Content Warning: Extremely graphic depictions of child suicide, bullying, depression, child abuse, child neglect, stereotypical treatment of sex work, animal cruelty and death

Spoilers for all of Takopi’s Original Sin

**What’s it about? **Takopi is an alien from the Planet Happy! They crash landed here on Earth hoping to bring happiness to children with their “magic gadgets.” The first child they encounter though, fourth grader Shizuka, definitely seems in need of their help. Why does she always come home from school with a mark on her face? What happened to her school supplies? And where is her mom?

[Portions of this review were written as notes for the Chatty AF Summer 2025 Wrapup and read on air.]

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Watching Takopi each week, I was often filled with a sense of dread. What horrifying thing would I bear witness to? How would the show humiliate, debilitate, immiserate, or otherwise harm the children it is depicting today?

I’ve often written articles meditating on, and occasionally defending, tragedy porn. My feelings about tragedy porn are particularly strong when it depicts children who are violently harmed by oppressive systems, and, in fact, many of my favorite shows fall into this category–shows as varied as Madoka Magica, Vinland Saga, Monogatari, Made in Abyss, and Penguindrum. In our current social order, to be a child is to be treated not as a human being but as property by adults who often do not have your best interests at heart–and the greatest works about childhood must excavate the harm that this causes. Takopi’s Original Sin stretches my tolerance of this excavation to its absolute limits–depicting how abuse and neglect can break the minds of children, with very little in the way of meaningful solutions.

I think part of what is frustrating to me is the extent to which the show is dedicated to displaying the broken minds of these children and their cruelty: we watch children kidnap each other, beat each other near to death, lose their minds, “cathartically” beat our Doraemon standin to a pulp, and generally just be completely monstrous. Yes, children can be terrible to each other. But bringing the show to the point where the children are likely having paranoid psychosis episodes–such as Shizuki having delusions that her father’s other children ate her dog–on top of the already existing depictions of suicide make the show’s ending feel completely superfluous. These are children who need help. And bonding over a shared repressed memory of a fallen friend in Takopi does not feel like an adequate ending point for Shizuka and Marina’s story.

Survivors can and do support each other, and representation can set the goal of raising awareness of how moving away from savior mentalities and towards mutual aid can help us better actually support survivors without pathologizing them. What makes the ending of Penguindrum so powerful, as a series that deals with many many similar situations to Takopi, is its acknowledgement of the inadequacy of children’s ability to protect each other in the face of systemic violence, and how, despite that inadequacy, these attempts are still worth valuing and cherishing. It refuses to pathologize the poor. Takopi, by contrast, feels at times like it is entirely pathologization–if only these broken children would just understand they have more in common than they have in conflict, then they could protect each other from their broken parents, who, by the way, are deadbeat dads, neglectful sex workers, and violent jealous wives. It’s tiring, and honestly I came away from the show not really feeling much of a sense that it understood what it was trying to say other than “shit sucks. But survivors can band together if they can get over their bullshit.” I mean I guess?

Part, I suppose, of my frustration with the show is all the things it does, in fact, do remarkably well. The animation is absolutely stunning, using creative boarding, innovative character acting, and wonderfully varied art design to create a sense of atmosphere in every episode. This show is the most visually stunning of the year, full stop. I would love to see this director get more work!

However, what *Takopi *does well also speaks to a gendering of who is allowed punished and who is treated with grace by the script. The depiction of Naoki Azuma’s struggles with emotional abuse I found fairly touching, and it makes sense that he would be empathetic towards Shizuka, even as she slid further and further into insanity. The ways systems of rewards and punishments (ie “positive reinforcers) can become an endless ritual of humiliation for children being set up for failure is poignant, particularly in a culture where test scores are posted on the wall for all to see (like mine were as a child.) It is notable, however, that the one significant boy in the story is arguably treated with far more empathy and nuance than the two girls, who are just pummelled emotionally over and over again. Unlike Shizuka and Marina, there is never the sense that Azuma is himself going insane–he is never needlessly cruel except to himself. His brother reaching out to him to offer real care, particularly given the brother is almost an adult himself, feels far more meaningful in terms of an acknowledgement of what would be necessary to disrupt the power dynamic of abuse than the resolution of Shizuka and Marina’s stories.

Takopi themself comes across as a complicated figure. Their complete lack of understanding called to mind the ways savior complex minded adults accidentally make the lives of those they are attempting to save much worse. Their lack of understanding also, at a certain point I considered, might be pointing at us–showing us that our way of treating children is incomprehensive. However, towards the end I felt this completely muddled by the reveal that he was originally going to earth to kill Shizuka. Shifting from that to making him again apologize for his savior complex felt jarring in the sense that I don’t know what he’s supposed to be!

I honestly came away from *Takopi *feeling utterly ambivalent. Many weeks later, I have not really thought about it at all, to be honest–which speaks, I think, to how hollow the show’s treatment of abuse is. Great art about social injustice provokes the spirit, asking us to examine our own complicity or own agency in how we can transform the world and make it different. Takopi, instead, often replicates the most lazy narratives about abuse–that hurt people hurt people, that sex workers make terrible mothers, and that spurned women become violent abusers–and combines them with shocking imagery to emotionally manipulate the audience into thinking they are watching something profound. We deserve better art about abuse.

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