Harinezumi no Harry
Hedgehog Harry

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Hedgehog Harry is a warm blanket and a nice cup of tea on a chilly day. It's the bittersweet pang of nostalgia. It's a pleasant memory from a Summer long past. Hedgehog Harry is about love, understanding, facing uncertainty, and growing up.
Harry's growth as a person speaks to the soul, and is both profound and relatable. His interactions with his steadily growing group of friends and his loving family are transparently human, despite them all being animals. Harry, and the whole cast of minor characters, represent a small piece of all of us, sometimes for better, and sometimes for worse.
I can not stress this enough: ... Hedgehog Harry is the world's strongest anti-depressant, and it's an undisputable masterpiece.

(TLDR at the bottom)

Well, I can't describe this in an elegant way. The whole thing is simple and to the point, but it is to not be underestimated, for the story to share is a pleasant one that serves well for the time that is to come.

Hedgehog Harry is a wholesome tale of a hedgehog looking to give hugs to others. It's hard being a hedgehog and having this desire. I'm sure you can figure out why. The whole story is really about meeting similar people in his situation and growing with them as they all come to terms with who they are and ... the predetermined standards in place with them. The path the story takes is nothing staggering, but there's a lot of honesty along the way. Characters here behave like normal people, doing normal people things, and having normal people relationships. It's not just something where a spur of the moment devices are used for the sake of it; continuity exists here, as light as it is, it only helps connect to the setting and characters in a more natural and pleasing manner.

Take any character for an example. Start with Harry, just your friendly hedgehog looking to hug others, also as a means to hug his mother who has gone on some training voyage for the sake of her little boy. Harry gets friends, speaks with them and helps out with their issues, do things together. All the basic things you can think of. There's not a lot in terms of content, but it means a lot for a story of its kind. You could go on and reiterate with the other characters that exist here too, namely Peta and Garu. The former trying to transcend the penguins' flightless abilities and the latter is just a kind-hearted wolf (which doesn't mix in with the aggressive nature of wolves that exist already). They too have their own families and outgoings that feel natural. Heck, there even exists backstory to some of the characters here. This isn't just some nothing copy-paste cute story. It's one with good detail.

The art here is the same story. Basic cute art with minimal detail yet very obviously trying to encompass a cute aesthetic. It works, particularly for a simple story of its kind, there's nothing really wrong here, but I suppose this didn't get me particularly absorbed as, for example, Wonder Cat Kyuu-chan which basically took everything about its art and escalated it beyond belief. Think some kind of Super Saiyan levels equivalent of cuteness. But again, nothing bad, but nothing extraordinary.

I've praised this manga to hell and back in this review, but having read it didn't invoke any kind of hidden fire within me. It was nice to read, but that was really it. It's like one of those SoL you get every now and then that just succeeds at being cute and nothing more. That isn't to say this one is to skip. This is probably on the higher end of quality, but it simply wasn't anything masterful to me. It's unfortunate, but that is just me, I wouldn't be surprised if anyone would easily give this a 9 or 10 for that matter. It is easy to enjoy and I can see why. Alas, different people are different. It's kinda like the theme of this story lol.

Would recommend this to anyone who comes to this. You can read the entire thing in a day easily. Nothing here unworthy of anything. If nothing else, at least do it for one of Harry's hugs c:


TLDR: Not a lot of conventional substance, but these characters are true to hear and have the dedication, motivations and behaviours of normal people for them to be loveable. Looks fluffy too and it is a fast read.