Barakamon

 

Barakamon is about the emotional journey of Handa Sei, a young calligrapher from Tokyo. He goes from punching one of the judges who criticizes his work to a caring, sensible person. The plot has a lot of very good 'emotional intelligence' moments and it's hard to believe this was written by a 23 year old sometimes. This is one of those titles that really makes me curious about the original material, which I plan to check out sometime.

Barakamon's weakest point is its comedy. It's not bad but if depended on it, this would be a run-off-the-mill slice of life show. Not bad but not really funny, more like amusing most of the time and at least not annoying in its worst puns. No, this characters and stories really shines in its emotional moments, brought about by life lessons Handa goes through while living with a colorful cast of charaters in the Goto islands. It's actually very straight forward stuff. Never give up. Be caring. See the bigger picture of things. 

Just like in real life those rather obvious realizations only really make sense through a meaninful event and Barakamon manages to do just that. Each episode is a self-contained story and almost all of them are interesting and endearing enough to make you care. Even minor characters have real weight to them and even though you only ever know one of two things about them (like Tamako's younger brother, the village elder Nomura or the village chief Yuujirou) you're always glad when they show up to say something. Not a single character here feels like padding and I find this is rather unsual, be it on anime or other entertainment media in general.

Handa Sei, the main character in this tale is really well written and his broad emotional depth makes for excellent interactions with everyone he meets, from his Tokyo business friend to the elemental school kids that visits him daily. He's one of those people that can learn from everyone and his rather self-effacing and sometimes self-doubt, self-debasement behavior brings out the best on everyone around him. And that's how he ends up being friends with everyone in Goto, to our great enjoyment.