English Dub Season Review: Kakushigoto Season One

Overview (Spoilers Below):

Kakushi Goto is a manga artist who draws dirty jokes for a living. But he also has an innocent young daughter, which is why he decides to keep his career choice a secret from her no matter the cost. With this concept as the main comedic conflict, the show explores Goto’s world of manga drawing at his office with his friends/assistants and Hime’s time at school with her classmates and adorkable teacher.

Each week brings about new hilarious hijinks, but there’s more to the show that mere slice of life comedy. Almost every episode ends with a mysterious flash forward scene that takes viewers to a time when Hime is all alone as a young adult. What happened to bring her to this point? It’s something that doesn’t get fully answered until the final episode — and not all the answers are happy or humorous ones.

Our Take:

Kakushigoto starts off as a sweet little show about a single dad and his adorable daughter. But there’s a lot more to this series than schmaltz. It’s also all about the life of a manga artist and everything that comes with it: the ‘fame’, hard work, and chatty assistants. So while there’s a healthy dose of familial love, there’s plenty of goofy inside jokes about mangaka’s, too. It makes for an anime that’s unique, a little bit messy, and a lot of fun.

Much like other father/daughter type duos such as Barakaman or Sweetness and Lightning, the main couple who anchors the show is hard to resist. Goto is a typical overprotective dad in some aspects, but it’s clear he loves Hime and values her opinion and personality, trying to make her life the best it can be. Hime isn’t a wild or rambunctious kid — she’s the kind of sweetly precocious protagonist who almost never talks back or does the wrong thing. Some could find this annoying, but there’s enough snark and sarcasm from side characters to make up for how straight-laced she is.

The supporting cast rounds out the show well, with most of the characters being charming in their own ways while not overshadowing the main duo. Hime’s grade school teacher and Goto’s work friends are the highlights. Goto’s editor is a conniving swindler with a heart of gold who’s always getting himself and others into awkward situations, like when he secretly invites Goto and the head of his publisher out for a fancy lunch — both of them believing the other one scheduled it. Miss Ichiko, Hime’s teacher, is probably the most fun character thanks to her silly sense of self and somewhat romantic obsession with Goto.

Most of the supporting cast members are well defined, but there are annoying exceptions. Mario, Goto’s queer-coded friend/used clothing store owner, just disappears after a few episodes with no explanations, and Hime’s paternal grandfather shows up early on only to be left out until a bit of exposition in the finale. Indeed, the finale is one of the most confusing parts of the series. Stuffed with big plot twists like amnesia and secret lovechildren, it doesn’t feel like any of the episodes that preceded it. It feels like the team was rushed into the ending — which may actually be the case, since they’ve been granted a theatrical movie edit with a chance to improve the pacing of the ending.

The main thrust of the show, the comedic thread it keeps coming back to, is the fact that Goto can’t let Hime find out he draws manga. So I was expecting the show to address this by the time the finale came to a close. And it’s true that Hime discovers her father’s secret — but we never really get to hear her reaction to it, or a conversation with her father about why he kept it hidden for so long. There is a sweet scene at the end that reveals Hime is keeping her own manga aspirations a secret from her dad, though, which is so poetic that it almost makes all the failings of the show forgiven… almost.

In the end, Kakushigoto is an ambitious show with a lot of potential that it doesn’t quite deliver on. It will appeal to comedy fans and those who love seeing the inside scoop on a manga creator’s life, but fans hoping for more conclusion to the mysteries may be disappointed.