Tokyo gets two personalities in the first minutes: neon after dark, restraint by morning. The opening montage spins through nightlife while Ichito Shimotori explains Japan’s uneasy relationship with sex, then deposits him back into a culture where even saying what he does for a living can freeze a room.
Netflix’s seven-episode S&X, adapted from Kisei Tada’s manga and directed by Shogo Kusano, builds its drama around that contradiction. Ichito, played by Kento Nakajima, is a 32-year-old sex therapist running the modest Shimotori Clinic with nurse Yuta Saikawa and administrator Marin Natsume.
Patients arrive with addiction, insecurity, trauma, misconduct, objectification and relationship problems, and Ichito greets each confession with the calmest face imaginable. The joke is that the man professionally qualified to discuss intimacy would rather keep his own buried under several locks.
His sessions avoid the easy route of turning every sexual problem into a punchline or a provocative set piece. Ichito listens, asks questions and creates individual prescriptions shaped around the person sitting across from him. The series understands something television occasionally forgets: two people talking can carry plenty of tension when one of them desperately does not want to say the next sentence. And Ichito usually knows exactly which sentence that is.
The Doctor on the Other Side of the Desk
Nakajima gives Ichito a useful split personality without making either side feel false. With patients, he is patient and precise, capable of discussing humiliating experiences without changing his tone or turning clinical. Around his own therapist, Sion Kaze, the posture begins to collapse.
The sharpest early reveal comes when Ichito admits that he does not believe he has the right to love anyone and cannot imagine himself having sex. Then comes the confession that reframes his entire career: he became a sex therapist because he hates sex.
Nakajima does not oversell it. The performance relies on pauses, guarded expressions and tiny shifts in posture, especially after conversations brush against his past. The restraint matters because Ichito could easily have become the familiar television genius who fixes everyone while delivering wisdom from a safe emotional distance. S&X keeps dragging him into the same messy territory he helps patients cross.
The clinic staff keeps those sessions from turning into seven hours of solemn nodding. Saikawa and Marin bring teasing, irritation and ordinary workplace energy into the room, giving the clinic enough personality that it feels like a small business staffed by people rather than a theme-delivery machine. Professor Daisuke Kurusu, Ichito’s mentor, offers another professional mirror, yet Sion’s sessions cut deepest because Ichito cannot hide behind expertise there. Apparently, therapists also get homework.
Yumi Makes the Theory Personal
Yumi Ichinose complicates Ichito’s tidy division between professional understanding and private avoidance. Played by Yuko Araki, she is his childhood first love, returning 17 years after he vanished from her life without explanation.
Her profession makes the pairing especially effective. Yumi works as a popular local reporter associated with a clean, innocent public image, so both characters live inside roles that demand a degree of performance. He is the man who can discuss sex with anyone. She is the woman expected to embody public respectability. Put them alone together and those neat identities become much harder to maintain.
Their strongest scenes are quiet ones. Ichito and Yumi talking through what they want, what frightens them and what his trauma means for any possible relationship carries greater weight than grand declarations could. Araki also prevents Yumi from becoming a reward waiting patiently for Ichito to heal. By the final episode, she becomes clearer about her own needs and less willing to let his fear dictate every emotional boundary.
That choice keeps the romance from functioning like treatment. Loving Yumi does not repair Ichito. Being with her forces him to confront the parts of himself his professional life lets him intellectualize. Romance gets awkward once nobody is allowed to prescribe the answer.
Better Behind Closed Doors
The patient cases give S&X room to address sexual anxiety, queer relationships, consent, harassment, objectification and illegal filming without treating any of them like daring television trophies. The camera and writing keep most of the emphasis on conversation, reaction and discomfort instead of nudity.
That restraint makes the weaker material easier to spot. Some cases resolve before their emotional implications have settled, while a few conversations linger long enough to start sounding like the script has underlined its point twice. The season also loses some of its intimacy when Dean Norio Toyohara’s opposition and wider public scrutiny begin pushing the clinic into larger external conflict.
Those developments make logical sense for a sex therapist working within a judgmental social environment, yet they rarely produce scenes as interesting as one patient hesitating before an admission across Ichito’s desk. Kusano’s direction is strongest in contained spaces where silence, eye contact and an interrupted sentence can alter the mood.
Seven episodes keeps these detours from spreading too far. The series knows its richest subject is not sex itself, but the strange amount of courage required to talk about it without hiding behind jokes, shame or professional vocabulary. Sometimes the bravest thing on television is finishing the sentence.
S&X premiered globally on Netflix on August 20, 2026. Based on Kisei Tada’s manga series, the Japanese romantic drama follows Ichito Shimotori, a dedicated sex therapist who thoughtfully treats various intimate sexual issues for his patients while privately struggling with complex relational challenges of his own.
Where to Watch S&X Online
Full Credits
Title: S&X
Distributor: Netflix
Release date: August 20, 2026
Rating: TV-MA
Running time: 45 minutes per episode
Director: Shôgo Kusano
Writers: Tomoko Yoshida, Kisei Tada, Takumi Baba, Shôgo Kusano, Ruriko Matsushima
Producers and Executive Producers: Kôsuke Oshida, Daisuke Saito, Mariko Seto
Cast: Kento Nakajima, Yûko Araki, Ryota Miura, Sawako Fujima
The Review
S&X
S&X finds its best television in the uncomfortable pause before someone says what they actually mean. Kento Nakajima gives Ichito a gentle professional confidence that cracks convincingly around Yumi and during his sessions with Sion, while the clinic cases treat intimacy with unusual patience. Some patient stories leave before they have fully landed, and the public scrutiny plot generates less tension than two people talking across a desk. Seven episodes, thankfully, means the weaker detours never hijack the show for long. Awkwardness has rarely been this therapeutic.
PROS
- Nakajima’s restrained, warm performance
- Thoughtful handling of sexual taboos
- Strong Ichito and Yumi chemistry
- Charming clinic ensemble
- Intimate therapy-room conversations
CONS
- Several cases resolve too quickly
- Uneven pacing between episodes
- Public scrutiny subplot lacks punch
- Occasional overly deliberate dialogue
