This post is a quickie, as it’s more about getting feedback than positing some position and buttressing it with evidence. I don’t have that evidence, see, and you lot may be able to help me more than conventional research. Not to worry, it’s not about something arcane; it’s about Tokyo Magnitude 8.0, which every fan and his/her (righteous) mother seems to be watching right now.

Mari Kusakabe has a few levels in awesome; she makes that much clear to us early on. She’s also a single mom, which is fine by me, as I think single mom heroines can have depth that your average action lady tends to lack. She has a daughter at home, and the titular earthquake happens to coincide with said daughter’s birthday, and she grapples the ordeal with a magnificent poker face, adding to the dramatic tension in a nice way. We know that her daughter could be dead, or that Mari could (hell, probably will…if she doesn’t, she’ll trump Kamina threefold as far as I’m concerned) suffer a breakdown at some point, and neither is an especially pleasant prospect.

We also learn, in episode three, that Mari is a widow. Now, it’s not certain that her husband was the father of her child; we can only assume as much from the dialogue. Nor is it certain that Mari didn’t do her fair share of gallivanting before her marriage. The point is that Mari presumably didn’t come across her child accidentally, and she isn’t a single mom due to divorce. Her situation seems to be the outcome of the most “correct” sequence of events, according to a conservative/traditional morality. I wonder, then, if she’d be such a heroine if it were otherwise — how many single mom heroines in anime and manga entered into single momhood in “questionable” ways?

The adoption/de facto adoption/non-literal parent-child relationship route seems to come into play with some frequency. I haven’t seen Seirei no Moribito, but isn’t that the case there? The protagonist of 20th Century Boys (which I just started, so go easy on the spoilers plzkthx) is, as of chapter four, a kind of righteous dad insofar as he acquired the child under his care without even the use of sex (it’s his niece). Then we’ve got widows like Mari; a recent example that comes to mind is Soyon from Kemono no Souja Erin (though I didn’t get far in that, either), and there’s…er, [classified information] from Clannad, of course. But are less “respectable” single parents often relegated to Minor Character Land? My main problem is that I can’t think of many at all. And is my perception somehow off-target to begin with?

Help me out here, O wise internets. Share your experience so that the gaps in my experience might be rendered irrelevant.