#toichi

Yukiko and Yuusaku: 

They don’t deserve the hate they get on their parenting style. Which usually falls onto Yuusaku, because clearly Yukiko’s personality looks better than the guy who’s already in the know and less relatable. The usual arguments are:

1) They left Shinichi alone in Japan while they moved to America. Well. He didn’t want to go with them, and he was at an age where he could live alone. They wanted to go, he didn’t, he could handle himself, so okay, everything was fine.

2) They set up a whole scheme to pretend to be his enemies and scare the ever loving heck out of him. Yes, they did. With the full purpose of scaring him to death, because they wanted him to get an idea of just what he was getting into. Immediately after, they told him: It’s going to be like that, it’s dangerous, so come with us and stay safe instead, other people can look into it. Again, he told them to mind their own business and not get involved, and they (mostly Yuusaku), respected that wish instead of forcing Shinichi to come anyway. They even talked Agasa into helping to get Shin to see what could happen, and yet the full blame is almost always only on Yukiko and Yuusaku, when Agasa knew Shinichi’s situation full well and he still went along to try and convince him on the danger.

Yuusaku is too all knowing, and that’s really the only thing that playing into what people hate about him. The whole ‘troll’ aspect. But he does know his family, and tends to respect their wishes and treat them as people. He took smol Shinichi’s concerns about a teacher’s special treatment of Ran seriously when everyone else brushed it off as jealousy without a second thought. He never outright gave Shinichi answers, and instead let him investigate on his own with hints. Yes, he was always ahead, but he never abused the knowledge and instead helped nudge Shinichi into figuring out things on his own.

And while he’s been Conan, Shinichi has gotten help from his parents any time he actually needed them. His mom might be used more often for her disguise expertise, but he still got his father to play a part when necessary, and they never complained. They were ready to help their son as support, and always are, so in that, they’re arguably the best parents in DCMK.

Extra information: They were together four years prior to having a baby (Shinichi being 16 and Yuusaku giving his proposal 20 years prior to the series as mentioned in the Desperate Revival), so they more likely had a better idea of what they were doing.

Eri and Kogoro:

They do have issues with their relationship, and Gosho really needs to resolve it one way or another, either with a full divorce or... I’m not sure I’d be happy seeing them get back together after all the ways have been written to show why they don’t work for each other, but it’s also there as an option.

In terms of parenting... Kogoro was not good as a father in the slightest at the beginning of the series, and implied that it had been like that for a long while after Eri left. With his new fame, getting out more, more family trips and interactions, he’s been getting better. But prior to the story events, he’d be the worst parent. But at this point in the series, he’s picked himself up more, curbed his bad habits away from the extreme, and he’s outright admitted he wants Eri to come back. It’s heavily implied that her leaving led to his habits getting worse and him getting to the point we see him at at the beginning.

Eri has encouraged Ran to come stay with her instead, but Ran herself chose to stay with her father to take care of him. Eri’s very first appearance was her meeting up with her daughter for the day, and Ran seems to drop by as often as she wants. While Kogoro from the beginning clearly needed help and couldn’t take care of himself, much less his daughter, Eri has been the opposite, very self sufficient and responsive to Ran.

As husband and wife, they have a lot of problems and Gosho needs to stop giving hints of them possibly getting together while simultaneously showing that there will always be another problem and never resolve any of the ones that exist. As parents, Eri has been the best with Ran. Kogoro had too many issues to begin with to help his daughter, though he’s been getting more and more responsive and concerned for both Ran and his separated wife (and Conan, despite the head abuse). He still tends to think of himself first, but when there’s clear danger to his family or people he cares about in general, he does have a serious and competent mode. He’s starting to try.

But parenting, second best with Eri, Kogoro making some progress.

Extra information: They had known each other since childhood, and the poor experience has given Eri a pessimistic view of romance with childhood friends. To a point of once advising Ran not to follow in her footsteps, which based on her experience could be a genuine concern, but is an issue when Ran’s only had Shinichi (and Sonoko) as childhood friends, and she knows they’ve been close.

Chikage and Toichi:

Would be fun aunt and uncle, probably not the best parents, could arguably be worst.

We don’t see much of Toichi or know about his personality outside of flashbacks, and Kaito’s admiration tends to skew how he’s viewed. What we do know is: 

1) He became Kid to get attention off of the Phantom Lady. Which would have meant his plan hinged on convincing her to drop that job and possibly included him assuming she’d say yes to getting together with him. 

2) He challenged child Shinichi and purposefully tried to scare him and Ran to get him to pass a message to Yuusaku. Which only half worked, and was unnecessary when he made plans for how to pass a message along via Yukiko anyway.

3) There are multiple instances of him teaching young Kaito not to interact with strangers, don’t let people know your true emotions, and that it’s better to act ignorant than show your hand. Which isn’t good advice to try giving to a kid who hasn’t experienced enough in the world yet to understand all the distrust.

Toichi has been shown to care about his family, arguably his friends in the case of the Red Tear, but he doesn’t teach his child in the best way with mostly magic and deception.

Chikage’s parenting is rarely seen, but she doesn’t offer Kaito much either. She was present in the first chapter of Magic Kaito, only really contributing to telling Aoko that her son doesn’t like fish (while preparing the fish she knows full well Kaito isn’t likely to eat in the hopes that ‘maybe this time he’ll eat it’) and showing that she knows Kaito found Toichi’s hidden room. No further mention of if she talked to him later, or if she was ever home, as the early manga focused more on Kaito outside of the house and his adventures.

She showed up later as having gone off to travel, no warning to the audience, but Kaito doesn’t seem to mind while he has things to do. She actually agreed to get together with a guy she just met who scared her almost to death just prior to him asking her to be with him, so seems impulsive. 

The times she’s played a more major part in Kaito’s story after her initial appearance, it was to ask him, as a thief, to clean up her mess, and to work with someone to give Kaito a hard time and a small side note of getting him to stop thieving. Which in some form included a disguise as his dead father, the whole reason he became Kid in the first place. Except unlike the Kudo’s attempt to get their son to stop chasing danger, this came late into Kaito’s career, not at the beginning, so concern isn’t the best excuse. No understanding of Kaito as his own person is ever shown, and actions taken with regards to him are less reasonable.

The Kurobas overall don’t seem like they’re responsible people, and they likely should not have been put in charge of a child. It’s no wonder Kaito has issues, Jii seems to be more the support and good advice giver more than any of what we see of Chikage and Toichi.

Extra: They got together 18 year prior to the events of present day. Kaito’s supposedly 17, which means most likely means they made him very soon after meeting and getting together. Neither have made good life choices, even if they are nice and fun people. Overall good people, bad as parents.

Heizo and Shizuka:

We don’t see much of them, Heizo seems to try and get his son to shape up and that’s the biggest flaw about him. He seems more work oriented, which is unsurprising with his ranking in the police force, and very serious. Heizo knows his son’s personality and skills, but tries to humble him and get him to also act professional instead of his usual hothead, rush into the situation self. (Which could lead to some real problems, such as if Heiji had continued his deduction from his first appearance and accused the wrong person in his rush to find the culprit before Shinichi could show up and beat him. Luckily Shinichi did show up and find the real murderer.)

Shizuka does seem supportive of her son, trying to attend one of his tournaments and checking on the people he goes a long way to visit to make sure they’re okay. There’s also mild disapproval from her of Heizo’s actions towards Heiji.

Heiji parents overall seem to be more average in terms of parenting, overall good but with some problems.

Nakamori:

Needs to get his butt out of Kid cases and stop ignoring his daughter.

...Okay, that’s obviously the biggest issue. He forgot Aoko’s birthday for gods sake, and left her in an empty house. Any other day, it might be fine, but that’s not the night to go out and get drunk. But he is there, usually in the mornings, they have meals together when there’s nothing going on at the time, and he talks to her about his thoughts on Kid. Even when the thought is that her friend could possibly be running around as a thief. Of course Aoko got defensive about that accusation towards Kaito, but she looks up to her father being an officer and always gets proud when he comes out ahead of a criminal like Kid. 

He’s never shown being a good parent, but also never shown teaching any bad morals or being gone for more than the night. His biggest issue is putting his work as more important than his only known family, which does still put him on the lower end of parenting, though still arguably not quite as bad as Kuroba parenting.

Don’t know enough about the other parent to make full calls on their parenting, but:

- Hakuba’s father put him against Kid to knock that arrogance down a peg or two and overall teach a lesson about things actually being difficult and needing real work.

- Sonoko’s parents, mostly mother, is a bit on the controlling side, seen best in Kid’s first appearance and her keeping an eye on the real jewel out of distrust of random people, and in Makoto vs Kid in saying he’d have to give up on Sonoko if he couldn’t win. Relationships and business concerns aside, they’re pretty lenient on Sonoko’s actions overall.