First Impressions / Kobato.

Summary:

In order to fill her bottle, Kobato goes around town looking for people who have been hurt, but no one wants her help, and she just ends up playing with some kids. She then finds someone handing out tissues, so she takes the whole box off the guy’s hands and tries to distribute them herself. In the process, she bumps into the same guy who had saved her previously, and because she wants to thank him, she tries to follow him. She thus ends up at the nursery school where he works, and when she finds out from his co-worker Okiura Sayaka that the school needs help, she volunteers herself. She starts by playing with the children, but she’s unable to answer them when asked about her father. The guy she followed, Fujimoto Kiyokazu, meanwhile doesn’t want her around because he feels that she’s useless. Later, when the kids are asleep, Sayaka explains that the nursery is old and that there are less kids coming here nowadays. Kobato still wants to come back to help though, and despite Kiyokazu’s suspicions of her, Sayaka welcomes her to help again.

On her way out, Kiyokazu warns her not to come if she’s just curious or pitying them, and Kobato can tell that he’s hurt in some way. The fact that he doesn’t want her around makes Kobato realize that there are people who might not want to be healed. Ioryogi, however, advises that if she wants to heal someone, then she should. Afterward, Kobato runs into one of the nursery school children waiting for his mother by himself. His mother has been working late ever since her divorce, and the boy is very defensive of her because he’s heard what the other mothers say about her. To the boy’s surprise, Kobato applauds his mother, and that leads to him hugging her in tears. Kobato spends the rest of the evening playing with him, and afterward, she discovers that there’s now something in her bottle. Ioryogi suggests that she call it a konpeitou since that’s what it’s shaped like, and he also gives her a score of 100 for what she did today.

Preview

I think the best way to describe this second episode is as pleasant and cute, but it also managed to lay some of the framework for the near future, particularly in regard to Sayaka and Kiyokazu. I loved some of the background music pieces they used as well. The main drawback to the episode was the little boy story at the end because it was rather underdeveloped. It doesn’t help that I’m typically not a fan of annoying kids, but it was like they felt that Kobato needed to collect her first konpeitou by episode’s end and threw in a good deed. On the other hand, the stuff about fathers earlier in the episode was interesting, though not because it foreshadowed the boy’s problem. It made me wonder what Kobato’s origin really is and if the bird meaning of her name is a clue. There’s certainly enough bird imagery in the stuff she carries. I’m curious to see how they develop this as we move forward, though I’m trying to temper my expectations a bit because I suspect it might be a while before we learn anything significant about Kobato herself.

26 Comments

  6. Yeah, it’s definitely the kind of story that revolves around “pleasant and cute,” though I would love to FINALLY get some explanations. Only two episodes in and the anime is already far more generous with giving hints than the manga.

    aether
    Reply

  8. Heh, the size of Kobato’s heart is indirectly proportional to how much commom sense she has. This anime isn’t going to get away with not explaining what Kobato is. They can give us the BS tenshi-in-training stuff for all I care. Atleast it’ll be something.

    Megas
    Reply

  9. dobato gives me the diabetes. I haven’t read the manga, but it being a CLAMP work, I expect that any moment they’ll start tormenting the cast with unimaginable suffering. Then after toiling away at a brothel for years, healing the hearts of broken salarymen, dobato will finally earn a magical gumball, only to bite into it to discover that it was made from AIDS-contaminated needles all along.

    m
    Reply

  12. like what mangaka-chan said up there, i really doubt if anything earth shattering will be revealed abt Kobato unless the manga somehow gets there first. That Madhouse is introducing characters from another CLAMP work (Wish) makes it even more suspect. Having said tht, I’m looking forward to when more of the cast gets shown on screen.

    MsF
    Reply

  13. I can’t help but feel that Kobato could be the sister of Fuuko from Clannad (who I loved). Both are very similar personalities with a childlike innocence and gulability to them.

    Splash
    Reply

  16. I don’t hate the anime but I can’t get that dislike feeling for Kobato, she is dumb, stupid, naive, no common sense and gulability. Yelling out in the middle of street, playing with little kids, grabing a whole box of tissues I was like god I am watching a retard at work here. The mood didn’t lightning up for me until she finally got all sad and teary eye when she actually realize that some people might want to be heal while other might not want to be bother, I was like yes reality finally hit the idiot in the face.
    She need to start learning some common sense before I can start liking her character.

    Mike
    Reply

  17. She’s pure and naive. She probably isn’t even human and has no particular reason to understand the world she finds herself in. Besides being an incredibly generic setup for humor that provides a simple path for development without a need to indulge in any complicated storytelling, it provides an easy way for the author to comment on society by contrasting the expectations of the innocent with the actions of the cynical. It’s probably the pure nature of Kobato that sets her apart to heal the hearts of others in the first place, and while she’ll probably ride the educational treadmill that every similar character does, she’ll always retain the childlike nature.

    m
    Reply

  20. I still don’t agree with some people calling her a retard. There are already hints she’s not human and therefore she does not understand the way human do things and how they interact. That’s being naive. Naive is not the same thing as being stupid or a retard.

    Silver
    Reply

  21. @Splash, rather than Fuuko, I actually thought Kobato might have similarities with Makoto from Kanon, another Key work.

    (Spoiler about Makoto from Kanon, and the similarity with Kobato)
    Show Spoiler ▼

    But personality wise, Kobato is more similar to Fuuko, just less annoying antics which drove Tomoya crazy.

    Kinny Riddle
    Reply

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