The bubble is distinctly large this season.  That doesn’t mean there’s not quality out there, but it does mean there’s a lot of clustering.  Only two non-sequels (Jibaku Shounen-Hanako-kun and Runway de Waratte) have closed the deal with me so far, and the most worrying thing is that the shows I had ranked immediately behind Hanako-kun (Dorohedoro and Pet) are clumped in with the rest of the pack.  On the plus side, there seems to me an unusual amount of upside potential in the bubble group this season, and Housekishou Richard-shi no Nazo Kantei is certainly a part of that.

I noted it right from the beginning that Jeweler Richard was a candidate for a very specific slot on my schedule – the one occupied by the likes of Mayonaka and Youkai Apato and Kyoto Teramachi Sanjou no Holmes – but that doesn’t exactly make me Nostradamus, because it was pretty obvious.  There’s something quite relaxing about thee shows, even if they usually aren’t what I would call slice of life (this one is more than most).  There’s a measured quality to them – the pace with which events unfold, the manner in which the characters talk to each other.  They never seem to be trying too hard – it’s like you happened to eavesdrop on something that was going on in the next apartment, got interested and stuck around to find out what happened.

That’s very much the sense with Housekishou, which might have started out looking like a mystery series but seems to be evolving into something else.  This is more about helping people with their problems than solving crimes, and Richard’s vocation is the catalyst for these events.  It’s the jewels that bring them to him, but he – and Seigi – end up gently nudging them back on their life paths.  And serving them tea and sweets, of course.

That was certainly true of this episode, which coasted along for a decent while without any third-party involvement at all.  Things are progressing nicely between Seigi and Tanimoto-san (which suggests certain assumptions new viewers had going in were off-base), and she ends up inviting him to a rare mineral expo.  But there is a stranger to be helped here – a young boy named Hajime who shows up with a Chatoyant Cat’s Eye, asking Richard if he can sell him another one exactly like it.

It strikes me that the contrast between how Seigi and Richard interacted with Hajime was rather striking.  Seigi, with good intentions, was rather condescending, while Richard basically spoke to Hajime like an adult.  My experience has always been that kids generally hate being talked down to.  There are also suggestions here of some childhood traumas for both Seigi and Richard (the latter being connected to the tradition of handing down rare jewels from generation to generation).  As for Hajime, he’s in a funk because his cat, Milk, has disappeared – and he knows his father is responsible and lying about it.  Since Milk was an esper cat, Hajime figures he needs the chatoyants to keep watch over his family in Milk’s absence.

Let’s be clear – you don’t need to get rid of a cat because of toxoplasmosis, even if there’s a pregnant woman in the house.  Be that as it may, the dad struck me as a general jerk anyway, and the reconciliation between father and son a bit too easily won.  It was also a stretch to believe that father and son coincidentally chose the same jeweler in a city with hundreds of them.  But on the whole this was still an enjoyable episode, and these weekly doses of gem education are quite fascinating in their own right.  So far so good – not great, but definitely good.