Crunchyroll has once again proven itself adept at bringing strong anime to viewers, and its latest pickup, Takopi’s Original Sin, is not for the faint of heart. Based on the highly-praised Taizan 5 manga, the series provides an unassuming outer appearance only to take its audience into the chilling knowing plunge on trauma, bullying, and what it means to be human. The series has rapidly elevated to a high rating amongst anime fans, not due to its involving darkness, but just how far it seeks to investigate the fabrics of its characters lives.
The Deceptive Plot
Takopi’s Original Sin begins with Takopi, a carefree, octopus-like alien from the “Happy Planet,” in the universe with the sole intention of spreading happiness to the whole universe through his goofy “Happy Gadgets.” Takopi comes to Earth and before long, he meets Shizuka Kuze, a gloomy 9-year-old girl. Shizuka is the complete opposite of what Takopi represents – she’s a constant victim of bullying, dumped by her mother, and has only her favorite dog Chappy to lean on.
Fuelled by his untainted, unshakeable optimism, Takopi tries to “fix” Shizuka’s unhappiness with his gizmos. But his naively simplistic understanding of the world brutally collides with the cruel realities of human suffering. His good-hearted efforts tend to go awry, spawning more devastation and despair. The early episodes rapidly set this bleak pattern of events: Takopi’s efforts to make people happy merely serve to underscore and, in a few instances, increase the intense misery of those around him. The central premise hinges on Takopi’s repeated attempts to rewind the clock with a magical camera after Shizuka’s suicide, in which she might be genuinely happy, but each loop merely uncovers further layers of their interconnected miseries.
Characters Forged in Fire: Backstories of Anguish
The people in Takopi’s Original Sin are not simply villains or victims; they are complex individuals whose lives are molded by their unbearable situations.
Takopi: The eponymous hero, a pink, round extraterrestrial creature, appears to be the epitome of innocence and nearly childlike comprehension of feelings. His sincere desire to promote happiness is hampered by his ignorance of the degree of sadness, despair, and evil of mankind, which renders him a tragic, humorous character amidst the omnipresent darkness. He truly thinks that all problems can be solved by a device or a good disposition, which implodes with each failure to “rescue” Shizuka. His own “original sin” might actually be his first co-conspiracy in Shizuka’s initial suicide attempt when he naïvely gave out a “friendship ribbon.”
Shizuka Kuze: The centerpiece of the tragedy of the novel. Shizuka is a fourth-grade child and lives a miserable life. Her father abandoned her, and her mother won’t even acknowledge her whole existence. She is continually bullied both physically and verbally by her classmates. She only has one true source of happiness – her dog Chappy. Shizuka’s character is unflinching in revealing childhood trauma, depression and the desperate search for connection. While she is the victim, at times the novel adeptly implies some depth and even manipulative characteristics due to her desperate search for validation and escape.
Marina Kirarazaka: Shizuka’s main tormentor. Initially presented as a sadistic bully, Marina’s background is shown in order to illustrate her own inner torment. After having experienced a violent abusive relationship, at the hands of her own mother whose concern is about an affair between her husband and Shizuka’s mother Marina, she has taken out her anger on Shizuka. She reacts angrily towards any perceived inappropriateness by Shizuka, whom she subconsciously feels represents her family’s destructive revenge. While we find Marina’s treatment of Shizuka appalling, director Koji Fukada shows us a psychotic reaction to the horrific reality that is Marina’s life, demonstrating the cycle of abuse.
Azuma: Another student who tries to help Shizuka. Azuma is also wrestling with his own emotional demons in the form of a perfectionist, emotionally manipulative mother who leaves him no choice but to try for perfection. Azuma’s intentions are genuine when he helps Shizuka, but Azuma is often limited by his own inability to separate from the difficult relationships he is involved in, as well as his own fear and need for validation.
Why the Top Rank? The Power of Unflinching Realism
Takopi’s Original Sin has risen to the top of top-rated anime for a number of excellent reasons:
Unflinching Realism: In contrast to most stories that may hold back from showing the true nature of child abuse, bullying, and mental illness, Takopi’s Original Sin shows them with unflinching, disturbing realism. It does not hold back on the agony or present simplistic solutions, striking deeply with audiences who enjoy stories that hold no punches and face unpalatable realities.
Psychological depth: The show digs deeply into the psychological effects of trauma on young minds. Every character in the show, including the ‘bad guys’ or bullies, is given a very full inner life and it is nearly impossible for viewers to demonize anyone but rather, they empathize with each character.
Narrative ingenuity: The time-loop device is not an eraser button. It exposes more gradients of tragedy, and past transgressions, and makes us keenly aware that suffering is a common thread among them. The true message of this show is that happiness cannot be deposited on top of someone. Happiness comes when people remove themselves from suffering, but they cannot do it through erasing the symptom as much as they need to deal with the cause of that suffering.
Artistic Contrast: Takopi’s cute designs, and sometimes colorful play on colors, stand at sharp odds to the melancholy subject matter and create a strange, unforgettable juxtaposition. It adds to the unsettling nature of the narrative as the full effect of its darkest moments can still have weight as a result of the contrasting nature of the visual style.
Emotional Weight: The show draws on powerful emotional responses around hope, and devastation, and even despair. It covers relatable topics like loneliness and the human desire to belong, and the experiences of abandonment, allowing it to be relatable for so many.
A Descent into Deeper Darkness: Episode by Episode
The increasing obscurity of the Original Sin of Takopi is a conscious literary choice, one intended to undermine Takopi’s naively optimistic outlook and reveal the obdurate nature of human suffering.
Episode 1: Broken Illusion of Happiness. Pilot episode introduces Takopi and his mission, and the desperate situation of Shizuka is set in quick time. The episode concludes with the dramatic suicide attempt of Shizuka, a scene that immediately signals the series’ true, dark tone. Takopi’s initial rewind is one of innocence, not yet fully understanding the gravity of what he’s facing.
Episode 2: The Abuse Cycle Uncovered. When Takopi attempts to “fix” Shizuka’s problems in the past, he learns the extent of Marina’s abusive and bullying childhood. In trying to intervene, he only makes her worse, demonstrating that Band-Aid fixes are not for entrenched trauma. The cold cruelty displayed towards Shizuka becomes increasingly blatant, and the viewer makes a jarring realization of Marina’s motivations.
The later episodes: move toward darker realities as Takopi’s time loops reveal horrific truths in the world of the story. We see how the characters’ actions lead to ripple effects across different timelines and ultimately result in unexpected, and often brutal, outcomes. Takopi’s well-meaning attempts to fix things can lead to indirect deaths, even more betrayals, and ultimately the hope of things ever getting better are pushed to the brink of despair, leading him to begrudgingly concede that there are some things even his “Happy Gadgets” may not be able to address. The anime increasingly acknowledges that “original sin” is not an act separate from responsibility, but rather a culmination of the embedded guilt left festering by unresolved trauma and negligence and the desperate acts surrounding non-sinful torments on humans.
Every episode strips away another layer of the characters’ trauma, at times almost undistinguishable between the victim and the one who made them a victim and then ultimately with a chilling reminder to audiences that happiness is tenuous and the past remains the past. Regardless of the effect on childhood experiences, we ultimately are left with the idea of sin, despair, regret and consequences.
In Conclusion, Takopi’s Original Sin is a grim and upsetting dive into the darkness of the human mind. It is a piece of warning that while something begins with good intentions, it can still have terrible outcomes in the face of insurmountable suffering. The rating says it all: it tells an engaging story, introduces very rich, though troubled, characters, and it makes you face the ugly realities of life without turning our attention away from them. This is not an anime, this is an intimate experience of emotion that might leave you rethinking what happiness means long after this anime is over.
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