InsaneJournal

Current mood:	enraged
Entry tags:	air, anime, clannad, kanon

Key and crappy parenting
I quite like the animes based on Key's bishojo games: Kanon, Air and Clannad (though I haven't actually seen the new Kanon yet, but I intend to). There's a couple of aspects, however, that make my skin crawl. I watched episode 13 of Clannad today, and I'm appalled.

In Clannad, we're currently going through Kotomi's story arc, and episode 13 gave us a bunch of backstory. Her parents (or maybe just her father) were scientists of some sort. Right before her birthday (it looked like she was ten years old or younger) they suddenly had to go off on a business trip - they were flying, so I'm sure it would've been at least a few days. They don't get a babysitter for her. Not only that, they were expecting kids to come over for her party, and I'm not sure if they were expecting parents. Yeah, let a bunch of kids run around your home unsupervised. Brilliant scientists, they were. No-one came to the party in the end.

Finally someone does arrive - a weird man in a trenchcoat. Kotomi tells him she's not supposed to let strangers in (one sign of intelligent parenting at last?). He's like "What, you haven't heard yet? Your parents died in a plane crash. By the way, can I just poke around your dad's office for a copy of this thesis he wrote that went down with him?" Just call him Mr Sensitive.

Kotomi doesn't let him in and freaks out. She stays up late to watch the news about the plane crash. The next day she wanders around the house calling for her parents. She eventually finds the thesis, and deciding she doesn't want anyone else to be happy or something, burns it.

No one comes to check on her in all this time. No relatives, no friends, no social services. I don't know if she ever got a guardian, and she doesn't seem to have one now - she currently appears to be living alone in her parents' home.

In Air, Minagi's situation makes me about as rageful. Her mother miscarries (or the baby dies? I'm not sure) and her parents divorce. The mother doesn't deal well with losing her baby, and starts calling Minagi 'Michiru', what the baby would have been called. I think she had other mental problems as well. The father has no idea about this. I'm not sure he contacts Minagi at all after the divorce. Finally, at the end of her arc, Minagi gets in touch with her dad again. He's remarried, and has a daughter (who must have been two or three years old) that Minagi had no idea about. The daughter's name? Michiru. Yes, he named her after the dead baby he had with his ex-wife. That creeps me right out.

Misuzu's dad was an asshole as well, but at least we're expected to see him as one.

Kanon (the first series), at least, didn't have any parenting situations that horrified me as much, that I can remember. Although I did think it was totally stupid for the mother to take the red-haired girl, a complete stranger, into her home after she fainted. Call an ambulance, for heaven's sake.