Friend: so, there’s this series about a found family of hitmen who adopt a child. Also one of the MC’s is a survivor of human trafficking who crossdresses for his hobby.
Anyways. I really loved this bizarre series. I never thought I’d even care about characters who torture and kill for their job without remorse and yet. The cast was really, for the most part, fantastic. Every character is someone the majority of society would consider technically a bad person–murderers for hire, torturers, hackers, etc. But when we delve deeper, we see their humanity despite their crimes. Martinez is a torturer, but he has standards, oddly enough. Jiro works with Martinez, basically raises Misaki, a five-year-old girl, with love, and lets her adopt a cat. Despite Enokida seeming like a stereotypical emotionless cool hacker, he’s actually quite complex. Each one of them is a victim to in some sense, and even if they aren’t exactly, say, directly fighting back against the abuse they endured, they’re still fighting through finding some kind of family and humanity against through each other.
It’s a very fine line to walk thematically, and HTR does it beautifully. The framing allows you to rejoice with these characters who have suffered a lot and caused a lot of suffering too as they find happiness and belonging with each other. It doesn’t try to excuse them for their crimes, and the characters are mostly self-aware that they are doing horrible things and own up to it, but they just want to find some hope even in the middle of it. And it somehow pulls it off as a touching and exciting series, with a ton of action and intriguing plot developments and one genuine twist I did not see coming.
Lin was the standout character for me (shocking no one; he’s the one I mentioned above) in his complexity and arc. The series doesn’t excuse him (or any characters, because the framing is really on point), but it also shows you his humanity and makes you root for him. He’s a disaster child in a lot of ways, traumatized out of normal development and struggling to find out how/if he can fit into the world without his mother and sister, a world that’s only been cruel to him, and when he doesn’t really conform to gender norms (but considers himself a guy ftr). But he still craves connection and yet paradoxically is desperately afraid of it, afraid of getting hurt again, and yet his motivation has always been people he cares for. His slowly learning to trust Banba and the rest of the Ramens was beautiful, and Banba/Lin is an OTP.
like tell me that’s not romantic framing right there
I would have loved for their relationship to move out of subtext (because it is definitely intentionally subtextual) and into the actual text, but the fact that it stayed subtextual still didn’t feel entiiirely like baiting to me, because the emotional payoffs were still there and neither of them were then randomly shoved with someone else. But we’ll see what the light novels do with it, and if there’s another season.
Which brings me to the one character I thought was perhaps the weakest: Saitou. He’s our everyman character, our introduction to this strange world, and he’s often played for comic relief. I enjoyed most of his comedy, but at times it felt a bit tired because he doesn’t particularly offer much in terms of growth for the other characters–at least not yet. I think there’s potential there.
What’s interesting to me is that a lot of the characters would be outcasts even if they weren’t the criminals they are. Lin is a crossdresser and heavily impacted by his childhood trauma. Jiro is an okama. Martinez is not Japanese. Misaki was horribly abused as well. Yet Banba and Saitou are both fairly normal for society, but they’ve made choices to step into a different world for different reasons. Enokida was tossed out of society for his criminal activities. And yet the audience, via Saitou, learns that they are kind of just like any other people despite their crimes, capable of love and growth and loyalty.
Anyways. I highly recommend this quirky anime. It’s got the compelling characters, the unique premise, and the themes. And this was me for a lot fo it (for the record, if something emotionally moves me at all, I cry. It’s not a tragedy).
