Takopi’s Original Sin is disarmingly cute and disarmingly fast. One moment you’re chuckling at a squidgy octopus thing who speaks in baby talk, and before you know it, you’re blinking too hard at the obliviating black mirror, suddenly aware of how absurdly exposed you are. Directed by Shinya Iino and based on Taizan 5’s manga, this year’s breakout hit anime follows an adorable alien who befriends a lonely child and deploys whimsical gadgets to fix her problems. The premise is charming enough to lull you into nostalgia, especially if you grew up with its obvious spiritual predecessor, Doraemon. But whatever warm childhood innocence you may feel gets violently ejected by the end of the first episode.
Six episodes. That’s all it takes. In that time, Takopi burns through suicide, child abuse, bullying, parental neglect, moral injury, and the sheer, existential nausea of trying to do good in this sick, depraved world. It’s not long, but it’s lacerating. And it absolutely earns the trigger warning it comes with, though no warning quite prepares you for what it’s actually willing to say.
The plot follows the titular pink, cephalopod-like alien from the saccharine “Happy Planet,” who is sent to Earth to bring happiness. He meets a quiet, sullen girl named Shizuka who is living what can only be described as a waking nightmare. She is beaten at school, abandoned at home, and slowly disappearing into that hollow place children go when the adults around them stop looking. Oblivious to the nuance of human suffering, Takopi’s attempts to help her are clumsy and naive. He hugs her abuser. He giggles when she cries. He believes in the fundamental goodness of talking it out and sharing snacks. That is, until [SPOILERS]
Shizuka kills herself before the first episode ends.
The moment is absolutely petrifying, and it kicks off the real start of the show. The distraught and bewildered Takopi reaches for a gadget that allows him to rewind time, hoping to “get it right” on the next try, in looping attempts to alleviate trauma. This is not a story about getting it right, but about being wrong in increasingly heartbreaking ways.
Takopi’s Original Sin (Japanese)
Director: Shinya Iino
Cast: Kurumi Mamiya, Reina Ueda, Honoka Kuroki, Anna Nagase
Episodes: 6
Runtime: 22-35 minutes
Storyline: Happy alien Takopi, meets Shizuka, a lonely fourth grader. But as he uncovers the pain in her life, Takopi learns that true happiness may require more than gadgets
What’s astonishing is how gently the series unfolds. It’s devoid of all edge-lord irony or sensationalist trauma-porn, and closer in tone to the unvarnished precision in Grave of the Fireflies or A Silent Voice, that doesn’t let you look anywhere else. Even the time travel doesn’t feel gimmicky; it’s just another form of helplessness, born from that all-too-familiar ache of “If only I had…”
Iino directs with formidable restraint. Each frame holds a kind of clinical stillness that forces us to sit with every unspoken thing. And then just when we’ve adjusted to its reticence, it fractures with light and shadow crashing in, and emotions surging through jagged expressionist flourishes like a nervous system suddenly exposed.
A still from ‘Takopi’s Original Sin’
| Photo Credit:
Crunchyroll
But what makes Takopi one of the finest anime in recent memory is its clarity. The characters are painfully well-drawn, and just as gracefully understood. No one here is simple, and no one gets off easy. The sheer, exhausting effort of trying to make someone else happy when you barely understand what that means is what lingers more than the tragedy itself. Takopi is about what it costs to care, especially when you don’t know how. It’s about the limits of kindness and the absurdity of innocence. The awful beauty of watching someone try, even as they fail, because trying is the only thing they know how to do.
If there is a flaw in Takopi, it’s in the clutter of timelines toward the end. The final two episodes barrel through six years of consequence, intercut with scenes from fractured pasts. The ambition is a bit too much to absorb, and the show stumbles slightly in orienting us within the tangle of perspectives. Nevertheless, the emotional throughline remains intact.
What wrecked me most about Takopi was the way it reminded me of the damage that can come from someone simply not knowing better. We like to think of cruelty as a choice, and kindness as a cure, but the series dismantles both notions. Sometimes people hurt you because they’re hurt. Sometimes they try to save you and make it worse. And sometimes, like Takopi, they just keep showing up, armed with nothing but good intentions and the stubborn belief that love, if repeated enough, might eventually work.
It’s foolishly naive. And it’s probably the most human thing I’ve ever seen a cartoon alien do.
Takopi’s Original Sin is currently streaming on Crunchyroll
