Inu to Hasami wa Tsukaiyou - 1

Every Dog has His Days... (and today just isn't it)

A boy obsessed with books is killed defending a woman during a robbery. He refuses to die before reading a particular book, and so is reincarnated as a dog. He’s found by the woman, who can now hear his thoughts. Obviously, since this annoys her, her solution is to kill him... So, after she learns he saved her life, instead of killing him, she lets him live with her. Oh, and it turns out that the woman is the author of the book he wants to read

It's exactly what you think, and yes, she's a psychopath

If my summary seems slightly... simplistic, it would be because I am trying to put, in plain terms, how monumentally strange this plot is. There are good convoluted plots. These lead to rich, detailed stories. This plot is a bad convoluted plot, as far as I can tell. The tone this piece seems to set up (comedic, slice of life) suggests to me that very little of this mass of wish-fulfilment is designed to operate as anything other than a cheap plot device in order to set up a ‘what-if’ scenario. It is, to me, bad storytelling. I could be mistaken, and this is in fact the beginning of a truly engaging plot, but somehow I find it hard to believe.

For those who caught the JoJo reference...

I was not expecting to like Inu to Hasami wa Tsukaiyou. I was expecting to detest it with a vengeance. The fact that the attacking of a sapient dog with scissors features in the key plot elements may have had something to do with it. As it turns out, it was somewhat better than I had anticipated, but still rather disturbing it its use of violence and animal cruelty as comedy.


I would not recommend this anime