Call Your Mother – This Week in Anime

I see we’re starting this column off with the mother (ba-dum tss) of all anime moms and the shows they exist in, Mamako (yes, really) from Do You Love Your Mom and Her Two-Hit Multi-Target Attacks?!

Sylvia, I want you to know that you getting to review this anime week to week as it aired is the most jealous I’ve ever been of you.

The thing about Do You Love Your Mom in my estimation is that, while it’s not necessarily “good,” it is interesting in a way that almost makes it better than its more celebrated contemporaries. The entire show can be boiled down to the premise of “what if an isekai protagonist’s mom traveled with him into a video game world?” and it pretty thoroughly explores that idea in these twelve episodes (plus a bonus beach episode). However, a mom being allowed to participate in this kind of story makes Mamako and Do You Love Your Mom feel novel, if not revelatory, in a media landscape where so many women’s stories end with motherhood.

I see where you’re coming from, and WILL knock Fullmetal Alchemist because anime and anime-adjacent media fridging or relegating motherly characters to the background is super annoying and a longstanding sexist trope in fiction. Trisha Elric motivates the inciting event behind the protagonists of FMA, and it’s always bothered me that her character is so one-dimensional.

Like, Eichiro Oda’s One Piece is an infinitely more sexist piece of media than FMA, but at least he had the foresight to make that series’ first dead mom, BELLE-mère, cool and actively participate in the narrative.

She’s literally costumed like a mom from the Pokémon games! Which is a character that’s explicitly designed to be instantly recognizable in their motherhood, but then instantly forgotten about as the story begins! FMA‘s treatment of Trisha is such a bummer for a series that otherwise has a rock-solid grasp on character writing.

Now, if we want to talk about some anime moms that play pivotal roles in their story without outright abandoning their maternal framing, I can’t think of a better character than Sachiko from ERASED.

(Thanks to ANN’s own Rebecca Silverman for highlighting this character during our planning chat!)

Sachiko really is one of the best representations of the dedication and sacrifice inherent to motherhood in anime. Beyond acting as an exemplary parent to multiple characters who need to see that example throughout the show, she also cares for a comatose Satoru, meaning the show’s final (and best) twist could not happen without her.

But also, her smoking and having a bit of attitude are also a big part of what makes this character work so well! ERASED easily could have been a time-travel power fantasy where the main character heroically prevents his mom’s death and other tragedies along the way, but because Sachiko participates in the story and is more than a cardboard cutout of a mom, the work is made so much better explicitly because of her inclusion.

Hey, I am all for including moms of different aesthetics and body shapes in this column! Sometimes moms are distinctly mom-shaped and stylized, sometimes moms rock a six pack and hair that she can punch people with, and sometimes moms are the coolest (meat) mechs you’ve ever seen!

To this day, I’m still not sure why Shinji’s mom, Yui, has her soul inside of EVA Unit-01, but it’s in there, and that means one of the most visually striking and influential character designs in all of anime is a mom!

I know that no work of fiction can be a complete encapsulation of the human experience, but my god does Evangelion get close with its consistent and informed depictions of parenthood and how these imperfect people mold the lovable but broken teenage cast at the center of the show. I know this is a cynical view of parenthood, but if a mother or father’s primary responsibility is to mitigate the amount of trauma their child inherits, Evangelion is a great look at how kids inevitably take on some degree of their parents’ damage.

That might be the first description I’ve ever heard of Flip Flappers after hearing people praise the show for years now, and I understand why nobody ever bothered to explain to me what Flip Flappers is about. That is incredible, and it is now at the top of my backlog!

Do we know why the mom in Flip Flappers is evil? Is there a confirmed homophobia element, or am I signing up for 12+ episodes of inspired and affecting symbolism???

So the Uma Musume girls hooking up is real and not just something I see from time to time on my alt-account! Awesome and inclusive!

searches the internet briefly

Oh, so this is a “raise my friend’s daughter as her dying wish” situation. That’s a little less cool, but I’ll take even implied lesbian mom rep from anime, considering the well of anime that depict two women coparenting is pretty shallow.

Well, she does have the backwards baseball cap vouching for her. I can’t argue with that.

Though if we’re taking lesbian mom rep in anime where we can find it, Hahari from The 100 Girlfrineds Who Really, Really, Really, Really, Really Love You is absolutely in a lesbian relationship with her maid, Mei Meido, even if Mei is too polite to make that clear to her and the both of them are in a polycule with a teenage boy and Hahari’s biological daughter.

While I bounced off of March comes in like a lion (or perhaps a college anime club wasn’t the ideal setting to experience this kind of work), I’ve heard nothing but good things about it, and I’m glad its compassionate character writing runs deep!

Speaking of more grounded depictions of motherhood in anime, I’d love to bring up Haruka Inokuma from Chihayafuru who, to my knowledge, is the only anime character shown juggling the maternal responsibility of breastfeeding with other parts of her life.

ANN contributor Lauren Orsini’s write-up of this character, her experiences, and how a lot of moms can relate to them for Anime Feminist does a better job of explaining why and how this character and this exploration of motherhood is important better than I ever could, and I encourage everyone reading this to go check out Lauren’s article.

Oh, we’ve gone from moms in anime to mom movies! I love the escalation and hope we see a lot more of both in this industry.

As we get to the tail end of this column, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the undisputed most popular anime mom of the 2020s, Yor Forger from SPY x FAMILY. A secret assassin, adoptive mother to Anya, and fake wife to the (unknown to her) spy Loid; Yor’s character is less about motherhood and more about fitting into a found family when you’re a person living outside the norms of society. However, she’s also the first character a lot of folks will think of when you say “anime mom” nowadays, so she at least deserves a shoutout.

Plus, she is an absolute freak in all the best ways in the early parts of SPY x FAMILY, and we respect that here!

Oh, wait, we forgot to talk about bad moms in anime!!!

Suletta’s mom in Gwitch, Prospera, built a giant robot that runs on the souls of her cloned babies! That’s like, advanced evil!!!

Haha, is anybody normal about anything or anyone in Kill la Kill?

And I also remember thinking that Hayato’s mom in JJBA: Diamond is Unbreakable, Shinobu Kawajiri, is a great example of someone who became a parent too early, and grew frustrated and bored with her daily life to the point where a serial killer replacing her husband provided more of a jolt of excitement than a cause for concern.

All right DARLING in the FRANXX popping up in a TWIA column is the anime equivalent of your conservative uncle starting to pop off about politics at the family function, time to shut it down, people!

If you’re a mom, we hope you enjoyed this column and that you had a great Mother’s Day! If you’re not a mom (but have one and have a good relationship with her), we hope you liked this column as well and encourage you to call her! She loves you, and she’d appreciate that!