Full spoilers through Episode 10.
Parts 1 and 2 already covered Episodes 1–4 (“disaster survival → sudden yoga”) and Episodes 5–6 (“pickup attempts, psychic mediumship, weed, archery, Morse code”). This third article covers only Episodes 7–10 and the final verdict.
1. Episode 7 finally answers “disaster, please.” Mt. Fuji clocks in very late
After Shan City made viewers beg for earthquakes instead of English and psychic powers, Episode 7 returns to evacuation, selection at a port, renewed shaking, and volcanic danger. The episode synopsis confirms that Ayumu alone is selected for a special athletic evacuation slot [1][2].
And Mt. Fuji, which has spent half the series looking like an employee waiting to be called into the meeting, finally starts producing smoke and moving toward eruption.
Viewer: “Disaster, please.”
Fuji: “Yes.”
Viewer: “You are extremely late.”
The title plot finally dominates the screen again. Yet the show never fully returns to the early “observe the disaster itself” mode. The final stretch becomes a series of character-specific final exams.
2. Mari’s death is not “unrelated illness.” Infrastructure failure turns a manageable condition into a countdown
Episode 8 reveals that Mari depends on a cardiac assist device. When the boat is trapped, she dives to release the underwater rope. She succeeds, but does not make it back conscious, and resuscitation fails [3].
The immediate reaction can be: “Battery? So this death is not really the disaster?”
But the chain is strongly disaster-related:
pre-existing heart disease
→ dependence on medical technology
→ national collapse destroys charging, replacement, and hospital access
→ battery/complication risk
→ survival requires a dangerous dive
→ cardiac arrest
The earthquake does not punch her directly. The disaster removes the infrastructure that kept her condition manageable.
That is actually one of the show’s clearest examples of its original theme: civilization is a giant backup system, and when it disappears, ordinary medical dependence becomes lethal.
3. Episode 9 suddenly becomes a rap episode — but Haruo’s death is almost too perfectly written
Episode 9 reunites the survivors with KITE and heads toward a research facility containing data that might help save Japan [1][4].
And then, yes, they rap.
Japan sinking
→ survivors at sea
→ rescue mission
→ research data
→ temporary rap musical
This show never learned the concept of “pick one genre.”
Haruo’s ending, however, is structurally precise. His official profile identifies him as a 17-year-old former track ace and Ayumu’s admired senior [5]. When the data storage device falls into a wave-exposed area, his old running ability becomes the only solution. He sprints out, throws the data back to safety, and is swept away [4].
The running joke during viewing had been:
“He used to be a track ace. Eventually they’re going to make him run and kill him, aren’t they?”
Then they make him run.
Then he dies.
skill established → situation demands skill → skill used one last time → character removed
Unlike Koichiro’s yam-and-unexploded-ordnance death, Haruo is taken by the disaster itself.
Running Senior becomes a textbook death flag.
4. KITE activates every death flag and still refuses to produce a clean death result. YouTuber armor is absurd
Then there is KITE.
He is already an adventure YouTuber associated with dangerous places and aerial movement. In the finale he boards a huge balloon alone in order to restore internet connectivity and make rescue possible [1][6][7].
As death-flag design goes, this is perfect:
- air-themed character;
- alone;
- final mission;
- balloon;
- high altitude;
- inadequate cold protection;
- visibly freezing;
- no one on the ground can reach him.
The natural reaction is:
“An air character going into the sky alone is absolutely going to die.”
Then the thing attacking him is not an earthquake or tsunami. It is cold air.
Earth: “Not me this time.”
Atmosphere: “My turn.”
His mission is still indirectly caused by the national communications collapse, so it is disaster-related — but visually it feels like KITE Hypothermia 2020.
His phone/GPS enables rescuers to locate Ayumu, Go and Onodera [6]. KITE himself does not receive an immediate explicit rescue scene. The eight-years-later imagery has been interpreted by many viewers as showing a KITE-like survivor, but contemporary ending analyses also describe his fate as ambiguous [8].
So the scoreboard is:
Death flags: 100/100
Confirmed death: connection error
YouTuber passive skill: activated
Somehow the late-game strongest classes appear to be “YouTuber” and “78-year-old national-level archer.”
5. Episode 10: rescue, then “EIGHT YEARS LATER.” Even the timeline develops a tectonic fault
The official finale synopsis says Onodera’s data identifies areas where Japan may rise again, while KITE uses a balloon to reconnect to the internet [1][7].
After rescue, Ayumu’s infected leg has to be amputated. On her birthday she watches a prerecorded, scheduled message from people she traveled with [6].
Haruo appears in that recording, creating a brief:
“Wait, Senior survived?”
No. It is old footage, not a survival reveal.
Then the show abruptly declares:
Eight years later.
Viewer: “EIGHT?”
A series that tracked days of walking, hunger and disaster in exhausting detail simply jumps across eight years.
Ayumu continues athletics with a prosthetic leg, Go has grown up, and the story presents a reconstructed Japan organized around archives, memory and returning land [6].
6. A future city above drowned Tokyo: Tokyo Tower begins New Game+
The most aggressive sci-fi image is the epilogue’s new city over the submerged old one.
Academic analysis of the ending describes submerged remnants including a stadium, Tokyo Tower and Tokyo Skytree, followed by a pan upward to a clean modern city floating above the water, including a new Tokyo Tower [9].
So the viewing reaction:
“Buildings and a tower over drowned Tokyo? This is extremely sci-fi.”
is completely fair.
Early in the series, Tokyo Tower looked like it had died spectacularly. In the finale:
Old Tokyo Tower: underwater
New Tokyo Tower: build another one upstairs
This is no longer ordinary reconstruction. It is urban layer stacking.
The official theatrical introduction frames the series around identity when a country is lost and around eventual regeneration [10], so the image works better as symbolism than as a literal engineering forecast.
Still, visually:
Japan: “We sank.”
Architecture: “Fine. We build on top.”
7. Archer Grandpa apparently makes it into the future. Starting age: 78
Spotting Kunio-like imagery in the future produces one immediate reaction:
“The archer grandpa is still here?”
Kunio entered the story at 78 and had an official background as a former national kyudo champion. Shan City turned him from supermarket owner into a combat unit.
Compare the roster:
- Koichiro: SSR survival dad → unexploded ordnance
- Nanami: fighter → toxic gas
- Mari: family anchor → medical-system collapse
- Haruo: track ace → wave
- KITE: air specialist → nearly frozen in balloon
- 78-year-old archer: future candidate
Trying to reverse-engineer the show’s survival meta suggests that youth, athleticism and survival training are less valuable than:
national-level archery + stubbornness + elderly status
That is not a normal RPG balance patch.
8. “The ending is ReoNa, of course everybody dies.” Correction: it is KAF
The final song’s fragile voice and end-of-the-world mood make it easy to joke:
“Oh, the ending is ReoNa. No wonder everybody dies.”
Except the official music page identifies the grand ending song “Keshiki” as performed by KAF [11].
Not ReoNa.
Still, if your mental music shelf is labeled “transparent voice + grief + apocalypse,” the confusion is understandable.
Viewer: “ReoNa?”
Official credits: “KAF.”
Viewer: “Same neighboring shelf.”
The mistaken identification was wrong, but the joke was almost too perfectly supported by the series’ mortality rate.
9. After finishing, Filmarks 3.1 makes much more sense
As of August 26, 2026, Filmarks lists the series at 3.1 from 4,238 reviews, with 11% at 4.1–5.0, 45% at 3.1–4.0, 30% at 2.1–3.0 and 14% at 1.0–2.0 [1]. IMDb episode ratings currently run 7.4, 7.3, 7.0, then 6.7, 6.3, 6.7, 6.7, 7.2, 6.9 and 6.7 [12].
During Episodes 1–3, the reaction is naturally:
“This disaster depiction is brutal. Why is the overall rating so low?”
After finishing, the answer becomes clearer.
The opening sells:
“an ordinary family suddenly dropped into a semi-realistic national disaster.”
Then from Episode 4 onward the package also contains:
archer grandpa
yoga
spiritual commune
supernatural mediumship
weed
pickup drama
English
DJ
sex
Morse code
rap
balloon
eight-year time skip
floating future city
The official creators explicitly framed the work as a mix of disaster, nationality, ideology, generations, internet culture and anime-style fantasy [10]. So from the production side, this is not accidental derailment.
From the viewer side, however, Episodes 1–3 were simply too good at being a disaster survival show. Everything after Episode 4 feels like a different product.
10. Final verdict: “Episodes 1–3 were great; once Archer Grandpa arrives in Episode 4, something stays weird until the end”
The shortest complete review is:
Episodes 1–3: disaster depiction is excellent.
Episode 4: archer grandpa, yoga. Hm?
Episodes 5–6: pickup attempts, psychic mediumship, Morse. Disaster, please.
Episodes 7–8: Fuji and the sinking resume work. Mari dies.
Episode 9: rap. Haruo runs. Prediction hits.
Episode 10: balloon KITE. Freezing. Ambiguous fate. Rescue. Eight years later. Future city. KAF.
The series did not accidentally become strange halfway through. Read together with the official concept, it was never intended to remain a pure disaster-survival procedural.
But the experiential turning point is obvious:
Episode 4, when Archer Grandpa arrives and the door to Shan City opens.
From then until the finale, the show is no longer just asking “How does Japan sink?” It also asks:
“What is Japan?”
“What is family?”
“What is nationality?”
“What is community?”
“Why is the YouTuber this hard to kill?”
“Why is the 78-year-old archer still here?”
A ten-episode version that stayed entirely in the harsh disaster style of Episodes 1–3 would be fascinating.
The actual Japan Sinks: 2020 instead:
destroys Tokyo with an earthquake, pivots with yoga, shakes physics with a psychic medium, inserts rap, makes the track senior run to his death, nearly freezes a YouTuber in a balloon, then builds a future city above drowned Tokyo.
And somehow it does all of that in ten episodes.
Japan’s tectonic plates are not the busiest boundaries in this series.
The genre boundaries are.
References (12)
- Filmarks『日本沈没2020』作品・各話情報・評価 filmarks.com
- Ready Steady Cut, Episode 7 “The Dawn” recap readysteadycut.com
- Ready Steady Cut, Episode 8 “Mom’s Secret” recap readysteadycut.com
- Ready Steady Cut, Episode 9 “Japan Sinks” recap readysteadycut.com
- 公式 CHARACTER：古賀春生 japansinks2020.com
- Ready Steady Cut, Episode 10 ending explained readysteadycut.com
- TELASA『日本沈没2020』第10話「ハジマリノアサ」 telasa.jp
- CBR, “Japan Sinks: 2020’s Finale Makes The Pain Worth It cbr.com
- Journal of Anime and Manga Studies, “Rethinking 3.11’s Mediascape through Japan Sinks 2020 iopn.library.illinois.edu
- 『日本沈没2020 劇場編集版』公式 INTRODUCTION japansinks2020.com
- 『日本沈没2020』公式 MUSIC japansinks2020.com
- IMDb, Japan Sinks: 2020 episode list and episode ratings imdb.com
