Is ‘Burn the House Down’ Based on a True Story?

Netflix has been striking gold recently with original Japanese shows and films. After the huge success of Alice in Borderland, the streaming giant amped up their original Japanese content with awesome shows like Sanctuary or First Love. Now, a new show – Burn the House Down – is arriving, and it feels awfully familiar, so people are wondering – is Burn the House Down based on a true story?

Burn the House Down is not based on a true story and is completely fictional. However, it is based on a Japanese manga series called Mitarai-ke, Enjō Suru (literally translated to The Mitarai Family Goes Up In Flames). 

The manga series, coming out in a magazine called Kiss between 2017 and 2021, garnered major success, prompting an English version release in 2022, as well as the Netflix Original series adaptation due to arrive on July 13, 2023. If you want to learn more about the story behind Burn the House Down, you’re absolutely in the right place.

What is ‘Burn the House Down’ about?

Burn the House Down is a Netflix Original series due to arrive on the platform on July 13, 2023. It’s a mystery thriller/drama about an incident that happened in the past, which is now coming to light again as a possible conspiracy against one person.

That person is the mother of Anzu Murata, a young woman who works as a housekeeper for a housekeeping agency. When she was just a kid, the house of the rich Mitarai family burned down in a suspicious fire. Osamu Mitarai’s first wife – Anzu’s mother – was accused of starting the fire herself, which practically destroyed her life.

On the other hand, Osamu remarried a woman named Makiko, and 13 years after the original incident, Makiko hired a housekeeper for their big, beautiful, rebuilt home. Anzu Murata – our lead – becomes the Mitarai family’s housekeeper. 

In reality, Anzu was there to try and find evidence about what really happened 13 years ago that had her mother’s – and her – life in shambles. As the plot thickens, we’ll get to see that nothing was as it seemed those 13 years ago. It wasn’t an accident, nor was Anzu’s mother at fault.

The show was created and shot in Japan, with Netflix being the executive producer. Yoichiro Hirakawa’ll direct it, while Arisa Kaneko will take the screenwriting duties. Shin’ichi Takahashi and Kei Haruna are also producing, whereas Takeshi Kobayashi is composing the music for the show.

As for the cast, Mei Nagano is portraying the lead, Anzu Murata, while Kyoka Suzuki plays her stepmother or her father’s second wife, Makiko Mitarai. Mitsuhiro Oikawa plays Osamu Mitarai, while Asuka Kuda portrays Kiichi Mitarai. There’s also Shinji Mitarai, portrayed by Taishi Nakagawa, and Yuri Tsunematsu plays Yuzu Murata.

Is ‘Burn the House Down’ based on a true story?

Although the mysterious revenge thriller might feel familiar, it actually isn’t based on a true story of any kind. The story is entirely fictionalized, along with the characters.

However, you might find it familiar due to a 2021 movie of a similar name – A House on Fire. It’s a film about Debora Green – a woman accused of burning her house down by her ex-husband, who wanted custody of their kids. That movie is semi-fictionalized but based on a true story about Debora Green and Mike Farrar.

That being said, Burn the House Down isn’t an entirely new story. In fact, it was based on something – just not a real-life event.

What was ‘Burn the House Down’ based on?

Burn the House Down was based on a Japanese manga series called Mitarai-ke, Enjō Suru. If you translate it literally, it means The Mitarai Family Goes Up in Flames, but the English translation of the manga had the title Burn the House Down.

The story is pretty similar to what the show will depict (as far as we know), as Arisa Kaneko used the manga pages and adapted them into a script. The writer of the original manga series is Mayashi Fujisawa, and the series was first published in a josei manga magazine, Kiss.

The first out of eight volumes came out in March 2017, and the last in April 2021. As the series gained traction and popularity, the international market grew interested. In June 2022, Kodansha USA released an English digital version of the manga series. The first volume was out in June 2022, and the last in January 2023.

As for the show, it still isn’t disclosed how many episodes the first season will have, but I believe it would be best to have eight episodes and cover each volume within one episode.

Burn the House Down is coming out on July 13, 2023, exclusively on Netflix.