Spotlight Anime: Usagi Drop

Usagi Drop is the only anime about parenting from the last ten years.

there is nothing simpler than this story: a guy discovers his grandfather has a child. As nobody wants to take care of the kid, he takes the little girl in and starts sharing a life with her.

Every episode presents real problems that a parent would have to deal with in child care. The Loss of a Career, the Loss of a social life, and probably the biggest impact would be the responsibility of protecting and caring for someone else.

Loss of career? Yeah, Daikichi takes on a lower-paying job with regular hours to better take care of Rin. But you never see him worrying about how he's got less to spend because of it nor does he ever regret or even doubt his decision.

Loss of social life? Daikichi didn't have much of a social life from what I could tell. I recall that he once makes an offhand comment about how he used to go out drinking before Rin came into his life but he never really expresses that desire in the series nor do you see him turn away former drinking buddies. He makes all these big changes in his life and yet it feels as if he only has the slightest bit of trouble adjusting to it all.

It is heartfelt without forcing the drama

... realistic, memorable, gives the same fuzzy feeling present in MOE titles ...

It aspires to be a fairly realistic portrayal of raising a child and yet it's so idealized in some aspects that it undermines itself.

The characters are very human and believable. They are detailed to an extent that we identify with them (for example, Daikichi's bad mornings, I absolutely found that detail essential) The children are also very real, except for the star of the show: Rin. As adorable as a child can be, Rin is an impossibility of nature. She is mature, that's ok, she is kind, that's ok, she is nice, that's ok. But she is so much all of this, on a such great effort to make her likeable to everyone, that she does not pass for a child. Children throw fits, children are annoying, children are dirty, and Rin-chan is not any of this. Rin is always adorable! All the other children, especially Reina-chan, are pretty much ok, but they apparently exist to emphasize how much Rin is special and wonderful.

Rin is certainly designed to appeal to the general audience, her behaviour in itself, though unlikely, is neither impossible nor even implausible.

Rin's speech patterns and mannerisms are just too polished, too free of errors and too glibly produced. This is not how a child of six years speaks and sounds really unnatural.

Rin's maturity and near-angelic demeanor feels like she was built from the ground up to be as likable as possible. Many of the scenes in which she interacts with other children only serve to show how much smarter and more mature she is.

but it's also very true to life that children who are abandoned have to grow up faster. The void of loving parents can be reflected behaviorally in children becoming overly obedient in an attempt to gain acceptance and love. Some times children seem to internalize the abandonment as it being something wrong with themselves.

'acting to mature' and 'not being able to act like a child' are issues well enough known that they call for immediate action by youth protection authorities where I live.

the series also opts to conveniently leave out exploring how Daikichi would have extra financial concerns (raising a child isn't cheap, after all), among other things.

they're not really considered because he doesn't lead a jet-set lifestyle in the first place, and while his new job doesn't pay as well as his old one, from the various shopping scenes it seems like he knows how to be thrifty.

Also, there is no central plot, a couple of sub-plots, or simply a direction that culminates in a satisfying finish; the story is left incomplete.

... your story only ends when you die, so why should a realistic anime be any different?

It lacks some sort of catharsis which, IIRC, Aishiteruze Baby, Koi Kaze (sort of), 5 Centimeters per Second, and Grave of the Fireflies all have.

The production values are wonderful and it's often heartwarming*

The art is very beautiful and the character design is appropriate. The lack of pretty people is reassuring. I would have liked richer backgrounds, even with the watercolour design present through the series, but like this it's ok too.

It's style of pastels and minimal animation at first seemed a bit overused in slice of life series. But the art subtly in the face of such a story seemed yet another element of the story that's pointing my vote towards yes. If this anime was in fact created to stimulate otaku into having children, I think it was very successful but I suppose we couldn't know if this anime actually stimulated any hikikomori's out of their seclusion without extensive testing and surveys pertaining to the Japans population dynamics post Usagi Drop.

Overall
Even without the psychological implications, the minimal artistic style, subtle and gentle, pretty, and appropriate musical arrangement and the easy to like characters of this story make this a series very easy to like and vote yes for.

It really is too bad if this story won't be continued, but as it stands it's still a great theoretical slice of someone's ideal life and how children play an important role in the equation of life.

On paper, Usagi Drop is the story of 2 people who make the most of a set of very unfortunate circumstances and help each other rise above them. In practice, though, the way Rin and Daikichi get along is just so smooth and perfect that it almost seems like they were destined to be together. An interpretation that's actually reinforced by certain developments in the later half of the manga (which the anime doesn't cover) up to and including the controversial ending.

Exkalamity said:
Usagi Drop is far from overrated.

Secretly funded by the Japanese government to combat declining birth rates, project "USAGI DROP" targeted a very specific, generally non-reproductive demographic of the Japanese population: the otaku. At the core of the project was a 11 episode television series that was specifically designed to thoroughly rouse hibernating paternal instincts. Researchers noted a 41% increase in the desire to have children in males in their 20s to 30s who watched a single episode of Usagi Drop. Researchers also noted that of that 41%, 77% of those males explicitly stated that they wanted daughters. One of the biggest advantages project USAGI DROP had over its predecessor, project MINDLESS ECCHI is that it instilled the desire to propagate in its viewers rather than the desire to merely fornicate. Researchers of the project also documented what later became termed as the "Usagi Drop effect;" after watching an episode of Usagi Drop, viewers would often ramble off a list of random names before being able to engage in proper conversation. After a conducting several widespread interviews, researchers discovered that these ramblings were the external symptoms of an internal debate that was common among all viewers of Usagi Drop; the viewers consistently tried to decide what name they wanted to bestow on their offspring after watching an episode of Usagi Drop. After these very promising test results, the Japanese Government gave the project the green light and the anime aired in the Summer of 2011. They are expecting great returns in nine months.

Usagi Drop is the only anime about parenting from the last ten years.

there is nothing simpler than this story: a guy discovers his grandfather has a child. As nobody wants to take care of the kid, he takes the little girl in and starts sharing a life with her.

Every episode presents real problems that a parent would have to deal with in child care. The Loss of a Career, the Loss of a social life, and probably the biggest impact would be the responsibility of protecting and caring for someone else.

Loss of career? Yeah, Daikichi takes on a lower-paying job with regular hours to better take care of Rin. But you never see him worrying about how he's got less to spend because of it nor does he ever regret or even doubt his decision.

Loss of social life? Daikichi didn't have much of a social life from what I could tell. I recall that he once makes an offhand comment about how he used to go out drinking before Rin came into his life but he never really expresses that desire in the series nor do you see him turn away former drinking buddies. He makes all these big changes in his life and yet it feels as if he only has the slightest bit of trouble adjusting to it all.

It is heartfelt without forcing the drama

... realistic, memorable, gives the same fuzzy feeling present in MOE titles ...

It aspires to be a fairly realistic portrayal of raising a child and yet it's so idealized in some aspects that it undermines itself.

The characters are very human and believable. They are detailed to an extent that we identify with them (for example, Daikichi's bad mornings, I absolutely found that detail essential) The children are also very real, except for the star of the show: Rin. As adorable as a child can be, Rin is an impossibility of nature. She is mature, that's ok, she is kind, that's ok, she is nice, that's ok. But she is so much all of this, on a such great effort to make her likeable to everyone, that she does not pass for a child. Children throw fits, children are annoying, children are dirty, and Rin-chan is not any of this. Rin is always adorable! All the other children, especially Reina-chan, are pretty much ok, but they apparently exist to emphasize how much Rin is special and wonderful.

Rin is certainly designed to appeal to the general audience, her behaviour in itself, though unlikely, is neither impossible nor even implausible.

Rin's speech patterns and mannerisms are just too polished, too free of errors and too glibly produced. This is not how a child of six years speaks and sounds really unnatural.

Rin's maturity and near-angelic demeanor feels like she was built from the ground up to be as likable as possible. Many of the scenes in which she interacts with other children only serve to show how much smarter and more mature she is.

but it's also very true to life that children who are abandoned have to grow up faster. The void of loving parents can be reflected behaviorally in children becoming overly obedient in an attempt to gain acceptance and love. Some times children seem to internalize the abandonment as it being something wrong with themselves.

'acting to mature' and 'not being able to act like a child' are issues well enough known that they call for immediate action by youth protection authorities where I live.

the series also opts to conveniently leave out exploring how Daikichi would have extra financial concerns (raising a child isn't cheap, after all), among other things.

they're not really considered because he doesn't lead a jet-set lifestyle in the first place, and while his new job doesn't pay as well as his old one, from the various shopping scenes it seems like he knows how to be thrifty.

Also, there is no central plot, a couple of sub-plots, or simply a direction that culminates in a satisfying finish; the story is left incomplete.

... your story only ends when you die, so why should a realistic anime be any different?

It lacks some sort of catharsis which, IIRC, Aishiteruze Baby, Koi Kaze (sort of), 5 Centimeters per Second, and Grave of the Fireflies all have.

The production values are wonderful and it's often heartwarming*

The art is very beautiful and the character design is appropriate. The lack of pretty people is reassuring. I would have liked richer backgrounds, even with the watercolour design present through the series, but like this it's ok too.

It's style of pastels and minimal animation at first seemed a bit overused in slice of life series. But the art subtly in the face of such a story seemed yet another element of the story that's pointing my vote towards yes. If this anime was in fact created to stimulate otaku into having children, I think it was very successful but I suppose we couldn't know if this anime actually stimulated any hikikomori's out of their seclusion without extensive testing and surveys pertaining to the Japans population dynamics post Usagi Drop.

Overall
Even without the psychological implications, the minimal artistic style, subtle and gentle, pretty, and appropriate musical arrangement and the easy to like characters of this story make this a series very easy to like and vote yes for.

It really is too bad if this story won't be continued, but as it stands it's still a great theoretical slice of someone's ideal life and how children play an important role in the equation of life.

On paper, Usagi Drop is the story of 2 people who make the most of a set of very unfortunate circumstances and help each other rise above them. In practice, though, the way Rin and Daikichi get along is just so smooth and perfect that it almost seems like they were destined to be together. An interpretation that's actually reinforced by certain developments in the later half of the manga (which the anime doesn't cover) up to and including the controversial ending.