I figured Hit Monkey would be an entertaining, fairly mindless excuse for Disney to do a Deadpool-esque entry into the Marvel catalogue (it's unclear if this is MCU, but possibly 🤷♂️). Well, it was definitely all of those things, but it was also a surprisingly layered story about revenge, loss, grief, and morality, with much more depth than I had been expecting. Don't get me wrong, there are still a lot of ridiculous "monkey kills dozens of goons" scenes, but Hit Monkey is a much more nuanced character than I would have guessed, and his ghost hitman friend, Bryce, works well both as a comedic device and a more human-centred emotional arc.
Add on top some excellent animation, which feels polished and visually interesting whilst still taking time to have consistently inventive moments (particularly the episode title), and well-choreographed fight scenes, and I really enjoyed this show. There are some slightly odd moments and I don't feel like the inclusion of the other "superheroes" was overly useful or necessary, but nothing really angered me that much. More importantly, the plot kept itself grounded and introduced some nice twists and moments of world-building as it went.
I don't 100% love the ending. I thought the twist around Shinji was a good one, even if I had begun to suspect it a little, but I really don't need Akiko to become the new Lady Bullseye. The first was a fun, utterly psychotic character, that fit well and gave us a villain to actually fear. Akiko turning her back on Hit Monkey makes sense, but doing so for vengeance... honestly, it feels like the showrunners need to watch the show they just made! The whole thing was arc after arc about how revenge is never justified or beneficial, and here we take the most intelligent and well-balanced character in the show and set her up to become a supervillain based on vengeance for a misinterpreted action. Honestly, it's baffling that she didn't understand that her uncle was about to shoot her anyway, let alone suddenly becoming an assassin (and let's not mention the whole training issue here 😅).
Still, that's an issue mainly pointed at season two, which I don't think I overly need. It was a fun, self-contained story, that did what it set out to do. Bryce has earned redemption and worked through his issues (and his back story was surprisingly detailed and interesting, by the end); I'm happy for him to stick around on Earth with his new friend, but I don't think there's much more for him to achieve. And Hit Monkey has found himself, brought justice to those that killed his tribe, and can now just be a typical antihero. I'll watch a second season, but I think it will probably be a mistake.