Mousou Dairinin

The infamous Shounen Bat is terrorizing the residents of Musashino City. Flying around on his rollerblades and beating people down with a golden baseball bat, the assailant seems impossible to catch—much less understand. His first victim, the well-known yet timid character designer Tsukiko Sagi, is suspected of orchestrating the attacks. Believed only by her anthropomorphic pink stuffed animal, Maromi, Tsukiko is just one of Shounen Bat's many victims.

As Shounen Bat continues his relentless assault on the town, detectives Keiichi Ikari and Mitsuhiro Maniwa begin to investigate the identity of the attacker. However, more and more people fall victim to the notorious golden bat, and news of the assailant begins circulating around the town. Paranoia starts to set in as chilling rumors spread amongst adults and children alike.

Will the two detectives be able to unravel the truth behind Shounen Bat, or will the paranoia get to them first?

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Shounen Bat Main

Sakaguchi, Daisuke Japanese

Sagi, Tsukiko Main

Noto, Mamiko Japanese

Ikari, Keiichi Main

Iizuka, Shouzou Japanese

Maniwa, Mitsuhiro Main

Seki, Toshihiko Japanese

Maromi Supporting

Momoi, Haruko Japanese

Chono, Harumi Supporting

Mitsuishi, Kotono Japanese

Old Man Supporting

Saikachi, Ryuuji Japanese

Ikari, Misae Supporting

Komiya, Kazue Japanese

Taira, Yuichi Supporting

Yamaguchi, Mayumi Japanese

Kamome Supporting

Tominaga, Miina Japanese

Cook, Justin Producer

Gotou, Hideki Producer

Tanaka, Shinsaku Assistant Producer

Kon, Satoshi Director, Storyboard, Original Creator

Reviews

Apr 20, 2025

contraspas

Recommended

REALLY good. It’s raw in the message it wants to get across, and it hits hard with how relatable the characters’ forms of escapism are—something any human can connect with. The guy who made this had a genius idea, managing to balance abstract concepts while still delivering a clear message, mixing in a bunch of crazy stuff (it starts off kinda detective genre and suddenly turns into a fight anime, lol).

I give it a 9 because those fight-heavy episodes felt a bit like filler to me, but I still get the point they were trying to make. It becomes another (of MANY, seriously) portrayal of ... reality that this anime nails—people obsessed with the internet, games, etc., to the point they commit atrocities, and in their minds, it’s still somehow tied to the media they consume so much. It even reminded me a bit of Videodrome.

Going into the final arc of the anime, I really want to highlight episode 11—the detective’s wife vs. the kid with the bat—it’s a TRUE BOSS FIGHT OF WORDS, HOLY SHIT. In that scene, the bat kid basically represents her will to die, to give up, and she herself represents the drive to live. You see the situations she brings up—losing her baby, telling her life story—while the bat kid laughs, his body growing like he knows he’s about to land a hit on her. But he destroys the whole house and still can’t touch her, because she understood that despite all the suffering, without suffering, there is no happiness.

Now talking about the series ending—I really want to point out how Shounen Bat and Maromi are two sides of the same coin. But Maromi is way worse, because he represents the most modern form of escapism, especially in Japan—using cute things like a kind of drug, projecting your frustrations onto them. And the answer to all that escapism is right there in the anime’s ending. Notice: the ending is literally the same shit as the beginning, the world hasn’t changed. Pessimistic, right?

But that’s the thing—what had to change, did. Sagi no longer depends on Maromi. When she accepted responsibility for her dog’s death, EVERYTHING ended. Shounen Bat and Maromi no longer exist. To me, what the creator wanted to show is that even if the world doesn’t change, that’s no excuse to run away from all the negativity. In fact, it’s even more reason to accept reality for what it is—or better yet, change your own reality just by stopping the escape. Because that does make a difference. Not in the world, like in Paranoia Agent, where everything just reset, but in your social circle and, most importantly, in you

Reviewer’s Rating: 9

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Aug 8, 2024

sanander

Mixed Feelings

Is it worth a watch? Definitely. Is it good? Maybe.

This is one of those shows that start off strong and then fail to keep up along the way. Frankly, it's a mix of brilliant episodes and episodes that waste your time. In the middle of its runtime you will see actual filler episodes that do not connect to the main story in anything other than featuring Shounen Bat, the poster boy of the show, one of those episodes is even openly framed as a collection of fictitious rumors that bear no resemblance to reality. Personally, I do not feel that a 13 episode show ... can afford to pad its numbers with filler in good conscience, but you may have a different opinion.

Looking at the plot itself, it's unsatisfactory at best. It ends up feeling as if the entire journey between episodes 1 and 13 focused on all the wrong things. Sure, it was supposed to be misleading at many points, but in the very end the show only confused itself. What it identifies as its main antagonistic forces ends up being superficially inflated. Suddenly, it's everybody's problem when there is nothing to actually support it being so.

Reading this over, it feels like a 'Not Recommended' review, but I leave it at 'Mixed' because the good parts of this series indeed rattle your brain and are very enjoyable, the art is pleasant and the opening is top-notch.
Go for this if you think you like weird anime. Or don't, because it's not going to be weird enough and you're not going to lose too much.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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May 22, 2025

1stDecame4Danime

Not Recommended

A poorly written story of mostly episodic filler character drama to convey the very basic concept of escapism and waste the audience's time.
The entire series is just a bunch of loosely connected nonstories rehashing the same things over and over.
There's nothing of depth to talk about. There are a bunch of random pedo character asides for no other reason than pedophilia.
The ending is uninspired and all the filler in between could've/should've been skipped to be a movie instead (this has more or less the same notes as Paprika but extremely uninspired execution here).

The reality/unreality of the ending absolutely falls on its face, since the ... entire conflict of the entire story affecting the entirety of the city gets resolved immediately after fmc arbitrarily faces her trauma instead of resorting to escapism immediately after being confronted with it, and this one act immediately solves the entire memetic problem for everyone else, completely destroying the argument that it isn't a real entity.
Pointless 2D character plotlines that go nowhere and haphazardly thrown in ideas and plot contrivances because it's just so cool that random old man is a plot contrivance doing math for no reason and random otaku exists and their dolls are maybe an autonomous ai program plot contrivance to have the police assistant to save the day and then become like the old man doing math for no reason and trust me the author says, this story is very deep because it pointlessly started with the empty ending scene of random escapism-inducing society stuff.

This series is a shoddily thrown together rough draft original. That's not just my opinion, that's literally the circumstances of its production under a tight deadline.

1/10 (where 5/10 is average)

Reviewer’s Rating: 1

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	Poll: Mousou Dairinin Episode 8 Discussion ( 1 2 3 4 5 ) Frash - Oct 4, 2008	201 replies	by Synesphere »» Jun 9, 10:59 AM
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