Father of the Year – 2018

This Mother’s Day, I rummaged through the anime I’d watched over the past year or so and chose an example of an anime mother who I thought was worth talking about. Parents in anime tend to exist in the background (if at all), so I thought it would be interesting to feature some of the few that make meaningful, impactful appearances in some of my favorite shows. It was difficult enough to find a mother character who had enough screen time and was actively involved in story activities, but for some reason I thought it would be easier to find an example of a great dad. Maybe it was because I had the idea in my head that most dads are men, and males tend to make up the bulk of anime protagonists, so therefore there should be more fatherly-type men from which to choose.

I was surprised, then, to discover that identifying a great father figure to feature was leaps and bounds more difficult than coming up with a mother figure. As a long-time anime fan I feel like I should have known better, but I think this is definitely a blind spot of mine. I began to realize that, while male characters abound in all sorts of anime, many of those male characters are children or teenagers (or they act like them and have the same level of responsibility). Having children, being gainfully employed, and doing all the other things that are required of parenting are beyond the scope of what many anime protagonists are asked to do (saving the world, being the butt of the joke, or even just surviving high school are lofty enough goals for most characters). In addition to that, if parents exist at all within an anime series in many cases the father of the family is mostly absent, working late or at least trying to enjoy a beer and the newspaper rather than get overly-involved. There are of course counter-examples – shows like Poco’s Udon World, Sweetness and Lightning, and Bunny Drop all feature dads or father-like figures as primary caretakers for young children – but those are exceptions rather than rules. While it seemed like this type of story might become more of a trend, they’ve tapered-off lately. Which is inconvenient, because that would have made for an easy post!

I started trying to think outside the box a little bit, towards male mentors in anime. Mentorship, especially in sports or competition anime, is an important role that I think fulfills the spirit of what I’m trying to feature. I imagine there’s an easy answer to this in an anime series or movie from the past year, but I suspect it may be from a series that I don’t watch. My understanding from friends of mine is that My Hero Academia has cultivated this sort of relationship between Deku and All-Might, as Deku’s actual father is not in the picture. Maybe I’ll give that series a watch this year and have something to write about for next year. As for the anime that I have watched (and there’s been quite a bit), it was not working out as a good source. All of the characters who came to mind had as part of their character some sort of problematic aspect to their personality or actions, which in my mind removed them from consideration as one of the best father figures.

One character that fits into this kind of problematic pseudo-parental role is Elias Ainsworth from The Ancient Magus’ Bride. Elias, an ageless magical entity, becomes guardian to Chise, a teenage girl with magical powers. He helps to instruct her in ways to hone her abilities and provides an environment that’s relatively safe and constant (at least more so than she had previously). It’s living with Elias that Chise is introduced to her true potential. This would seemingly be a great starting point for an examination of important male mentors, if not for the fact that the relationship between Elias and Chise is much more complicated than that of a parent and child. Elias technically has ownership of Chise, and it’s made clear that she’s something of an experiment for him. They’re also painted as potential lovers, though as two emotionally incomplete souls even that becomes difficult to fathom within the snap shot that the anime provides. There are unequal power dynamics at work that, as much as I truly enjoy the series, I have a difficult time overlooking. It’s intriguing and dangerous, but not so appropriate if you’re looking for something paternal.

A character who gets a bit closer to my mental ideal is Reigen Arataka from Mob Psycho 100 (technically okay for me to reference since there was an OVA episode focused on his antics that was released earlier this year!). Reigen is a scoundrel, a liar, and a phony, with only a bag of table salt and some middling charisma on hand to dupe people into thinking he can exorcise malevolent spirits. At first glance it seems like he only associates with Mob, his young “protege,” for the potential boost in business – Mob is the only one of the two with legitimate telekinetic skills, and Reigen can at least recognize that having Mob around is advantageous to his bottom line.

Despite his many faults, though, Reigen has something that not many anime characters have and he wields it like a weapon – his superior maturity. His skepticism towards the theatrical and cliche opponents that appear before himself, Mob, and their companions serves as the backbone to a series that isn’t so much about cool dudes with powers fighting each-other as it is about self-reflection and the duty of gifted people to recognize the worth and talents of others. One of my favorite “Reigen” scenes occurs in flashback near the end of the series, where young Mob first visits Reigen’s office in search of some help with handling his abilities. Reigen imparts a piece of good advice – having special powers doesn’t make one any less human, nor does it put one on a pedestal above others. Rather than domination, the goal of any person should simply be to achieve a state of kindness. For a series known for its killer animation and sometimes ridiculous situations, that idea cuts surprisingly deep. My only real qualm with Reigen-as-dad is the fact that he’s essentially a con artist who not-so-secretly takes advantage of his young protege’s talents, and that still doesn’t sit well with me even though I love the character and the series.

One of the last bits of middling inspiration I had was that Masami Kondo, one of the two protagonists from the series After the Rain, might be an interesting subject to try to tackle, since he’s actually a father (*gasp*) and also ultimately serves a mentorship role. Kondo-san is the middle-aged manager at a family restaurant; he’s divorced with a young son. As we enter the story, one of his employees, a high school girl named Akira Tachibana, has concluded that she has romantic feelings towards him and refuses to take no for an answer. There’s a lot of the typical mental denseness that comes with a story like this since it takes a while for Kondo to realize that Tachibana is nursing these difficult and inconvenient feelings. When it finally dawns on him he just becomes more awkward about it and manages to keep from addressing the situation directly. There are also some tense moments where it seems as if the pursuit of this relationship at face value might take place. It’s only after a certain point in the story (a little late for my tastes, honestly) that both Kondo and Tachibana realize that each has some emotional emptiness in their life (Kondo gave up writing fiction, and Tachibana was a track star until a major injury sidelined her), and it’s misguided emotions related to that emptiness that are fueling thoughts about their specific relationship to one-another.

Kondo, despite how good-natured his character is, probably would never have been my first choice as a focal subject for this post, because the series itself has a troublesome premise (or at the very least plays a bit of bait-and-switch) and while watching it I kept waiting for the other shoe to drop (and crossing my fingers that it wouldn’t). Once I finished watching it and confirmed that it wasn’t actually aiming to feature a problematic romance, I did take the opportunity to look back at the series in retrospect and was able to appreciate the characters a bit more. While Kondo is initially portrayed as kind of a hapless goof, the kind of dad who shows up in uninspired TV commercials or old sitcoms, he proves himself to have some self-awareness, as well as some canny insight into his life and a decent grasp of what Tachibana is experiencing. While I can certainly look back on my own life and remember what it was like to experience some of the high school indecisiveness and misguided longing Tachibana is suffering, I can understand firsthand Kondo’s feelings towards having given up doing things that he loved for the sake of existing in the “real world.” He’s someone who shares his life lessons willingly, and chooses kindness rather than bluntness. There is something very comforting and inspiriting about that. It’s that lack of straightforwardness which is partly what makes me hesitate, however; I would have loved for Kondo to give Tachibana a proper “no” earlier in the series, to make it clear that there could never be a romantic relationship between them, rather than finding multiple ways to skirt by and avoid her awkward attempts at affection. There’s something about that which keeps me from fully forgiving the character, unfortunately.

After spending so much time scouring my mental anime catalog and ultimately feeling underwhelmed by my choices, I was honestly considering ditching this post entirely. Disappointing, but sometimes you just have to move on in life. It was then that my experiences reading manga arrived to save the day. Earlier this year, I finally got around to reading the first volume of My Brother’s Husband, which deals with the subject of homosexuality and prejudice in Japan. The protagonist is a man named Yaichi, a fairly average guy who’s divorced and works from home so that he can parent his young daughter, Kana. One day a very large Westerner arrives at the front door. The man’s name is Mike, and he’s the widower of Yaichi’s estranged gay twin brother. Yaichi gets to know Mike, and through doing so, starts to learn more about the brother who became a stranger to him.

The manga itself is excellent and I would recommend it to almost anyone, especially those who are interested in supporting LGBTQ+ stories and storytellers (the author is one of the more famous members of the LGBTQ+ community in Japan), or people who just enjoy slice-of-life stories. It does a good job of explaining and demonstrating some of the specific ways in which homophobia presents itself differently between Japan and the West, and it also demonstrates the beginnings of character growth that are the result of challenging one’s assumptions. The most important point as far as this post is concerned, is that I got the impression while reading this manga that Yaichi’s story, his reaction to learning about Mike and coming to terms with who his brother was, would have turned out quite differently if Yaichi weren’t also a father.

As it usually is with these types of stories, the rambunctious child character is the one who steals many of the scenes and becomes the heart of the story even though they’re not the main character. Kana is immediately drawn to Mike, has no qualms about asking him loads of very straightforward questions about his life (including things about what it means to be a gay person), and is almost immediately accepting of any answer she receives. I’ve heard many people in real life, those who are nursing some sort of phobia towards people with various sexual identities, gender identities, or whatever other arbitrary marker they’re angry about at the moment, get extremely bent out of shape about how normalizing various types of romantic relationships will only confuse children and cause them to, I don’t know, also not conform to society’s arbitrary definition of what’s “normal.” In my experience, however, it’s the children with minds still open and malleable, who have very little trouble parsing a straightforward answer about what being “gay” or “transgender” means. Kana doesn’t know not to be curious or ask questions. She’s not so concerned with what being gay means in the greater context of society. She’s simply excited to know a foreigner who knows things about distant lands (like Canada) and who’s willing to spend time with her and show her love.

Though Yaichi is initially put-off by Mike’s looming presence, especially since he’s a reminder of a relationship in Yaichi’s life that deteriorated due in part to his own prejudices and can now never really be repaired, watching Kana take to Mike so readily gives Yaichi a chance to question his own thoughts and motivations. it gives him the opportunity to realize that it’s not necessarily natural or automatic to look at someone like Mike and be concerned about what his existence means to the balance of society, or to think that Mike should just “get over it” and integrate like everyone else. Because of his love for Kana and due also to Kana’s boundless enthusiasm and open-armed acceptance, Yaichi starts down the road of becoming a better person.

Yaichi’s definitely not a perfect person, but the manga is as much about his attempts to learn and be a better person as it is about anything else, and watching him learn from Mike and Kana demonstrates the real potential and power that a father’s love can have. Ultimately, I think that’s a good thing to try to celebrate.

I’d be interested to hear whether this past year left you feeling impressed by any anime (or manga) dads. Please let me know in the comments!