I nearly dropped this series because the episodes uploaded on Youtube has really awful audio quality and while I get the gist of the story, I struggled a lot with understanding the conversations especially in the beginning but I'm glad I decided to finish it.
It's quite far-fetched for a little boy from Italy traveling solo all the way to Argentina in search for his mother to be happening in real life but I would personally file this anime in the 'slice of life' genre (and a historical one at that!). It was fascinating to see adults offering Marco wine and him chugging it down. I'm not sure if that's an Italian thing or if it was just commonplace back then (keep in mind this anime was released in 1976). I also remember this scene where Marco and his friend got scammed out of his ship fare so they decided to hunt the guy who scammed them in the shady part of town where they proceeded to get hurt and they beat the crap out of the scammer in return. Marco stepping foot into the immigrant ship also stood out to me, because everybody on that ship looked gaunt and very tired. I've read somewhere that even regular transatlantic voyages were tough back in the day (health wise due to poor hygiene, contamination and poor nutrition on board).
I also like the small details in the anime, especially when Marco got to Argentina. They showed the salt flats, gauchos, ostriches (? not sure but they said avestruces), there was even one scene where the locals seems to be drinking yerba mate (they didn't specifically mentioned it but they were drinking something out of the gourd cup).
They really took a short story and fleshed it out and the attention to details is outstanding. Highly recommended!
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