Hello Harinezumi: Satsui no Ryoubun

*SPOILER FREE*
This OVA follows a private investigator hired to find his client's husband. It turns out the man is wanted for double homicide, and she wishes to speak with him before he's arrested. What makes this anime so interesting is that this investigator travels across Japan following breadcrumbs he hopes will eventually lead to his target. But, instead, he discovers that these clues slowly unravel a psychological mystery of a man who suffers a mental break after being haunted by an incredibly difficult decision he made in the past.

While I won't spoil exactly what this decision was, I will say that his survival once ... teetered on a morally grey dilemma where all outcomes are tragic. The PTSD resulting from this choice forever changed him and sent him down this dark path.

Despite the anime only being 50 minutes long, they manage to create a good sense of mystery while gradually illustrating what the man's recent history was like while also making you question your own morality. In the beginning, the guy sounds despicable, but the more you watch, the more you realize that anyone could be placed in such a horrendous situation.

Although Domain of Murder is a mystery that gets into the psychology of its suspect, I wouldn't describe it as suspenseful, at least until its climax. It feels like you're watching a random episode of a tv crime drama for the most part. You don't care about the protagonist because he's been introduced ages ago in content that wasn't adapted, and he also doesn't face any real danger. If you enjoy episodic tv crime dramas, then you'll enjoy this. However, I think most other people will probably find the OVA interesting but dry. There is an English dub I think is good. However, if you want to get the most out of something like this, I'd recommend the original Japanese audio.

I give Domain of Murder a 7.5 out of 10. I recommend checking it out because it creates an engaging mystery in under an hour, plus I think it's produced well in terms of character designs and background art. To me, this anime feels like a missed opportunity to have a nice, short series because I'd love to see more along the same vein. The manga is titled Hello Hedgehog, and Domain of Murder applies to this specific mini-story. The manga series was also adapted into a Japanese live-action TV drama, but I'd personally rather just read the manga...if I could find it. Although Hello Hedgehog isn't all about crime mysteries, if each arc was written as well as this OVA, then I think it would make for a decent read.

STORY 7
ART 8
SOUND 7
CHARACTER 7
ENJOYMENT 7
OVERALL 7.5

Domain of Murder is an interesting anime to say the least. The audience is somewhat thrown into the story and are given the same clues to work with as the private investigator which I thought was pretty fair. As a 'psychological' anime it does fulfill that role and deals with some serious questions about the grey area of morality (specifically analyzing the concept of sacrifice to save another) and by the end you are left with the general message that the decisions we think are easy may end up being ones we regret for the rest of our lives, which is pretty damn psychologically mind ... boggling for a half hour movie. However, the movie had its ups and downs from the start.

The art style is what you would expect of for an anime of this era so there are no complaints on that front, and the sound is a bit grainy but again, expected. The characters are fairly enjoyable, unique from each other, and have intriguing goals/motives that the audience can tell from the short amount of screen time they had. Now here comes the bad news - they completely blew the arc of the story. Just as things were coming together and the mystery was getting deeper, one character suddenly reveals a VERY important detail that they "forgot" to mention earlier, despite how very clearly important it was to the case. Not only this, but that fragment of the case could've been revealed in several different ways, but for the character to brush it off like "oh right I forgot to tell you that the killer told me who his next target was" is a *little* frustrating on its own, let alone how nonchalantly the character brings it up. This struck me as a lazy way of keeping the plot going but at the very least the movie didn't end on that note.

The climax of the anime takes place in a theme park and was genuinely well played out in terms of twisting your mind and sort of making you sick/sad. To be as general as possible, they bring in two snipers who claim they aren't capable of taking the shot, the one man who doesn't want to take it is the only one who knows he can, and the decision of whether to pull the trigger is left to a character who thought the decision would be much easier said than done. The wrap up shortly after the climax is a bit too mushy for my taste but I'm hard to impress when it comes to endings.

Overall, I think it was worth the watch! I give it a 6 out of 10 because, though I found it intriguing as a whole, I wouldn't place it as one of the best I've ever watched. I'd definitely recommend it to those who enjoy this style of anime or perhaps a sample of psychological anime for those who are wondering if they might like the genre, but don't want to sit through an entire series.

This ova is dumb as fuck, and I know that’s a strong and harsh way to begin a review but I find no other nor more appropriate way to sum it up. The premise has a woman paying a private investigator to find her criminal husband to see him one last time, it’s sentimental but also kind of cheesy from the get go. At least the pacing is not bad, since even though the protagonist is seemingly fooling around, he is getting close to people related to his target and gathering information about him, that way he also comes to learn stuff about him, and ... since every character he encounters is related to the man he is searching, both that guy and everyone else gets fleshed out at the same time by revealing more about their shared backdrops each time. The movie it’s mostly about that, there isn’t much plot in it aside from showing the lives of the criminal and his acquaintances.

Visually the anime is good for a single minor production from its time, character designs are simple and generic, the artwork suffer from some quality drops, and motions are simple and not very good. Backgrounds and special effects, however, elevate the overall visuals. The sound is very forgettable and unnoticeable, weak sound effects, weak music, very average voice acting.

The main problem of this title is presenting a fake grey morality, it tries to judge the horrible actions of the man everyone is searching from a moral standpoint, and what they do with him at the end feels satisfactory because both his wife and friend take a big part on it, but it also tries its hardest to justify every single thing he does. Exploring a character to understand his motivations is one thing, justifying the horrible things he does is another completely different. Not only that but the conflict could have been resolved much sooner if every single person here didn’t act so stupidly and illogically. Also the anime becomes idiotically melodramatic at the end by attempting to present a situation as complex when it’s not, it’s very simple as the outcome comes to prove. Finally, the closure it tries to give to its story and bad guy was so corny and out of place, the movie tries to say that he found forgiveness, redemption and a sweet, touching and emotional reunion but it fucking isn’t possible to buy it, he was a horrible person through and through and his train of thoughts was completely irrational and only gave an even worse impression of him, he didn’t deserve any happy ending, and certainly not one where he happily reunites with his first victim.

This is supposed to be the adaptation of just one case, the 170th, of a long manga, in turn spin-off of an ever going way bigger manga franchise, which is why there is no context given about the protagonist nor any of his coworkers, plus, if this is its level of quality, then there’s no reason to delve into it. Despite being a short watch, it is still a waste of time.