" Anpan " (General TV, Monday to Saturday 8:00 a.m. and others), the NHK Asadora drama starring Mio Imada , will air in the first half of the 2025 fiscal year. On April 5th, we will look back on the first week, "Humans are lonely" (March 31st to April 4th).
" Anpan" is based on the married couple Takashi Yanase(1919-2013) and Nobu Komatsu(1918-1993), the manga artist and picture book writer who created "Anpanman." It is a "story of love and courage" that will make you feel the joy of living, depicting how these two, who were once nobody, overcame all sorts of rough seas to become "Anpanman," the embodiment of "unreversible justice."
The first week features Nobu Asada(Nagase Yuzuna), also known as "Hachikin Onobu," a girl who runs at breakneck speed through the town of Kochi in the early Showa period. Nobu's grandfather, Kamaji (Kotaro Yoshida), has run a stonemasonry business for generations in the Asada family, but her father, Yutaro (Ryo Kase ), has no intention of taking over the business and travels around Japan and abroad for a trading company, telling Nobu, "Girls should be ambitious too."
Meanwhile, Takashi Yanai ( Kazunari Ninomiya ), who lost his father Kiyoshi (Ninomiya Kazunari) to illness when he was young, is taken by his mother Tomiko ( Nanako Matsushima) to the home of his uncle Hiroshi (Yutaka Takenouchi ), who runs the Yanai Clinic in Gomenyo-cho, and meets Nobu at the elementary school he transfers to.
Just then, Yutaro passes away from a heart attack on his way home from a business trip.
Nobu didn't shed a single tear in the midst of the sadness of the Asada family. When Takashi worries about wanting to cheer her up, Hiroshi gently tells her, "That's what it means to be alive."
The next day, Nobu, who was sitting expressionlessly in the living room, suddenly stood up and ran to the station at full speed. Out of breath, Nobu desperately searched for her father. Takashi, who happened to be at the station, approached her and handed her a picture. When Nobu saw it... Nobu then encountered the " Anpan " (sweet bean bun) made by Kusakichi ( Sadao Abe ), which gave her the strength to live.
