Who Are Kotaro’s Mom & Dad In Kotaro Lives Alone? (& Where Are They)
Kotaro Lives Alone is one of the hidden gems that you can find in the anime industry today, as this Netflix original has become quite popular among different anime fans all over the world due to how true to life it is and how entertaining its overall premise is. But one of the things that you will notice about this series is that Kotaro literally lives alone and with no parents around him. So, who are Kotaro’s parents, and where are they?
Kotaro’s mother is Sayori Wamiya. Meanwhile, his father was never named. Sayori Wamiya, after leaving Kotaro in a shared apartment, died. On the other hand, his father is still alive but is not allowed to see Kotaro due to a restraining order against him because he was abusive.
The thing about Kotaro Lives Alone is that it is actually very true to real life in the sense that things similar to what Kotaro experienced happen on a regular basis. Even if there might be a few things that are a bit unrealistic in this series, it actually is a bit accurate in terms of how it reflects real society. As such, let’s look at where Kotaro’s parents are.
Who Are Kotaro’s Parents?
Kotaro Lives Alone is a Netflix original anime series that explores the story of the titular character named Kotaro, a kid who is four (or five) years old but lives in an apartment all by himself. The series actually starts out a bit bizarre because of the fact that Kotaro acts in a manner that isn’t close to how children of his age should act. Of course, what’s even weirder is the fact that he basically lives on his own in an apartment building.
The series starts out with Kotaro introducing himself to his neighbors in the apartment and giving them all tissue. He is introduced as a boy living all by himself and with no parents around to help him do all the work in his apartment. This makes the neighbors wonder why a boy is living all by himself and is trying to get by without the help of a parental figure or a guardian.
Of course, Karino Shin, one of the neighbors, ended up taking it upon himself to become Kotaro’s de facto guardian and tried to help the kid out. The other neighbors, Mizuki and Isamu, end up helping the kid out, as well as we got to know each character’s story and how Kotaro ended up accepting them for who they are. Of course, they also ended up becoming adult figures that Kotaro learned to rely on throughout the series.
While Kotaro may have ended up getting a lot of help from the different adults in his life, this still makes us wonder who his parents are, considering that they have been noticeably absent throughout the entire series. So, who are Kotaro’s parents?
Kotaro’s mother’s name was only revealed during the final portion of the season when Kotaro and Karino visited the cemetery to pay respects to Kotaro’s grandparents. The boy revealed his mother’s name as Sayori Wamiya.
On the other hand, we never got to know who Kotaro’s father is, but we can make the assumption that his family name is Sato, given the fact that Kotaro and Sayori have different family names. It might be possible that Kotaro’s father and Sayori were never married and that Kotaro was given his father’s family name shortly after he was born.
Where Are Kotaro’s Parents?
As bizarre as the start of Kotaro Lives Alone might be, the thing that people should know is that he is but a normal boy that should’ve lived a normal life. However, the fact that his parents are absent in his life is what has forced him to lead a different kind of childhood that’s far from what regular children are supposed to experience. So, where are Kotaro’s parents?
To understand more about where Kotaro’s parents are, it is important to talk about what kind of childhood he experienced living under his parents. And it’s something that is quite true to life in the sense that plenty of children all over the world continue to live or have lived through similar situations.
Kotaro was born to a family with an abusive alcoholic father that was always beating his mother up. It came to a point where Kotaro’s father received a court restraining order that prevented him from seeing Kotaro.
Even after the restraining order was issued against Kotaro’s father, things still didn’t feel normal for him. The abuse to his mother got to her as she left her child to fend off on his own when she left him in a group house. However, no one was around to take care of Kotaro, and that meant that he needed to learn how to actually become an adult at the age of four. At one point, he got so hungry that he began eating tissue paper.
Meanwhile, Kotaro’s abusive father found out where the boy lived, and that was when Kotaro decided to move out of the group house. He began living independently on his own by getting his own apartment and by essentially buying his own groceries and cooking his own food. And this is where people might be wondering where he got all of his money from.
In the final episode, when Kotaro and Karino went to the cemetery to visit the child’s deceased grandparents, the older of the duo realized that Sayori Wamiya was already dead. He found out about this when he was cleaning out the gravestones, and he saw Sayori’s name on one of them. However, Kotaro never learned about his mother’s death and just assumed that she was still alive after she left him all alone in the group house.
Going back to Kotaro’s independent life, the truth was that he was able to pay for the apartment and for his own expenses through the money he was getting from Sayori’s life insurance policy after she died. However, Kotaro was too young to understand what this all meant, and that’s why he never really thought about the possibility of his mother being dead.
So, to sum it all up, Kotaro’s mother died from unknown causes after she left Kotaro in the group house. On the other hand, Kotaro’s father is still out there somewhere but is legally prevented from seeing the boy due to a restraining order.
