Human Vapor is a new Netflix sci-fi thriller from Japan where a cop and a reporter try to bring down a killer that can literally turn himself into vapor and kill his victims from the inside. How in the hell do you stop a killer that can literally disappear?
HUMAN VAPOR: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?
Opening Shot: A van runs over a pink stuffed bunny as it speedily pulls up to the door of an office building in Tokyo.
The Gist: Kyoko Kono (Yū Aoi) is rushing in to do her segment on a morning news show on the JNT network. At the same time, a colorfully-wrapped package arrives at the network’s offices. Kyoko’s segment is an interview with a professor about renewable energy. While they’re talking, a mysterious smoke surrounds the professor, eventually going straight into his mouth and nose. He starts expanding, rising up to the ceiling of the studio, before exploding in a shower of guts and blood. All of it is broadcast live.
Kenji Okamoto (Shun Oguri), a detective for the Metro Police, is called in on the case, despite being in the middle of a suspension; he’s literally reactivated on the spot and given his badge at the scene. When he finds out that Kyoko is the main witness, he pauses. Five years prior, at the start of her reporting career, Kyoko rode along with Okamoto for a story and the two of them forged some sort of personal relationship. She somehow was involved in the incident that got Okamoto suspended.
When Kyoko and her colleagues open the package that came in around the same time the professor died, all it contained was an empty box with a QR code printed on the lid. The code led to a video of a man (Uta Uchida) who admitted that he’s the one who planned the killing. He will hold a press conference the next day at a ramen shop, but only answer questions from news outlets that run the video in its entirety as their top news story. After both the broadcast and the alleged killer’s video goes viral, there’s a lot of speculation as to who it is and why he did what he did.
Despite warnings from the governor that this may be a chemical attack, a crowd gathers at the ramen shop, but the man in the video doesn’t show. When Kyoko figures out where the man really is, she gets an exclusive interview. This is when she finds out he’s taking revenge on everyone involved in a project called the White Center, and the professor was the first of those victims. But both Kyoko and Okamoto find out why it might be hard to contain this killer before he finds his next victim.
What Shows Will It Remind You Of? Written by Yeon Sang-ho and Ryu Yong-jae and based on a 1960 film, Human Vapor reminds us a bit of another sci-fi mystery like The Resurrected.
Our Take: The first episode of Human Vapor sets up a story with two major threads. Of course, there’s the investigation into the Human Vapor, which involves a lot of moving parts. How does he make himself into vapor like that, and how does he manage to kill people that he invades when he’s in vapor form? Then there’s also the matter of what the White Center is and what they did to the killer to make him seek revenge.
It’s pretty apparent that Kyoko and Okamoto are going to team up, and two vloggers — Kaho and Fujita Fujikawa (Suzu Hirose, Kento Hayashi) — will also be among the many who will be trying to figure out who this person is. But the backstory of Kyoko and Okamoto will also inform the current search, as we see from their interactions in the flashbacks.
Okamoto seems to be a top-flight, by-the-book detective in the Metro Police. His late father was also on the force, and Okamoto has known the superintendant general since he was a kid. But he still got suspended, and we don’t find out much about that during the first episode.
So, while he and Kyoko try to figure out just what’s going on with the Human Vapor, we’ll see how their relationship developed and what led to his suspension. Even in the brief scene of the two of them during a stakeout, where he teaches her to put her hand to her chest and listen to her heartbeat to calm down, we see that the two of them are going to build a deep personal relationship. That’s going to inform a lot of the action in the present.
Performance Worth Watching: Shun Oguri does a good job as the world-weary Okamoto, whom we see definitely is a letter-of-the-law cop.
Sex And Skin: None.
Parting Shot: An older man sees the Human Vapor’s interview with Kyoko and figures out he might be the next victim.
Sleeper Star: We’re curious to see how the Fujikawas, played by Suzu Hirose and Kento Hayashi, fit into this investigation.
Most Pilot-y Line: Nothing we could really find, but we’re curious as to why cops in shows and movies think they can shoot an entitiy like the Vapor, which can change into a form that can’t be pierced by bullets.
Our Call: STREAM IT. While there may not be enough of Human Vapor‘s thriller plot to cover an eight-episode season, the backstory of Okamoto and Kyoko should make up the shortfall.
Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.