Desaparecida: O Caso Lucie Blackman

This is a very well done and compelling true crime documentary about the disappearance of a British foreign National in Japan who becomes the linchpin for the investigation into sexual deviance and sexual crime in Japan. The case unveiled a look at how The Japanese police treated sex crimes and crimes against foreigners. The show features archival footage, contemporary interviews, and documents associated with the case. Jake Adelstein, the subject of HOB's Tokyo Vice, is featured as a Western reporter with intimate knowledge of Japan and the Japanese police. The show is good. It is sad, but good. The show has a lot of cultural undertones, and it is tight as far as documentaries go.

I know this story pretty well already, having read a few books on it. Tokyo Hostess, in particular, was well written and gave a lot of detail.

This documentary starts when Lucie has already disappeared, so there is no background to her life in Tokyo and her job working in the hostess club. It suffers greatly for this, as this is what would make the casual viewer care about her story.

Instead, it's her father, who I find seriously arrogant, who is star of this show. Not playing down that he lost his daughter, and obviously what happened to Lucie was evil, but I just couldn't deal with him throwing his weight around in another country. I know this won't be a popular opinion. Reading that he accepted a cash payment in hopes of a reduced sentence from a friend of the killer makes him look even worse, honestly.

Lucie took a silly risk to make easy money (again, in no way makes what happened to her okay). Father has the air of wealth, so not sure why he didn't just fund her holiday instead of letting her do that. Even a safe country has its issues.

There is a movie called the "earthquake bird" that takes a really similar tone and everything to this story and even worst because this is real life, the story of lucie was tragic indeed but there are so many others with stories similar to this one and no voice to speak up i think netflix should be doing more documentaries like this so we know about those sad cases there is a similiar active case about a 21 year old girl that flew to japan 16 years ago with a one way ticket and never return to this day no one knows anything about her i there are thousands stories like this we need more, but i agree that we needed to know more about lucie who she was.

Extremely biased story telling, eluding many important facts of the story, including the father receiving 450k£ from the killer to limit his sentence, or the existence of her friend and colleague who had received a phone call from the killer on day one.

Only the father and cops are giving testimonies to re-write History, and skip all the aspects that could hurt Japanese police.

When you check who the director is, you understand the story is told in a way to clean Tokyo police image only.

Netflix should be ashamed of producing such content, without any fact checking, and depicting an absolutely misleading representation of the actual story.

Go on YouTube or listen to podcasts, you will have better quality content to understand the full story instead of wasting your time with this piece of propaganda.

This is obviously a tragic case, the anguish and desperation are perfectly understandable.

However, the attitude? Why do British nationals so often behave like this in an international setting? From British journalists throwing stereotypical comments about another culture, to Tim Blackman's initial disrespect and antagonistic attitude to random Japanese people/cops who are just trying to go about their lives. Again, it's a serious case, and it's understandable that certain standard behavior is out-of-the-window here, but trying to stick your posters anywhere then giving an officer a hard time for nicely telling him not to?

Imagine a foreigner who made a scene in London after their hostess daughter went missing. They then tried to stick posters everywhere downtown, then their entourage of journalists/friends throw stereotypical comments like "oh you know the Brits, they may seem reserved, but there's a dark side under the belly," sneering at the police instead of trying to engage with them first... they might be tackled to the ground forthwith, let alone being given big platforms to present their case to the media and being allowed to do whatever they want (including setting up a hotline, which the Tokyo Met claims might interfere with investigation), all the while with many locals offering assistance.

Look, not suggesting that the Tokyo Met is beyond reproach here, all police forces are flawed, including the Scotland Yard, and their actions deserve scrutiny. Just saying that a sense of self-entitlement isn't going to help anything.