Best Japanese Live-Action Series

Summary

• Heaven and Hell: Soul Exchange is a captivating Japanese live-action series with a deep mystery and unexpected twists.
• Smoking is a unique twist on Yakuza fiction, featuring a crew of homeless assassins and an intriguing story that challenges loyalties.
• Blazing Transfer Students is a hilariously irreverent series that pokes fun at itself and follows seven transfer students on absurd missions to save failing schools.

Most Americans, whether they are fans or not, are aware of Japanese animated shows known as anime. Lesser known, but no less amazing, are Japan’s live-action TV series that similarly push the limits of the imagination.

Often based on anime or manga, these series have supernatural elements and weird aesthetics that make for a fascinating watching experience. Shows such as Squid Game, Sweet Home and All of Us Are Dead put Korean TV on the map with American audiences, but there are just as many great Japanese live-action series worth checking out.

Updated by Timothy Blake Donohoo on January 29, 2024: Asian dramas and TV shows have become incredibly popular across the world thanks to streaming platforms. While many of these shows are Korean dramas, Japanese television has also seen an increase in fandom. While some of these shows are based on Japanese manga and anime, others are entirely original productions, with some being the best Japanese live-action shows.

10 Heaven and Hell: Soul Exchange Combines Body-Swapping With Crime

Heaven and Hell: Soul Exchange is reminiscent of the classic setup from Freaky Friday, albeit featuring a cop and a serial killer switching bodies. An ambitious female detective is pursuing a male murder suspect when they soul-swap and find themselves in each other’s bodies.

The series starts off seeming like a by-the-numbers body-switch story, but soon, a deep mystery unfolds. Numerous twists and turns abound, and just when it appears things are sorted out, the status quo is completely upended. This sense of mystery is what makes Heaven and Hell a great Japanese live-action series.

9 Smoking Is a Unique Twist on Yakuza Fiction

The Japanese live-action series Smoking is essentially if the classic TV series The A-Team featured a crew of homeless assassins who specialized in flaying Yakuza gangsters. It’s also a series that’s far more than what it seems at the beginning. Uncle Sabe and his “nephews” are contract killers who take out the baddest of the bad.

Operating under a code of justice, Sabe’s crew is called “Smoking,” which is where the title comes from. Sabe, however, is a former Yakuza enforcer, and a complex story emerges that challenges loyalties and perceptions. Without giving anything away, the show has one of the most shocking and heartbreaking twists ever aired.

8 Blazing Transfer Students Is a Unique Manga Adaptation

For a little humor, Blazing Transfer Students is a series about seven students, all named Kakeru, who transfer to a mysterious academy, where they are sent on missions to save other failing schools. All seven are played by members of the boy band Johnny’s WEST and have different hilarious personas.

Based on a manga series called Hono no Tenkosei, the Japanese live-action series has no pretension of telling a serious story. Casting that tone to the side, it’s irreverently goofy and absurd but infinitely entertaining. The humor carries across cultures, and the show gets extra points for making fun of how truly silly it is. The closest comparison would be the series 21 Jump Street if the crew went undercover to stop a school cafeteria from turning students into zombies.

7 Tokyo Vampire Hotel Is a Different Take On Vampires

Filmmaker Sion Sono is the mad genius behind J-exploitation classics like Tokyo Gore Police, Why Don’t You Play In Hell? and Tag. He took his twisted visions and applied them to the small screen with the limited series Tokyo Vampire Hotel, which is streaming on Amazon Prime Video in the U.S.

With a story involving warring vampire factions, the end of the world and a young woman named Manami, who is the chosen one carrying on Count Dracula’s bloodline, there’s more than enough story for ten episodes. The Japanese live-action series also features heavy amounts of classic J-splatter mayhem with buckets of blood, with the opening sequence ranking as one of the most disturbingly violent scenes fans have ever seen.

6 Mob Psycho 100 Adapts the Popular Manga from the One-Punch Man Creator

Mob Psycho 100 is a web manga series that became an anime series and eventually got the live-action treatment. The story is about a teenage boy with scary psychic powers who is just trying to live a normal life, but there are others with similar abilities who wish to exploit or destroy him.

The name comes from the main character, who is nicknamed “Mob,” and his anger level. When Mob’s rage grows, the screen will flash “Mob 50” or “Mob 75,” but when it hits 100, he goes full-psycho, and his full powers are unleashed. It’s a fun series, but what makes it amazing is Mob’s charlatan boss, who is absolutely hilarious. Though the series isn’t as well known as its creator’s other franchise – the manga/anime series One-Punch Man – it’s still a highly-reated Japanese live-action show.

5 The Naked Director Is a Salacious But Addiction Series

In the United States, the movie Boogie Nights is loosely based on the life of ’70s porn star John Holmes, while Rated X is a semi-true movie about Behind the Green Door directors, the Mitchell Brothers. As seen on Netflix, Japan has The Naked Director, a series about Japanese AV (adult video) pioneer Toru Muranishi, which is not only twice as irreverent but also 100 percent true.

Muranishi started as an encyclopedia salesman and ended up building an AV empire that he lost at least twice. The series also chronicles AV actress Kaoru Kuroki, who became a mainstream media star and prominent feminist figure. Obviously, the subject of adult entertainment is touchy, but the Japanese live-action show is focused on Muranishi’s magnetic charisma and self-defeating ego.

4 Re: Mind Is a Bloodcurdling Horror Show

Re: Mind is a spooky mystery series in which 12 female high school classmates wake up at a dining room table with their feet secured to the floor, so they can’t escape. They have no recollection of being kidnapped or any idea why they have been abducted. Casting must have been easy because all 12 stars are from the idol group Hiragana Keyakizaka46.

Eventually, the teens decide their captivity is related to the apparent suicide of a classmate, and whenever a girl confesses to an act of bullying, the lights go out, and she disappears from the table. The creepy atmosphere is as enticing as the unraveling mystery, and the acting is intense, which is most unexpected from a J-pop unit.

3 The Forest of Love Is Not At All Romantic

The Forest of Love is a Japanese live-action limited series about a killer conman who charms a group of followers and then proceeds to torture them. His charisma is so strong that his minions not only accept the abuse but actually welcome it. What makes this series so completely off-the-wall is that it’s a mostly true account of real-life serial killer Futoshi Matsunaga.

Director Sion Sono took actual events from Matsunaga’s real-life early 2000s murder spree and turned them into a horrifying narrative that rivals any of his fictitious J-splatter classics. There is a film version of The Forest of Love, but the seven-episode series is better at conveying the sheer madness of one of Japan’s most notorious criminals. The result is one of the best Japanese series’ to tackle terrifying horror.

2 Kakegurui Is Just as Zany As the Anime

In Kakegurui, gambling culture rules an elite private academy, where a student’s betting skill determines social status. Mysterious transfer student Yumeko Jabami cleverly exposes the elite cheating and corruption, beating them at their own game. This two-season Japanese live-action series is ingenious and hilarious and features some amazingly memorable oddball characters.

Kakegurui, meaning gambling mad, began as a manga series before becoming an anime series. This spawned a Japanese live-action feature film that effectively serves as a third season to the show. Yumeko Jabami, portrayed by actress Minami Hamabe, is brilliantly complex and simply mesmerizing. Fans of the metal idol group PassCode will also appreciate the show’s theme song, “Ichika Bachika.”

1 Alice in Borderland Is the Japanese Squid Game

Before the popular Squid Game was wowing audiences with deadly games of consequence, the Japanese sci-fi thriller Alice in Borderland introduced intense competitions with the highest of stakes. Based on a manga of the same name, the 2020 TV show crafted a world in which Tokyo is largely abandoned, and the remaining young people must participate in a series of mental and physical games where the losers are killed by a laser from the sky.

All the games correlate to a playing card, and the goal is to complete them all to “clear the deck.” The original concept, well-crafted stories and character depth combine for not only a great Japanese live-action series, but one of the most entertaining shows in recent years. Though there was some level of closure in Season 2, things were left open for one more season. Thankfully, fans can rejoice because an upcoming third season of the Japanese action drama series has been announced.