My Home Hero

Absolutely not for children, but not in THAT way.

Some time a while back, I saw a thread on Twitter (yes, I'm still calling it Twitter) complaining about a lack of anime specifically aimed at an adult audience. Everyone's subsequent examples listed in the replies were laughed off by the OP as being "violent and gorey but definitely written for teens and not Actual Adults". And it got me thinking, trying to determine what this person meant by "Actual Adults".

An 18-year-old college student, while still a Teenager, is considered an Adult. A 30-something virgin living with their parents is also an Adult. A soccer mom of four kids pushing 50 is an Adult. A tired ex-military grandpa is also an Adult. Every one of them qualifies as an "Adult Audience", but they are all VERY different audiences to write for. So what the hell answer was that person expecting to find after posing such a vague-ass question?

I really hope that post was just shallow engagement farming and not that person's attempt at Deep Shower Thoughts.

As this review is going to highlight, I had the perfect counterattack to that post in the palm of my hand, but I decided not to take the bait. It's a known fact that arguing with anime fans is a completely fruitless endeavor even on the brightest of days, so I'll just immortalize my retort here on my private website, where my words are my own and there are no comment sections to poison them.

This is what you get for posting your opinions on a public forum.

Loosely and unintentionally taking the same trajectory as its more popular cohorts Spy x Family and Buddy Daddies, My Home Hero is another entry in the "parents who can't let their kids know they're involved in some serious criminal shit" genre that seems to have emerged in the past few years. But where Spy x Family and Buddy Daddies present a more high-energy production with generous servings of comedy and levity, My Home Hero takes a much more grounded and realistic thriller approach, the likes of which I haven't seen in an anime in god knows how long.

Rated M not so much for Man Drinking Alcohol, but more for Melancholy and Misery.

Our main character (Tetsuo) is a mild-mannered geeky middle-aged salesman who collects crime novels and even tried writing one back in the day. He and his wife live in the city with a daughter who just moved into her own apartment recently. One day, Tetsuo finds out his daughter (Reika) is dating an abusive asshole. While Tetsuo is over at her apartment, dropping something off while she isn't there, the dickhead in question (Nobuto) drops in and Tetsuo makes the brilliant decision to hide in the closet and spy on him to find out what his deal is. He ends up overhearing that this violent fuckboy is actually the son of a prominent yakuza boss in the area, and is planning to do away with Reika after he bleeds her dry for money.

Fuckboy or not, everyone is someone's child. And understanding what that means is a key part of what makes this story so damn good.

Fearing for his daughter's safety, Tetsuo snaps and makes a move to simply kill this motherfucker. He sneaks up behind Nobuto and starts bashing his head in with a rice cooker. And the moment the deed is done, he immediately realizes what will happen next. The criminal organization will naturally find out who killed the boss's son, and the retribution delivered unto Tetsuo and his family will be slow, agonizing, and gruesome. As the reality of the situation he's put himself in dawns on him, the door opens again. Tetsuo's wife (Kasen) walks into the apartment and sees that her husband has just killed a man. And after he explains, shockingly enough, she just nods and understands completely, and agrees to help him dispose of the body.

The ultimate ride-or-die murder parents power couple.

From here onward, the anime focuses on Tetsuo and Kasen working together to stay one step ahead of the yakuza to hide the evidence and keep Reika safe as the organization goes berserk trying to investigate Nobuto's disappearance. Like most good crime dramas, the show burns slowly but consistently, and relies on long, drawn-out moments of tension and paranoia before delivering its next story point.

But as coordinated and sharp-witted as the organization is, so are Mom and Dad. Tetsuo's nerdy love of crime drama stories has given him an incredible knowledge of criminal procedure and espionage tactics, and watching him coordinate his moves with Kasen's ability to improvise and follow through as the stakes increase with every lie they fabricate makes for a truly thrilling ride that feels both too good to be true, and yet rooted enough in gritty realism that it feels totally plausible.

Funny enough, some scenes featuring lockpicking and other highly specific criminal acts were mosaic-censored during their initial broadcast, likely for legal reasons. But only VERY specific ones, while others were shown in full, because Standards and Practices boards are often silly like that.

And as Tetsuo continues to dig his own grave deeper and deeper, there's something else that emerges inside him as well. Even the yakuza tasked with interrogating him comments on the whole meek-geek thing just being a façade for something much darker hiding deep inside him. That same urge he got while spying on Nobuto rears its ugly head multiple times throughout the series, as if Tetsuo is always secretly looking for another opportunity to simply kill the people making his life a living hell (makes sense, considering his dad was a cop). And each time, this rage is not dispelled by some sudden twinkling of goody-two-shoes morality, but rather the grim realization that another murder will only dig him and his family deeper into the mountain of shit they're already drowning in.

Knowing that temptation is always lingering just in the back of his mind helps keep the tension at a constant slow boil.

What really impressed me was just how realistic the charaters in this show felt. Tetsuo, while hailed by the show's small fanbase as some kind of criminal mastermind, feels like a realistic geek-ass of a dad. He's scrawny, carries heavy bags under his eyes, isn't exactly in peak health anymore, but can easily carry on a conversation under stress due to his nature as a salesman. Meanwhile, Kasen is polite, always speaks warmly, and has a variety of weird little DIY hobbies that make her the perfect jack-of-all-trades to back up and carry out Tetsuo's plans, and even improvise her own lines when the lies go south. They're so believably normal that it honestly makes them seem even more badass by comparison!

Loid and Yor Forger may claim their badassery through their slick fight scenes, but Tetsuo and Kasen manage theirs without even throwing a single punch.

And it's not just the thriller aspect of this show that really got me. Nobuto's father, the tired, beleagured yakuza boss himself, was already on the verge of quitting the organization after a successful life of criminal leadership. During his big climactic one-on-one with Tetsuo, after the hell they've both been put through, it's clear that neither of them are going to win in a fist fight. And while Tetsuo tries to talk him down, father to father, the truth is that the boss has no pity for Tetsuo. Yakuza or not, he lost his only son. He doesn't need to understand how Tetsuo feels about protecting his family, since that doesn't change the fact that Nobuto is actually dead.

What ensues between the two is not an epic showdown fueled by revenge or righteousness, but one of the most pathetic, kicked-puppy slap fights I've ever seen, and I say that in a very positive, endearing way. Nothing in this whole story has ever really been about bravado or grand displays of kickassery, it's always been grounded and realistic. And this final battle is the culmination of that; a genuine, miserable confrontation between two sad dads, neither of whom actually deserve to win. It feels REAL. And even if the animation is stiff and limited, I think I can safely say it's one of the most exciting fights I've ever watched in any anime. I was glued to my screen waiting to see how it ended.

"Pepper spray? That sounds delicio--AAHH I WAS WRONG I WAS HORRIBLY WRONG!"

Talk about a unicorn of a series. In a world where marketability and hooky gimmick is everything, how does such a niche story about two average parents in their late 40s lying their way through having murdered a crime boss's playboy of a son - a premise more akin to your stay-at-home grandma's favorite incarnation of CSI than any of its fellow anime peers - manage to receive an animated adaptation in 20-fucking-23? Granted, it was clearly given a pretty low budget, but it's not at all to the detriment of the show. The voice acting and music pick up most of the slack, and the pace never really seems to falter. It really is one of the most unusual anime I've seen in the past decade.

That rando on Twitter was right about one thing: there aren't A LOT of anime that are aimed specifically at an "adult audience". My Home Hero most definitely fits the bill though. I wouldn't really put it in the same category as either of these titles, but the "adult" vibe reminds me of older niche classics like NaNa and Paranoia Agent. It's an anime that isn't concerned with having an attractive or memetic gimmick, but stands on its own by simply weaving a compelling story through its grounded, three-dimensional characters.

And even though I hand these out like candy at Halloween, that's a 10/10 from me!

Kasen totally should have won the waifu of the year award, just saying.