is a 2014 television drama that first aired on Nippon Television (NTV) on January 15, 2014. It follows the stories of ten children living in an orphanage. The drama stars child actresses Mana Ashida and Rio Suzuki, who are noted for their roles in the television dramas Mother and Woman respectively.
The series aired for nine episodes and garnered an average viewership rating of 12.85% in the Kanto region. The series was embroiled in a controversy due to its depiction of orphanages, which was criticized by Japanese welfare organisations.
Plot
9-year old Maki Watanabe was left in an orphanage, named Kogamo no Ie (コガモの家) Japanese: Duck's House after her mother was arrested for involuntarily causing hurt. Here, she meets "Post", a girl who was abandoned at birth at a baby hatch and other children who have been abandoned by their parents or are taken into care due to child abuse or child abandonment The orphanage is run by 50-year-old retired detective, Tomonori Sasaki, an eccentric housekeeper who runs the orphanage with an iron fist.
Every week, Sasaki holds trials, which are foster parent applications, and he trusts the children to essentially choose their own parents based on their preferences. The children then spend 1–2 days with their selected foster parents, and then decide whether or not they want to be adopted or not.
The children at the home face discrimination from society as well as the psychological trauma of being abandoned at the home. While most of the children harbour the hope of eventually being adopted into a loving family, Maki clings onto the hope that her mother would return one day to claim her from the orphanage.
In the end, some children are adopted, some go back to their birth parents, and some even choose to stay at the orphanage.