Why is it that in anime, you find so many anime series detailing the action-or-emotion-packed journey of a person and a child they are never blood-related to?
You try that in real life and you’ll end up in a police chase, but it is actually a pretty common set up in anime.
What is usually happening is that you have an adult that is some kind of a damaged badass. Something hurt them in the past, and a child – one of the more literal symbols of innocence – can help to heal them. They are also never blood related just to keep that ability to righteously abandon the child somewhere for their own good on the table and not have the character abhorred for being a terrible parent.
Perhaps traveling with a innocent child reminds them of the innocence they once felt. Maybe it serves as a sort of morality leash in which they do less bad than they once did because they don’t want to look bad in front of their young ward. Of course, maybe there is no deeper meaning and a cheerful side-kick was needed for for comic relief so we didn’t drown in the despair of the world.
If you are looking for anime where a gruff adult journeys with a child companion, head on down below.
Anime Where The Main Character Travels With A Child
Dororo
Dororo follows the story of Hyakkimaru, a man who – as a baby – had his organs, limbs, and skin given away to a series of demons by his father in return for power before being tossed away.
Through sheer suspension of disbelief and being found by a prosthetics maker shortly after, the baby lives and grew up to start slaying the demons in order to regain his missing pieces.
It is for the best that Hyakkimaru meets his titular child companion Dororo, a cheeky orphan child, pretty early since he can’t really see, feel, or talk for varying points of the anime. Following a silent protagonist would have been less interesting, but Dororo chatters enough for the both of them.
All joking aside, Dororo excels in both creative action and tells a surprisingly emotional story, all of which is accented by Dororo adding levity to Hyakkimaru’s otherwise extremely devastating existence.
Michiko & Hatchin
For a large bulk of anime that follow adults who travel with children, things are pretty wholesome. The adults are damaged, but generally good people, and the children are the devices that fix them.
That is still true in Michiko and Hatchin, but you could argue that as a life-long criminal, Michiko isn’t exactly the picture of morality. However, neither is Hatchin the perfectly innocent child either. Both parties have some issues in this series, and that is probably why it was so fun to watch.
Michiko and Hatchin follows Michiko, a criminal who broke out of prison for the forth time, and Hatchin, the young girl she kidnaps from her abusive foster family. Michiko is searching for a man, a man she believes to be Hatchin’s father. Both parties have an interest in finding him, and Hatchin doesn’t mind if she is the bait.
As they journey, these two bond in their own way, all the while getting pulled into a variety of situations going on in the criminal places they stop to look for their prey.
Somali and the Forest Guardian
Somali and the Forest Guardian may be about a small human child in a world where humans were thought extinct by fantasy creatures and the non-human golem that finds her, but it still tells a similar story to many of the other anime series on here.
The goal of the show is that the golem is trying to find other humans to return this child to, but he is at the very end of his lifespan and will soon cease working. As such, every moment you watch this child bond with her guardian who is very short on time hurts. However, it is his interaction with her that sort of humanizes him and makes him think that perhaps he does not want to cease existing now.
Sakugan
It is excessively rare to find this particular trope done with actual blood-related family. Having the adult and child not be related removes one of those strings of responsibility that tie blood-related characters together.
Sakugan tells the story of a daughter who wants to journey outside their closed off city to the series of tunnels that only a few brave individuals explore.
However, she may be a genius, but she is still a young girl and her father insists on standing in her path. After a series of events, the both of them end up on a journey into the tunnels together.
Sakugan is a great adventure series, most faulted for its genius child main character acting as arrogantly as a genius child would most likely act and often being the cause of all the problems she needs saving from. However, her dad is always there to save her in a wholesome and comical way.
Claymore
It is pretty rare that you have an action series where the teen boy is not playing the role of the main character, but Claymore certainly makes it work.
Claymore tells the story of Clare, a woman that is part of an all-female order of warriors infused with demon blood and tasked with killing those demons. However, despite being the defenders of mankind, their tainted status makes them shunned by humans and often forced to live a thankless, lonely life. What’s more, the end of a Claymore is either dying in battle or transforming into a demon that your comrades will have to come dispatch.
Claire meets Raki, a boy that she saves and who is one of the few that are unafraid of her. They start a journey together where Claire is often cold and indifferent, and Raki is one of the very rare fonts of cheerfulness in the world.
While Raki actually has a minimal role to play in the plot, Claymore would drown in despair without him.
Fist of the North Star
Everyone remembers the meme-able one liner and Kenshiro exploding heads with poking-based martial arts in Fist of the North Star, but few remembers his child companions, Bat, and later, Lin.
Bat is a thief who self-appoints himself as Kenshiro’s side-kick in a very “he thought Kenshiro was cool and just started following him” sort of way, and Lin was mute after watching her family be murdered before Kenshiro fixes her with some well-placed pokes.
What is great about these two child companions in particular is if you stick with Fist of the North Star long enough, you get to watch them grow older and grow into proper adult badasses like their mentor.
Moribito
Moribito is one of those anime series that really flies under the radar despite how well-received it is by everyone that watches it. What Moribito does best is building out a lore-rich world, but its story about a female mercenary protecting a young prince isn’t bad either.
In Moribito, a female mercenary named Balsa is summoned to the capital by the empress to spirit away her young son. It was prophecized that the child was host to a water demon that must be killed in order to avoid a drought.
To save his life from sacrifice, Balsa flees with the young prince. On their journey, you see a world-weary warrior teach this young man about how the world works away from his palace. It is a great coming-of-age story for the prince, and mentoring him helps Balsa with some problems of her own.
What is refreshing about Moribito is that while Balsa is a woman, she is not made motherly. She is very much a strong mentor and always a strong protector. The child has a soft, loving mother in his life, but it is not Balsa.
Golden Kamuy
In series where a battle-hardened main character travels with an innocent child, typically the kid is part of the goal or someone that just needed protecting. Golden Kamuy mixes that up quite a bit by making the child kind of crucial for survival.
Golden Kamuy follows Sugimoto, a veteran of the the Russo-Japanese war of the early 1900s who is in Hokkaido looking for gold in order to support the widowed wife of his deceased comrade. While doing so, he hears about a fortune stolen from the native Ainu people by a criminal who tattooed its location on the flesh of his cellmates in prison.
That tale turns out to be true, but finding the location – via the flesh of criminals – is a dangerous business. While Sugimoto is good at fighting, the young Ainu girl searching for the treasure and some means of justice on the men that slaughtered her father, is good at living in the wilderness.
The Ainu girl, Asirpa, teaches Sugimoto about surviving in the wilderness as the pair bond and look for the criminals. Without her, he probably would have frozen to death much earlier in the story. Although, now they are often caught in the usual loop of saving each other.
Casshern Sins
Casshern Sins perhaps doesn’t count in the strictest sense as the child doesn’t actually follow him in particular, but their paths just happen to cross often.
However, the wayward robot child serves the same purpose that a child companion serves in every other series on here – to humanize and moralize a damaged adult.
Casshern is a robot who is immune to and the cause of the rust that is causing every other robot being in their desolate planet to start to die. However, it is said that if they eat him, they will live forever.
So now you have an anguished immortal who can’t remember his crimes and people who constantly attack him. However, Ringo, a small child robot, frequently makes a cheerful appearance in Casshern’s life, even if most of the time she is just there to watch his fights.
Ringo and Friender, the robot dog companion that actually does accompany Casshern all of the time, provide a bit of levity to what is otherwise – truthfully – a very bleak world.
Guin Saga
Why have one child companion when you can have two?
In Guin Saga, a man with no memories and his head magically turned into that of a leopard saves the lives of a prince and princess who are on the run after a coup overthrew their kingdom. Taking pity on the scared children, he protects them as he tries to solve his own personal mystery.
Much of the time in Guin Saga, the children create the plot. They get into trouble, have their squabbles, or create any other such event that starts to drive the story of the episode. However, they are complex characters in their own right that are explored while Guin is saving them from the trouble they so often create.
Monster
Monster follows a surgeon who disobeys the orders of his hospital superiors to save a dying child instead of a wealthy patient who dies. It is only later that he discovers that this child-now-adult may be responsible for a series of serial murders that start to point to him as the culprit.
This leads to him abandoning his life and career in order to track down and murder the killer himself since he was originally the one that saved his life.
While it does take a bit of time to get there, eventually this doctor does start to travel with a young boy that he saved from his abusive adoptive father. While the good doctor tries to pawn his young tag-along off on every even remotely good-hearted stranger he ends up meeting, the kid still continues to follow him for much of the series.
El Cazador de la Bruja
Much like Michiko and Hatchin, in El Cazador de la Bruja, a tanned badass roams around South America with a bleached child companion that they both protect and threaten. However, the mystery in this series is more about the child character, who has misplaced her memories and is journeying in order to discover the truth.
As the mysterious child companion is pursued by bounty hunters, her adult companion once and still technically among their number, they find trouble pretty much everywhere they go.
Tokyo Magnitude 8.0
Does it count as traveling with child companions if you never leave a singular city?
Tokyo Magnitude 8.0 tells the tale of two young siblings caught in the aftermath of a 8.0 magnitude earthquake in Tokyo while out shopping for a present for their parent. A single mother happens to find these two kids, stranded and alone, and takes it upon herself to get them home safe while also being concerned about her own daughter at home.
While their “journey” is them walking from one district in Tokyo to the district where they live, let’s be real here – when you are in a city over a certain size, getting from one neighborhood to the next on foot is a journey.
As they travel, you see Tokyo and humanity in its worst shape, and the series doesn’t hold back with its emotional punches.
Gun X Sword
Nothing mellows out a guy hell-bent on revenge than a journey with an innocent girl who has her own agenda.
That’s Gun X Sword.
It follows your standard apathetic swordsman who is looking to murder the man that killed his fiancee. His path crosses with a girl who is searching for her kidnapped brother. Initially not wanting to get involved in her or anyone else’s problems, he gets pulled into her and everyone else’s problems because they have a connection to the man he is looking for.
Do you have more anime recommendations that follow a badass adult and their humanizing child companion? Let fans know in the comments section below.
