
MISS KING (ミス・キング) is a 2025 Japanese web series directed by Yamagishi Santa and released by ABEMA in Japan and available on Netflix in the United States and other countries. Episode 1 was released on September 25, 2025 with a new episode released each subsequent Monday. A total of 8 episodes has been planned with the final episode scheduled for release on November 17, 2025.
Kunimi Asuka (NON/Rena Nouen) is the daughter of a renowned Shōgi prodigy Kunimi Shoichi (Nakamura Shido), who abandoned her and her mother Keiko (Okunuki Kaoru) during her childhood. Asuka, who had learned shogi to spend time with her father, abandons the game after seeing how it caused her mother trauma. Years later, Asuka and her mother, now dying of cancer, live in poverty and barely survive on Asuka's earnings. Meanwhile Asuka's estranged father, now named Yuki Shoichi, has found fame and fortune in the shogi world, with a new wife Yuki Kaori (Yamaguchi Sayaka) and son Tatsuya (Mori Shoot) at his side. Unable to fulfill her dying mother's final wish for a reunion with Shoichi and with both mother and daughter seemingly written out of his best seller memoir, which discusses family, as if they never existed, Asuka vows revenge.
Todo Seigo (Fujiki Naohito), a former professional shogi player who also has a grudge against Yuki Shoichi, stops Asuka from attempting to kill her father at a shogi title match, telling her that murdering him would only make him a martyr. Instead, Todo tells Asuka that the only way to "kill" someone like her father is to beat him at his own beloved game, shogi. In the heat of the moment, Asuka takes the shogi board of a pair of watching spectators and accurately predicts the remaining moves for her father's match. Todo, who notices what Asuka did, realizes that instead of just being a throwaway comment he had meant to dissuade her from actually trying to kill her father, that Asuka has the innate shogi talent needed to finally defeat Shoichi in a match. Todo proposes to Asuka that together, they can seek revenge through shogi.
But to be able to face her father in a competitive match of shogi, Asuka must first become a kishi, a professional shogi player. However, in the history of shogi, no woman has to date been able to qualify to compete as a kishi.
The series also features Kurashina Kana as Sakai Reiko, Seigo's girlfriend and an early supporter of Asuka; Narumi Yui as Hayama Yuna, Tatsuya's fiancee and joryu kishi (women's professional) who has an idol-like following in the shogi world. However, her skills at shogi reveal that she is more than just a pretty face. Nishioka Tokuma plays Ando Tessai, a former shogi association president and former mentor to Yuki Kaori.
This show provides examples of:
- Chess Motifs: Technically shogi, but shogi is essentially Japanese chess. Asuka is named by her father after shogi's equivalent of a rook.
- Curb-Stomp Battle: In episode 7, Asuka takes the kishi admission test. To pass and become a kishi, Asuka must win three of five matches against current professionals. While she wins her first match, Asuka loses two straight matches as she becomes distracted after Reiko's bar is trashed and Todo is nowhere to be found. Asuka regains focus for her fourth match after finding Todo. For her fourth match, Asuka is matched against a professional who is still considered a rookie. The match begins. When the show goes back to the match, we see the judge and the announcer stunned and Asuka's opponent already thoroughly beaten. Asuka's opponent is forced to concede.
- Revenge: Asuka's motivation for training to become a professional shogi player; to defeat her estranged father
- Parental Abandonment: A losing streak by Shoichi turns him against his first wife and daughter, Asuka. Despite their pleas, Shoichi walks out on them. Years later, Shoichi is at the top of Japan's shogi world as chairman of the association, winner of multiple titles, a best selling book living in wealth with his second family. Meanwhile, Asuka and Keiko have been left behind and struggle to not get evicted from their apartment. The book in which Shoichi talks about his family; it only mentions his current wife and son. Asuka and Keiko are not mentioned at all.
- Serious Business: Shogi. Shoichi's obsession with shogi leads him to become violent and abusive towards his first family, ultimately abandoning them. It does not help that Asuka, at a young age, accidentally solved a shogi problem that had perplexed Shoichi. Flashbacks of Yuki Kaoru (Shoichi's second wife) counter-productive attempts to break the gender barrier during her time at the shoreikai (apprentice school for would-be professional shogi players).
- Stage Mom: Yuki Kaoru. She is exceptionally controlling of her son, Tatsuya, assigning him to become a director of the shogi association. Yuna Hayami, Tetsuya's fiancee and promising joryu kishi (female professional), is forced by Kaoru to retire from shogi as a condition for being able to marry Tatsuya. And that is not counting her attempts to thwart her stepdaughter, Asuka, banning her from tournaments and attempting to buy her silence about her relationship with Yuki Shoichi.
- Visit by Divorced Dad: Shoichi discovers that his estranged daughter, Asuka, has been playing shogi competitively and is rapidly climbing the rankings. He goes in person to watch the finals of a shogi tournament between Asuka and his future daughter-in-law, Yuna Hayami.
