When Tetsuo Tosu went to visit his daughter at her apartment near her university, he discovered that her thuggish new boyfriend Nobuto is beating her. Upon following him, he also overhears that he is only using her for money and that her has done it to other women in the past before.
When discovered by Nobuto listening in on him, Tetsuo kills him in the fight that follows.
Now, this once-average office worker and mystery novel enthusiast has to dispose of the body and, with the help of his wife, cover up Nobuto’s murder from his yakuza associates. Using all the cunning and ingenuity they can muster, the pair take every avenue possible to protect their daughter and their own lives.
I appreciate that anime tries, but it often flubs suspense and thriller-type series. However, this one has some clever ploys despite the suspension of disbelief-breaking fact that criminals would have just killed them on suspicion alone. If you are looking for more anime recommendations like My Home Hero, head on down below.
Anime Like My Home Hero
For Fans of Reverse Murder Mysteries
Death Note
Light Yagami is a high school prodigy and genius. However, he has an ever-increasing boredom and disdain for this rotten, violent world.
One day, he happens upon a notebook, called a Death Note, which states that if you write a name in it, the person will die. To his surprise, the notebook’s claims turn out to be true.
This Death Note, the property of the Shinigami gods of death, gives Light the power to change this world and he decides to become its new God by executing all criminals.
Both My Home Hero and Death Note are series in which you follow the murderer. You know they are the murderer, you watched them do it. Now, instead of following someone try to find out who committed a murder, you watch these murderers try to cover their own ass with clever schemes.
While Death Note is innately different with its supernatural element, it has a similar tense game of cat and mouse playing out like in My Home Hero. You watch various characters espouse their own view of justice, and you enjoy watching the clever plots that the characters come up with in order to not be discovered.
Terror in Resonance
After a terrorist attack on a Japanese nuclear facility, the country was paralyzed to act. After six months of searching for the perpetrators, the public is shown a video of two boys known as Sphinx who take credit for a recent bomb attack. The pair are soon linked to the terrorist attack on the nuclear facility by police.
Threatening more mayhem to come, it is up to the police to catch these terrorists. However, Sphinx has been very careful to never kill anyone with their attacks. Instead, they hope to use them to expose a secret government experiment and its cruelty.
As Terror in Resonance is an anime about terrorists blowing up buildings, you would expect it to be about cops trying to catch them. Just like My Home Hero subverts the murder mystery by making it about a murderer covering up his crime, Terror in Resonance subverts the traditional story by following the terrorists.
Both series follow main characters who have done something bad and show you how they get away with it. Terror in Resonance sets things up so you can sort of “root for” the terrorists as well as discover the sad reason they are committing their crimes.
91 Days
Set during Prohibition, a man named Avilio returns to Lawless, a town famed for brewing illegal liquor, after the murder of his family by the mafia. A mysterious letter prompted him to return and infiltrate the Vanetti family to get his revenge.
This anime tells the story of the 91 days leading to the tragic end between Avilio and Nero Vanetti, the Don’s son.
While My Home Hero and 91 Days are both about guys fooling members of a criminal organization, they are also anime that make their reasons for doing so very clear for the audience and lets the cleverness of what they are doing be the star of the show instead.
In My Home Hero, you saw him kill a guy, now watch him try and not be murdered by that guy’s business partners. In 91 Days, a Mafia family killed his family, now he infiltrates it to violently take it down from the inside for revenge. Both involve subterfuge and clever plots, though 91 Days does a better job capturing intense emotions when compared to My Home Hero.
For Fans of Justice
Babylon
Zen Seizaki works as a prosecutor in the Tokyo District Public Prosecutors Office. In what originally was an investigation into claims of false advertisement, Zen uncovers that a Japanese pharmaceutical company faked clinical trials on their company’s new drug.
Further investigation leads Zen and his entire department into a growing case of suicides spreading across the city linking to a plot in the mayoral election of a newly formed district in Tokyo. As Zen gets caught in an increasingly more complex whirlwind of an investigation, he finds the truth challenges his very sense of justice.
Both My Home Hero and Babylon are suspense anime that feature main characters that are trying to follow their own definition of justice. It causes them to do bad things that they feel are right in order to protect the people they are trying to protect.
While My Home Hero is rather focused in its plot, spending a lot of time becoming lost in increasingly complex ploys, Babylon starts off more like a crime thriller and ends up surprisingly philosophical by the end as it really leans into the ‘justice’ of it all.
Monster
Dr. Kenzou Tenma has the perfect life as one of the world’s most renowned brain surgeons. However, one night he is presented with a doctor’s most painful choice – to save an injured child or the mayor, both mortally wounded.
Against his colleague’s advice, he saves the kid. However, when a series of crimes start happening around him, all evidence points to the child he saved.
While My Home Hero is a reversed sort of murder mystery, Monster is a the traditional set up. A guy saved the life of someone who became a murderer, feels responsible, decides to hunt him down and undo his mistake with murder.
What My Home Hero and Monster have in common is the way they build out tension by using realistic characters. These stories have some lofty and unbelievable things in them, but they do still feel like stories that could be happening in our world. Monster, however, is a master at making what would normally be boring characters feel very interesting with its story and storytelling.
While My Home Hero doesn’t get too deep into the philosophy of justice and morality, Monster dives deep into it, but that helps it capture a distinct haunting element that adds to the story it is telling.
Inuyashiki
At only 58 years old, years of overwork and stress has Inuyashiki Ichirou looking like he is well into his 80’s.
Ignored and disrespected by his family as well as diagnosed with cancer, all seems hopeless. However, a light descends from the sky and strikes Ichirou where he stands.
When he awakens, he finds he is a new man, one augmented with alien technology. He sees this as just the power he needs to become a hero and earn the respect of his family.
While a series about an nice, ill-treated old man having his body replaced by alien machines and fighting a teenager who had the same thing happen but turned to murder is a decidedly different experience than murdering a thug and covering it up from his friends, but the similarities really sit with the main characters.
Both My Home Hero and Inuyashiki follow older salarymen who are treated rather poorly by their family, but still love them deeply. Furthermore, they have a strong sense of justice to protect others, and that is what spurs them to action.
However, if you think Reika is bad, the way Ichirou is treated by his wife and kids make her look like a great daughter.
Both series highly emphasize what is right and what is wrong, but Inuyashiki is more bare bones about it since it enjoys focusing on either the shittiness of everyone besides the main character or the interesting sci-fi action.
For Fans of Criminal Thrillers
Kaiji
Kaiji Itou is a thug in the truest sense. With his days spent drinking and stealing hubcaps, his world is turned upside down when a co-worker tricks him into taking on a huge debt.
In order to pay it off, Kaiji takes up a shady offer to participate in illegal gambling on a cruise ship that is filled with even worse scumbags than him.
While My Home Hero doesn’t always succeed, it does certainly try to keep a tense and dire atmosphere in every scene, even when it is just characters drinking coffee. Kaiji attempts a similar thing and does it a little more successfully since it leans into the main character being kind of a comical scumbag.
Both series are for those who enjoy watching a normal, clever guy deal with a criminal organization and actually being successful in tricking them at times. However, the big difference is that My Home Hero is about covering up a murder of a criminal while Kaiji is about gambling with his life on the line.
Odd Taxi
Blunt walrus Hiroshi Odokawa drives a taxi for a living, which has caused him to get to know his various eccentric customers.
One day, his simple life is turned upside down when a missing person case is tracked by the police back to him.
Now a person of interest to both cops and yakuza, he becomes increasingly entangled in this complicated case.
Both My Home Hero and Odd Taxi tell stories of normal working men who become increasing involved in the criminal underworld. However, while My Home Hero is about covering up a murder, Odd Taxi is a more traditional murder mystery.
Both series subvert traditional murder mysteries, however. My Home Hero does it by following the murderer trying to cover up his crime and not be killed while Odd Taxi is following a murder mystery being solved through the lens of a taxi cab driver. All he did was give the victim a ride, and he somehow becomes increasingly involved with those trying to solve the crime and those trying to cover it up.
Do you have more anime recommendations like My Home Hero? Let fans know in the comments section below.
