In honor of all you fathers out there, here’s a list of (some of) my favorite anime dads. Naturally, it’s a highly subjective list! 🙂 In general, what gives these guys a slot on this list is how they navigate the sometimes unbearable tensions of family life: loving your kids vs. not wanting to be overly soft on them; making time for your family vs. working to support them; and so on. However fantastic the settings, these are very real concerns for each and every dad worth of the name…

Kazumasa Hachiken (Silver Spoon)

Kazumasa puts the emphasis in “tough love” on the “tough”. He pushes both of his sons to excel so much that they end up running away: Shingo drops out of a prestigious university to tour the country on his motorcycle and marries a Russian, while Yugo heads off to an agricultural high school simply so he doesn’t have to live at home. At the end, however, with a light touch that gets carried a bit further in the manga, Kazumasa wryly admits that he has a tendency to say things that upset his sons; while Yugo comes to appreciate his father’s challenge to him to stand on his own feet and rise to his potential.

Goushi Mikage (Silver Spoon)

While Yugo’s father is overbearing, the father of Yugo’s girlfriend-in-all-but-name Aki is overprotective. From the moment Yugo steps on the Mikage farm, Goushi glares, yells, and growls at him lest he steal away Aki’s heart. To his credit, however, he doesn’t simply push Yugo away: instead, he directs the young man’s affections towards helping Aki accomplish her goals. In other words, he forbids them from dating unless Aki succeeds in getting into the college of her choice, which motivates Yugo to help her study!

Van Hohenheim (Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood)

On the opposite extreme, Van Hohenheim probably should have been more protective and more demanding of his sons—heck, they would have been happy to have him involved in their lives, period. Of course, he did save the world—and even God itself—through the preparations he carried out during the years he was absent from his family. He did what he felt was necessary, but it’s evident that having to leave his wife and boys behind tore his heart. In the end, before he died, he managed to reconcile with his sons at least, paving the way in part for the story’s bittersweet ending.

Fr. Orgi (Black Clover)

Orgi is the priest who takes in Asta and Yuno as infants and raises them in his orphanage. He has no super magical ability, as a commoner; he’s not rich; he doesn’t even play a front roll in the story. Most of the scenes with him early on show that, while he loves Asta, he doesn’t think he’ll amount to much (though he’s sure Yuno will). So why is he on this list? Because while he doesn’t hog the limelight, the story simply wouldn’t have taken place without Orgi to beg for pennies, cook countless dishes of potatoes, and provide a leaky but functional place for his orphans to call “home”. Orgi is at once every father who simply soldiers on in the face of adversity without ever being recognized for it, and every father who is not a ‘normal’ father (i.e., biological father in a ‘traditional’ family). In some ways, he merits the highest honor on this list. If only it weren’t for…

Mae Hughes (Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood)

Returning to the theme of overprotective fathers, Mae Hughes draws a gun on some kids who want to play with his three-year-old daughter. However, if you know the story, Hughes is a fantastic family man and soldier, and quite possibly the best man in the series in every sense of the word. Which, of course, makes his pointless death, and subsequent burial in front of his wife and uncomprehending daughter, one of the most heart-wrenching moments in anime history.

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There you have it! And while we’re here, honorable shout-outs to some absolutely terrible anime dads, especially the ironically-named one from Fullmetal Alchemist, “Father”. And Andragoras from Arslan Senki. And… You know what? I’ll stop now. 😀

Finally, a last “arigatou” to Hiromu Arakawa, the mangaka who did Fullmetal Alchemist, Silver Spoon, and Arslan Senki. Because every character I’ve mentioned here, except for Fr. Orgi, wouldn’t exist without her.