Updated July 22, 2022 10.5K votes 2.9K voters 41.4K views
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Vote up the anime parents you wish you could call your own.
It's surprisingly common to find anime parents who are absolutely terrible at parenting. Sometimes the parental figures are dead, or just off on permanent overseas business trips. That said, there are some parents in our favorite anime shows who are just plain amazing.
Parenting is no easy job, but these great moms and dads make it look easier than spotting the protagonist in an anime classroom. Some of them make huge sacrifices for their kids, while others are simply rocking the day to day grind of child-rearing. Good parents in anime are rare, so it's worth getting to know the ones who do exist.
Maes Hughes of Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is one of the most loving dads you'll find in an anime. He carries a picture of his daughter, Elycia, with him everywhere and brags about how cute she is to anyone who will listen. He consistently showers his little girl with affection, making her feel safe, loved, and happy in a dangerous world. His death partway through the series is all the more tragic because Elycia is going to have to grow up without him.
Loid and Yor aren't your typical parents. Loid is a spy who adopted a little girl named Anya in order to infiltrate a prestigious elementary school, while Yor is an assassin who married Loid in order to appear normal to her little brother and her day job co-workers. Neither of them have revealed this to each other - Yor thinks Loid is a psychologist with a biological daughter, and Loid thinks that Yor is a regular office lady. Anya only knows what's going on because she's psychic.
Despite the dishonest set-up, Loid and Yor are surprisingly good parents. Whether it's Yor teaching Anya how to stand up to bullies and compete in sports competitions or Loid setting up fake heists for Anya's amusement, both of them put a lot of effort into the whole parenting thing. They even do a good job with mundane things like not forcing her beyond her limits when it comes to studying, even if it jeopardizes the mission. Overall, they're unconventional but awesome parents.
Hana from Wolf Childrenhas some parenting challenges that most parents don't have. Not only is she raising two rambunctious little kids on her own, but her kids have a strange secret. Like their father, they can transform into wolves. Figuring out how to raise her kids properly requires a ton of research and there are some thorny questions (like whether to take her kids to a pediatrician or a veterinarian when they get sick) but Hana makes it work for the sake of her babies.
Because Fruits Basket opens just after Kyoko Honda's death, we never get to properly meet her. From the flashbacks, though, we learn that she's the MVP of anime moms. Kyoko was a gang member turned responsible mother. While her wilder tendencies followed her into adulthood, she had no expectation that her nervous, well-behaved, and deeply empathetic daughter Tohru be like her. All she wants is for Tohru to be herself. Kyoko raises Tohru to be confident, decisive, and strong, while still retaining her gentleness.
Not only is Kyoko an awesome mom to her own daughter, she's a surrogate mom to Tohru's friends, Uo and Hana. The lessons they learn from her help them with every problem they face after her death, particularly when they must deal with the deeply disturbed Sohma family.
Akio and Sanae Furukawa of Clannad are often cited as some of the best anime parents ever, and for good reason. When their daughter Nagisa feels guilty because her poor health forced her parents to give up their important careers, her dad hits her with this:
"A child's dream is their parents' dream. You can make it come true for us. Don't you realize that our dream is to watch you live out your dream? Your mom and I didn't give up our dreams at all. You get it, Nagisa? You are our dream. That's what being parents is all about. That's what being a family is all about. If you get discouraged and give up now, then all our dreams die."
Not only do they obviously love their kid, they're also emotionally honest and open enough to have these kinds of conversations in the first place. Besides that, they take in Nagisa's boyfriend, Tomoya, when his own father proves less than ideal, thus extending their parenting skills beyond their own daughter.
Erased's Sachiko Fujinuma says that her child is the most important thing in the world and she proves it. She consistently shows her love for him through the minutiae of parenting - making meals, giving physical affection, dispensing general life advice, and more. She also shows it through some seriously huge gestures.
When her child, Satoru, tries to save his friend from an abusive mother and a local serial killer, Sachiko is more than willing to help. When Satoru ends up in a coma after the aforementioned serial killer goes after him, his mom spends four hours a day strengthening his muscles to prepare for the day when he finally wakes up. The coma lasts for 15 years, but she never gives up no matter how hopeless things look.
