Kotaro Lives Alone (Season 1)

Kotaro Lives Alone (コタローは1人暮らし, 2022) is a Netflix anime series you can watch online on iFILM. The premise reads like a tearjerker: a four-year-old boy moves into a run-down apartment building entirely on his own, no parents in sight.

Kotaro Sato carries himself like a tiny feudal lord — speaking in stiff old-fashioned Japanese, doing his own shopping, paying his rent and stubbornly refusing help. Next door lives Karino, a broke manga artist who's unnerved by the odd kid at first and slowly slips into the role of stand-in father. A bar hostess, a divorced office worker and a soft-hearted yakuza round out the building, the whole place quietly orbiting one small boy.

Under the gentle comedy sits a story about childhood loneliness and where a child that young learned to build so much armor. It can make you laugh and gut you inside the same episode. Perfect for unwinding an episode or two at a time. Stream every episode of Kotaro Lives Alone online on iFILM.