We have seen many of these characters before in melodramatic police shows, but somehow Inspector Yamagishi's remarkable seiyuu and character design managed to bring me to the brink of tears more than once, as though meeting his "type" for the first time.
If anything, although it's in color, Hello Harinezumi: Satsui no Ryoubun "feels" more like a black-and-white 1950s Japanese movie than it does an anime. Keeping that in mind helped me to enjoy it more.
This OVA already has several wonderful reviews, but I joined MAL today after watching it because the sacrifice it dramatizes of one of two children, and the repercussions, may have helped to inspire a superficially similar sacrifice in a later, darker, and more convoluted anime series called Monster.
An unexplained disappearance, as well as Pangaea-sized guilt, madness, compassion, anguish, love, sacrifice, and salvation play parts as big here as they do in Monster.
In 51 minutes, this OVA took me places, and presented me with a riddle I hope never to have to answer in real life, a riddle paraphrased not only in Monster, but during the first Hunter Exam of Hunter x Hunter--for which the correct answer is no answer at all.
The plot feels archetypal, mythological, and helped to answer a long-standing question of mine.
This OVA revolves around a watershed problem requiring decisive action, but to which no correct response exists, in which Toyama Tsuyoshi is, literally, "damned if he does and damned if he doesn't".
To those who sometimes wonder whether we as a species are innately evil and, if not, what gave birth to evil, Hello Harinezumi: Satsui no Ryoubun provides an answer which, for once, feels right to me.
A gem for those interested in slower, atmospheric anime which depict a vanishing Japan.
