After killing his daughter’s abusive yakuza boyfriend to save her, ordinary salaryman Tetsuo Tosu
becomes embroiled in the dark criminal underworld. The wish for a simple life he and his wife Kasen
had for their daughter has been reduced to a wish for survival. Though middle-aged and weak, he’ll put
his life on the line using only his wits in order to protect his family.
(Source: Crunchyroll)
The mystery/crime thriller genre is a difficult genre to create a masterpiece in. A tight-knit story with a high level of suspense, while keeping the contrivances and convolutions low is most definitely a tough task, and even more of a tough task to satisfy all viewers. “My Home Hero” has its fair share of suspense to keep you on the edge of your seat at times, but unfortunately, it had a very low budget to work with, making the important moments not hit as hard as they should be. However, it still did a good job at making some of the characters feel realistic to an extent. The set up for the show is relatively simple, as it’s about a normal man, Tosu Tetsuo, doing whatever it takes to protect his family, even it means murdering someone in cold blood to save his daughter. In doing so, he gets the yakuza on his tail, and he has to attempt to diffuse the situation and cover up his murder to save his family. The idea of protecting your family is present in both the protagonist’s and antagonist’s point of view, and the story attempts to make you feel for the characters, even the villains. As with most mystery/thriller shows, there are moments that aren’t particularly well written, and you question the intelligence and consistency of some of the actions of the characters. I suppose the most difficult thing to believe, or something that requires a degree of suspension of disbelief, is how the characters are so skilled in escaping the yakuza, despite being seemingly a normal family. Tosu Tetsuo, the protagonist, gets his skills from reading and writing mystery novels, which is quite an interesting concept, though admittedly a bit flimsy. His wife, Kasen, was quite a highlight of the show, as she was able to support her husband extremely well, and together, they made an excellent tag team. One major complaint I would have is towards the daughter, Reika, who despite being the focus of the initial conflict, didn’t play much of a role in the story, and felt a bit too oblivious to what her parents were doing. What I did like about the characters however, is how realistic they felt at points, especially selling the point that they aren’t experts at crime, especially on the emotional side of things. One might criticize Tetsuo for not acting when he had a chance to resolve the issue, perhaps by killing another person, but you got to recognize, he’s just a normal human being with empathy. I also liked some of the fights, as they were realistically awkward and clumsy, because the characters were never trained to fight. It was a good touch for sure. The other major issue is obviously the animation, which was extremely stiff and took away from the major moments of the show. I honestly feel a live action adaptation might have worked better than this anime. However, the soundtrack was quite decent, and had a level of a thrilling tone to it to help compliment the show. Overall, the show’s fine, but just severely held back by the production values unfortunately. The story had its ups and downs, and requires a fair share of suspension of disbelief. It’s a fine showing of a crime thriller, but lacked the execution to make it stand out from the other shows in this anime season.
__Plot __ The overarching plot of the show is about the main character, Tetsuo, trying to cover up the murder of his daughter’s boyfriend in an attempt to protect her. This sounds fairly simple and straightforward. However, the show presented Tetsuo’s elaborate scheme to do anything to not get discovered. The show presented this in a very convoluted manner and halfway through the series it was hard to keep up (especially when you are watching one episode per week). The show cycles through the format where they present the outcome and show short flashbacks as to how Tetsuo and his wife get to the outcome. This made the flow a bit confusing and hard to follow. At the same time, the show also tried to insert backstories to explain more about the characters, adding to the confusion. As for the methods itself, they were pretty interesting but as mentioned earlier they could have been explained in a more creative manner instead of just monologues inside Tetsuo’s head. Shows like Summertime Rendering come to mind, where there is a single end goal and the plans taken to achieve are portrayed in a creative and clear manner. Nevertheless, My Home Hero has its fair share of action and suspense. These mostly came in the last three episodes where Tetsuo carries out the final stage of his plan. Until then, there was not really much suspense. In the end, whenever Tetsuo is highly suspected, he just gets away somehow. There is also an element of luck at play here which I do not enjoy. We never saw a moment where his plans had a major flaw and was backed into a corner with no way out. Perhaps this is to convey the message that family is important and the resilience he has to protect his daughter till the end. No man is an island and he had his wife supporting him every step of the way. __Characters__ Funnily enough, I felt more sympathy for Kyoichi than for Tetsuo. At least we got to see different sides of Kyoichi: when he is vulnerable, when he is strict and when he is being loyal to the organization. For Tetsuo he never looked strong, always meek and worried as he carried out plans, which annoyed me throughout the whole show. I guess there is some juxtaposition that he may look fragile on the outside but is actually cold hearted and cynical on the inside (we did get a snippet of this at the very end). At the end of the day, he is doing it for his daughter right? Kasen was more peculiar as when she first saw the body, she agreed to help Tetsuo without an inch of hesitation or surprise. I was honestly taken aback. The show did attempt to involve the daughter in the case but that was unfortunately short lived. They did try to bring an angle that the daughter too cared about the family and she was strong and independent. However that was shoved under the rug within one episode. __Animation__ The animation generally, for most of the show, was alright. As someone who watched Human Bug University, this is not the worst animation I’ve seen. However, there were some serious moments in the show that could have been more intensified with better animation. Still frames with sketchy special effects did not cut it. There was a mismatch of voice and visuals. Voice acting was expressive but plastered on non-expressive facial expressions, it seemed odd. Nothing notable about the OP and ED either. On the whole, My Home Hero has an interesting premise but lackluster execution. There were some emotional moments especially when it came to Tetsuo’s past and the reasons for his actions. However, we had to sit tight till the good part. The show did get a bit philosophical at the end and I wished there was more discussion throughout the show whether Tetsuo’s actions were justified or not.