Father Forgive Him: The Deadbeat Dads of Anime
Happy Father's Day to Worthy Dads Only.
My paternal parent was not present at my birth. He was “too hungry and couldn’t wait anymore.”
I was born within the twenty minutes he was gone.
My Spirit has been known.
He was the first person to lay his hands on me.
I have no relationship with my paternal parent and never will. When we did, it was never good or real. He was barely present and consistently abusive to family, never honest, even if he called you a friend. Now he’s dying, life squandered to unrecognizable pieces, and I’m living my life in perfect peace. I am not grieving. He was abusive. I am not sad. He is mentally ill. I am nothing but abundantly reflective of how much love and life one man lost by being an ain’t shit dad.
Sorry to that man.
I know I am not alone in this experience (besides my siblings).
There are countless people whose life stories have a soul wound caused by their parents, namely the paternal parent. Let’s talk about it.
Father, Heal These Wounds
Father wounds are the attachment wounds of unresolved traumas inflicted on a child by an abusive or absent paternal parent. The thousand pins of disappointments. The paper cuts of insults. The gut punch of abandonment and the slap of neglect.
There are signs of the emotional immaturity of such a man: the lust of self, the pride of life, the selfish and miserly kind. The man who uses his fists over his heart, who stabs with words and steals joy and time, but covets the legacy and inheritance of what they did not earn. It’s the entitlement that creeps into every interaction that reopens the soul wound, the continued demand for access to harm that widens the gash with each new painful memory.
How do you reconcile with someone who never wants to, who doesn’t believe there’s anything to ask for forgiveness, and who never will?
This is one of the reasons I hold storytelling so closely to my heart as a healing act, tool, and process.
Maybe it’s because art imitates reality.
I love storytelling that depicts the complexities of fatherhood through human experiences in fiction. My favorite TV dads are Bob Belcher and Phil Dunphy. My standards are high because watching even fictional characters experience a loving father-daughter relationship has been healing. The autistic brain does not process fiction as a fake reality; vicarious learning is as tangible and edifying to the soul as experiential. The human brain does not know the difference between you sensing pain in your body versus seeing someone in pain. It’s all one consciousness connecting our realities.
Creativity is spirituality, and healing can only be done through the artistic prism of that light. I’m healing my father wounds through my art, my manga light novel, a josei I’m writing inspired by Erina Nakiri from the anime and manga, Shokugeki no Soma.
Anime as Experience: The Everyday Somaesthetics of Fatherhood
But living as the child of an emotionally immature father is a complex wound to heal. People will want to talk and indoctrinate you out of the extraction process. They will guilt you with religious texts, cultural rhetoric, and epithets. They will mock you and gaslight your experience because “he’s still your dad” and “the Bible says…” and “you only have one” you out of doing what is necessary to cut a parasitic parent out of your life, and then out of your system.
Animanga loves exploring and grappling with “daddy issues.”
Shonen, in particular.
Mothers are often sacrificial plot devices, dead before the pilot (if not mysteriously absent from the story altogether until fans begin to question the covert misogyny inherent in that), and a mangaka probably wrote the worst, most selfish dads in fiction for their main character to be the offspring of. But bad dads are not limited only to the backstory of the protagonist. In anime, any child can get it.
From fathers who refuse to give up their life dream to raise the child they chose to have, to fathers who forcably rope their child into their wicked schemes and corrupt plans, to fathers too afraid to grow up and raise their son into a man, so he abandons his kid and his mother too…anime depicts some of the worst men alive that leaves many wondering if he’s not better off gone…or dead.
When I was working on my three-part Substack series on somaesthetics, sensations, and adverse childhood stress, centered on Shoto Todoroki from My Hero Academia, a major focus was on Enji Todoroki’s role in Shoto’s life. An involved parent to the point of being overbearing and abusive to his children. I was also working through some childhood paternal trauma through my creative writing. Anime helped me through it all.
Bad Dads of Anime (the list is long…)
Grisha Yeager (Attack On Titan): used his two sons as weapons of mass destruction and genocide.
Goku (Dragon Ball Z): a wildly immature, unserious, and irresponsible. He died so many times for the sake of his dream that he abandoned his son for ANOTHER ALIEN, his foil, to raise.
Azami Nakamura (Food Wars): brainwashed and abused his daughter into developing an eating disorder, among other mental health issues.
Joichiro Yukihira (Food Wars): abandoned his son to go cooking around the world a year after his wife died.
Ging Freecss (Hunter x Hunter): abandoned his son for the sake of his work, then forced him to get strong to find him, which led his son on a life-or-death wild goose chase to see him, only if he is the strongest hunter. Even if Ging is one of the top five Nen users in the world, talk about an unreasonably high standard to meet an egotistical, deadbeat dad.
Toji Fushiguro (Jujutsu Kaisen): gave his son a feminine name and took his mother’s surname to escape his affluent family’s name, only to abandon him as a baby. He then forgot his son’s name and that he even had a son until he became a poltergeist trying to kill him until he heard.
Enji "Endeavor" Todoroki (My Hero Academia): I’ve said enough.
Naruto (Naruto): when he became a husband and hokage, instead of breaking generational curses, he repeated the pattern of poor parenting decisions and absenteeism. He works too much, ignores his kids, misses important family events, and uses his magic system to clone his image to keep up the ruse. Being a present but emotionally absent and immature father is like giving a child a pack of cookies only to find them all gone. Even after knowing what his father, the fourth hokage, did to him and how he was used as a vessel for evil, left him orphaned and to be shunned by the same village he was born in and forced to save.
Naruto and Boruto fighting
Healing Father Wounds
Parenting is a choice. Good parenting is a choice. Those who choose and those who don’t are not in the same category, because fatherhood is difficult. The sorrow and regret that a father's wounds create in a child burrow deep into romantic, sexual, and platonic relationships. How could they not? But there are ways to heal. To accept love from present men who serve as surrogate fathers. Father figures who show up and stay, who are compassionate and self-sacrificial
One Piece, in particular, has some of the worst examples of paternal parents I’ve ever seen, and there is a lot of material in other media to reference.
Monkey D. Garp (One Piece): was such an absent dad that his son and grandson became the mortal enemies of his profession as a vice admiral in the Marines: a revolutionary and a pirate, respectively.
Monkey D. Dragon (One Piece): abandoned his son to lead a global revolution against the world government.
Judge Vinsmoke (One Piece): disowned his son for displaying empathy.
Yasopp (One Piece): abandoned his son to be a pirate and help raise his Captain’s adoptive daughter after his wife died, and was too cowardly ever to meet him.
We hate him.
One Piece of Advice: Be a Present and Devoted Dad
However, the iconic animanga also boasts some of the most heartwarming and moving depictions of my favorite step-dad meme. Pirates can be good dads, too. These men stepped up to take care of another man’s kid with all the love and guidance a good and involved father should bring (if they are alive, that is). As everything circles back to God and One Piece over here, I want to highlight a few to end on, because I know a good father, several, and I encourage them to remain that way. It’s the least every man can do—BE A GOOD FATHER and a role model of a father figure.
Red Leg Zeff and Black Leg Sanji
The father who starved to death and sacrificed his leg for a child of abuse and neglect that he barely knew.
Rosinate “Corazon” Don Quixote and Trafalgar Law
The father who traveled by boat and foot to find a doctor and a cure for a terminally ill, orphaned child; then sacrificed his life to save his life and keep him alive.
Whitebeard, the Whitebeard Pirates, and Ace
The man who became the father of the fatherless because he wanted a family, and died while waging war against the military to save one of his sons from death.
Dr. Hiriluk and Tony Tony Chopper
The father-figure who saved a child rejected by his own family, kind, and community to raise him into the most compassionate medical doctor the world will ever know.
"Red-Haired" Shanks, Uta, and Monkey D. Luffy
The dad who remembered what it was like to be abandoned and found, raised with love, and the King of the Pirates mentality. Who sacrificed his arm and his reputation to save his son and daughter as if they were his blood.
Happy Father’s Day to the men who deserve it. The rest of you bad dads can eat shit.