The Netflix Crime Comedy Anime Series With Tons Of Potential

Overall, the series—and the manga it’s based on— has an interesting and lighthearted premise. It follows Tatsu, a mafia (yakuza) boss who is well-known and feared throughout the area. He’s often called “The Immortal Dragon,” due to his reputation.

However, he decides to retire when his wife needs a little help around the house. He spends most of his days doing chores around the home, including cleaning, bringing his wife lunch, and shopping. On occasion, he bumps into police or old associates.

The series doesn’t follow much of a plot but is full of funny and short scenes about his daily life. Interestingly, the jokes aren’t much about him taking on a more feminine role in The Way of the House Husband, but that he doesn’t know how to handle daily life.

Most of the time, he handles it in an overly aggressive or focused manner, just like a mafia boss handling a problem, and this is where most of the comedy comes in.

It’s not the story or the colorful art style that makes some people hesitant to watch The Way of the House Husband, but the animation style.

It’s a series that’s not really animated in the traditional sense, but instead uses a series of still-frames with unique camera angles that mimic manga panels. It was a deliberate choice and is an interesting idea, but it doesn’t work for everyone.

The animating team, J.C. Staff (Maid Sama!) wanted to let the voices and the comedic statements take the stage over the animation.

While there was a good reason for animating The Way of the House Husband in this way, it wasn’t everyone’s favorite, especially when there were some scenes with animation and some that had none at all, which made for a rather jarring situation.

Though it may seem like a decision made to make the animation easier, the team, specifically Chiaki Kon who is in charge of directing animation at J.C. Staff, argued that this style is more difficult to do right.

Chiaki also said that it took a lot of time until everyone was happy with the result, according to a translation of an interview by Anime Corner.

However, some people liked the animation style. The fast changes between scenes and the changing camera angles added an essence of movement that wasn’t there.

Additionally, the style did what the animation team wanted: it used the animation to highlight the comedic moments, rather than detract.

Despite the complaints about the show, The Way of the Househusband has pretty decent reviews. On My Anime List, the average score is 7.25 and it has a popularity ranking of #545.

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The Way of the Househusband is a Netflix original anime, and as such, you can only watch it on their platform. It’s not the best series in the world but is something short and comedic to watch if that’s what you’re looking for. The series features 10 short (17- to 20-minute) videos, so it doesn’t take much time at all to finish the series.