Story Pile: Buddy Daddies
There’s a lot to be said for mid anime, in quality and in scope. Not an epic sprawling story meant to spin off for multiple seasons. Not a mystery that promises a resolution that it may completely bottle. Not trying to change your life, just trying to get you to tune in and look at some ads and maybe buy a wall scroll or two. Or fill out the extensive entries on the Internet Movie Firearm Database.
Buddy Daddies is a fundamentally a more ‘realistic’ show than you might imagine. It’s an unreality of high speed car chases and gunfights in cities, rather than grand political drama or telepathy and future sight. It’s grounded in that the characters have to spend time dealing with things like day care and clothing options and Japanese cultural assertions about how to blend in. Sometimes there are anime made because it lets them represent transitions between worlds and remarkable special effects and build on a particular visual language, but Buddy Daddies is an anime that doesn’t do anything you couldn’t do in a live action TV show, except doing it very cheaply and conveniently.
Here then, is your pitch: It’s an action comedy about a pair of single dads who adopt the same daughter, and also, they’re professional murderers. Hilarity ensues. Well, mild hilarity. Well there are jokes.
Modest spoiler warning ensues. I’m not about to tell you anything that you couldn’t predict looking at the poster.
