The NHK Asadora drama series "Anpan " (General TV, Monday to Saturday, 8:00 AM and other times), starring Mio Imada , is down to its final week (week 26), with the episode "Only Love and Courage Are Friends." Many characters have appeared and left in the drama, and we'd like to look back at their transitions using a character relationship chart. Some characters make you want to know what happened to them afterward and what their current situation is...
" Anpan" is based on the married couple Takashi Yanase(1919-2013), the manga artist and picture book author who created "Anpanman," and his wife, Nobu (1918-1993). It is a "story of love and courage" that will fill you with the joy of living, depicting how these two, who were once nobodys, overcame all sorts of rough seas to become "Anpanman," the embodiment of "unreversible justice."
The drama began on March 31st, and the character relationship chart has been updated a total of 15 times on the official website. Seven people have appeared on every single one of them, completing the entire series. The cast includes the main character, Nobu (Mio Imada), Takashi (Kitamura Takumi), who was Nobu's friend since elementary school and later married her, Nobu's mother, Hatako (Takumi Kitamura), her younger sisters, Ranko (Noriko Eguchi ) and Meiko (Nanoka Hara), Takashi's mother, Tomiko (Nanako Matsushima), and his aunt, Chiyoko (Naho Toda).
The basic rule of the character relationships is that when a person dies or loses connection to Nobu and Takashi's lives, their name disappears, but there are also cases where they unexpectedly reappear. In that sense, two characters who repeatedly appear and disappear are "Yam-san" Murakusayoshi (Sadao Abe) and "Ken-chan"Kentaro Karashima(Fumiya Takahashi).
Yam-san, the wandering baker, disappeared in week 11, reappeared in week 16, and then disappeared again in week 18, his name missing and his whereabouts unknown. His name next appeared in week 24. Take-chan, Taka's friend who later married Meiko, was also in a similar vein, disappearing in week 11, reappearing in week 12, then disappearing again in week 16, only to reappear a third time in week 19, appearing in and out of the story.
When the setting changes, the relationship chart usually changes drastically, with many members of the wartime Kokura Regiment and members of the Kochi Shimpo newspaper immediately after the war appearing and then disappearing. Nobu's childhood friend Usako Ogawa(Sara Shida) and the women's normal school teacher Yukiko Kuroi(Kumi Takiuchi) also faded out as the setting changed. There were also cases where names disappeared from the relationship chart without any warning, such as Shin Uto(Himari Hitomi), a maid at the Yanai household who goes by "Oshin-chan."
There are also a few characters who only appear on the relationship chart for one week. Among them, the one who caused the biggest moment of excitement was Shiratori Tamae (Kubo Shiori), the popular singer who sang "Te no Hira wo Taiyou ni." She only appeared in one episode (episode 101), not just one week (week 21). Her pushy attitude, which ignited Nobu's jealousy by asking Taka to help with the recital's composition, became a hot topic, but by the following week (week 22), her name was no longer on the relationship chart, which was quite refreshing.
Will we ever find out what happens to Usako, Kuroi-sensei, Oshin-chan, or Shiratori Tamae afterwards? The drama will air its final episode on September 26th.
