This short series does an excellent job of portraying how parental negligence creates a chain of misery. The real world is messy, and this story doesn’t shy away from showing it.
To those saying, “Adults aren’t actually like this; they’re just incompetent to make the plot work,” I’d urge you to check your privilege. Adults are like this, and worse happens every day. In the United States alone, roughly five children die each day due to abuse or neglect.
While I count myself fortunate to have been raised by great parents, I still found myself relating to Naoki Azuma. I grew up in my older brother’s shadow, he was the golden child. Straight A’s, president of the SGA in high school, leader of Model UN, class president for all four years of college, magna cum laude in Chemical Engineering, and with job offers lined up before graduation. And then… there was me. The “screw-up.”
I went through almost exactly what Naoki did. But just like Naoki, my brother loved me more than anyone. He listened to me, encouraged me to do what I wanted, and reminded me I didn’t have to follow his path. Maybe it’s just a common older/younger brother dynamic, but it resonated deeply with me.
For me, the emotion in Takopi’s Original Sin felt real. Painfully, beautifully real.
