As much as we get to hear Rinko’s “backstory” and the history of Tomo’s fraught biological family, to watch Rinko and Tomo’s relationship unfold is to watch a family come into its own. This drama has all the charm and interpersonal subtlety of Hirokazu Koreeda’s cinema of unconventional family, but instead of childrearing, it is focused more on the way Tomo navigates these unique relationships (Why does this stranger take better care of me than my own mother?) and people’s reactions to her new living situation. Tomo (Rinka Kakihara), an 11-year-old girl, lives with her mother – until she finds herself alone. She then goes to live with her uncle Makio (Kenta Kiritani) and his girlfriend, Rinko (Toma Ikuta), who is a transgender woman. Netflix Japan has a good range of international offerings, from animation to musical, from lighter teen flicks to heavy dramas. Films with LGBTQ+ characters aren’t a monolith. Of course, as the calls for more diverse media grow louder, it’s necessary to recognize media diversity. But too often in this conversation are non-Western movies neglected. It’s clear that LGBTQ+ representation has significantly grown in popular cinema in just the past few years.
