief and isolation characterize much of her and her husband’s past as well.
Suzie reveals to Masa on their first date that she came to Japan to escape poor choices and broken relationships that she had in America. Elijah Gonzalez, Assistant Games and TV Editor at Paste magazine, comments, “[T]he story eventually digs into deeper questions about why Suzie is here [in Japan] in the first place, getting into how Westerners like our protagonist frequently romanticize the country.”1 In the same scene, Suzie reflects on how the hikikomori lifestyle is appealing to her, how she could come to Japan to be truly alone — all while on a date with the man she would marry. The term “hikikomori” originates in Japan. It is “a portmanteau of the words ‘hiki’ (to withdraw) and ‘komori’ (to be inside), collectively referring to ‘people who withdraw from society.’”2 It specifically refers to those who self-isolate for longer than six months in their homes, or sometimes rooms, refusing to leave.
Masa is well acquainted with the hikikomori lifestyle. He quickly responds to Suzie’s interest with understanding. He had lived as a hikikomori for three years himself. As a child, he struggled to connect with his father. He grew up resenting that he could not make his father love him. When his father died, Masa went into his room and simply did not come out.
Although hikikomori was first documented in Japan, the phenomenon has spread around the world.3 Elsewhere, it’s labeled “extreme social withdrawal (ESW).”4 A condition that generally affects more men than women, it is also associated with interpersonal difficulties and dropping out of education or work.5 According to Mark Travers, an American psychologist, some factors that contribute to hikikomori syndrome are:
- Psychiatric conditions
- Maladaptive personality traits
- Adverse family dynamics, including detrimental parenting
- Negative peer experiences
- Societal pressures
- Excessive Internet and digital media use6
Coping difficulties, more than any other factor, seem to correlate to hikikomori syndrome.7 Many people living with the condition, when polled, cited hopelessness, relationship fatigue, low self-esteem, feeling caught in their situation with no way out, and fear as the reasons why they cannot leave their homes. Instead of seeking out in-person relationships, some individuals living as hikikomori cultivate online lives where they can remain anonymous.8
In Sunny, Masa is a textbook hikikomori in some ways. He remains in his room and will not leave. He relies on his mother in every way to take care of him and spends much of his time playing video games. Uncharacteristic of many other hikikomori, Masa holds a remote job while in isolation. In this way, he does not fall into the category of hikikomori called “NEETs,” meaning “people not in education, employment, or training.”9
Today, researchers cite “the rise of the internet and decline of face-to-face interaction”10 as one factor that may drive the spread of hikikomori. “Others say the Covid-19 pandemic may have created even more recluses, as most of the world retreated indoors to stop the spread of the virus.”11 Further still, others believe that because marriage and dating are on the decline, and the number of single adults is on the rise, hikikomori lifestyles are becoming more common globally.12 With more young adults living at home with their parents and fewer people leaving and starting their own families, the situation is ripe for people to choose hikikomori.
As noted, this kind of isolated lifestyle is on the rise globally, with a nationwide survey in Japan indicating that “an estimated 1.46 million” people are living reclusive lives.13 Likewise, there are around 244,000 reclusive people aged 19 to 34 in South Korea.14 Yoshiyasu Takefuji, researching at Musashino University in Nishitokyo, Japan, details a summary of global hikikomori numbers:
hikikomori ranging from 0.87% to 1.2% in Japan, 6.6% in China, 1.9% in Hong Kong, 2.3% in South Korea, 20.9% in Singapore, 9.5% in Nigeria, 2.7% in the United States, and 9% in Taiwan respectively….hikikomori rate in the UK: NEET (Not in Education, Employment or Training) in January–March 2021 is 10.6% of all people in this age group [ages 16 to 24].15
Takefuji goes on to report that “hikikomori is a silent epidemic.”16
In Sunny, Masa eventually ends up leaving his hikikomori lifestyle and entering back into society, but it took many factors to influence this choice. His restored relationships with others and finding purpose through his work with robots help him reenter society again.
LEAVING ISOLATION AND FINDING MEANING
Locked in his room, Masa, with his headphones perched on his head, stops playing video games only for an occasional swig of hard liquor. But his mother is desperate for a solution. She resolves to come clean: her late husband is not Masa’s real father, but Yuki Tanaka is. She invites Yuki over to speak with Masa, and he immediately connects with Masa about the video game he is playing. Eventually, Yuki convinces Masa to leave his room for a larger space and hands over the keys to his remote cottage.
Masa forms an unlikely friendship at the cottage with Yuki’s trash bot. He spends hours striving to improve this trash bot’s programming. Determining what is “trash” and what is “not trash” is the key to this robot’s programming. Masa wants the bot to realize that sometimes people’s relationships with items can shift from “not trash” to “trash” or vice versa over time. When the trash bot remarks that Masa continually frowns at “not trash” because he likes keeping things that make him sad, Masa is shocked at the insight. This key perception shifts the trajectory of Masa’s life. Not only did his relationship with the trash bot help him realize his passion for robot engineering and ignite his future career endeavors, it also very practically helped him realize that his hikikomori lifestyle was harming him more than it was helping him. He was in a vicious cycle of self-imposed sadness that he needed to break free from. To escape isolation is incredibly difficult. There’s no prescription that works for everyone. In Masa’s case, it took the truth of his family situation, a realization of purpose, and restored relationships with his mother and father to help him reestablish an interest in the “outside world.”
The same principle is true in Suzie’s case. Her isolation, in one sense, is ended when Sunny arrives. Her quiet is interrupted. And even though Suzie hates it, Sunny is persistent in her attempts to care for Suzie. Suzie’s deep worry that robots cannot be trusted becomes the catalyst for a conversation with a local bartender, Mixxy, as she tries to devise a way to turn Sunny off completely. Throughout the season, we see Suzie’s friendship with Mixxy shift from surface-level to much deeper as they endure the crazy twists and turns of dealing with the Yakuza. All the while, Suzie becomes more open to Sunny and more willing to put her own life on the line to help save Sunny and all the memories she contains of Masa.
Because loneliness is subjective, and the varied reasons for seeking isolation are deeply personal, it is hard to propose a solution that works for everyone. However, researchers tend to agree that some key things help. Cultivating friendships and serving others are some of the most-cited antidotes to loneliness.17 Working to gain confidence, finding self-reliance, family involvement, becoming responsible for things around the house like cooking and cleaning, and sharing experiences and meals with others may be imperative in breaking the hikikomori isolation cycle.18
REAL FRIENDSHIP IN A WORLD OF AI
Another key tension we see in Sunny is the difference between the relationship Suzie forges with Mixxy, a human, and Sunny, a robot. In some sense, Suzie is using both of these “people.” Her main interest in pursuing Mixxy is the hope that she can get more information about the book that will help her hack her robot. At the same time, Suzie keeps Sunny around because Sunny was created by her husband, and Sunny contains latent memories of time with Masa in the lab. Both relationships begin out of expedience and later develop into deeper friendships as the show continues.
Kaiya Shunyata, a pop culture writer and academic, explains:
Without the presence of robots, this would just be another run-of-the-mill thriller, but the unique sci-fi angle raises some interesting questions surrounding corruption and free will. It’s hard to say if robots control their own fates in this universe, or if they’re at the complete mercy of the humans they serve. Sunny seems special in this regard, and the people around her — including Suzie — pick up on this too.19
Sunny responds to Suzie with what appears to be real love, care, and concern — the kind of care and concern that is scarce and unique in Suzie’s life. It appears to be programmed into her by her creator, Masa. We’re forced to ask: Can this be real emotion from a robot? And even more, can Sunny fill the void that Suzie needs to have filled in her life now that Masa is gone? Because there is a stark difference between the comradery between Suzie and Mixxy and Suzie and Sunny, there is a tension that arises between Mixxy and Sunny. Mixxy and Sunny take turns questioning the other’s motives, wondering if they should be trusted.
A robot purely functions based on its design, which can cause skepticism and distrust because you can never really be sure how a robot is designed (unless you design it yourself). They could hurt you or your loved ones with no prior indication of violence, for example, if it were programmed into them. At the same time, humans are much more impulsive. They do not act according to any kind of “programming”; they have free will — and that means they may choose to help others, and they can choose to harm others. They can choose to lie. They can choose to cheat. They can abandon you when you need them most. There is a level of danger in cultivating human relationships for this reason. No wonder Sunny worries that there’s something “off” about Mixxy (and, if you watch to the end of the season, you see why this was a right assumption).
All the relationship tensions in Sunny demonstrate the complex, difficult reality that we all face. In a world laden with sin and selfish ambition, it is incredibly hard to truly know people. As one of the most cited reasons why people choose to be hikikomori, relationship difficulties are not something we can easily escape. And yet there is hope from a Christian perspective.
A CHRISTIAN RESPONSE
As difficult as it is to forge meaningful bonds in our world full of sinners, it is imperative to a happy, fulfilling life. The Bible tells us that “Iron sharpens iron, and one man sharpens another” (Proverbs 27:17).20 So, too, are we encouraged to, “Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins” (1 Peter 4:8). We are not called to shy away from the challenges of human relationships but to love people through those difficulties. We “Rejoice with those who rejoice, [and] weep with those who weep” (Romans 12:15).
When looking at Sunny from a Christian perspective, it is clear that Sunny, though a helpful character in the life of Suzie, cannot replace a human influence. Christians recognize that robots do not have eternal souls. They do not have moral or intellectual reasoning and, therefore, cannot replace human-to-human interaction. The Bible tells us that God made humans in His own image (Genesis 1:27); therefore, anything that humankind makes cannot have the same worth or value. Man creates robots in the image of man.
When grappling with crippling loneliness and isolation, and even the desire to withdraw entirely like the hikikomori, Scripture encourages us to see our worth in the world. We are called to love and serve our neighbor according to our gifts and talents; it is incredibly hard to do that when you never leave your room. And yes, your work will be imperfect, and you will likely endure unwanted social pressure and relational pain, but it glorifies God and helps your neighbor.
Sunny is an interesting show, complete with all the twists and turns a person could ask for. It calls the viewer to wrestle deeply with the problem of human relationships: Can we really know those around us? In the Sunny universe, the answer appears to be “no.” Shunyata observes: “Nobody seems to be who they say they are, from Suzie’s mother-in-law Noriko (Judy Ongg) to various colleagues of Masa’s, and it appears that everyone in Suzie’s life has ulterior motives.”21 Yet from a Christian perspective, we can trust that, through God’s activity in this world in calling sinners to repentance, we can forge meaningful bonds with others. We can truly love people and be vulnerable with them. And that can give us great hope as we seek to establish friendships and cultivate relationships with family. —Lisa Cooper
Lisa Cooper is a marketing specialist at Paravel Insights and a freelance writer with Barna. She has a master’s degree in religion from the American Lutheran Theological Seminary and serves as an adjunct chaplain at Chesterton House at Cornell University.
NOTES
- Elijah Gonzalez, “Sunny Is a Solid Dark Comedy About Robots and Loneliness,” Paste Magazine, July 9, 2024, https://www.pastemagazine.com/tv/apple-tv-plus/sunny-review.
- Mark Travers, “The Concerning Global Rise of Hikikomori Syndrome,” Psychology Today, April 24, 2024, https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/social-instincts/202404/the-concerning-global-rise-in-hikikomori-syndrome-explained.
- “Altogether, these findings signify that hikikomori is not solely a Japanese, culture-specific syndrome but can be regarded as a global phenomenon.” P. Muris and T. H. Ollendick, “Contemporary Hermits: A Developmental Psychopathology Account of Extreme Social Withdrawal (Hikikomori) in Young People,” Clinical Child and Family Psychology Review, January 18, 2023, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10567-023-00425-8.
- Muris and Ollendick, “Contemporary Hermits.”
- Roseline Yong, and Kyoko Nomura, “Hikikomori Is Most Associated with Interpersonal Relationships, Followed by Suicide Risks: A Secondary Analysis of a National Cross-Sectional Study,” Frontiers in Psychiatry 10, April 15, 2019, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2019.00247.
- Travers, “The Concerning Global Rise of Hikikomori Syndrome.”
- Roseline Kim Fong Yong and Yoshihiro Kaneko, “Hikikomori, a Phenomenon of Social Withdrawal and Isolation in Adults Marked by an Anomic Response to Coping Difficulties: A Qualitative Study Exploring Individual Experiences From First- and Second-Person Perspectives,” Open Journal of Preventative Medicine 6, no. 1, January 2016, http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ojpm.2016.61001.
- Yong and Kaneko, “Hikikomori, a Phenomenon of Social Withdrawal.”
- Allie Conti, “When ‘Going Outside Is Prison’: The World of American Hikikomori,” Intelligencer, February 17, 2019, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2019/02/the-world-of-american-hikikomori.html.
- Jessie Yeung, Sophie Jeong, Carlotta Dotto et al., “A Shrinking Life: Why Some Asian Youth Withdraw from The World,” CNN, May 25, 2024, https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2024/05/world/hikikomori-asia-personal-stories-wellness/.
- Yeung, Jeong, Dotto et al., “A Shrinking Life.”
- Jessie Yeung and Moeri Karasawa, “Japan Was Already Grappling with Isolation and Loneliness. The Pandemic Made It Worse,” CNN World, April 7, 2023, https://www.cnn.com/2023/04/06/asia/japan-hikikomori-study-covid-intl-hnk/index.html.
- Yeung and Karasawa, “Japan Was Already Grappling with Isolation and Loneliness.”
- Yeung, Jeong, Dotto et al., “A Shrinking Life.”
- Yoshiyasu Takefuji, “Review of Hikikomori: A Global Health Issue, Identification and Treatment,” Asian Journal of Psychiatry 84, June 2023, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ajp.2023.103596.
- Takefuji, “Review of Hikikomori.”
- Lisa Cooper, “The Loneliness Crisis in America and How the Church Can Help,” Christian Research Journal, September 27, 2023, https://www.equip.org/articles/the-loneliness-crisis-in-america-and-how-the-church-can-help/.
- Yeung, Jeong, Dotto et al., “A Shrinking Life.”
- Kaiya Shunyata, “Apple TV+’s Daring, Unpredictable Sunny Is Summer TV Standout,” RogerEbert.com, June 24, 2024, https://www.rogerebert.com/streaming/sunny-apple-tv-review-2024.
- Bible quotations are from the ESV.
- Shunyata, “Apple TV+’s Daring, Unpredictable Sunny.”
