Minamida Minami Bengoshi wa Tensaihada

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This Kansai TV legal drama, a Japanese remake of the Korean series Extraordinary Attorney Woo, follows a rookie lawyer with autism spectrum disorder who joins a major law firm and encounters a variety of cases and people.

Extraordinary Attorney Minami (Japanese title: Minamida Minami Bengoshi wa Tensaihada) is produced by Kansai TV and premiered on October 19, 2026, in the Fuji TV network's Monday 10 p.m. slot, with the first episode extended by 15 minutes. Each episode is also released worldwide on Netflix right after it airs; in Korea, Netflix lists it as Isanghan Byeonhosa Minami, rated 15+. The original is Extraordinary Attorney Woo, a 16-episode series written by Moon Ji-won and directed by Yoo In-sik that aired on ENA from June 29 to August 18, 2022. Park Eun-bin won the Grand Prize (Daesang) in the TV category at the 59th Baeksang Arts Awards for the series, and on Netflix's weekly global Top 10 for non-English TV (ranked at the time by hours viewed), it was No. 1 for seven consecutive weeks, for the weeks ending July 31 through September 11, 2022. The Japanese version's first episode drew average ratings of 7.4% household and 3.9% individual (Video Research, Kanto region). The theme song is “Iinjanai,” newly written for the series by the three-piece band muque, the band's first theme song for a drama series.

The screenplay is by Shigenori Tanabe and Moral. Tanabe leads the theater company Lolita Danshaku (“Baron Lolita”) and has written scripts for dramas including Only Just Married and Living-Room Matsunaga-san. Four directors are credited, among them Yoshishige Miyake. At Kansai TV, Miyake directed He Who Can't Marry and War of Lie, among others, and he was also one of the directors of Boku no Aruku Michi (2006), whose protagonist is a young man with autism. The whale illustration on the poster and the opening animation are by Shishi Yamazaki, who created the opening sequence for the NHK morning drama The Tiger and Her Wings. The producers are Haruka Kato and two others, with production cooperation from MMJ.

Mana Ashida plays the protagonist, Minami Minamida. Minami graduated at the top of her class from the University of Tokyo's Faculty of Law and placed first in the bar exam, but, running up against prejudice about autism spectrum disorder, she is turned down by every firm until she joins Hirokawa & Howard Law Office, a major firm headed by Nagisa Hirokawa (Kami Hiraiwa). She loves whales and introduces herself by her name, Minamida Minami, which is a palindrome in Japanese. In episode 1, Minami is assigned to the team of partner lawyer Kengo Miyaji (Makiya Yamaguchi) and stands in court for the first time in an attempted-murder case between an elderly couple, where she and Miyaji disagree on the direction of the defense. Fumiya Takahashi plays Minato Funai, a paralegal who supports Minami's work, and Akihiro Kakuta plays her father, Makoto Minamida, who has raised his daughter alone and runs a rice-ball shop. Kanata Hosoda and Shiori Kubo play Takuma Himi and Koharu Asahi, rookie lawyers on the same team; Rinka Kakihara plays Ririi Madoka, Minami's only friend; and Kaede Tsuchimura (Sakura Takeuchi), secretary to the head of the firm, is a character newly created for the Japanese version.

Mana Ashida said she had enjoyed watching the original, so she was surprised to be offered the role. To prepare, she read books about autism spectrum disorder, talked with the production's supervising expert and visited a learning center for people with developmental disabilities, where she met many people. She said that even echolalia, one of Minami's traits, must come with its own reasons and feelings behind the words, and that emotions are what she most wants to treat with care. In an interview released on the day of the premiere, she said that because Minami is a character who finds it hard to look people in the eye, she was not really able to see her co-stars' expressions while acting, and only properly saw them for the first time when she watched the finished episode 1. Fumiya Takahashi said his mother, a fan of the original, had long urged him to watch it, and that being offered the role was what finally got him to do so; Akihiro Kakuta said that the actor who played the father in the original was so wonderful that part of him wanted to ask viewers not to compare, but that he wanted to create his own take on the father. Producer Haruka Kato said the decision to remake the series brought both joy and enormous pressure, and that thinking about who could convey the warmth of the original together with the team brought Mana Ashida to mind, which led to the offer.

See alsoExtraordinary Attorney Woo 2022

Drama Lineup editors · Fact-checked against: ktv.jp, netflix.com, Japanese Wikipedia, mantan-web.jp · 2026-10-20