How Takopi’s Original Sin Devastates Through Cuteness

Editor’s Note-CW: Takopi’s Original Sin contains extremely graphic depictions of bullying, child suicide, depression, and implied animal abuse.
Have you ever seen anything as cute as Takopi? In the Kawaii Hall of Fame, this little pink, squishy bundle of joy must rank pretty high. And it’s not just because of the way Takopi looks either. Between his squeaky voice, bouncy physicality, and message of pure delight, this octopus-like alien is cuteness personified. It would almost feel contrived if Takopi wasn’t so loveable…
As a visitor from the Happy Planet, Takopi’s mission is to spread a message of, yep, you guessed it, happiness to humanity. And it’s here that Takopi’s Original Sin begins, with the first meeting between the Happian visitor and a nine-year-old girl named Shizuka.
Shizuka and the other characters Takopi goes on to meet aren’t drawn in the same stylized way, however. That initial bubblegum aesthetic doesn’t extend beyond Takopi, so the soft, round curves he’s drawn with immediately contrast with the finer lines and muted color palette that characterize everything else in the show. It’s not like Pokémon, where the cuteness of those adorable critters consistently matches up to the wider world they inhabit.
In Takopi’s Original Sin, this clash of styles is very much intentional, as it is in Taizan 5’s original manga, and not just to highlight Takopi’s alien nature. Looks aside, the reason he doesn’t fit in aesthetically is because his outlook is worlds apart from the reality he now finds himself in. That visual dissonance is odd, deliberately so, and it quickly becomes more and more apparent when Takopi’s mission starts to collide with the reality of Shizuka’s life on earth.
Because Shizuka isn’t exactly a ray of sunshine. She’s the polar opposite of Takopi in many ways, a depressed fourth grader who’s grown up too fast due to neglect at home and bullying at school. Takopi doesn’t get it, though. Such concerns are as alien to him as the Happy Planet is to Shizuka.
On the one hand, he means well, introducing special gadget after gadget so advanced that their effect is akin to magic. Nothing helps, however, not even the power to float a few inches off the ground, and these misguided attempts to instantly fix what Shizuka’s going through only make matters worse. Takopi refuses to take her pain seriously because this kind of suffering is unfathomable to a sparkly mascot like him. But Shizuka does end up using one of Takopi’s Happy Gadgets to help fix her problems. Just not in the way we or Takopi hoped for.
What ensues might be one of the most harrowing scenes ever animated when we discover that Shizuka has used Takopi’s Friendship Ribbon to hang herself. We don’t just see her silhouette or feet dangling either. The shot lingers on her corpse swinging for far longer than you might expect. It’s a full-blown nightmare brought to life, and it arrives just fifteen minutes into the very first episode.
What somehow makes it even worse is Takopi’s initial confusion. He doesn’t understand what’s going on, and that childlike naivety is emphasised by the simplicity of his character design. Contrast that with the horribly detailed drawing of Shizuka’s lifeless body, and the visual whiplash is enough to crack even the most stoic viewers. It’s like showing Pikachu the corpse of Ash Ketchum, just with less nostalgia to play on (even if Taizan 5 does purposely draw on Doraemon, another legendary anime property, for inspiration).
Yet Takopi doesn’t learn his lesson. Using another Happy Gadget, he turns back time to try and fix his mistake, but the result is always the same. That is, until Shizuka’s bully, Marina, is accidentally killed instead.
With his gadget broken in the chaos, Takopi is unable to rewind time again, so they bury Marina in a cartoonish capsule that looks like a kids’ toy. Watching adults later discover the child’s corpse in such a contraption emphasises yet again the horror of what’s unfolding, as well as the innocence that’s been lost (despite how cruel Marina was).