English Dub Season Review: Kotaro Lives Alone Season One

Overview: Four-year-old Kotaro Sato (Cherami Leigh) moves into an apartment building where he starts his new life with the help of his neighbors who soon become his close friends as he forges strong friendships and learns important lessons along the way. 

Our Take: Kotaro Lives Alone takes the simple premise of a little boy named Kotaro living by his lonesome and delivers an emotional ride that is devastatingly heart-wrenching as it is heartwarming. 

Kotaro immediately grabs you by the heart with his eccentric, kind and bizarrely polite disposition for someone so young. He then proceeds to, over the course of the series with friends he makes that look after him, show you how there is much more to him than just sweet and adorable energy. 

Helping enforce powerful lessons on Kotaro, and vice versa, is Shin, an unsuccessful shut-in manga artist, acting as his primary caretaker, alongside the kind and upbeat mistress, Mizuki and a doting thug, Isamu. Whether it’s Kotaro’s maturity rubbing off on Shin allowing him to be a more responsible adult, his courage that helps Mizuki stand up against an abusive boyfriend or his honesty about the similarity between himself and Isamu’s son that allows Isamu to be honest about his intentions, it is a sight to behold in watching Kotaro impart a unique and crucial lesson upon each of them. Kotaro’s perceptiveness and emotional maturity, on account of his painful and harsh upbringing, makes for shockingly grounded confrontations and discussions that allow his neighbors to develop and grow alongside him. 

Of course, at the end of the day, Kotaro is still a naïve, young boy in many respects. This innate aspect of the little guy lends itself to the poignant messages and learning experiences for him throughout the show regarding parenthood, strength being more than the outward, physical kind, misconceptions people often come to about others without any real context and much more. Kotaro is never framed as a know-it-all, snot nosed brat but rather a kid trying to find his way and coming to the realization that he isn’t as lonely as he may think with his neighbors and friends looking after him. 

There are plenty of moments of heart and charm that stand alongside the grounded lessons, like Kotaro being too shy and reluctant to ask Shun to attend his kindergarten ceremony or creating a stylish bento box to take to school and show off to classmates. Kotaro’s kind heart in spite of the cruelty he has been shown by his parents, mostly his father, will bring you to tears in the lessons he takes from those harsh experiences and how he moves forward. Veteran English voice actress, Cherami Leigh, brings every quirky and bright aspect of Kotaro with outstanding radiance. The rest of the English cast is also excellent with Michael Sinterniklaas, Kayleigh McKee, Stephanie Sheh and Heather Gonzalez dominating their supporting roles. 

Kotaro will have you grinning ear-to-ear as the boy and the 10 episode season shines with unyielding heart and charisma. With relatable and grounded lessons of parenthood, family and child development to be taken from the Kotaro’s coming of age story, there is also a great familial chemistry amongst the whole cast that is nourishing food for the soul that will stay with you for quite some time.