This one doesn't do disaster spectacle, it does the paperwork after. Mount Fuji goes up on August 10, 2002, the quakes and tsunami finish the job, and by August 15 Japan is physically split in two and administratively handed off, China running the North, the United States running the South. Two episodes is barely enough time to blink, and it spends that time on the part most catastrophe stories skip: refugee processing, foreign flags over Japanese soil, a nation that still exists on paper being governed by other people's rules. Kaiji Kawaguchi's geopolitics never let you enjoy the ruins, they make you read the treaty. If you've ever wondered what happens to identity when the country you're from is administratively cut in half, this sits with that instead of blowing something else up. Grim, unsentimental, and short enough that it lands like a punch you didn't see coming.

Japan is torn apart after Mount Fuji erupts and a series of massive earthquakes and tsunamis strike, with one quake splitting the country in two. The government accepts aid from China and the United States, and that help turns into rule: China governs the north while America governs the south. Many Japanese flee abroad as refugees. Fifteen years later, the Japanese refugees in Taiwan and the local Taiwanese are clashing over jobs and the refugees' conditions, which never improve. Genichiro Ryu, a survivor of the disasters who was adopted by a couple and grew up in Taiwan, steps into the conflict hoping the two groups can learn to live side by side. The result is a two-part sci-fi drama special about displacement and a divided nation.