We previously discussed father figures in anime in a different article; now it’s time to talk about something even more important: the best mother figures in anime. Mothers are important characters, no matter how little their screen time is.
Everyone can relate to the fact that their influence on their children, usually the main characters, is monumental. So let’s talk about some of the amazing mothers across multiple anime.
Best Mothers in Anime History
Delia Ketchum (Pokémon)
Delia is probably the first anime mom for a lot of people getting into the medium as a kid. Just like how every other Pokémon game moms were the first mother figure for a lot of people getting into the video games.
She is a kind and loving mother figure to Ash Ketchum and also has a soft spot for Pokémon. She treats all of Ash’s Pokémons with kindness as if they were always a part of the family. Also, kudos to her for supporting her sons multi decade long journey away from home to become a Pokémon master.
Dadan (One Piece)
Mother figures are not always limited to blood-related characters. Throughout the anime medium, there are countless amazing parental figures who gave their whole life raising some amazing characters.
Some of the prime examples come from the series One Piece. Dadan is an old lady character in the show and the leader of the Mountain bandits, who spent a good part of her life raising some of the most important characters in the whole show.
Everything we love about Ace and Luffy’s ideals in One Piece can be directly credited to how Dadan raised both of them. She may not show it all the time, but she is extremely proud of them.
Yor Forger (Spy x Family)
We previously talked about how Loid Forger is one of the best father figures in anime history, even though he is not blood-related to Anya. Now it is time to talk about the mother’s side. Yor Forger is one of people’s favorite female characters in the past decade.
While Loid is an excellent spy, Yor’s prowess lies in her abilities as an excellent assassin. Underneath the smiling and caring personality, Yor is one of the strongest characters in the whole anime, capable enough to overpower hordes of villains.
But the best part about that is she knows she shouldn’t let that get to his head, because there’s still a lot to learn in how to be the best mom to Anya, even though it is all fake. She really cares about her family and wants to protect them from any form of harm.
Hiling (Ranking of Kings)
Step-parents are not really portrayed as kind figures to most characters in almost every medium. Most of them go down the route of being an evil antagonist or at least in the grey areas of morality. So was also what we thought would happen to Queen Hiling’s character in Ranking of Kings.
But it turns out, she is the mother who stepped up for Bojji. At times, she might have come off as a cold and strict person, but the anime does a brilliant job of separating her emotions properly in order to represent her caring side.
Inko Midoriya (My Hero Academia)
The sad part about some of these amazing parental figures is that they don’t get enough screen time or praise. That is exactly why we have taken up the job to highlight the role of characters such as Inko Midoriya from My Hero Academia.
We traced Deku’s origin story throughout the early parts of the anime to learn how hard he had to work in order to gain his powers. But we forgot to take notice of how much his mother believed in his son, never giving up his support.
Inko Midoriya even worked hard to make sure Deku had a superhero costume ready when the time was right. Which she had stitched and made with her own hands.
Chi-Chi (Dragon Ball Z)
Dragon Ball is one of the most popular anime ever created by the late Akira Toriyama. Even if you don’t know much about this medium, we are sure you have definitely heard about Dragon Ball at least somewhere or another.
The show is one of the most important pieces of media that pretty much shaped the shounen anime genre with its style of action and characters. While the whole show is mostly about characters’ powerscaling on each other, and Goku coming out on top of everyone else, there is one character who far surpasses our Saiyan.
That is Chi-Chi Goku’s wife and Gohan’s mother. It might get played out as a gag, how much Chi-Chi scares both Goku and his sons, but it also puts importance on how much power and authority the mother figure and a housewife holds over the rest of the family members.
Kushina Uzumaki (Naruto)
Similar to Chi-Chi, we get to see Naruto’s mother, Kushina Uzumaki, in the anime, at times being a major authority in the household. Enough to even shut down his husband, the fourth Hokage. Unfortuantely we did not get to see much of her becuase Kushina already passed away, giving birth to our main character.
Her mental perseverance during the time the village was attacked by the nine-tailed fox is a prime example of how far motherly love can go when it comes to making sacrifices of their children. This is why it was a joyful moment for us to experience Naruto meeting her mother at least once in the show.
Hana (Wolf Children)
We believe that Mamoru Hosoda is one of the best animators to exist in our generation. But it is very unfortunate that not many know about his works yet. This is why we have taken this opportunity to highly recommend Wolf Children, which is one of his anime films.
Other than the incredible fantasy aspects of the movie, Wolf Children celebrates the hardships that parents go through in trying to raise their children. In this movie, we see the main character Hana going down the path of single motherhood after his husband passes away tragically.
This is one tearjerker of a film and will definitely make you call up your old folks or run to hug them after you are done watching. Hana is one of our favorite mother figures who needs to be more famous.
Sanae Furukawa (Clannad)
It is no news that Clannad is one of the biggest tearjerker anime from the early 2000s that terrorized the hearts of many who sat down to watch the anime because of its moe artstyle and characters.
There are a lot of characters one can relate to in that show, but for the current discussion, we want to talk about Sanae Furukawa, who was the mother of Nagisa. She may not have been the best at baking, but she was an adorable mother to Nagisa and her daughter.
We never really considered how much pent-up pain she had in her after the passing of her daughter, because even after all of that, she continued to nurture her granddaughter.
Tomoko Higashikata (Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure)
Other than falling for an Englishman, Tomoko Higashikata is one hell of a mother character who obliviously continues to do her daily tasks as the sole bread earner of the house. In the meantime, Josuke and his nephew Jotaro are exterminating dangerous threats like a mouse.
But let’s also not forget her as an amazing mother figure. After Joseph Joestar had an affair and left her, she gave birth to Josuke and raised him as a single mother while moving through the pain of never seeing the old man ever again.
Not even once have we seen her go through depression in the name. She is always seen as super lively, thus standing as a testament to motherhood for her strength.
