What A View | Japanese Netflix romance reality show The Future Diary puts two polite men and one wholesome woman in a weird love triangle
- Filled with uncomfortable moments, scripted encounters and extreme politeness, this Netflix romance reality TV series is certainly different
- Meanwhile, HBO’s Westworld season four continues the story of the futuristic Western-themed amusement park,
Romance reality television gets a cringeworthy twist in the second series of the Japanese Netflix show The Future Diary, with two young men vying for the same girl in various contrived, but very polite encounters.
Instant points deduction: it’s not cute, cool, clever or “grammable” to use captive wild animals as photo ops for gormless tourists. Which is what two of the “stars” do in series two, episode one, giggling at a caged monkey at a vantage-point ice cream stop at Mishima Skywalk suspension bridge in Shizuoka prefecture.
Doesn’t the Japanese National Tourism Organisation have a Humane Resources department?
The Future Diary is an odd fish: a “romance reality” show that puts participants into cringingly awkward television drama-style scenes, prescribed by the “diary”, which is actually just a set of instructions. So how much is scripted?
Series one featured a male-female pair; this time we have a threesome (curb your enthusiasm, there’s no sex), pitting two young men against each other for the affections of a girl. This being Japan, there’s no chance of a Western-style punch-up or date rage.
