Spoilers for all 10 episodes of VIVANT’s 2023 season, including the finale.
The immediate reason for the filthy escape in episode 1 is to evade the police dogs tracking the fugitives. To me, the scene also seems to establish a rule for this story: being highly capable doesn’t guarantee that you’ll survive with your dignity intact. That’s my reading of the scene, not an explanation of the creators’ intentions supplied by the production team.
Deserts, explosions, overseas locations, a star-studded cast. Everything promises a spectacular, stylish adventure. Then the protagonists choose to hide somewhere full of human waste.
Everyone is impressive. Nobody gets to stay clean. For me, that mismatch is one of the most gloriously ridiculous things about VIVANT.
What was happening in that scene?
In episode 1, Nogi and his companions hide in a pit toilet to evade the Balka police and their tracking dogs. WEB The Television’s review of the premiere also discusses this part of the escape.
Drum, meanwhile, helps them get away by arranging a vehicle and providing other support. Describing the escape as a team effort doesn’t mean that Drum also climbs into the sewage.
What matters is that the tension never disappears. If the scene were only showing us something disgusting for a laugh, it might not have stayed with me so vividly. They’re being pursued, so they have to choose an option they hate. You want them to survive while desperately hoping there might be some other way.
From the other side of the screen, I can laugh. Would I want to join them down there? Absolutely not.
That distance seems to make the escape feel both urgent and bizarrely funny. Of course, this is a fictional scene, not guidance on how to escape danger safely in real life.
The glorious absurdity of “big-budget poop”
The landscapes and the actors’ presence alone make VIVANT’s first episode feel like the start of something huge. Normally, you might expect a production to spend a while delivering nothing but the glamour those images promise.
Instead, it immediately brings sweat, panic and filth into the same frame.
I love that.
When I call it “big-budget poop,” I’m not claiming to know the production’s accounts. I mean that blockbuster imagery and a brutally undignified escape sit side by side without hesitation.
Being capable doesn’t mean the script will always provide an elegant exit. An expensive-looking suit doesn’t mean the scene will protect your dignity.
We’d like to save your life. Your clothes and your pride will have to wait.
Once the first episode establishes that order of priorities, the impressive spy-thriller concepts to come start to feel like more than shiny decorations.
Knowing Nogi’s identity changes what competence looks like
On a first viewing, Nogi looks like an out-of-his-depth trading-company employee caught up in a mistaken money transfer. TBS’s recap of the 2023 season also describes him being mistaken for a bomber in Balka and struggling to escape with Nozaki and Kaoru.
We later learn that he is actually an intelligence operative for Beppan, working undercover to pursue Tent.
Return to episode 1 with that knowledge, and “Someone needs to help this man” becomes entangled with “What was this man trying to achieve?” But that doesn’t require us to decide that every mistake or moment of panic was an act. Having an undercover objective doesn’t give someone complete control over every danger they face.
What interests me is less the idea of a formidable person who never fails than the sense of someone still looking for a next move when cornered.
Competence starts to look like the ability to keep going even after getting filthy. Knowing his identity gives the same undignified spectacle a different meaning.
Nozaki and Drum keep this from being Nogi’s solo showcase
The escape isn’t simply a stage on which Nogi demonstrates his abilities.
Nozaki is reassuringly good at finding options and getting people moving even while being pursued. Drum advances the escape through practical arrangements and action rather than a stream of dialogue. It’s fun to watch different kinds of competence at work alongside Nogi’s worried face.
On a rewatch, Nozaki and Nogi’s relationship also becomes harder to reduce to rescuer and rescued. You start wondering how far each trusts the other, and how much suspicion remains.
Still, we can’t say, “Nozaki had him 99 percent figured out from the start and was only pretending otherwise.” Neither that number nor the full contents of his thoughts can be verified. Reading their unspoken exchanges as an attempt to size each other up leaves room for the relationship’s ambiguity.
One extraordinary person saving everyone else would be straightforward. Several extraordinary people still having to flee into somewhere horrible is what gives this opening episode its peculiar force.
“Everyone is a monster” doesn’t mean everyone has the same abilities
Here, “monster” is an exaggerated way of describing a character’s prowess or presence within the story. It isn’t a diagnosis or a judgment about their personality.
Nogi has the enormous gap between his seemingly ordinary corporate persona and the identity eventually revealed. Nozaki has the judgment and force of personality to take charge on the ground. Drum has the reassuring ability to get necessary things done.
Later in the season, Kurosu, a fellow Beppan operative; Beki, whose presence matters both as a father and an organization’s central figure; and Nokor, who helps run Tent, each bring different strengths and conflicts. Watching people with different abilities collide is more interesting than putting them in a single ranking of who is strongest.
F’s presence also makes it difficult to divide Nogi neatly into a weak outward personality and a strong hidden one. But I wouldn’t go as far as claiming that Nogi could have done exactly the same things without F. That would be an unproven hypothetical.
I explore their relationship further in this article about what makes Nogi and F unsettling, available in Japanese. What matters here is that these characters’ story never begins as a spotless heroic adventure.
A large-scale production, but ¥100 million per episode is unconfirmed
The production’s scale is part of what makes the contrast so striking.
According to WAYO, which coordinated the Mongolia shoot, filming there lasted roughly two and a half months and involved 3,000 goats as well as many other animals. Those figures describe the Mongolia shoot. They aren’t the duration of the entire production or a count of animals appearing in the sewage scene.
The figure of ¥100 million per episode, however, cannot be treated as an established budget. In MANTANWEB’s report on a TBS press conference, the broadcaster declined to discuss production details when asked about that amount. Calling it a figure TBS denied would also go too far. It simply wasn’t confirmed.
Even without knowing the exact total, we have evidence of the overseas shoot’s scale. And this is a production that, from its very first episode, refuses to protect only its protagonists’ glamorous image.
It meets the promise of a grand spectacle with a filthy escape. To me, committing so completely to that choice takes nerve.
The filth gives the glamour some weight
Within the plot, the poop-covered escape in episode 1 is a way to evade pursuit. For the viewer, though, it leaves a larger impression.
Being highly capable doesn’t always leave you with a clean option. Having dependable people nearby doesn’t eliminate fear, failure or physical discomfort.
I think that’s why, even once the larger machinery of Beppan, Public Security and Tent comes into view, these characters don’t feel like pieces on a board. We’ve already seen the bodies that sweat, panic and move through thoroughly unpleasant situations.
Everyone is a monster. Their escape is anything but pristine.
You arrive expecting a stylish espionage drama, and the first thing it does is leave everyone’s dignity in a toilet. That complete lack of ceremony is part of what makes even VIVANT’s most extravagant moments of cool so oddly unforgettable.
References (4)
- TBS: recap of VIVANT’s 2023 season: the escape and Nogi’s subsequently revealed identity.
- WEB The Television: episode 1 review: a secondary source discussing the pit-toilet scene and Drum’s support during the escape.
- WAYO: coordinating the Mongolia shoot: the company’s account of the shoot’s duration and scale.
- MANTANWEB: report on the TBS press conference, August 31, 2023: TBS did not confirm the budget figure put to it.
