2025 review<\/a> of the series in the Japan Times.<\/p>\nThe ministry’s rehabilitation bureau had justified the campaign on grounds that the show’s depictions of participants’ harsh upbringing, atonement and personal growth jibe with its belief that “a person can change.”<\/p>\n
The ministry promoted the program \u2013 which says it aims to showcase “people who are unapologetically themselves” — as part of the campaign, and the show will continue to air without the government’s support.<\/p>\n
“It was never the intention of this collaboration to endorse crime or delinquency, nor to glorify or trivialize these acts from someone’s past,” the ministry said in a statement on Friday.<\/p>\n
“But we have received a lot of concerns and criticism that it can cause discomfort among people victimized by crimes,” it said, adding that the partnership will be terminated.<\/p>\n
“Badly in Love” Season 2 came under fire after an episode aired in which one cast member confessed that, as a teen, he had been arrested for setting someone on fire to prove he was “not chickening out.”<\/p>\n
The cancellation of the campaign, however, “isn’t meant to deny efforts to help rehabilitate people who committed crimes in the past,” the ministry said.<\/p>\n
![\"JAPAN-SUBCULTURE-CRIME-DELINQUENCY-NETFLIX](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/gettyimages-2271628610.jpg#.jpeg\")
<\/p>\n
This picture taken on April 17, 2026, shows “Badly in Love” Season 1 participant Otoha posing at an event in Tokyo.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Yuichi YAMAZAKI\/AFP via Getty Images<\/p>\n
“Badly in Love” executive producer Dai Ota told AFP in April that prior to running Season 1, the production team had “extensive internal discussions” to ensure the show would not be perceived as “condoning the violence.”<\/p>\n
“Our hope was to show that these young people \u2014 who have often been marginalized or labeled as ‘social outcasts’ \u2014 are simply youths who worry, struggle and genuinely grow,” he said.<\/p>\n
In:<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Japan’s justice ministry said Friday it will cancel a collaboration with a controversial Netflix dating show featuring ex-juvenile…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":78132,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[8,6904],"class_list":["post-78131","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-japan","tag-japan","tag-netflix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78131","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=78131"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/78131\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/78132"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=78131"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=78131"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=78131"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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<\/p>\n