November is coming to an end, and I'm thinking about Thanksgiving. Of course, making a turkey dinner in Japan is a little difficult, but there is a dish that seems to convey the idea of family and makes a meal of itself. Oyakodon (親子丼) or, in English, “parent and child donburi” is a dish that uses both chicken meat and eggs. The use of both chicken and eggs together is where this dish pulls its name from. Some of my western friends thought this was creepy, but I thought it was rather sweet. It reminded me of all the family—both that of blood and that of heart—I have back home that I'll be missing this year.
Here's the way I made oyakodon with my host mother, Motoko Okada:
Ingredients: 4 onions, 3 carrots, 3 small green peppers, 1 small chicken, 5 eggs.
- Julienne and sauté all veggies (in order of appearance). Add sake, some chicken stock (dried) and a bunch of water and simmer for a bit.
- Marinate chicken with ginger, onions, garlic, salt, and sugar for a nice taste. Best if done the night before.
- Remove chicken from marinade and grill.
- Mix eggs and cook separately.
- Once everything is cooked to taste, lay ingredients over a bed of rice and serve.
Here’s another recipe too, if you find my hurried notes too inexact.
It felt right to make this with a maternal figure during this time since it’s still Thanksgiving in my silly American heart even if the people in Tokyo aren’t celebrating it. But it got me thinking… How often do we see healthy familial relationships in media? Can you count the number of them you’ve seen in the last week? Are you only using one hand? Yeah…
When I first heard the name oyakodon and was told what it meant, it actually immediately reminded me of one of my favorite scenes from Fire Emblem: Awakening.
Those of you familiar with the Fire Emblem series will remember the support system of the previous games that allowed you to build relationships between your army’s units. But in Awakening, the support system also allows the player to meet the offspring that result from the romantic support links. These children travel back to a time before their parents have conceived them in order to prevent the tragic events of the future they come from—in which most of their parents have died and the world has been overrun by darkness and chaos due to the Fell Dragon Grima—in order to attempt to save their parents and to build a future in which they can all live happily together. When Chrom, the main character of Awakening, meets his daughter Lucina and hears her story, he reacts not as a soldier or as the Exalt, leader of the country of Ylisse, but as a father—and it is so much more emotionally powerful than any declaration of war he could have made on Grima.
Those of you less familiar with niche JRPGs will remember The Incredibles. Part superhero movie and part family romcom, each member of the Parr family has a pretty “incredible” power; Dash has enough speed to allow him to play as many pranks as a young boy could think of; Violet’s invisibility and force fields allow her to admire the world of high school without ever having to worry about stepping foot in it; their mother Helen’s ability to stretch makes her more than flexible when it comes to balancing house work, her third baby, and the rest of her family; and Bob’s colossal strength should be more than any father could ever need in order to protect his family. In a way, these powers reflect the things we as normal viewers might stereotypically wish we had in our everyday lives. Wouldn’t it be great to be fast enough to get away with pranks? To not have to worry about what might happen to you going out on a Saturday night regardless of what you were wearing? To be able to stretch far enough that you could be in three places at once? To be strong enough to protect everyone you loved?
But the point that is very quickly made is that no matter how incredible someone is, no one is ever strong alone. From the beginning of the movie, Mr. Incredible starts losing to the machine that Syndrome made. It’s not until the entire family starts working together that they’re able to defeat both the robot and Syndrome. The toll it takes on Mr. Incredible when he thinks his family has died is also indicative of how important familial bonds are to us. The Incredibles really drives home how much of a superpower familial love is.
Now, those are conventional families portrayed by media. When it comes to less traditional forms of family, Steven Universe and Gravity Falls have it made.
Steven of Steven Universe is the offspring of Greg, a human, and Rose Quartz, a sentient alien rock called a Gem that we would typically gender as female on sight. Because of his dual lineage, Steven has a very interesting familial structure. His mother gave up her physical form so he could be born. Steven lives not with his father (although his father does run a car wash nearby) but with Pearl, Garnet, and Amethyst—all of whom are also Gems—as one of the team members of the Crystal Gems. It was decided this would be the best living situation for Steven because only other Gems could possibly hope to teach him to control his own Gem powers.
When the series starts, the viewer knows very little about Gems. As the series continues, we learn that they come from all sorts of situations and backgrounds, and that the Gems Steven’s mother led to earth are considered radical in their ways of doing and thinking by “homeworld” Gems. We learn that Amethyst was artificially made, that Pearl would be restricted to servitude instead of being allowed to engineer, create, and fight the way she does as a Crystal Gem team member, and that Garnet—who is made up of two other Gems that are in love—wouldn’t be allowed to exist as a fusion of these Gems. Steven’s family is full of diversity. It is the acceptance, communication, and love the characters exhibit in every episode that keeps it going and allows them to fight off homeworld Gems still hoping to invade and colonize the Earth.
Gravity Falls is a show that balances relationships between blood family members and non-blood family members more brilliantly than any other piece of media I’ve ever seen.
The series centers around a pair of fraternal twins, Dipper and Mabel, who get shipped up to their Grunkle (that’s Great Uncle turned into one word for the purposes of a joke in the series) Stan’s tourist trap The Mystery Shack in Gravity Falls, Oregon for the summer. Once there they meet Soos, the handy man of the shack, and Wendy, one of the gift store attendants. The only people related by blood are Stan, Dipper, and Mabel, but when the apocalypse happens in Gravity Falls as the series finale, and Dipper, Soos, and Wendy break into the Mabel’s dream prison to save her, they are referred to as “The Pines Family” by their adversaries.
And that description is not inaccurate. Series creator, Alex Hirsch, recently discussed a couple of the relationships between the characters on The B Movies Podcast, saying how he really made it a point to fill relationships that are usually fraught with tension with love instead. This is evident in key relationships, such as the twins themselves and the father and son type relationship Soos and Stan have as well.
It also seems to fit, because no matter what happens in the show, Dipper, Mabel, Stan, Soos, and Wendy always get through it together.
And if that’s not enough to convince you how powerful and important the portrayal of warm, loving familial relationships is, refresh yourself with this scene from Lilo and Stitch:
Happy Thanksgiving, wherever you are, whatever you celebrate, whatever language you speak. I hope your loved ones are near and that you can see them today, because life is heavy and life is hard and it’s so much lighter when they’re there to help you through it. May you find many a loving portrayal of family in your media and in your living room this coming holiday season.
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