Anpan

The life stories of a tomboy and a milksop

Anpan is the fictionalized biography of Komatsu Nobu and Takashi Yanase the latter of whom was a mangaka and the creator of Anpanman, a character so successful that it overtook the sales of Hello Kitty in 2002. Even from the title it's clear that the draw for this series is Anpanman, but, as the series faithfully documents, Anpanman was not created until Takashi was 50 which happens around week 21 in this series, and, even then, the anime was not created until Takashi was 69. And so the series, appropriately, is more focused on Nobu and her family. To be fair, all the evidence is that she had quite a bit more personality and more interesting jobs than her famous husband (named Yanai in this series).

Nobu and Yanai met and grew up together in a small village near to and now a suburb of Kochi City on Shikoku. Young Nobu was a bit of a jock (to the extent that it was possible in the culture at the time) who would always choose to run rather walk. As is common in asadoras, a child actor (Nagase Yuzuna) performs the character in the early episodes and Imada Mio takes over starting in high school. I found Imada's performance throughout to be perfectly fine and professional playing Nobu as upbeat and energetic pretty much throughout though it must be noted that Nobu is the very rare protagonist in an asadora that spans the wars who fully supported the Japanese wars in Asia and the Pacific. She is a grade school teacher during the final years of war, dutifully and enthusiastically drills her students with the war propaganda she is required to teach. And so when Japan finally surrenders, and she sees the cost of what she and others have done, she thoroughly regrets what she had done, quits teaching and sincerely seeks ways to make the world a better place. Indeed, one of the major themes of the series is how the characters respond to their parts in the wars.

Yanai is played by Kitamura Takumi who has the much more difficult role of playing a talented artist who is self-effacing and hesitant to the point of complete and utter inertia at times. The character is unrelentingly uncharismatic, and - absolutely no shade on the actor since that is how the character is written - he effectively portrays Yanai as such throughout.

I must admit that one of the reasons that I watched this series is that Kawai Yuumi plays the oldest of Nobu's two younger sisters, Ranko. As ever, she is an upcoming actress who is one to watch - she has already won the Japanese Film Academy prize for Best Actress (read my review of A Girl Named Ann here on MDL, and then never, ever watch the film). Ranko is a perfectly fine character with her own arc through the series, but there's not all that much for Kawai to do here even as she acquits herself well as usual.

On the other hand, it was Hara Nanoka's performance as Nobu's youngest sister, Meiko, that really caught my eye, and had me searching to see what else she has been in. Her portrayal of Meiko's crush on one of Yanai's friends is both delightful and hilarious. Meiko led the most conventional life of the three sisters, and so there is not that much for character to do in the second half of the series, but her turn in that first half is very fun.

Anpanman itself is a very strange character: a hero who happily offers his head to be eaten by the starving and always nonviolently fights to help people. And so this series is about how that character came to be, and the parts of that character which were drawn from the lives of the people around the real Takashi. I do think the series is successful in telling that story, and I also think it is reasonably fun and entertaining along the way. If you're a fan of Anpanman, then it's probably a must-watch. If you like asadoras as genre then it's well worth the watch: I have this one as above average though not near the greats like Amachan, Tora ni Tsubasa, Oshin and Gochisosan (the latter three of which span roughly the same historical time period). For the general viewer who is unacquainted with the format it's perfectly fine, but there are better ones to introduce you to them.

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