Dale is a cool, composed, and highly skilled adventurer who’s made quite a name for himself despite his youth. One day on a job deep in the forest, he comes across a little devil girl who’s almost wasted away. Unable to just leave her there to die, Dale takes her home and becomes her adoptive father. Devil or not, Latina is beyond adorable, and the adventurer soon finds himself head over heels with being a parent. – ANN
Streaming: Crunchyroll
Episodes: 12
Source: Light Novel
Episode Summary: Dale has never had to think far beyond his next mission or his next meal, but when he finds an orphaned devil girl in the forest one day, he’s suddenly forced to look beyond his own day-to-day survival. The girl has one broken horn, marking her as a criminal – but one would be hard-pressed to come up with any scenario in which a kid her age should be banished in such a way. Dale learns that her name is Latina, and he takes her back to his home in the walled city of Kreuz.
After cleaning Latina up, Dale considers his options. He’s barely 18 and his job as an adventurer keeps him away from his home base for days at a time. But the “perpetually under-funded” city orphanage probably wouldn’t be that happy to have yet another mouth to feed. And Dale has a support system in Rita and Kenneth, the proprietors of the restaurant where Dale rents a room. Rather than dump Latina in the hands of strangers, Dale chooses the path toward instant fatherhood, with all its challenges and surprises.
Impressions: Many years ago, I watched the anime adaptation of Bunny Drop, a story set roughly in modern times during which a 30-something man adopts an orphaned relative and raises her as his own daughter. The anime is charming and emotional and after all these years I still recommend it, but the manga on which it’s based ends on a sour note; the daughter, now a teenager, confesses romantic love toward her adoptive father figure, and he doesn’t outright tell her “no” or “that’s inappropriate considering our several-year-long parent-child relationship.” I didn’t hear about this twist until I was long-done with the anime, and despite being pretty upset about that particular knowledge bomb it didn’t really do much to affect my opinion of the anime adaptation (which only adapts the first half of the story). You’d better believe I stopped buying the manga before it took its bad turn, though.
I mention this because, in the intervening years, there have been several series in which a bachelor or a single father takes up the task of caring for a young child, and people are quick to ask if these series have a “Bunny Drop ending;” fans familiar with the source material are quick to reply (and in some cases seem pretty gleeful about bursting fans’ bubbles). I think in this age where people in the public eye are finally being forced to reckon with their own history of sexual crimes as their (former?) fans reel from the realization that someone they admired was actually terrible the whole time, it can be difficult to freely open our hearts to a story when something seems even a little bit amiss. Personally, this is one topic where I always prefer to know ahead of time what I’m getting into so I don’t have to bother with the heartbreak of finding out suddenly after I’ve put a lot of emotional investment into the characters and story. The downside to this is that it’s difficult to be fair when you know ahead of time that a storyteller has already made a poor choice.
I mention all this because, thanks to light novel fans on Twitter, I know that this story results in a bad-end Bunny Drop type scenario, and it certainly has colored my feelings toward this series (though I doubt that 12 episodes are enough to actually reach that end point). Despite that, I wanted to try to challenge myself to at least look at this episode on its own merits (as I always try to do), since an adaptation isn’t necessarily doomed to repeat the errors of its source material.
To be honest, the “unexpected dad” scenario is one of my favorite recent trends in anime, despite the fact that it can be a bit of a thematic minefield. It’s a sub genre characterized by cute kids, soft men, and warm fuzzy feelings, all things that help to pad out my personal anime comfort zone. As someone with a lot of anxiety about parenthood, watching a character go into such a situation completely unprepared and prove that love and a bit of minimal competence are enough to build a family is sort of a comfort for me. Of course, it usually helps that the child characters in these situations are cute, well-behaved, and usually a bit more mature and studious than many children are in real-life. They’re certainly easier to care for that the literal demon children my sister and I were when we were young!
I like Dale as a character. He reads as youthful without being immature, and I think his journey from being a person whose only responsibility is to himself to someone whose needs are now secondary is relatable. I think most of us would at least attempt to step up to the responsibility of caring for someone helpless, at least temporarily, and so the idea isn’t as fanciful or “out there” as it may seem at first. Of course, foster children aren’t typically also magical entities, but I can give the story a little leeway there. I think the stumbling block of the episode is Latina, and more specifically the focus she’s given. There’s a lot of energy put into emphasizing just how cute and irresistible she is, and this is done at the expense of establishing an actual personality for her. I’m all for cute stuff – just come over to my place and take a look at all my mascot character merch if you don’t believe that. But there’s only so much cuteness I can be force-fed before the glow wears off. Watching Latina throughout this episode starts to feel like eating too much candy.
This truly is a fantasy anime, though, as revealed by the fact that Dale has enough money to raise a child, as well as several unrelated folks who are available, willing, and able to help him out. The US isn’t a great place to be a single parent, as there aren’t a lot of social safety nets or public child care to help offset the burden (and child care centers in my area often cost more per month than a mortgage or rent payment – big yikes). From what I understand, in some ways single-parenthood in Japan can present even more of a challenge, since there’s often still a social expectation that one parent is available to stay home with children, so daycare as we imagine it is more uncommon. That’s maybe what’s nicest about series like these, though; they remove the stressful logistical struggle from the equation, and allow us to enjoy the joyful aspects without worry.
I’m not willing to pretend, though, that the end point of this story is easy for me to brush off or ignore. While I realize that there are cultural traditions and explanations that provide some background to the trope itself (and I’m sure there are several Western storytelling tropes that are similarly despicable to people from other cultures – I’d be interested to know if any of you readers out there might have some examples), I think we’re at a point in society where we don’t need to glamorize pseudo-incest as some kind of harmless fantasy story element. There’s a very delicate dance that ought to occur when incorporating elements of people’s real-life trauma into fiction, especially in ways that don’t outright condemn those kinds of actions. Unfortunately, I don’t think an otherwise fluffy anime about an adoptive dad is capable of it, in the same way that I wouldn’t trust a trope-y bottom-of-the-barrel “little sister” anime to talk seriously or realistically about genetic sexual attraction (or even about what it’s actually like to have a younger sibling in the first place). This may seem like an overreaction on my part, and I honestly expect that many people will be able to ignore the story’s end point and enjoy this short adaptation. But I’m not ashamed to say that it’s become harder and harder for me to ignore actions in favor of intentions, so take that how you will.
Pros: The intro episode is a very cute story about a guy and his unexpected entry into fatherhood.
Cons: Knowledge about the “bad end” of the story is out there everywhere, making it difficult to ignore in favor of the (likely) more restricted anime story. Latina’s characterization is too sickly sweet after a while.
Content Warnings: Brief glimpses of a dead demon parent.
Grade: C