Pachinko on Apple TV+ is honest, deliberate, and culturally significant.
Season 2 of Pachinko premieres today August 23, 2024.
The Apple TV+ series Pachinko is epic in scope and intimate in tone, the story begins with a forbidden love and crescendos into a sweeping saga that journeys between Korea, Japan and America to tell an unforgettable story of war and peace, love and loss, triumph and reckoning. Audiences cannot help but to connect and journey along with these characters as their story filled with highly emotional, historical, and challenging events unfold on screen.
Pachinko is an American drama television series created by Soo Hugh based on the 2017 novel by Min Jin Lee. Pachinko follows four generations of a Korean family, starting from 1915 to 1989. In 1931, Sunja leaves her family in Korea under Japanese rule, to move to the Koreatown of Osaka, Japan, and start a new life there. Season 2 episode 1 premieres today on August 23, 2024 and it is titled “Chapter Nine”. The series details the living conditions and discrimination of Korean immigrants in Japanese society.
Topics in this series span from colonialism, to romance, to gender, to assimilation, to politics, to family culture, injustice and more. Viewers are pulled into the story as they watch the characters face significant cultural and personal trials. Throughout several difficult circumstances, these characters continue to show resilience and fortitude which engages and emotionally pulls viewers into their story.
The cinematic color pallet used in Pachinko creates a captivating, majestic, and alluring look. The cinematography by Florian Hoffmeister and Ante Chengdoes matches the cultural setting, pace, and significance of the plot. The way in which the series spans over generations is elegant and very brilliantly displayed on screen. It flows well and audiences are able to understand and be immersed in the story regardless of the timeline that is being presented.
Even the use of color in the subtitles has meaning and provides a cultural and historical context of where the language originates as well as how it mixes when multiple subtitle colors are used when a singular character is speaking. Color can affect people both psychologically and emotionally without the person even being aware. Color in film can build up suspense, evoke fear, elicit harmony or increase tension within a scene or sequence.
Pachinko stars Lee Minho, Yuh-Jung Youn, Minha Kim, Jin Ha, Anna Sawai, Eunchae Jung, Soji Arai, Junwoo Han and Sungkyu Kim.
Throughout the generations being portrayed in Pachinko, they face unknown odds and overwhelming obstacles that lead to intense emotional states which influence the characters behavior and trigger different life outcomes within the series. Metaphorically, this could relate to a Japanese Pachinko machine with emotions being caused or triggered by odds, surprises, uncertainties and more….thus the title.