Switched

D and I were talking about getting a Nintendo Switch recently, but I’m not sure if there’s enough nice games for us to want to actually get it. Further, with my experience getting a PS3 and 3DS and then selling them off in less than a year due to a lack of games, I really wonder if getting a Switch is the right thing to do. What more, we have Steam on our laptops and we hardly play them now. But the truth is, this post isn’t really about the Nintendo Switch.

A few days ago, D was browsing through Netflix and saw this Japanese Netflix original show Switched. She told me it looked interesting and I asked what it was about. She said it was about this unpopular high school girl, Zenko, who swapped bodies with her pretty classmate, Ayumi, and stole her boyfriend and her life. I thought, “another cliché show.”

So D decided to watch it herself. But as the show was playing on TV, I turned to catch a few glimpses of it and found it highly entertaining. It wasn’t exactly what I had thought it to be and before I knew it, I was eagerly waiting to catch the next episode and the next and the next. The show conveys a meaningful message but if you’re interested to catch it, I suggest you not read the spoilers part coming up. To skip, read the part after “END OF SPOILERS.”

WARNING: START OF SPOILERS 


Despite having swapped bodies with her less popular classmate, Ayumi gradually grew popular among her peers which made Zenko still very resentful. In one scene, Ayumi told Zenko that she will show the latter that she can still lead a happy life regardless of how she looks.

And truth is, more and more of their schoolmates who used to not even notice Zenko’s existence, began to like her after Ayumi took over her body. It goes to show that (while I still agree looks do give people certain advantage in life), at the end of the day, it’s your personality that really matters. Because despite having stolen Ayumi’s good looks and loving family, her personality still gradually made people drift away from her. To the contrary, Ayumi who is now in Zenko’s body, lived with the latter’s estranged mother but somehow manages to slowly repair their relationship.

The only bone I have to pick about it is the part where a professor once swapped bodies with a parrot. Sure, the parrot now speaks like a human because it’s the professor that’s in the body, but what about the professor’s original body that the parrot took over? Does it just start chirping for the rest of its life? Did people who find him in that state send him to the mental hospital? All these, while supposedly not important to the storyline, haven’t been addressed and it’s annoying like the pea in Princess and the Pea.


END OF SPOILERS

I was very surprised at the quality of the cast. While the actors aren’t such big names, they were very good at what they do. You know how when an actor is so good, you end up hating that face because it’s associated with an unpleasant behavior? But I find that a very difficult thing to do in this show because while Ayumi’s face is the one doing all the shit, you know the evil one is really Zenko, so it doesn’t make sense to register Ayumi’s face as the antagonist. But if you think about disliking Zenko, Zenko’s face is the one doing the nice things, so it’s hard to associate Zenko’s face as the evil one.

The show is only 6 episodes long, but it does feel apt as I find it a drag if they made it even longer. Nevertheless, it’s still a pity such a great show is so short. Netflix does have very good writers and this has gotten me interested in catching more Netflix originals.

If you get the opportunity, do give Switched a watch and let me know what you think.

See trailers here.

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