Tokyo Alien Bros. (2018)

This is for all the outsiders out there: Nietzsche's "bungled and botched," those who have been stepped on, ignored, misunderstood. Immigrants and underdogs: this is your story. A pair of aliens-brothers-are sent to Tokyo on an undercover mission to evaluate Planet Earth as a potential site for colonization. Over ten 25-minute episodes we follow their quest to adapt to modern-day Tokyo and human society. Younger brother Fuyunosuke ("Fuyu") arrives first, and establishes a beachhead at a squat in a funky downtown Tokyo neighborhood. With a glib nature and superficial charisma, always taking photos with his antique camera, Fuyu is already a popular hipster by the time older brother Natsutaro ("Natsu") arrives. Guileless and earnest, Natsu is again and again befuddled by human social interactions. But by the end of the series, we will have witnessed a complete inversion of the brothers: earnest older brother Natsu is ultimately able to integrate to human society, while social butterfly Fuyu winds up truly "alienated," disillusioned by humans. This TV series forgoes the slapstick approach taken by the manga source in favor of a more melancholic tone and a humanistic, dramatic, focus (while remaining true to the details of the original story). The alien brothers are introduced realistically and without explanation-their basic "humanity" is at the center of the drama, and their search for identity and human connection is that of all immigrants.