Occasionally, one picks up an anime that sounds good at face value. Maybe the starting synopsis was especially well-written, maybe the show fits into a genre you like, or maybe it has a talented cast of voice actors. In such cases, one feels quite disappointed when the anime turns out to be a fantastical failure. That was the case for My Home Hero, a Spring 2023 anime that had good initial appeal, but far more wasted potential.

This series review will cover five categories: audio, visual, characters, story, and personal enjoyment. At the end of the review, the series will receive an overall score that is the average of the five category scores. Now, let the review begin.

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Visuals: 6/10

My Home Hero was made by Tezuka Productions, a studio with a very long history. It’s known for being a creator of ancient anime like Jungle Emperor (Kimba the White Lion) and Tetsuwan Atom: Astro Boy. More recently, Tezuka Productions teamed with MAPPA to animate Dororo, which was successful and well-received. With at least one recent success and experience spanning many decades, I thought this studio would have no issues with producing quality art and animation.

Despite my reasonable expectations, the visuals for My Home Hero were definitely not great. Now, the art and animation are not horrible. There is a good level of detail in each frame and sometimes good lighting and cinematography. Normally, I would give this quality a 7 or maybe an 8 if I felt generous. However, My Home Hero worsened its appearance with a few strange scenes. For instance, When Tetsuo kills Nobuto, the visuals are terrible. I don’t like the blurred look, splotchy pink filter, or shaky camera. There were a few other keys scenes with this same vague style, too.

In addition to making some of the most important scenes into blurred abstractions, My Home Hero failed in other ways as well. The main example that comes to mind are the absolutely boring and unappealing character designs. I understand that the makers were trying to go for a realistic look, but in an anime that also fails to tell a good story or write good characters, you cannot afford to have them look bland on top of everything else. Because of these issues, the visuals in My Home Hero are 6/10 at best.

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Story: 5/10

Ultimately, My Home Hero failed to tell a story that was exciting, profound, or even reasonably entertaining. The story category is one area in which we see massive wasted potential. There were so many different directions the plot could have taken to become more interesting. The narrative sometimes succeeded in building suspense, but never to a level that would warrant calling this anime a thriller. There were a few little plot twists, but nothing that remotely surprised me. The plot was boring.

The potential psychological themes and their deeper implications were barely touched. We do get the overarching theme of parental love and how people will go to extremes to protect what they value. There was the slightest hint about the lasting guilt of taking a life. But there wasn’t nearly enough exploration or flushing out of the ideas. Besides being boring and having almost no psychological depth, the plot faced other problems as well. It left a few loose ends at the conlusion and made some strange narrative choices along the way (such as the opening flashback scene in the first episode).

I will give My Home Hero a small amount of credit for a few things. First of all, the series did attempt to touch some deeper themes, even if it failed to satisfy me. Secondly, the starting concept is genuinely good. I mean, that’s why I started watching the anime. I needed to see this “normal salaryman” who would kill to save his daughter. Lastly, I liked the consistent logistical details of the criminal plans and actions. For instance, the show believably explained how Tetsuo dealt with Nobuto’s body. Another good example was the way Kasen broke into Kyouchi’s safe.

These decent aspects of the narrative saved it from getting an even lower score. As things stand, this is a mediocre plot that only deserves 5/10.

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Audio: 7/10

The audio category was probably the only element of My Home Hero that was genuinely good. There are two reasons for this: experienced voice actors and excellent choices for opening and ending songs. The opening is “Ai no Uta” (meaning “Love Song”) by Chiai Fujikawa. It’s a beautiful ballad with a calm but moving female vocalist and a slow buildup. I looked up the lyrics and their translation, and they are amazing to me, if rather sappy. The choreography is a bit strange, but the original music video by Chiai Fujikawa is linked below.

The ending song is “Decided” by Dizzy Sunfist. It’s a hard-rock song with a lead female singer. The only issue is that said singer is not a native English speaker and can only do so well with English lyrics. If poor English is an issue for your ears, don’t listen to the ending song. Personally, I still like it because of the upbeat rock music. I just don’t pay attention to the vocals at all.

Then there’s the voice-acting. Kasen is voiced by Sayaka Ohara, who sounds mature and motherly. Tetsuo is voiced by Junichi Suwabe. His normally deep and suave voice can also be toned down to a quieter level and higher pitch for charactes like Tetsuo. Now, both seiyuus did great with their roles, as usual – especially considering that there were not many creative lines. I’m just puzzled that they took this gig when My Home Hero ended up so subpar. Regardless of why they did it, Ohara and Suwabe helped make the audio quality easy on the ears.

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Characters: 5/10

Let’s change things up and start out with the positives of this category. I genuinely enjoyed the character of Kasen the middle-aged housewife. She is quite spirited, funny, and cute. Her other good traits include courage and firm trust in her husband. I’m glad she had this much personality. It was also nice that she wasn’t fussy or annoying. Wonderful and cute as Kasen may be, however, she goes through very little character development. She never changes, never gets traumatized, and only has doubts once in the series.

Besides Kasen, Kyouichi had a few interesting moments and a decent character motivation. I found myself wanting him to buy back the family diner. But one does have to wonder why he took the risk of kidnapping Tetsuo against Kubo’s orders if he was really just trying to earn money and keep a low profile. Not everything about Kyouichi was consistent.

As for other characters, they were disappointing. Personally, I thought Reika had the potential to be interesting, but nothing came of her character. She was just the one who got protected and never knew it. For the brief time we saw him, Nobuto was too evil to be believable. Literally nobody would date such a brute. Matori’s insanity more believable, but his character execution was still awkward in every way. It’s like the anime couldn’t decide if he should be a sympathetic antagonist or a complete madman. A few other characters appeared in minor roles; none were interesting.

With the others out of the way, we are left with Tetsuo, the actual main character of My Home Hero. I usually admire male characters who are perceived as weak or less masculine. My problem with Tetsuo is not his “weakness,” because I don’t actually think he’s weak. He’s a truly brave man who protects his family. If people say Tetsuo is weak, they mean he is not naturally assertive or confident, but just awkward and depressingly average. He bows his head a lot, both literally and metaphorically. If you ask me, acting submissive and being sneaky about his real plans was a great survival strategy.

Initially, I had no contention whatsoever with Tetsuo. When I started to take issue, it wasn’t because of his lack of bold heroism or masculinity. The problem is that, like Kasen, Tetsuo never changed in any way. There was no development and no interesting character arc. In a few scenes, I thought he was legimately suffering on a psychological level – like when he stands in the rain in the last episode. That would have been a good time to delve into his existential struggle and make him emerge with new strength and insight. But the anime spent about 3 seconds on this heavy moment and then moved on. A few days later, Tetsuo is fine again.

In the end, Tetsuo is a poor protagonist, being severely underdeveloped. The story failed to emphasize his few impressive traits and cool moments, resulting in a character who begins and ends as unremarkable. I was originally going to give the character category a 4/10, but since Kasen is so funny and cute, I suppose 5/10 makes sense.

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Personal Enjoyment: 4/10

I don’t regret watching this anime because it lets me practice being critical and dissecting what can go wrong in a series. That being said, on most days, I didn’t enjoy the experience of watching My Home Hero. The episodes were so often so boring that I watched them on 1.25x speed, something I rarely need to do for anime. It was nice that there was nothing especially problematic in terms of values or social issues. It’s just that the anime had so much wasted potential.

There were a few things I did enjoy, such as the character of Kasen and the opening song. By and large, however, there was little to appreciate in this series.

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Overall Score: 5.4/10.0

The overall score for my reviews is calculated by taking the average of the scores for the five categories. Most of my overall scores for anime series range from the low 6s to the high 8s, with a few in the 9s range or in the 5s range. In other words, My Home Hero did pretty damn badly. I do not recommend this anime.

Thanks for reading~

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