Hit Monkey is Not Your Kid's Marvel Show

 Earlier in 2021, Hulu released MODOK, which was a more adult-oriented show based (very loosely) on the Marvel villain.  Near the end of the year, Hulu added Hit Monkey, which is even more an adult-oriented show based on Marvel comics.  I thought it was a crazy awesome show, but it is definitely not one for the kiddies despite that it's Marvel and the monkey is cute.

The premise is pretty bananas (see what I did there?):  a hitman named Bryce goes to Japan to kill a politician, which he does.  But afterwards his client tries to double-cross him.  Bryce is wounded and ends up being taken into a colony of white monkeys--whatever the technical name for them is.  One young monkey in particular hates Bryce and warns that he'll draw other humans to the colony, but the old monkey in charge sees caring for Bryce as a moral obligation.

But of course the younger monkey is right in that bad guys come looking for Bryce and in the firefight, pretty much all the monkeys are killed, except the young monkey.  He picks up a machine gun and kills all the bad humans.  By that point Bryce is dead but he lingers as a ghost that pretty much only the monkey can see.

Things get more bizarre as the monkey travels to Tokyo and winds up getting a suit and some weapons to start killing those responsible for the attack that killed Bryce and the monkeys.  The stakes keep going up as the monkey is confronted by Yakuza hitmen, cops, and even a spirit named Yuki, who claims to be the protector of Tokyo.  Meanwhile the monkey struggles with his conscience and Bryce maybe starts to find his conscience.

After nearly getting a human friend killed, Monkey retreats to his old home after trapping Bryce in a bathroom with a ring of salt.  (Salt is said to be a barrier against demons and apparently Bryce qualifies as one.)  In the most emotional episode of the series, Monkey finds you can't go home again as he tries to save a new tribe of monkeys from the nastier "red stripe" tribe.  Meanwhile, Bryce flashes back to his past in rural Texas, where he was basically trailer trash with a girl and a baby until he accidentally kills his mother's latest scummy boyfriend.  Then he goes on the run and becomes a killer-for-hire.  When the battle with the red stripe tribe leads to tragedy, Monkey embraces his destiny as the "killer of killers" who walks between the human and animal worlds.

So Monkey returns to Tokyo and frees Bryce for the final showdown.  As the election for a new prime minister reaches its end, there's a stunning twist that makes a lot of sense.  Then there's a final battle that brings back pretty much everyone introduced earlier who's still alive for an epic brouhaha.  

The ending is not Happily Ever After and sets up a season two, which would be awesome.  It is a weird and yet wonderful show if you like action and humor and don't mind a lot of blood and gore.  A monkey in a suit going around killing people with guns and swords and shit?  And he has a wisecracking human sidekick who's a ghost?  It's crazy but it's so crazy it works.

I wasn't too surprised to see one of the production companies behind Archer on FXX also is involved with this, because there is some of the same DNA, only a different animation style.  This is more traditional animation that's not exactly anime but closer to that than what they use in Archer and not at all like the stop motion in MODOK.

Anyway, I've liked these first couple adult Marvel offerings on Hulu; maybe they will have some more that will be just as good.

(Fun Fact:  At one point during a news broadcast on the bottom of the screen it mentions someone buying AIM from MODOK, which probably means the two shows--despite the difference in their animation--are part of the same universe.)