The Complexities of Motherhood

Please Note: This post contains character and plot spoilers for several anime series and films, including A Place Further Than the Universe, The Promised Neverland, Made in Abyss, and Mirai.

Last year around Mothers’ Day, I used the opportunity to feature one of my favorite anime mothers from the previous year. While I’d originally wanted to do the same thing this year, I ran into a bit of an issue – nothing that I’d watched from the past year or so struck me as having a really central, memorable mother (or mother-type) character who wasn’t already missing or dead. Too often, nurturing family members are sacrificed at the altar of “character development,” allowing a protagonist to develop pathos as their earthly familial connections are ripped away in return. This leaves one with very few choices of motherly role-models. This isn’t to say that there weren’t great moms this year, but I was unfortunately not lucky enough to view anything in which a mother’s story was detailed, complete, and plot-central.

As someone still attempting to become a mother, even as the world around me does its best to demonstrate its hostility toward me and other women (mothers or not), what I’m consistently reminded of is the fact that motherhood itself is a complicated and messy state of being, filled with decisions that have no correct answers. While I hesitate to assert that all mothers have their children’s best interests in mind (unfortunately, abusive situations exist and I think it would be unjust to folks who’ve experienced them to say otherwise), I do believe that the majority of parents out there are trying to do the best with what resources they have. I think that anime and manga might honestly be better at featuring the messier aspects of parenthood than the average, mostly-positive ones that (hopefully) exist in reality.

Anime, and, in fact, most other media, has a “dead mom” problem. The first time I realized this, I was in my teenage years; I was already going through a phase where I’d started to disdain the things I’d loved as a child, and the knowledge that a good chunk of Disney films featured characters whose mothers had been killed, then sometimes replaced with evil female surrogates, was only fuel for that fire. The mothers in these films seemed to be pawns in the telling of the hero or heroine’s story, something I found incredibly frustrating at the time and which still bothers me. The same goes for the JRPG video games I’ve loved; one of the major tropes that’s often still joked about is that the hero’s quest only begins once his tiny home village (including his friends and family) has been burned to the ground by some evil faction. Having parents seems to be an inconvenience in many cases; it’s only once parents, especially mothers, are out of the picture and the hero’s attachments to place are severed completely that the real adventure can begin.

What I’m choosing to acknowledge is that its prevalence and inherent misogyny as a trope doesn’t always mean that this type of predictable tragedy is doomed to be trite and meaningless, as much as I still wish storytellers would find some other route to travel. Even media’s most frustrating characterization habits can sometimes be turned toward the purpose of powerful storytelling, depending on who’s telling the story and about whom the story is told. I recently had occasion to re-watch A Place Further Than the Universe at my long-time local anime club. In this series, a group of four high school girls travels to the continent of Antarctica along with a scientific research group. Each of the characters experiences her own story arcs and personal challenges, but the quest itself is prompted by Shirase’s memories of and relationship with her mother, who was a researcher and passed away tragically during the previous expedition three years prior. What we know of Shirase’s mother Takako is told mostly through the eyes and mouths of others – her fellow researchers reminisce about her drive to explore and her deadly mahjong abilities, while the characters find physical remnants of Takako throughout the trip. They remember her enigmatic final words, commenting on the singular beauty of Antarctica’s stark environment. Takako is a present, guiding light to Shirase, even though she is no longer of this Earth.

There’s a temptation, I believe, to blame characters like this for abandoning their children in service of what seem like more selfish goals. With a child to take care of at home, why risk death halfway across the world? This is one of the complexities of becoming a mother, as I see it. Motherhood comes with an expectation that one’s life is now secondary to one’s children’s existence. “You’ve had your chance, now settle down and put your energy toward uplifting your progeny.” While there are parents who choose this for themselves with eyes wide open, I’ve always thought the assumption that people’s lives and senses of self should fade into the background once they procreate is flawed in many ways. I’ve read a lot of writing and commentary from mothers who are frustrated and depressed that their rich inner lives are somehow hidden behind the label of being “so-and-so’s mom;” as if that somehow trumps their sense of humor, love of music, interest in literature, film, or art, or ability to grill a mean steak or bake a beautiful cake. While the love for a child is said to be something so deep that it’s difficult to describe, there is also a fully-fledged human being at the giving end of that love and devotion. I myself, in those quiet moments, consider how the maintenance of my personhood in the eye of the public is at least as important as someday becoming a parent to a beloved child.

In Made in Abyss, there are explorers who are inexorably drawn toward the Abyss, a dangerous and mysterious hole in the Earth. Protagonist Riko’s mother was (or is) one such explorer, and a high-ranking one at that. The Abyss is a literal death trap; those who descend past a certain level can’t ascend unaltered (physically or mentally), and the dangers beneath the surface are such that most explorers meet their doom within the maw of some horrifying creature or environmental anomaly. Riko’s mother Lyza, after giving birth to Riko and making the difficult trek out of the Abyss to return her to the safety of the surface, chooses to descend again rather than remain at her daughter’s side. The choice seems unfathomably selfish at first glance; leaving the care of an infant to others while pursuing a very likely death is the antithesis of what most of us may consider “good parenting.” Yet, there is something deeper going on that’s difficult to understand except perhaps for those who understand the consequences of certain types of abuse or who have experienced the breakdown of a relationship.

In the context of potential divorce, there’s an idea that some parents should stay together “for the sake of the children,” but the underlying toxicity of the relationship – the disdain between partners, the disconnect, the unhappiness – can be evident to the perceptions of a child even if the parents attempt to hide it. It’s usually considered better to separate no matter how logistically-challenging life becomes; when the example children see of interactions between two people in a relationship is disrespectful or abusive, they carry that baggage forward into their own relationships. Lyza may seem irresponsible leaving her infant daughter’s side, but unwillingly staying in one place would doom Lyza to a deep unhappiness that she’d be unable to hide. Riko, the bright child that she is, would likely perceive this resentment and bear the burden of it. Lyza also doesn’t want to hamstring Riko’s life by becoming too comfortable a home base; instead, she’d rather serve as a model and a motivation by following her own quest, even if that quest leads to nothing but doom. It’s a difficult and complicated character motivation that I’m not sure if I completely condone, but I think, on a very basic level, I can at least understand.

One of the most emotionally stunning series I’ve watched this year is The Promised Neverland, whose vision of childhood is both idyllic and horrifying in equal measure. The child protagonists are watched-over by kindly women who aren’t biologically their mothers, but serve that nurturing role. We learn very quickly that the children are essentially livestock, and that the “mothers” are merely overseers that ensure they never discover the truth. Isabella, the mother to Emma, Norman, and Ray (in addition to several other younger children) at Grace Field House, is an immensely terrifying character. Her loving facade exists in opposition to her intensely manipulative, cunning nature. In Isabella, the children discover an adversary who can predict their every move and has a vested interest in keeping them trapped and subdued. It seems almost like a joke, then, that these women are referred to as “mothers” and use their love to accomplish nothing but prevent children from existing freely in the world.

And yet… I can’t help but feel some kind of sympathy for Isabella and the state of the world in which these characters live. Honestly, our world right now is a very scary place; wars continue to rage around the world, driving people toward hunger, disease, and death, the state of the world’s climate has long since revealed itself to be tenuous, and people continue to lose their lives needlessly at the wrong end of firearms wielded by those with an ill-conceived hatred toward others. These are problems that people seem unwilling to tackle in any meaningful way; the symptoms are easy to see, but the root causes are difficult to address when many of those with the power to do so seem all-to-willing to stick their heads in the sand in exchange for temporary worldly desires. I watch the daily news go by, experiencing feelings of anger and hopelessness in alternating measure, and yet I’m still trying to bring a child into this complicated, messy world – a world which, by many assumptions, might be in a worse state by the time my potential children are my age than they are for me right now.

Isabella is a mother figure who exists in a horrifying world. She’s carved out a place within a system that leaves no room for winners; one with no personal freedom and one which is filled with only the promise of an early death. She exists at a crossroad of potential decisions – continue to work within this cruel system for the purpose of self-preservation, or work toward the eventual dismantling of the system. We learn why Isabella chooses her path; she discovers the world’s biggest secret and loses hope in the promise of escape. The burden then falls to her “children” to discover a way out of humanity’s perpetual prison. When I witness movements like the School Strike for Climate, led by the whip-smart, driven Greta Thunberg, or the March for our Lives led by the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, I both marvel at the tenacity of these young people to take on such enormous issues and feel disappointment towards those of us in previous generations, supposedly the stewards of the world that these young people are set to inherit, for choosing to exist within an unjust system rather than work to change it. When I look in Isabella’s eyes, I see a woman whose sanity was broken by the forbidden knowledge of the world’s terrors, and a parent who, however hopelessly, perpetuates a cruel system that dooms her children. I see in her the mother I hope I choose not to become.

As complicated and ambiguous as motherhood can probably be, I think it’s worth noting once again that, as humans, most of use still attempt to do the best job that we can to raise the next generation with the resources we’re given. While Mirai is a great film about a young boy who’s allowed the rare chance to experience multiple generations of his family first-hand, it’s also a story about parenthood and the indelible marks we as parents leave on our children’s experiences. It’s tempting to focus on Kun’s mother as an expression of non-traditional gender roles, and while her role as breadwinner and company executive is definitely notable in realm of anime families, there’s already interesting commentary out there. What resonates with me is that the film paints parenthood as a state of perpetual questioning, where there are no rules, only well-meaning attempts at nurturing and guidance.

One of my favorite parts of the film occurs when Kun meets his mother during her childhood. They have their disastrous fun, dumping toys on the floor, pulling laundry off the line, and stuffing their mouths full of treats and candy. Pointedly, kid-Mother tells Kun that “it’s more fun when it’s messy,” echoing Kun’s sentiment when his adult mother in the current time scolds him for leaving his toys out. As we grow and mature, it’s amazing how our perspective on life starts to change. As young people, our worlds are ruled by what’s fun; as adults, we begin to see potential safety hazards and grow to have concerns about what others think of us. Kun’s adult mother’s parental scolding seems humorous considering the type of child she was; it’s that “grown-up” perspective, as well as those learned feelings of shame and a society-influenced view of correct behavior that transforms us from juveniles to caregivers.

Near the end of Mirai, Kun’s mother and father turn to one-another as they pack the car for a trip, and ask themselves if they’re doing an okay job as parents; having witnessed plenty of Kun’s acting-out behavior following his baby sister’s arrival, the question’s likely been hanging in the air for a while. I think most viewers would agree that they’re doing fine; they have a place to live, they have enough to eat, and they clearly love their children (even if one of the kids is currently acting like a jerk). But motherhood and parenthood are complicated and there’s no instruction manual or road map on Earth that allows us to avoid every pothole or mishap. The world is a judgmental place, and filled with dangers unfathomable. Especially for mothers, one’s image of success is one part child-rearing, and 3 parts enduring the barrage of judgment from society, misguided politicians, “friends,” nosy family members, heck, even other moms. I think the best we can do is look in the mirror at our own behavior, and constantly, consistently ask of ourselves “am I doing the best job that I can?” For whatever outsiders say, motherhood is less a matter of becoming an infallible person, and more a matter of putting purpose to the love one has toward one’s offspring. I hope to carry this thought forward myself someday.