Suddenly remembered how when Buddy Daddies first came out a lot of ppl hated Misaki's guts and thought she was just as bad as Miri's bio dad, I think things have calmed down but back then it really rubed me the wrong way.
I’ll be honest, I really liked her. Like yes, sending such a young child away on her own with absolutely no supervision was horribly irresponsible. But I just loved how flawed and realistically human she was and I honestly want to see more of this type of character in media. Especially in anime, maybe I just haven’t seen a lot but I feel like we often see either parents who are super loving and caring or awfully abusive, we don’t see a lot of parents that are just trapped in a life they don’t want and tired of holding a facade (it looks like Misaki never abused Miri or even showed her unhappiness around her even though she was on the verge of snapping any minute).
Idk maybe I just sympathised with her because I neither want nor like children and I know I’d hate my life and resent the kid if I was ever forced or coerced into the role of a caretaker, but apparently it was too much asking to have some nuance. It blows my mind that so many ppl thought a trapped, unhappy, desperate abuse victim was on the same level as a human trafficker. I’ve seen some ppl bring up abortion or adoption and I know they had good intentions but afaik the situation isn't as simple in Japan.
I’ve also seen a lot of ppl comment that they wanted Misaki to “work on her issues so that she and Miri could be together again” and all I ask is: why? Why is that necessary? Why is there such a pervasive idea that children are always better off with their mothers? I sincerely think a happy ending would've been for her to get help and get better but NOT get the kid back and I was rlly hoping the writers would go that route, it would've been very refreshing. I wanted the message to be “Not everyone is fit to be a parent and especially not every woman is fit to be a caretaker and there’s more than one type of family”.
And I'm sad that she was killed off but I see why they made the choices they made and they make a lot of sense given the context of the story. I personally don’t have any complaints about the writing but I think Misaki deserved better. I’m sad she died but I understand why it happened, I suppose with her arc going that route it wouldn’t have made sense for her to survive in a show where nobody’s safe from violent criminals who are willing to murder women and children to get them out of their way. Still, I don’t think she needed a big change of heart, I think she was already a great character as she was (it also rubbed me the wrong way that some people started viewing her as a good person only once she started making an effort to do things right but I digress).
I’ll be honest, I’m not a huge fan of the “unwilling parent learns to love their kid and learns to be a good parent so that they can finally be a happy family” narrative. It just doesn’t sit right with me, maybe I’m reading too much into it but the message I get from these kind of stories is that anyone can be a good parent/caretaker with enough help and resources and in the right place mentally and emotionally (ESPECIALLY because that’s an argument people use in real life for why they think everyone should have kids, or hell, even as an anti abortion argument; like that’s not an exaggeration, I’ve seen them saying pretty much the exact same thing), when the sad reality is that sometimes kids are just unwanted. I sincerely wish the show had acknowledged that some people just don’t want to be parents even when they already are, I know it’s not pretty but these things need to be talked about in fiction.
I also think it would’ve fit the story perfectly: we would’ve had an example of horrible abusive parents (Rei’s father), amazing loving parents (Rei and Kazuki themselves) and parents who do their best but would still rather be doing anything else (Misaki herself). Maybe I’m biased, I don’t know, but I’m really starved for this kind of content. As a friend of mine as well as a few other people have said, we need more situations like in Matilda, where the bio parents admit they aren’t fit for the role and happily sign away their parental rights.
(Granted that if Misaki hadn’t popped back into Miri’s life she wouldn’t have died like that, as she got targeted precisely because she was with Miri, that’s why I say I understand why the writers made the choices they made).
I also wish they hadn’t given her cancer if they were going to kill her off anyway, give the poor woman a break lol.
#not-eli's-art #eli-rambles #text #buddy-daddies #misaki-unasaka