Apple TV’s ‘Sunny’: Be Prepared to Feel For This Animatronic Robot

By Kaleena Rivera | TV | August 12, 2024 |

By Kaleena Rivera | TV | August 12, 2024 |

I admit that I’m wary of any show or film that has a big-eyed nonhuman central character that seems designed solely to win the hearts and minds of viewers. All too often they operate as a shortcut for a show’s overall likeability, and besides, I’ve been burned before [looks askance at The Mandalorian]. So when I decided to review Sunny, the latest entry into Apple TV’s ever-increasing sci-fi offerings (adapted from Colin O’Sullivan’s novel The Dark Manual), I was intent on not being lulled by some CGI creation designed for the express purpose of emotionally manipulating me with cutesy expressions and a few jokes. Six episodes in, and now I’m worried about the fate of a fictional robot. Dammit.

For those who are unaware: Sunny, set in Kyoto, Japan, in the not-too distant future, opens with Suzie Sakamoto (Rashida Jones), a woman who’s recently lost her husband, Masa (Hidetoshi Nishijima, who viewers may recognize from the exquisite Drive My Car), and their young son in a plane crash. Naturally distraught, she spends her days becoming increasingly bitter over her circumstances and endless parade of condolences, not to mention her mother-in-law, Noriko (Judy Ongg), whose subdued coping methods are at odds with Suzie’s. When a representative from ImaTech, the company that employed her husband, gifts her a home bot (high end robotic domestic helpers), Suzie soon realizes there’s a deeper mystery behind everything that’s happened, least of which is whether she knew her husband after all.

Episode one had me on the fence, especially regarding the location—beyond mere aesthetics, a common perpetuation of the frequent and objectionably shallow usage of East Asian culture in film (a topic tackled by writers much better suited to speak on it than myself), there appeared to be no reason why the story is set in Kyoto, a misgiving that was only amplified by the fact that Suzie speaks next to zero Japanese despite having lived there for a decade. There’s also the fact that Suzie instantly comes off as not very likable, which also left me thinking that I was almost certainly going to regret this assignment.

I can’t point to any particular moment that made me do a 180, but I began to enjoy myself by the time the second episode finished (the average run time, by the way, blissfully clocks in around roughly 35 minutes per episode). My sympathy for Suzie, combined with my growing curiosity over where the mystery of Masa’s death—presuming he and young Zen (Fares Belkheir) are dead, seeing as how the bodies have yet to be recovered—began to draw me in past her prickliness. In fact, Suzie’s unwillingness to be pleasant in the face of her tragedy wound up winning me over. This is due in part to Jones herself, who’s at a career best here, but it’s also because we deserve to see female protagonists be unpalatable sometimes. As Suzie delves into fluctuating memories of her marriage, from the moment she met the dashing Masa to their final wave at the airport, the only constant is that Suzie has always been a little acrimonious; a nice change up from the usual ‘sweet demeanor before tragedy struck’ characterization that so many fictional women are assigned.

Then there’s the titular Sunny (voiced by Joanna Sotomura), a robot molded in a humanoid plastic-like body in a shade of matte white that will, probably through no coincidence whatsoever, bring Apple products to mind. Living up to her name (and the similarly named Sonny of the 2004 sci-fi film I, Robot), the moment Sunny is activated, the robot’s chirpy sweetness agitates the bot-hating Suzie, whose desire to get rid of Sunny is only outweighed by her confusion over why Masa, a man she’s always believed worked on refrigerators, has actually been in the robotics division. Robot and widow become an odd couple of sorts in short order, as Suzie unexpectedly becomes increasingly attached to Sunny.

Sunny’s undeniably cute—her expressive emoji-like face coupled with Sotomura’s charming performance makes sure of it—but the further along the season advanced, the more Sunny won me over, to the point that it was easy to become emotional once she’s in danger of being destroyed. It’s also helped by the fact that, surprisingly in this day and age, Sunny isn’t solely a product of CGI but rather a mix of animatronics and in-person performances by Sotomura herself, allowing Jones and the rest of the cast to work directly with a scene partner rather than rely only on their imaginations (via The Japan Times).

The mystery itself grows bigger with each week that goes by, to the point that it threatens to become unwieldy at times. What happened to Flight 405? Why did Masa have all of these secrets? Was Sunny previously utilized for more nefarious means? What’s ImaTech’s role in this, and what is the yakuza doing here? It’s all so sprawling that it’s constantly at risk for spilling over into a mess; in truth, were it not for the human-robot relationship, I can’t say the mystery alone would be enough to keep me seated from week to week.

Showrunner Katie Robbins, who also wrote several of the episodes, has made it so Sunny is more than just some AI grief teddy bear; she feels self-directed and equipped with her own motivations, alive on a level that’s on par with some of the film’s most astounding VFX creations. When Susie inadvertently enlists a bartender, Mixxy (annie the clumsy), to assist with her investigation, their burgeoning friendship causes the normally upbeat Sunny to become jealous. But Sunny eschews any Black Mirror nightmarishness, a series whose influence can definitely be felt at times; when Sunny overhears Mixxy make an insensitive comment from another room, it doesn’t hearken the beginning of a murderous rage. Instead, she gasps a surprised, “Bitch,” under her breath before tossing Mixxy’s portion of a meal into the trash.

The larger sci-fi world that takes place in the background, which does wind up actively participating with its cultural and geographic setting up to a certain point, is grounded but possesses just enough flair to remind us that this isn’t quite the reality we inhabit. Not yet anyway. Although there’s a number of actors showing out here—Noriko’s role in relation to the mystery feels a bit jumbled, but Ongg does a lovely job reminding us that Suzie isn’t the only mother undergoing loss, especially when her stoic façade begins to fray along the edges—their human elements are featured at their best through the lens of a dutiful, and yes, exceedingly adorable, robot.

The first six episodes of Sunny are available to stream on Apple TV+ with new episodes available each Wednesday.

Kaleena Rivera is the TV Editor for Pajiba and can be found on Bluesky.