Spring 2022 First Impressions – Kotaro Lives Alone

Streaming: Netflix

Episodes: 10

Source: Manga

Episode Summary: Kotaro is a precocious four-year-old boy who moves into an apartment by himself. The landlords only seem concerned with whether or not he can pay his way, not with whether he can actually manage on his own, so he manages to clear that initial hurdle. Kotaro’s neighbor Karino is perplexed by this well-spoken kid, and wonders what may have happened to his family leaving him to survive on his own.

As Karino follows Kotaro around on his daily errands, he also starts meeting the other tenants in the building, who all seem to be people with somewhat complicated circumstances. The one constant between them seems to be Kotaro, who treats them all as neighbors, though also has very little tolerance for falseness in relationships. Karino, who also lives alone and has felt directionless in his manga career, starts to warm up to Kotaro, sensing some unresolved emotions and trauma in the kid.

Impressions: The older I get, the more I vibe with the idea of “found families.” While I’m lucky enough to get along well with my blood-related family members, there are also aspects of my life that they’re never likely to understand. It’s in those moments that I turn to my close friends for the sort of validation and support I need as it pertains to my fandom life and hobbies. That said, I have the luxury of choice in adopting a found family in addition to my living relatives. Kotaro Lives Alone suggests a scenario in which Kotaro, the kid at the center of things, seems to be left to rely on his neighbors as a replacement for the family he no longer has access to.

There’s very little information in this episode regarding the details of Kotaro’s circumstances. It seems pretty likely that he’s an orphan and that he’s ended up in that weird, tragic situation that orphaned anime children sometimes seem to where their other extended family is uninterested in taking them in. His outward maturity is charming until you realize that it’s likely a reaction to trauma and an affect born of one of the only age-appropriate activities Kotaro indulges in – watching his favorite cartoon show.

This is one of those cases where the “how’s” of the situation may not be as important of a factor as the overall emotional arc and health of the characters. Kotaro’s neighbors all appear to be struggling in one way or another – Karino with a lack of direction and focus, Mizuki with some form of financial abuse dealt by an outside party, and Isamu with a broken family and inability to interact with his own young son. These are all very real manifestations of the challenges that life may throw our way – things that cause us to withdraw into ourselves rather than seeking the kind of emotional support required to tackle them head-on. The other neighbor characters we meet throughout the episode are all literally isolated, having no idea that any of the others happened to live at the same apartment complex. Kotaro, with his sense of independence that occasionally seems to falter in ways where others can come to his aid, seems to serve as a sort of inflection point for others to do some internal examination and take the first steps to reach outside themselves.

This… is a bit of an odd one, but I think it speaks volumes that I got a little bit choked-up multiple times throughout this episode. For me, weird and illogical plot set-ups are usually overridden by what I see as emotional truth, and there’s a lot about this episode that rings very true in that regard.

Pros: This episode has several moments that seem to defy its simplistic look and slow pacing. When gangster-looking Isamu tries to gift Kotaro a stuffed character plush that he eventually admits was meant for his own son from whom he’s become estranged, Kotaro refuses it, claiming that being treated as a placeholder for someone else isn’t “truthful.” What he’s getting at, I think, is that Isamu isn’t being true to his own sadness at being unable to be a part of his son’s life, and perhaps also to the reasons why that is. Rather than facing the truth, Isamu would rather fill the hole in his heart with Kotaro. Though Kotaro would likely benefit from more adults in his life, it has to be on the correct terms to mean anything.

Cons: At the end of watching a rather intense anime one time, a friend of mine went on what I’d call a rant about the mishandling of the situation central to the show’s plot. It essentially boiled down to “if the authorities had been called in to deal with this, none of this would have happened.” While that may have been true, I think that the story being told probably couldn’t have been if real-world logic had been followed. I suspect that this story might also drum up those sorts of feelings in the viewer – I don’t think in any modern context or society, a four-year-old kid would be allowed to live on their own. So overcoming that obstacle may be a challenge for some viewers.

Content Warnings: Alcohol use. Financial abuse. Parental death and familial trauma (alluded to).

Would I Watch More? – This was a really interesting premiere episode for me. This series has been floating around in my Netflix recommendations for a few weeks now, and while I eventually try to give every series its proper time in the sun (or on the blog), I wasn’t exactly chomping at the bit to get to this one due to its strange premise. It’s the type of story that could be tragically mishandled in the wrong hands. Yet, I really liked this episode and I’m interested to see whether my hopes about the developing character relationships eventually come true.