I KNEW IT I FUCKING KNEW IT WOULD BE THIS
Akechi and Ren's "Welcome home/Honey, I'm home" is an okaeri/tadaima exchange.
And it's tempting to be like oh, this is the adaptation hitting us over the head again. But there's an intimacy to this.
Akechi isn't supposed to be there. He wants to unbalance Ren, so he's deliberately intruding on Ren's home, on his uchi. And he emphasises that with that okaeri that you would only use with your uchi - in the in-group of close people, the family, who belong in your home.
And there are two real ways you can respond: you can either call him on it - "Why're you here?" - or you can accept it and respond in kind, with tadaima, unbalancing Akechi in turn. (Because even though Ren is fighting back, being accepted into the group is very, very dangerous ground for Akechi.)
It's also kind of touching and sweet any time Ren treats Leblanc as his home, but that's a whole other deal. But, idk. There's a really sweet subtlety to Ren's tadaima, I think, that "Honey, I'm home" loses entirely.
(Also it's easy to miss that Akechi started it, like the troll he is.)


















