Although the English title of this Japanese-Italian anime is Sherlock Hound and characters in the English dub refer to the titular detective as “Sherlock Hound,” no other version of this anime strays away from calling him (and the show itself) Sherlock Holmes. This is yet another clever, Herlock Sholmes-esque way to avoid copyright issues with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle‘s estate, which affected the anime’s production at the time. Nevertheless, I’ll refer to this anime as simply Hound to avoid confusion.
Even to a Sherlock Holmes novice, the implications of “Sherlock Holmes, but everyone’s a dog” seem tremendous—will the red-headed league turn into the ginger cat league? And what will become of The Hounds of Baskerville—The Humans of Baskerville just doesn’t have the same ring to it. But you don’t have to worry about that because Hound isn’t meant to be taken too seriously. Hound is completely episodic, with a new case beginning and ending all within the same 20-minute span. So, by design, the cases are generally pretty simple.
I’m not enough of a Holmes aficionado to tell you for sure whether or not all of the 26 episodes are takes on specific Holmes stories, but I can at least tell you that there are episodes based loosely on stories like “The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle” and “The Adventure of the Speckled Band.” And I cannot stress the word “loosely” enough; murder and manslaughter (or would it be dog slaughter?) simply don’t exist in Hound‘s G-rated London. Instead, Hound mostly deals with disappearances, kidnappings, and thefts. Think of the kind of crimes you can make family-friendly Saturday morning cartoons out of. Because essentially, that’s what this anime is: a family-friendly, Saturday morning cartoon.
That said, regardless of whether or not the many adventures Sherlock Hound goes on in this series are new takes on old classics or completely new adventures original to this anime, they’re wacky and enjoyable if a bit formulaic and repetitive, all the same. Usually, Moriarty and his henchmen are trying to steal something—and it could be anything from lobsters made entirely out of coral and diamonds to Big Ben. And then, once Sherlock Hound takes on the case, he’s quick to deduce that Moriarty is involved and then fetch what’s been stolen. Most episodes include a chase scene of some kind and Miyazaki-an mechanical contraptions. Some viewers (like myself) will find this charmingly corny, but admittedly, it’s easy to imagine the many ways in which one person’s “charmingly corny” is another person’s “kiddy and not-very-Sherlock-Holmes-like.”
But speaking of Miyazaki-an mechanical contraptions, one can’t talk about Hound and not discuss the involvement of one Hayao Miyazaki, who was on the eve of co-founding Studio Ghibli at the time of this anime’s debut (to be more specific, Ghibli would be founded about a month after it finished airing). It’s worth noting, however, that by the time this anime finally hit Japanese airwaves in 1984, Miyazaki’s episodes had already been finished for some time, as production was paused due to copyright issues with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle‘s estate. Hound scriptwriter (and, in one episode, assistant director) Sunao Katabuchi, however, claimed that there were issues relating to funding from their Italian collaborators and that production resumed when funding did.
It’s pretty visually apparent which of the six episodes Miyazaki (who, across those six episodes, is credited for chief direction, episode direction, storyboard, and script of episode three*) worked on. I say this not only because one can see several familiar gestures, movements, and faces (the faces of Commander Raythunder and his brother, for example, look like they could be the blueprint for the faces of the kashira, aka the three heads, in Spirited Away), but also because he made the fur of one of Moriarty’s henchmen, Smiley, green (he’s brown in the other episodes).
You might wonder why I put an asterisk on “episode three.” It’s because the episode in question—titled “A Small Client”—is the third to have aired. However, in 2020, TMS Entertainment uploaded the series in full on YouTube, but with the episode’s numbers mislabeled. So, while “A Small Client” is the third episode to have aired on TV, it’s labeled episode one on YouTube (whose episode three is instead “Treasure Under the Sea”). Similarly, RetroCrush, who started streaming the series in September 2023, has opted to use the YouTube episode numbers as opposed to the broadcast order. Admittedly, this show is so episodic that this is hardly an issue. It probably wouldn’t even be particularly noticeable if not for the fact that, almost halfway through, some of the characters suddenly don’t seem to know each other right away. Admittedly, even if this issue is quickly resolved, watching the episodes in YouTube/RetroCrush order can still be a bit off-putting for this reason. But even then, these characters are so ubiquitous in fiction, and their relationships aren’t at all complicated in Hound that this isn’t likely to have a meaningful impact on viewers already familiar with Sherlock Holmes.
Speaking of watching this series on RetroCrush, they have both the dub and sub of Hound available. After giving both a chance, I found myself preferring the dub. This isn’t to say the subbed version is bad—in fact, it’s quite good. But the late Hamilton Camp delivers such a perfectly hammy performance as Professor Moriarty that I simply have to give the edge to the dub.
The art and animation, like the intro to a certain JRPG with a lot of Final Fantasy and Disney characters, are simple and clean. While it’s fun to look for little Miyazaki-isms in the episodes he worked on, overall, the art and animation, relative to other things being made at the time, are neither ruff nor overtly impressive. The only exceptions to this would be the shockingly crisp image quality and the aforementioned mechanical Miyazaki-an contraptions.
Overall, I’d say Hound is an enjoyable watch if you’re in the mood for some easy viewing or for the kind of anime that’s fun for all ages. For better or worse, there’s nothing terribly deep here—no complicated Kōtarō Uchikoshi-esque mysteries, character arcs that develop throughout the series, or overarching stories that demand you pay close attention and watch the episodes in a specific order. It’s just simple, light-hearted fun.
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