The usual disclaimers – season is crazy, not much time for anything below the top tier.  But My Home Hero was definitely worth a second look (despite its mediocre looks) so I wanted to at least check back in on it.  And I will say I enjoyed the second episode – the world-building is pretty good, and I find myself fairly caught up in the story.  But even setting aside the crappy visuals (which, honestly, I can probably live with) there are a couple of off notes for me.

First of all, it seems to me that Tetsuo and Kasen are way too calm about this whole business.  Never mind how good they are at it, especially him – which is passed off as him being obsessed with mystery novels.  But boiling bodies in bathtubs, fooling the yakuza –  this is some seriously twisted and scary shit.  And the both of them are way more blasé about the whole thing that a normal suburban couple would be.  Seriously.  Kasen actually asks Tetsuo later in the episode “Is this your first murder?”, which implies the mangaka realizes there’s a problem here.  And frankly Tetsuo could just as easily have asked his wife the same question.

But okay, let’s move past that.  On the whole this is pretty entertaining stuff. with a decent sense of suspense to it.  Normally you’d sat a cat-and-mouse between a middle-aged schlub and the mob is only going to end one way.  But I think we have to just accept that this one is super-knowledgeable about true crime minutiae and calm under pressure.  When he realizes (actually, Kasen does) the house is being watched, Tetsuo concocts a plan to dispose of the body inside the house using compost acceleration garden chemicals.  I have no idea if that’s even possible, but it’s pretty clever if it is.

There’s a little of everything here – surveillance, bugs, and finally kidnapping.  Tetsuo’s idea to use the listening devices to pitch a story about their daughter having a stalker is another clever ruse, but I doubt that’s going to fool professional gangsters.   I admit I’m curious to see how the happy couple will get out of this one, because they pretty much have to or we don’t have a series.  And of course, do so while keeping all this a secret from Reika (who if I’m honest is annoying as hell).  One more week at least to take My Home Hero’s measure is definitely merited.