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My Home Hero
Episode 10

by Richard Eisenbeis,

How would you rate episode 10 of
My Home Hero ?
Community score: 4.0

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This episode of My Home Hero is an odd one. It feels like two episodes stitched together—one excellently done and the other painfully contrived.

The first is the half centered around Kasen explaining the "How done it?" of the last episode—i.e., how she broke into Majima's apartment undetected, cracked his safe, and planted the evidence. From top to bottom, it's insanely clever, with Tetsuo's devious planning and Kasen's unassuming intelligence on full display.

Tetsuo's plan for Kasen to use a portable fire escape ladder to climb up and down the outside of the apartment building in a way that leaves little-to-no physical evidence is genius—as is the simple device he has Kasen make to remove the ladder from below so it's not hanging out in the open while she gets to safe cracking. As for Kasen, we see her not only mentally keeping track of all the combinations she's tried for the safe, but also doesn't panic when things go wrong—i.e., when she finds the safe's keypad locks her out after four failed attempts. Instead, she looks up the safe online, figures out it has a 10-minute lockout feature, and then calculates how much time she will need to crack the safe at max.

All this comes together to exemplify the show's theme in general: the meaning of family. Despite all his detective novel tricks, Tetsuo would have failed on his own. He would be dead, and his family would be broken. However, because he and Kasen work as true partners, they can overcome all the odds and get away with murder. The moral of the story is that a family isn't something you protect alone. Rather, it's something you protect together. You are a team against the world. You support each other and cover for each other's weaknesses. This is why Kasen and Tetsuo win while the solitary Majima loses.

But then we have the other half of the episode dealing with Majima's escape. Bleeding heavily, he just happens to run to the roof and follows Kasen's exact path from the night before. Now, that alone might not have been too bad—he ends up trapping his pursuers on the roof while he doubles back to his apartment and gets some cash from his secret stash to cause a distraction. The eye-rollingly contrived part of the story is that, despite being grievously injured and fleeing for his life, he happens to notice the scratches made from Kasen's ladder left on the balcony divider wall—and somehow knows that they are new.

It breaks the suspension of disbelief and only serves to add one more climax to the story, where the two fathers face off for real. Moreover, Majima's plan doesn't make sense either. When it comes down to it, he has no proof that Tetsuo did anything, and he still hasn't figured out Kasen's role in everything. While he claims he plans to survive somehow, going to Matori with his suspicions only provides Matori with another target. Logically, Matori is not going to believe the man who had his son's bones locked in his safe. However, he might just kill Tetsuo alongside Majima just to ensure he eliminates his son's killer. It's all kind of a mess.

Rating:

Random Thoughts:

• Tetsuo's near-passing out while walking home is a realistic touch—as he has been running solely on adrenaline for a full week—and a clever way to keep him away from home while the final climax unfolds.

• Tetsuo's repurposing of the stolen UV light for Kasen's safe-cracking was a great display of continuity.

• While the money thing is a great plan—as even the yakuza aren't going to kill a guy in the middle of a giant crowd—the measly two stacks of bills he has under the sink aren't near enough to account for all the money we see falling later.

• While Reika's version of what's going on is played for laughs, I have a feeling that she's going to be the reason Tetsuo and Kasen make it out of this alive.

My Home Hero is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.


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