Miss King Isn’t a Tale About Revenge but Freedom

It’s rare to find a television series as cinematic as AbemaTV’s Miss King, an eight-episode drama that aired from September to November 2025.

Written and co-directed by Yamagishi Santa, who shared the helm with Tsubakimoto Keijiro, Miss King is set in the world of shogi (which is a kind of Japanese chess), but the game is nothing but a narrative tool through which this short series allows its female characters to subvert the society that limits them.

This review contains very, very mild spoilers. Read it at your own risk! If you prefer, you can read our spoiler-free summary — it’s at the bottom!

Setting Up Miss King: A Story About Revenge?

When we first meet Kunimi Asuka (Non), she’s sobbing in a filthy, dark bathroom. Her destination, however, couldn’t be more different. She soon makes her way to a beautiful, impeccable traditional Japanese house, where the famous shogi player Yuuki Shoichi (Nakamura Shido II) is competing for his 100th title. Even though she tries to navigate the place discreetly, Asuka’s poverty and plainness stand out. She hides in a tiny room, knife in hand.

Still, Asuka isn’t a bad person, and you can see her waver. Before she makes a final decision, the narrative takes us back in time, and we witness how Asuka is treated unfairly at work. She’s often aloof, but shows a spark of life when she cares for her dying mother. From her tiny, cheap apartment, she sees her father, the renowned kishi (that is, a professional shogi player) Yuuki Shoichi, on TV and in bookstores as he releases his autobiography.

Her mother’s last wish is to see her father again, and so, Asuka decides to humiliate herself at Shoichi’s latest event to get his attention. His second wife, Yuuki Kaori (Yamaguchi Sayaka), stops her and Asuka is dragged out like a criminal — her mother passes away without the re-encounter ever happening.

Once we’re brought back to the tiny room where Asuka shakes with the knife, we understand why. We understand her anger, pain, and frustration. She has no pride to speak of, no passion to defend, nothing to live for. Asuka is a shell, filled with rage against her negligent father and the prejudiced society that made him successful.

The one to stop her is former shogi player Todo Seigo (Fujiki Naohito), a person who also holds a grudge against Shoichi but understands that killing him now will only immortalise him. If Asuka wants to take him down, she should take away from him what he loves most: shogi.

While its premise might lead you to believe this is a revenge tale, Miss King is actually a story about self-discovery, nonconformity, and the pursuit of freedom. It is an incredibly cinematic journey of a young woman who needs to master her emotions to defeat the world that has always tried to silence her. Asuka’s universe may be gritty and sorrowful, but it still has an electrifying, magnetic rhythm to it that compels you to come back, episode after episode.

Shogi as a Symbol of an Unfair Society

With every new instalment, we understand that Asuka is a product of abandonment. As a child, her passion for shogi was smothered by a father who saw in her a threatening spark of talent. Her mother, incapable of overcoming a divorce she never saw coming, couldn’t honestly support the traits in her daughter that reminded her of her uncaring ex-husband. Who Asuka is was never of any importance to her parents, and, as a consequence, her identity was never clear to Asuka herself.

To Asuka, shogi went from a shared passion to the symbol of a negligent, self-centred father. Her passion turned into numbness, and she kept on living just to fill up the emptiness that her father left behind in her mother’s life. Once her mother is gone, that numbness turns into outrage. But, without knowing who she is and what she really wants, Asuka has no proper means through which she can channel all that anger. Asuka may be furious, but she’s completely aimless.

Society has made her father a king, while leaving Asuka and her mother to fend for themselves. The world we live in isn’t a kind place to women, and Asuka knows that. Surprisingly enough, Miss King is a story about women fighting such a sexist world. It’s a story about how men are often free to climb the social ladder while women are forced into specific roles. When Todo offers Asuka an objective — to become the first-ever female kishi and defeat her father — Asuka has to navigate a male-dominated industry that constantly dismisses her.

Asuka as Her Own Worst Enemy

Being a woman is seen as a weakness, and sexism pulses underneath every single storyline in Miss King. Asuka is a “rarity,” an “eccentricity” when winning, but it’s “not a surprise” when she loses a game of shogi. Hayami Yuna (Narumi Yui), a talented joryu kishi (a female shogi player) who is to marry Shoichi’s son Yuuki Tatsuya (Mori Shoot), is forced to give up on her career upon marriage. After her games, reporters don’t ask her about her results as a shogi player, but about her preparations for the wedding. Yuna’s dream to become the first-ever female kishi drowns with every scene that portrays her as a cute doll playing shogi. While Asuka fights back, Yuna seems tired, jaded — after all, she’s been facing the intrinsic misogyny of this industry for too long.

Every single woman who has tried to become a kishi has been mocked, silenced, and belittled. Soon, Miss King shows us that Asuka’s true goal isn’t to defeat her father, but to defeat an entire system that enabled her father to become who he is.

Beyond the unfair world that surrounds her, Asuka is her own worst enemy. For half of Miss King‘s run, she keeps coming and going on her resolve. She constantly wavers, uncertain about how to move forward in a society that keeps pushing her back. Asuka is stubborn, single-minded, angry, impulsive, and impatient. It’s only once she learns how to tame her emotions and wield her temper to her benefit that she’s able to march confidently towards her objective.

While Todo encourages Asuka to sharpen her shogi skills and develop the self-confidence she lacks, it’s the sweet bar owner Sakai Reiko (Kurashina Kana) who serves as a bridge between characters. She sees Todo and Asuka for who they really are, and she knows exactly how to approach them to help them grow as individuals. Her kindness counteracts Kaori’s selfishness. Kaori, Shoichi’s current wife, is determined to keep Asuka hidden in the shadows while allowing her husband and son to shine in whatever way she sees fit. Kaori is the disturbing result of the sexist society that stopped her from being who she really wanted to be: once she accepts that she can’t beat the system, Kaori decides to manipulate it through its own rules.

The Beauty & Cleverness of Miss King

That’s where the cleverness of this script really shines. Narratively, Asuka’s journey is fairly straightforward, but Miss King allows its characters to be more than shallow caricatures. They are all given well-rounded characterisation — no one is completely good or evil.

Our antagonists, Shoichi, Kaori, and Tatsuya, are self-obsessed and envious. They are keen to place their own interests, desires, fears, and insecurities above anything else. Their own pains and struggles have been used towards destroying others — a path that will inevitably lead to their downfall. They aren’t just “bad” people, but individuals with backstories, reasons, and sorrows who make one misguided decision after another while seeing themselves as victims instead of active characters in their own lives.

Meanwhile, Asuka embodies nonconformity: she’s loud, enraged, persistent, and couldn’t care less for tradition. She’s often seen in dark clothes, and her style isn’t ladylike at all. Yuna, on the other hand, represents conformity: she’s quiet and polite, feminine and timid. When Asuka and Yuna come together, however, we realise how they are both aware of the discrimination that hinders their every move. Asuka inspires Yuna to take back control of her life, to dare to defy the prejudiced expectations that have been imposed on them.

Miss King then offers a variety of internal, interpersonal, and external conflicts that keep its narrative moving forward organically. Most importantly, all of the core conflicts in Asuka’s journey relate to her ability to control her emotions: Miss King is a battle of a young woman against herself, after all. Over and over again, as she stumbles and falls, we see Asuka rediscovering her identity to achieve her goals.

All of that is delivered through a script that appreciates silence — which is incredibly rare these days. Even though the dialogue can be a bit trite at times, this is a story that allows its characters to be quiet. There’s no such thing as unnecessary narration or spoken exposition in Miss King. With a limited runtime of 30 to 45 minutes per episode, no scene or line is wasted. The series knows when to show and when to tell, which allows the show’s stunning cinematography and flawless sound design to take the reins.

Miss King is extraordinarily shot and incredibly edited. Every single frame counts on meaningful compositions and careful production design, which are perfectly combined and given rhythm through thoughtful editing. Sound design plays a huge role in Miss King, too, offering the story an extra layer of significance and tension. Miss King might be dark, but it’s simply a marvel to look at (and listen to).

Should You Watch Miss King?

Thematically and visually gritty, Miss King is an intense portrayal of trauma, sexism, parental neglect, and hypocrisy. However, this isn’t a toxic narrative that pulls its characters into endless spirals of malice. Miss King is, ultimately, a story of courageous women who fight the odds to reclaim their identities and freedom. That means that, if you expect it to be a classic tale of revenge, you’ll surely be disappointed. Asuka’s journey reminds us that, in real life, revenge isn’t as cathartic as the movies make it out to be — because what is done is done and nothing will ever change our pasts. But Asuka reminds us that we can still create our own futures, and there’s nothing more empowering than being free to be whoever we choose to be.

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