Season 1
10 episodes Oct 16, 2011
In 1956, a determined group of explorers from Japan — along with 22 trusty Sakhalin huskies — departs on a mission to explore Antarctica.
Overview
Set in the 1950's, a Japanese Antarctic research exploration team and 19 dogs that accompanied the team are stationed at the Showa Base in Antarctica. After a year, the exploration team is ordered to withdraw from the Antarctic station due to severe weather conditions. The dogs have to be left behind. The following year, the next team arrives at the Showa Base station and a miraculous reunion occurs between a dog handler accompanying the new tean and two dogs, Taro and Shiro, that are brothers.
Seasons
1 listed- Status
- Ended
- Seasons
- 1 season
- Episodes
- 10 episodes
- First aired
- Oct 16, 2011
- Last aired
- Dec 18, 2011
- Network
- TBS
Latest episode: S1 E10 Finale / Many Months Later... The Conclusion of the Miracle from 52 Years Ago! (Dec 18, 2011)
Cast
12 people
Reviews
2 min readThe dogs that waited
I have not sat through the ten episodes of Antarctica. I have trailers, stills, and the premise of a 2011 Japanese series. It will not leave me.
In the 1950s a research team at Showa Base takes an evacuation order and leaves the sled dogs in the snow. A year later a new team finds two still alive. Taro and Jiro.
Brothers. The show is built on that true wait. How much of the human plot is invented, I cannot say.
The dogs standing in the ice have been sitting with me anyway.
A studio with a rescue budget would sell storms and a last-minute airlift. These trailers sell hush. People move in heavy parkas.
Looks land or miss in cramped rooms. Wind talks more than anyone. Snow under boots starts to feel like a third party in the scene.
The stills are mostly white. Dark specks of humans and dogs, tiny on the ice. The continent does not care about your schedule or your guilt.
Buzz & Rumors
Public reportsKimura said he was fired up. The ice was in Nemuro.
On January 18, 2011, TokyoHive carried TBS's boast that Nankyoku Tairiku would be the most expensive drama serial in the network's history, the 60th anniversary show, Sunday 9 p.m. in October. Takuya Kimura would play geologist Takeshi Kuramochi. "I got really 'fired up' whenever I read the script, but I guess it's going to be freezing cold at the set." Then the dare. "I'm going to challenge inaccessible areas, both in terms of the content and the filming, which is making me even more excited for this project." latestnetflix.com's take is that the same January copy said the Showa Base set would go up in Hokkaido and that the team was still looking at shooting a few scenes on the actual continent.
That second hope did not survive wrap. Jdrama Weblog, writing after cameras stopped in September 2011, said filming started in February, ran six months, and used Nemuro City in Hokkaido as Showa Station. Japanese Wikipedia's production notes put the polar unit at two and a half months in that same city, from February, with the whole shoot closed by August. Nobody published a call sheet from the ice. Print the January scouting talk as scouting talk. Print Nemuro as the set that got built. ,
Taro and Jiro, not a stranded press corps.
Netflix lists the show as Antarctica, 2011, ten episodes, TV-14, with Kimura, Haruka Ayase, and Masato Sakai. The logline is Japan's 1956 Antarctic expedition and 22 Sakhalin huskies. It is not a 2011 news crew trapped after a catastrophe. English Wikipedia files it as a remake of the 1983 film Antarctica, written by Yoshihiro Izumi, directed by Kazuo Fukuzawa, on TBS from October 16 to December 18, 2011. Kuramochi handles the dogs. Ayase is Miyuki Takaoka, the sister-in-law waiting in Japan. Sakai is Haruhiko Himuro on weather. TokyoHive's January plot card already named the reunion with two brothers, Taro and Jiro, after the first wintering party is forced to leave the animals chained at Showa. , ,
The 1983 film had already made those dogs famous. TBS was not hiding the inheritance. TokyoHive said Kimura's part sat close to Ken Takakura's and that this would not be a beat-for-beat remake. Miyuki Nakajima wrote the ending theme "From the Icy Reaches." Tomoko Naraoka narrates. The first episode ran 2 hours and 5 minutes. Video Research, via TokyoHive and Nikkan Sports, put Kanto at 22.2 percent average and 25.5 percent at 10:37 p.m. Nikkan Sports called it the second 20-plus commercial-drama open of 2011, behind only JIN. AsianWiki's table, also Video Research Kanto, has the December 18 finale at 22.0 percent and an 18.0 percent series average. Week five sagged to 13.2 percent. The dogs brought people back. , , ,
Netflix put the 10-hour memorial back into catalogs in 2024 under one English word. The Japanese title is a continent. The gossip that still travels is smaller. A January leak about filming on the ice. A Hokkaido harbor that had to pretend. Two huskies who outlived the men who left them. Kimura's line about inaccessible areas now reads like a joke about Nemuro wind, and like a dare he already knew the anniversary budget would try to buy.
Entertainment rumors and trivia aggregated from public reporting. Treat speculation as unverified unless a cited source confirms it.
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