Of all the peculiarly personal pleasures I’ve blogged in anime over the years, there have probably been few quite so personal as Kyoto Teramachi Sanjou no Holmes.  Even I’m aware of just how specialized the appeal of this show is – if one isn’t interested in the same things it is, the appeal is going to be a hard sell.  Let’s be honest, not that much really happens here (apart from when Enshou is about, anyway) – it’s mostly people going to interesting places (never in a hurry), parties, and a lot of indoor-voiced conversations.  Was that your pulse quickening I just heard?

But the flip-side of that coin is not to be belittled, because the smaller the sweet spot of a series, the more helpless one is against it if they happen to be in that sweet spot.  Frankly I’d have considered it 22 minutes well-spent just by learning a new bit of Kansai-ben – I had no idea a “fresh” was milk in coffee.  But there’s a lot of other appealing stuff here too, at least for me – and even a little more movement on the romantic front, though for once it’s the girl whose denseness is holding up an anime romance.

Our little taste of Kyoto travelogue this time (apart from Kiyotaka’s grandma’s house, which is effing gorgeous) is the Yata Jizou temple in Teramachi Sanjou, which is where Holmes-san takes Aoi for the first prayer of the new year (haven’t been – now I want to check it out).  It’s pretty clear Holmes sees this as a date – Owner-san certainly gets that – but Aoi still won’t catch up.  Kiyotaka’s disappointed reaction when Aoi-san declines to stop at a cafe with him after the temple visit says it all, really – that, and the hints dropped like anvils all over the episode.

That cafe visit ends up coming a few weeks later, to a fairy-tale like secret den beneath a chocolatier on the first floor.  Aoi is still trying to prove she’s a grown-up by drinking black coffee (this is where the “fresh” thing comes in), though even she seems not to get why she’s so fixated on it.  On the way back they run into Kiyotaka’s grandmother, the owner’s ex-wife – the first time she’s been mentioned in the series as far as I remember.  Holmes tells Aoi that he divorced her for “personal reasons” when his father was very young, and a visit to that incredible house reveals that Grandma has another husband of long standing.

This is where we get our digestif of mystery this week, involving a couple of creepy bisque dolls.  My mother collected bisque dolls and yes, I can verify that they are fucking creepy.  It’s a fey and modest little mystery though, revolving around the “new” (50 years) husband’s feelings about his wife still treasuring the bisque doll Seiji gave her when they were together.  This is also where the truth of the grandparents’ divorce is revealed – Grandma became seriously ill, and a shaman told Seiji that his bad karma was the cause of it.  It’s an odd reason to separate with your wife, even for a traditional Japanese gentleman, but that’s apparently what happened.

All of this none too subtly reflects back on Holmes and Aoi – lessons about not keeping one’s feelings to themselves and such.  Everyone in the room (every room) seems to realize what’s going on here but Aoi, and I have to think even she gets it on some level but just can’t bring herself to believe it.  It’s very clear to me that Kiyotaka is a hard-core romantic.  It’s the one area where his detach leaves him and he surrenders to impulse, and he’s self-aware enough to realize that.  There’s a lot of danger in a 22-ish year-old man of that sort entering into a relationship with a 17 year-old girl, but more and more I get the sense that’s where we’re inexorably headed with Kyoto Teramachi Sanjou no Holmes.