SPOILERS!! SPOILERS!! SPOILERS!!
Girl From Nowhere is an Thai anthology series about a girl named Nanno. Nanno is the kind of girl you don’t want to come to your school. When she transfers, she is there to reveal the misdeeds and injustices around school. This is another series that I found on Netflix while browsing through to find new shows to watch. Each episode has things that happen in the every day world and actually brings these things to light. So, I guess let’s just hop right into it.
Episode 1: The Ugly Truth
Episode one of Girl from Nowhere begins with Nanno coming to a school that had recently earned the “Purest School of the Year” award. The episode begins with the words, “There are two sides of a coin.” This is the moral of this story. As Nanno transfers to the school, she soon learns about the darkness that has been intertwined in the school. As she prepares to help a teacher with a yoga video for meditation at the school, she finds herself in a mighty fine predicament. After she meets with Mr.Win alone, she finds herself in the hands of a child predator. (Of course, Nanno already knows and is going to do everything in her power to expose the misdeeds.) She plays along with his game for a short while. When Nanno asks if Mr. Win is afraid of the consequences of his actions, he threatens her with releasing the sex tapes and ruining her. Nanno doesn’t take kindly to his threats and quickly turns the tables by getting on his family’s good side. Now, the tutor of his daughter, Nanno uses her as a way to bait out Mr. Win. Eventually, Mr. Win loses everything, including his daughter, and he is exposed as the creep he is. While the victims are given their closure and justice, the school has lost everything because the principal of the school and a teacher were preying on children.
The Ugly Truth was one of the better episodes of Girl from Nowhere. It dealt with a very heavy subject, and one that can make people uncomfortable. It deals with child predators in a school setting, as well as abortion of the predator’s child. There is some very heavy scenes in this one, of course there is a lot of sexualization of student. (There kind of has to be given the episode.) The one that I really felt wasn’t necessary, and honestly made me feel really upset was the death of the daughter that had nothing to do with the situation. Anyways, overall it was a fantastic episode. Nanno’s plan was well executed, and with everything that happens, the story in a way has a happy ending. The misdeeds are brought to life and the perpetrators are taken into custody. So, to me this episode had a satisfactory ending. I would watch this episode of Girl from Nowhere again. It keeps you interested the plan was rather ingenious.
Episode 2: Apologies
Episode two: Apologies follows a group of boys who are sex crazed and are trying desperately to sleep with Nanno. They even go as far as bribing two girls to help them in their conquest. Of course being as popular as they are, the girls agree to help because they like the boys. They get jealous when the group of boys are giving all their attention to Nanno. This is when things get out of hand. The girls invite Nanno to a party. This is where they put their plan into motion. They try to get Nanno drunk, and when that doesn’t work they decide to drug her. That is when the boys take over and take Nanno to a bedroom. After trying to leave, the girls force Nanno to stay in the room. While being raped, Nanno begins her reign of terror. The guy raping her is under the impression he killed her. Thus, the group decides to bury her dead body. (This is where you learn there is no way that Nanno is a normal human being.) As she is being buried, she regains conscientiousness. As she does, the friends then decide to bury her alive. Now, knowing Nanno, this has sealed their fate. When the group thinks they are finally rid of Nanno, she suddenly appears at the school.
Apologies was an okay episode. The first half of the episode is nothing but everyone cyber bullying Nanno. It is the boys doing nothing but talking about how they are going to sleep with her, and the girls going on about how she is a slut and has already slept with everyone in the school. So, really the first half of the episode is super redundant and boring. However, after everything heats up, and the group of friends kill Nanno the first time, it starts to get better. Although, I don’t really care for the end. I feel like it really doesn’t give closure to what happens with the group of friends. Do they go crazy? Does Nanno let them off the hook after awhile? (This I doubt.) Like there is really no definitive end to Apologies.
Episode 3: Trophy
Episode 3: Trophy is Nanno taking on Lerdvithi School. A school that has won the “Most Outstanding School Award”. This school has what they call geniuses. These are students with special abilities that exceed expectations. They are the elite of said ability. The school believes that there is no such thing as limits and the students must exceed those limits to not be a leech on society. That is where Mew comes in. She is just an ordinary student with no special abilities. Yet, everyone around her slowly become a genius. She quickly becomes jealous and, Nanno talks her into cheating the system. She does this by taking other people art and throwing some paint over it, calling it her own. It doesn’t take long and she becomes a genius under false terms. When the school has an open house program for the genius students, Mew is asked to create a piece of artwork on stage in front of the audience. Being the fraud she is, she can’t create art, so she decides to break her hand instead of coming clean. She then tells everyone that her friend since childhood was the one that did it. After a few days, and other minor circumstances, the teachers decide that she can still go on stage, using her non-dominant hand to paint, as she had stated that she can paint with both hands.
Trophy is one of the meh episodes. It really didn’t do anything for me. It was overall boring. I mean it was a girl complaining that she wasn’t a genius. Yet, she never did anything to try and better herself. It was more annoying than anything. I felt this episode was rushed, and just not quite up to par with the other two episodes. Of course, add in the ending to all that, and it was kind of just annoying. I mean at the end of the episode, again you don’t really get much closure with what happens to Mew. Does she just live on the rest of her life ripping off people’s artwork? Does she finally come clean after awhile? I don’t know. I just personally didn’t really care for this episode all in all.
Now, with this rating system, I was rather lenient. I only compared the episodes to each other instead of all other shows that I have watched. So, three star is completely average, and 5 stars means it is one of the better episodes. I will continue to do Girl from Nowhere episodes. I will break them up like I have done here since it is an anthology series. It only feels right to break them up and review them separately considering they are separate stories. I will post them on Monday’s until I have finished the 12 episodes. I am doing this because I really don’t have any manga right now. I haven’t made it to my library. So, to fill in the gap. Welcome to Girl from Nowhere. So, that’s all for now. Thanks for taking the time to check out my review of Girl from Nowhere. I hope to see everyone in the next one.
DJ's World 
I think you may have overlooked some subtle things that may have been intentionally done in the episodes, if they’re not intentional then i am just overthinking. Anyway in the 2nd episode i thought it was intentional to not have a real definitive ending as it could just as well be a parallel to real-life’s impact on victims of rape/cyber bullying where apologies are all people can do and nothing will really truly fix the victim.
In addition, the third episode really hit hard for me specifically because it could (potentially) allude to some real issues with elitist schools having to put their concern about reputation above the fact that one of their student is a fraud. This is very true to life where there aren’t much you can do about a system that protects the guilty not even a supernatural being who can manipulate situations to her favor.
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With episdode 2, yeah. I can see that. I didn’t really even think of that. That is an interesting idea. Thanks for mentioning this. With episode 3, I 100% agree with that.
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it’s kinda a way to tell supernatural stories popularly used in japan. they don’t give you closure, leaving you to think and assume for yourself what the heck happened and what would the fate of each characters. girl from nowhere borrows many concepts from japanese horror mangas and dramas. you can tell that it’s heavily influenced by tomie by itou junji and jabame yumeko. this kind of idea is pretty rare for thai tv series.
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They intentionally didn’t give closure, to be honest not everything needs to be “completed” in other people’s eyes. i think the episodes were good, the death of the daughter kind of shows nanno will do anything for karma (since that’s what she depicts). Wether the karma be good, or bad:)
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After watching the season a few times. I knew I wasn’t going to get closure with most if not all of them. (Which is okay
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I did after watching several episodes realize that I wasn’t going to get closure through most if not all of them. (Which is okay) it was just a different format for me who was used to American shows where 99% of the time you get happy endings or closure etc etc.
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For episode 1 I think that the daughter died as a result of him forcing his victims to get abortions. The fact we don’t get closure for most episodes shows how committed Nanno is to her job, such as in the TK episode. Although she loves him she has to give him his punishment and move on – she never stays around.
Mew’s case is interesting as she doesn’t get a violent punishment like nearly everyone else. Will she own up to it? Will she continue a life of guilt and ruining friendships? I think the fact this episode didn’t have closure either made it interesting to think about
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About the death of the daughter in the first episode, I think it’s to realize the teacher the consequences of his deed, due to his such dirty works other girls could have been suffering the fate that his daughter did. As per second episode I don’t think there is any kinds of closure to what they did in the brief moment of lust and the mental imbalancement caused to them may have given them a realization for self reflection even though unwillingly. And third episode is so not boring. There are so many little things in that episode that are a huge key to the life of what people call “genius”. Being genius is not a thing it’s just a justification given by society to you for being you in the way that everyone wants to be you. But in case of mew instead of finding her speciality she let herself get lost in the big crowd of “I am the best”. The end says that she will suffer not being herself for the rest of her life. She will always be someone that could never be the one.
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