Remove ads

Who are the winners of the Gendo Ikari Parent of the Year Award? [Spoilers for various series]

Q99

Q99

It's discussed often enough, the Gendo Ikari Parent of the Year Award, given out for noteworthy examples of parenting in anime and anime-adjacent works.


What parents are generally accepted as having won it?
Gendo himself of course

Shou Tucker won the award in 2003 and 2009 (FMA and FMA:B)
Precia Testerossa took it in 2004 (Nanoha)
The 4th Kazekage/Rasa in 2006 (Naruto)
Ragyo Kiryuin was the undisputed 2014 winner (KLK)


Who else we got?
 
I'm just waiting here for someone to 100% seriously suggest Naruto
 
Haven't watched many of this year's anime, but how about Isabella from The Promised Neverland?
 
Naruto's got surprisingly good parenting skills. Spends too much time at work and using clones to make up for it is a jerk move, but it's like, 7 out of 10, and were it not for that he'd be something like a 9.5/10. Even at his most-pissed-off-at-Naruto, Boruto would agree he's not on the list.

LordVile said:
Genma and Nodoka Saotome the OG bad parents.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Oh, yea, we should include retroactive-awards from before Gendo!

Genma's 'throw son into a pit of cats to traumatize him and teach him martial arts,' and 'promise his son's hand in marriage to multiple people, which plays a role in Ranma having various people attack him on a regular basis' is well up there.
 
Ren Sohma from Fruits Basket. She is so obsessed with her husband loving her that she abused and manipulated her daughter over fears of being replaced by her. Ren is pretty much the reason for Akito being such a nasty piece of work.
 
There was that one comedy butler about the parents who tried to sell their son's organs to the mafia to cover their gambling debts. And that was after fourteen years of similar type of abuse.

Honourable mention to Goku for that stunt he pulled with Cell. Otherwise, by anime standards, he's not terrible.
 
Goku's a bad parent, but mostly out of being a goddamned idiot and assuming his son liked the same things he did.

Nah, to win the Gendo Ikari Award, you need Active Malice towards a child.
 
Kinzo (and because of his superb parenting example, several of his children would fit the list if Kinzo was not significantly worse than them and so takes the Umineko spot), for all the *Oh Desire*/"I wouldn't put it past Kinzo"/BEATRICE! memes, is probably the worst non-magical character of Umineko on the island and deserves every burned-alive fantasy-death he suffered.

Besides just generally being a greedy, sexist, mentally-and-physically-abusive piece of shit who encourages his children to fight/bully each other, his worst act is
after his mistress, Beatrice, dies giving birth to a daughter who, unfortunately, is also named Beatrice and grows up to resemble her mother, Kinzo rapes Beatrice II believing her to be her mother's reincarnation. His daughter then dies taking a tumble off a cliff while trying to leave the hidden mansion Kinzo had imprisoned her in all her life. The child of Kinzo and Beatrice II goes on to have a very bad, unhappy life, admittedly mostly not directly because of Kinzo, baring the one time right before he died where he realises who the child is (hidden from him by his servants to stop him doing it all over again) and begs them to forgive him. They do, not realising quite what happened, he dies contentedly with a smile on his face and THEN they find out what they just forgave him for from the servants and are not happy.

Kinzo's abusive parenting should already put him somewhere in line for a "bad anime parent" award, but the last act is waaaaay worse than normal anime bad parenting.
 
Last edited:
Endeavor from BNHA is probably nominated for it.
 
Endeavor doesn't even lift in the same weight class as anyone mentioned as far as those things go. He's definitely fucked up on parenting, but you're pitting him against things like literal molestation and inserting energy monsters into your wife's womb.
 
He's like, someone who'd be on the list of nominees due to the high profile, but yea, he wouldn't win it.
 
Q99 said:
Naruto's got surprisingly good parenting skills. Spends too much time at work and using clones to make up for it is a jerk move, but it's like, 7 out of 10, and were it not for that he'd be something like a 9.5/10. Even at his most-pissed-off-at-Naruto, Boruto would agree he's not on the list.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Add to that, Naruto's neglect is primarily due to the demands of an extremely important job. Yes, it's the job he's dreamed of doing since he was a child, so the opportunity to do it may be seen as selfish, but it's still a demanding job that someone has to do.

He clearly doesn't consider the work/home ballance to be remotely optimal. Meanwhile, he materialy provides for his family and is shown to love his wife and children when he can actually tare himself away from the office to see them.

That's not great. But as neglect goes, it at least has a pretty good reasons behind it.

FortePlus said:
Endeavor doesn't even lift in the same weight class as anyone mentioned as far as those things go. He's definitely fucked up on parenting, but you're pitting him against things like literal molestation and inserting energy monsters into your wife's womb.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Didn't he kind of pressure his wife to keep having kids so he could get one with the optimal mix of their respective powers?
 
Last edited:
The whole marriage was based on the scummy practice of quirk marriages so yeah he's a fun guy. By all accounts he and Rei (his wife) did have an actual relationship and there's nothing to say the previous kids were forced. Everything points to the age Shoto manifested his power as the break point. So that was years in and while not father of the year material, he isn't noted to be terrible on the scale of the winners here.

Of course this is all based on his unhealthy obsession with beating All Might soooooooooo. At least he's realized his fuckups in real time and is trying to fix them.
 
Do Hojo and Lucreczia from Final Fantasy VII count, given their whole "Let's inject Jenova Cells into her womb and our unborn child FOR SCIENCE" and how that directly resulted in the plot of Final Fantasy 7?
 
Fivemarks said:
Do Hojo and Lucreczia from Final Fantasy VII count, given their whole "Let's inject Jenova Cells into her womb and our unborn child FOR SCIENCE" and how that directly resulted in the plot of Final Fantasy 7?
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Did Hojo actively abuse his son during his lifetime though? Plus, he did try to help Sephiroth in his plan, proving to be a bit more supportive than Gendo was.
 
There's a guy worse than Gendo and Ragyo and he's been around decades before they were created.

Let me tell you about Kagemitsu Daigo from Dororo, he'd look at Gendo and Ragyo's crimes and go "Lightweights! I ruined my son's life before he was even born. Get on my level, scrubs!"

Long story short, Daigo is a power hungry samurai who agreed to sell his unborn child to a pact of demons in exchange for prosperity for his lands without a second thought. His actions cause his son, Hyakkimaru to be born without any of his body parts or organs. He has no eyes, ears, nose, spine, arms, legs, or even skin at birth. He was literally born a blind-deaf skinless quad amputee.

Quickly getting to be abusive the moment of his birth, Daigo orders his son drowned in the river just to be safe.

Of course, Hyakkimaru survives and gets adopted by Anime's Best Dad, but Daigo manages to escalate from this.
 
The Zog said:
There's a guy worse than Gendo and Ragyo and he's been around decades before they were created.

Let me tell you about Kagemitsu Daigo from Dororo, he'd look at Gendo and Ragyo's crimes and go "Lightweights! I ruined my son's life before he was even born. Get on my level, scrubs!"

Long story short, Daigo is a power hungry samurai who agreed to sell his unborn child to a pact of demons in exchange for prosperity for his lands without a second thought. His actions cause his son, Hyakkimaru to be born without any of his body parts or organs. He has no eyes, ears, nose, spine, arms, legs, or even skin at birth. He was literally born a blind-deaf skinless quad amputee.

Quickly getting to be abusive the moment of his birth, Daigo orders his son drowned in the river just to be safe.

Of course, Hyakkimaru survives and gets adopted by Anime's Best Dad, but Daigo manages to escalate from this.
Click to expand...
Click to shrink...

Oh yeah, forgot that there's a relatively recent anime about this too. For people who don't know, go watch it, it's good.
 
You must login or register to reply here.
Remove ads
Back
Top