Kotaro Lives Alone is the cutest and most heartwarming anime that you should be watching already. Be warned, this show will take you on a rollercoaster of emotions. Be prepared to laugh, cry, and love as you watch Kotaro make his way in the world.
Kotaro is a peculiar four-year-old who lives on his own. Kotaro is mature for his age and acts like a proper old man from a different time. Kotaro lives in an apartment next to a struggling manga artist. The two will slowly become friends as they spend time together. Kotaro Lives Alone is a story about broken people making friends and dealing with their traumas. The series deals with the themes of neglect, loneliness, abuse, and family while it tells a cute and powerful story.
I watched the English dubbed version and thought the voice acting was great. It is available in the original Japanese with subtitles, but either experience is valid. The art and animation are fantastic for telling this story. Kotaro is so cute, and it’s hard not to fall in love with him as soon as he walks on screen. The rest of the cast is full of broken souls who need Kotaro as much as he needs them. It is heartwarming to see how the characters become friends and go on adventures. This is an anime that is based in reality so don’t expect powers and demons that aren’t metaphorical.
Each episode is made up of different vignettes that neatly come together at the end. You get different perspectives, experiences, and narratives of different traumas as they relate and empathize with Kotaro. This series gets sad, and I cried a lot. If you are someone who gets triggered by abuse or neglect, proceed with caution. It isn’t explicit when it addresses these themes, but it is something to keep in mind. That said, there are a lot of heartwarming moments to make up for it, but they will probably make you cry as well. My only complaint about this series is that I have already finished it.
Go watch Kotaro Lives Alone and thank me later. You can stream it now on Netflix!
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Image By https://comics.shogakukan.co.jp/book?isbn=9784091873552, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=68802401
Watched this a while back and also cried a lot. I work around kids and I had some children tell me another kid on the bus liked to eat tissues and immediately thought of this anime. When I asked him why he did it he just said he didn’t know. He wasn’t the best behaved but it still hurt me to think he was experiencing some kind of neglect or abuse and that was why he was doing it.
Oh man, thats sad. He might have been acting out for attention. I used to work with a kid who was super bad, but when I worked him closely and called him out when he was acting out, he started to do a lot better. Sometimes all kids need is someone to notice them.