Soda Master

The Bones of Our Youth

There’s a particular sting to being fifty-one and realizing the life you planned never made it past the first draft. That bruise sits at the center of *Ramune Monkey*, Fuji TV’s winter 2026 drama. Three old middle-school friends—who spent the late ’80s shooting amateur kung fu movies—end up back together after thirty-seven years when human remains turn up at a construction site in their hometown. On paper, it’s a standard mystery hook. In practice, writer Ryota Kosawa (behind *Legal High* and *Confidence Man JP*) isn’t really chasing a tidy whodunit. He’s doing an autopsy on a generation.



Kosawa’s name usually means fast, screwball momentum, so the heaviness here sneaks up on you. Yoshii (Takashi Sorimachi), Fujimaki (Nao Omori), and Kikuhara (Kenjiro Tsuda) move through middle age like they’re haunting themselves. They start poking at the disappearance of their old film club advisor, a woman they knew as Matilda (Mai Kiryu). The show plays like a comedy about after youth—what happens when the bright fever of 1988 smashes into the weariness of 2026. (It made me think a little of how Stephen King’s *It* handles old trauma resurfacing, minus the clowns and with more VHS.) Some people will bounce off the lurches between slapstick and genuinely unsettling thriller beats, but I kind of like that roughness. Their lives aren’t smooth either.



The casting is the show’s secret weapon, especially Kenjiro Tsuda. He’s spent years as a famous voice actor with this cool, controlled aura, and seeing him in live action as Kikuhara—“Kinpo”—is startling. One moment in episode four flattened me. Kinpo, run ragged from caring for his mother who has dementia, runs into a former juvenile delinquent who used to terrorize him. The ex-bully sticks out a hand, eager to wrap his cruelty up as harmless “naughty” kid stuff. Tsuda has Kinpo take the handshake, but his face won’t cooperate with the forgiveness being offered. His shoulders go tight; the grip turns sharp. He asks what happens to the people who got tortured. It’s a quiet scene that suddenly detonates—grief that’s been sitting there for decades.



It’s not wall-to-wall misery, though. Episode six leans into the dumb, unavoidable comedy of getting older. The three of them try to chase a suspicious guy through the streets at night. Kinpo is the first to gas out and crouch on the pavement. Fujimaki makes it halfway up a footbridge staircase before collapsing. Yoshii pushes a little longer, then quits, completely cooked. And then Hakuba (Riko Fukumoto), the young cafe employee, just jogs past them like it’s nothing and keeps the chase going. Later they regroup in a square, flop down side-by-side on the concrete, and start laughing at how pathetic they are. The overhead shot—three bodies sprawled out, small against the cold ground—is both hysterical and brutal. I don’t know if the bones mystery will stick the landing in the final episodes. But maybe that isn’t the point. *Ramune Monkey* feels most honest in the relief of finally letting yourself hit the ground.