I hate to criticize another mother’s decision making skills…
I know it’s just a cartoon and plot devices are needed so the kids can have their epic adventure. But my goodness! This is what Sosuke’s mother, Lisa, does: When her husband doesn’t come home from his job as a boat captain on the day she expects, she drinks beer and falls asleep on her kid’s bed. In the middle of a storm so fierce electricity goes out and people are predicting a tsunami, she decides to put her kid in the car and go home through the driving rain, through flooding streets and up a narrow mountain road. Then, in the middle of the night while that same storm continues to rage, she decides that what she really wants to do is leave her five-year-old son, and someone else’s preschool size child (who just appeared in her yard during the storm), alone in her neighborless house on top of a cliff while she drives several miles back to the senior center where she works.