Everyone seems to love Final Fantasy XIV: Dad of Light, and it’s not what you think

Are you interested in watching a series about Final Fantasy XIV that’s actually about watching two people play the game? You might be surprised. Final Fantasy XIV: Dad of Light is on Netflix right now, and it turns out the show is actually really good even if you have little to no interest in FFXIV as an actual game. Because it’s not about “how awesome is our game,” it’s about two people connecting after years apart.

The show centers around Akio and his father Hakutaro, who have a distant relationship with one another and only connected ages ago around the original Final Fantasy game. Now that Akio is older, he starts connecting with his father again through FFXIV, and also while pretending to be someone else… which sounds goofy, but it leads into an examination of how people can connect through video games despite the gaps in their lives. Which is something less than the cynical bit of cross-media synergy you might expect.