Searching for specific anime about family relationships

[KholdStare]

Hello all once again.

I am currently looking for an anime where a boy has a very good relationship with his father. By this, I mean there are scenes where they spend lots of time together. The mother must also be present. The father-son relationship doesn't have to be the main focus of the story; the plot can literally be anything from action fantasy to slice of life. I just want it to have some significant influence on the plot.

I am basically looking for a Clannad where Ushio is a boy.

[Tenzen12]

Try Evangelion

[SeijiSensei]

Both Chi's Sweet Home and Higepiyo feature young boys in a happy family setting. These shows are probably not what you're looking for, though.

Positive relationships with parents seem rare in anime shows, probably because most of them target adolescents.

[KholdStare]

Originally Posted by SeijiSensei

Positive relationships with parents seem rare in anime shows, probably because most of them target adolescents.

I wholeheartedly agree with this. I would love to see more anime where the "family" theme is in there.

[wontaek]

Touch
H2
Cross Game
Space Brothers
Pandora Hearts

[Flower]

Originally Posted by KholdStare

I wholeheartedly agree with this. I would love to see more anime where the "family" theme is in there.

Some of the World Masterpiece Theatre series are good for this kind of thing, but only some. Might try looking at some ofthe titles in the Social Group here: http://forums.animesuki.com/group.php?groupid=542 (Assuming you have not already seen them all, of course.)

Often these series deal with broken familial relations in some way and the healing or restoration of the children (and parents) in various ways. Sometimes the family situation are amazingly wholesome before the break, and other times they come in after many years of being orphaned.

Many of the series are based on popular late 19th or early 20th c novels that extolled "family values" that were normal and wholesome even for that time, but they are pretty effectively brought even a bit more up to date by the contemporary Japanese presentation of the material - sometimes they really are amazingly well done in my opinion.....

That being said, the larger % of MCs are also female, though there are some with young male leads....

Anyway, just a possible different avenue.

Be aware that they are definitelynot to everyone's taste - though I hapoen to like many of the series produced thus far.

[frivolity]

Tamako Market features strong family relationships. The protagonist is a girl, but one of the main characters is a boy who has a good relationship with his parents.

[SeijiSensei]

The father in Showa Monogatari has a complicated relationship with his children. His older son is finishing university and shows no interest in carrying on his father's machine-tool business which is struggling financially. His younger son, who narrates the story, is a rumbunctious lad of nine who has run-ins with his dad. There's also a teen-aged sister discovering romance to complicate the father's life even further. Yet there is no doubt that this is a loving family, just one beset by the difficulties of everyday life. The story maintains an optimistic tone throughout as befits its setting in 1964, the year the Olympics came to Tokyo.

[Sackett]

Originally Posted by Tenzen12

Try Evangelion

No, no. Ranma 1/2 of course.

More seriously, this is a rather difficult request to fill.

Most stories in general lack parental figures, or the parental figure is an antagonist. I can name plenty of stories where the father has a good relationship with his son, and plenty where the father is an important figure in the story. Very few were they both coincide.

With anime targeted at teenagers and young adults the number of stories with both drop close to zero.

[Guardian Enzo]

I like the idea of the Adachi selections above, but the fathers are honestly barely present in those stories (the most present being the father of the girls in Cross Game, not the boy). I honestly consider the father-son relationship in Showa Monogatari to be pretty awful, though it's certainly a focus.

This is indeed a tough one. It's a shame about "the mother has to be present" because the father-son relationship in Capeta is one of my favorites anywhere in anime or manga, but the mother is no longer with them.

[KholdStare]

Originally Posted by Sackett

More seriously, this is a rather difficult request to fill.

Most stories in general lack parental figures, or the parental figure is an antagonist. I can name plenty of stories where the father has a good relationship with his son, and plenty where the father is an important figure in the story. Very few were they both coincide.

With anime targeted at teenagers and young adults the number of stories with both drop close to zero.

Thanks for the information. Someone also told me the absence of parents is common in Japanese media in general, not just anime.

[Sackett]

It's not just Japanese media. This parental absence is common in stories in general. In his book The Seven Basic Plots Booker talks about this and concludes that the very nature of storytelling tends towards stories with either absent parents, or antagonistic parents.

Just look at fairy tales, how many have the hero or heroine an orphan?

Basically Booker says that the nature of storytelling tends toward telling the story of a hero achieving independent adulthood, which is difficult to tell with a friendly father/mother figure who is more than a supporting character. He does identify some stories that do have a prominent friendly parental figure, but notes that they are often not explicitly the parent, but rather a stand in for the parent.