Due to a recent recommendation I went ahead and watched the way of the househusband. The Netflix adaptation into an anime was amazing!! Why you should watch it too!

I don’t own my own Netflix subscription, to my dismay when I was told that this was a Netflix original. As an avid consumer of anime and weeb culture, I was told that this was a must watch, which led me to finding family that had a subscription to Netflix just to watch it. I ended up binging the show and finishing it in an evening and I would say I love it, but why?

Synopsis and genre.

The way of the househusband is quite a simple show in premise. It is about an ex yakuza boss who becomes a househusband. The show is a slice of life anime that follows this househusband through daily routines and other events in his life. It sprinkles in heavily some comedy by contrasting such a scary character with the idea of being a kind loving househusband. The show is incredibly short, with only 5 episodes.

The animation.

The animation of the show is a drastic experiment when it comes to the medium of anime and animation as a whole. It is a lot stiffer and looks more like a web-toon ad. In the sense that each scene looks like a manga cell and is often just moved from cell to cell with minimal animation in between. For example when there is great movement happening, like when the main character goes from his house to the grocery store you will see a cell of him walking out the door, then on his bike on the street, then getting stopped by the cops. This all happens with no actual movement in these cells besides maybe a wind effect or him putting a jacket on. I know there are many that might get turned off by this animation style, but I felt that it fits the anime quite nicely. It captures the original feel the reader might get as they read the manga and the animation just fills in the subtleties that your own mind might fill in. Now I will admit that I watched this anime and felt the whole time that it was adapted from a web-toon or something of the like and not from a manga.

The art style.

Here is where I want to preface this with a disclaimer, I do not know much about the manga, but I want to talk about the anime itself. I know there are viewers like myself who, for whatever reason, don’t reference the manga of an anime when they are watching but watch it and just move on after. Now with that in mind I do think the critiques that I have about the art could apply to both if it is also an issue in the manga.

With that said what is my issue? Well overall I love the art style of the show. I feel that the characters are drawn great and that all their designs are really modern and fit with the whole modernity the show aims for. Now with that said there are times during the animation, after or before a movement, where the design of a character might not seem consistent, like changing jawlines or even changing the nose shape or size. Now this is a small offender that really is not much of an issue that often when you are watching and something you can easily look past, but avid anime viewers all know that sometimes anime lose out on animation budget or get rushed and you see a drop in quality. This issue was very reminiscent of that.

The writing.

The way of the househusband relies a lot on its comedy. It uses its characters and their stereotypes to create characters that create a funny contrast, yet at the same time they are deeper than said stereotypes. For example the main character being an ex yakuza fighting for a sale early in the morning against other shoppers is a great contrast to the idea that he is a yakuza, but using his strong stereotype of scary man to create a funny birthday scene where he sings menacingly without knowing it subverts a lot of expectations you have on his character. They use this to show he is more than a mob boss but also more than just a simple househusband, he is a complex human character who is more than just what we viewers expect to see. He is competent at times and others not, he flip flops a lot just as an organic character should. we as humans are not always perfect in our roles, nor do we conform or define them perfectly just like we see with him. Normally I am not one for anime humor unless they are really trying or very different and this show succeeds in its humor. It had me chuckling out loud more than I thought it would honestly and that all boils down to masterful writing.

The voice acting.

Now I want to say again, that I am no connoisseur of voice acting. Normally it takes horrendous voice acting for me to even recognize that it was bad voice acting. I also am someone who watches dub when I can, to the dismay of many I am sure, because it makes it easier for me to focus on the visuals as a whole and to be able to listen to the show in the background. With that said I had no issues with the voice acting. I felt that the voice for all the characters hit spot on especially the main character. Your mileage may differ if you watch it in subs, but as far as the dub goes they did a fantastic job with it.

Closing.

The way of the househusband is an experimental anime that I watched and couldn’t pull myself away from before I had finished the short series on Netflix. It was something that experimented with animation and storytelling and created a unique and hilarious experience. The biggest crime that it commits is only having the 5 episodes to watch as I was enjoying it all the way up until it ended and said “Wow that was great but is that really it”? I might just go and find the manga for myself and read up some more hilarious interactions.

With that said, I hope you all liked my mini review of the way of the househusband. If you haven’t yet go give that a watch and let me know how you felt about it. Feel free to comment and please follow me here or on twitter if you want to see more of my content. Thank you all very much for reading until the end and till next time!