It's a pretty cool Dopant, yeah. Definitely not the sort of thing that's going to fly on a series for younger viewers, but perfect for a story of gold diggers, mysterious families, and some pretty gross murders.

FUUTO P.I. EPISODE 8 - “THE CLOSED K - A CHAIN OF MALICE”

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/w/fuuto08a.png

Man, I thought this one all the way worked. Where last episode leaned a little too much on setup for me, this one is the glorious middle chapter that has action, reveals, humor, and some fun deductive leaps from our heroes. It’s the sweet payoff to last episode’s (for me) stale introduction.

It’s actually really fun to see Shotaro and Philip presented with a bizarre mystery that end up collectively solving, despite how I might’ve made it sound last time. There’s a little more of Philip’s deduction than Shotaro’s gut instinct, but each of them serves a role in the investigation: Shotaro helps steer and center Philip’s unease at the petty maliciousness of the mansion’s guests, while Philip connects the dots to make sure that Kanna can feel some relief from suspicion. It’s the two of them acting as one investigator, which we honestly don’t see a whole lot? (They even call it out here, which is nice for viewers who never saw the live-action predecessor.) We usually get a story where Shotaro and an assistant – Akiko, mostly – goes out and interviews suspects, collects clues, and fends off attacks, while Philip stays back in the W Cave until it’s time to search the Gaia Library. They don’t ever really go out and solve a mystery together, in person, at a place. Philip, as seen here, is sort of not the detective you bring on location! He’s kind of bad around people!

And the people themselves are also not great this time, but in an interesting way. We’re in a story of amoral greed, where both the culprits and the victims are using each other to get what they want. It’s a story where anyone could be the killer, and almost no one is above suspicion. (Well, Kanna, who it turns out is a sweet girl who’s being taken advantage of, assuming there are no additional twists coming up for her.) This makes for a fun reveal, as we find out that – actually – no one was murdered by a Dopant, and the two dead bodies were the unfortunate victims of Museum-style human experimentation. (Also, alcohol poisoning, which is nice use of the Gaia Memory as USB drug metaphor.) It’s a neat deescalation and complication to last episode’s whole There Is A Killer On The Loose thing, as now things are trending a little more into traditional Kamen Rider mad science.

Speaking of traditional Kamen Rider stuff – very excited to see the rest of Team Double show up through the use of Revolgarry! (I was honestly hoping there’d be a few lines from Tokime wondering why Revolgarry doesn’t have anywhere for people to sit down as it careens through the streets of Fuuto, but alas.) We not only get an amazing payoff to last episode’s terrific gag of Tokime misunderstanding Akiko’s journal entry/drawing, but we get to see Accel take on the Scream Dopant. It’s a dynamic fight, with this show’s first use of the Trial Memory, and it’s a nice diversion from this episode’s more straight-forward mystery solving.

Which I liked! I liked the mystery solving, the classic change-up on how many killers and victims there really were, and the general vibe of Shotaro and Philip in this one. They’re very heads down on this case, which is fair considering the rising body count. What humor and goofiness there is comes around the edges – the Tokime/Akiko/Terui triad, and Philip informing one of the contestants that he’s very good at dressing up as willowy women to bait a killer, but it’s not a passion of his. Cute moments of levity, but this one does a stellar job of both ratcheting up the tension, and resolving it in clever ways. This one worked for me!

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/w/fuuto08b.png

Ahahahahahahah :lolol

So this was a fun middle part to everything, we've got Shotaro and Philip solving the mystery while also leaving us in suspense at who the true villain is.

I do love the idea of a case where no one actually died because they were murdered. It puts a unique spin on things, and makes the Alcohol Memory unique in how it works.

Of course there's a slight snag in trying to apprehend the actual perpetrator given we've got Masquerade duplicates and Scream running around. Thankfully Accel's also around to keep them busy, but still.

-Everything in the Manga is played straight... until we get to the Masquerades showing up. They end up showing up not only against Shotaro and Philip but also while Terui, Akiko and Tokime are trying to unclog the tunnel. The result is Terui and Tokime going on ahead while Akiko uses the Revolgarry to combat the ones left in the tunnel.

-Scream also doesn't show up immediately, with Shotaro and Philip heading to the mansion, meeting someone (I'm being vague on purpose) outside the mansion before Scream shows up with Accel going to take her on so that the others can get to the bottom of things.

Tokime's constant belief that surely there can't be anything weirder to learn than what she already knows about Team Double will always be hilarious to me.

It's definitely more interesting to have a murder mystery with a villain, but not a murderer. By removing rage and revenge from the possible motivations, whatever's left is bound to be meatier for the audience to enjoy!

I like that they emphasise how big a threat whoever’s behind the case is by them having a silver Memory like Isaka did. Not to mention the fact they’re able to call the Memory back to them from a distance. Definitely a good way of selling them.

And like with W’s debut 5 episodes ago, with Accel’s debut comes an updated CSM, that includes an Engine Memory with all the Engine Blade sounds. No Trial Memory or Booster, since W’s CSM products tend not to do upgrade items.

https://youtube.com/watch?v=KlZlGZNe...qB2V3ed3oKXMtr

And we also fully meet the second of Street’s (which is what the wiki tells me our new villain group is called. The show is kind of coy on naming them) executives, in the form of Scream. With a casting choice that surprised a great deal of the western fan base.

Rider-lert!

Scream’s VA is Miku Ito, who had recently come off a year of voicing Lovekov for 15 minutes worth of footage in Revice (and that doesn’t include appearing as herself in the Subaru Kimura two-parter). Since the summer movie hadn’t come out on home media, to a lot of western fans, the contrast was jarring.

https://y.yarn.co/d219384c-6b38-4b70...2f1b2_text.gif

And thanks for the casting info!

FUUTO P.I. EPISODE 9 - “THE CLOSED K - THE ULTIMATE TWO HALVES OF ONE”

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/w/fuuto09a.png

I would’ve bet money that CycloneJoker Xtreme wouldn’t show up until the final story. This story didn’t seem to need it, and it’s exactly the sort of form you roll out at the season’s finale. Having it show up in the penultimate (or, y’know, third) story didn’t feel like the right move.

But, of course, it’s the perfect move.

This three-parter is about how exceptional Shotaro and Philip are when they’re together. They’re always partners, but they’re rarely in action together as detectives. They work cases semi-separately: Shotaro, pounding the pavement while roughing up crumb-bums and stoolies; Philip, combing through evidence and puzzling out hidden connections. In this story, though, they’re doing it simultaneously, in tandem. They’re able to combine intuition and observation in real-time to figure out the truth of what’s going on in the mansion, and who the culprit truly is. (The grandmother; the butler was always a red herring, and Kuya was too reliably incurious and lazy to be faking it.) This is a story all about how Team Double’s never more capable than when Shotaro and Philip are on the same page.

Which is why it’s the best possible time to introduce Xtreme into this animated continuation of W. That power is the embodiment of how unified Shotaro and Philip can be, so it makes sense to have be the deciding factor as Double squares off against their first High Dope. The fight is quick — I think the arrival of Xtreme and the Henshin sequence take up more time than the two-move battle — but exciting for its brevity. After getting pummeled relentlessly as CycloneJoker, the flip of them just swiftly eliminating the Alcohol Dopant as Xtreme is very, very cool.

While the battle was swift, the denouement was appealingly drawn out. We got to spend a lot of time learning various motivations and details, from the important — Kanna’s participation (she was just sort of sheltered and bored) — to the almost hilariously trivial — why Philip couldn’t get a phone signal (IT WAS THE MUSEUM, instead of just a bunch of rich creeps doing secret sex games opting to block folks from transmitting photos of it) — and it made this thing feel so thought-out and robust. We even spend a little time with Kuya, who vows to reform his decadently idle ways and become the upstanding citizen of Fuuto that Kanna might respect someday. It’s cute, even if it feels a bit like a much longer subplot from the manga that got truncated in the anime. Everything from this sprawling and (at times) convoluted mystery got put to bed, almost entirely thanks to the deductive prowess of Shotaro and Philip.

I kind of flipped 180 degrees on this story, by the end? Where I was first disappointed that Fuuto P.I. opted to tell a basic Shotaro/Philip mystery story, instead of utilizing its newest cast member in fun or unique ways, I ended up sort of appreciating that this show took a story to demonstrate how on their game or two-in-one detective can be when they’re put in their element. I mean, not finding cats — their other element.

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/w/fuuto09b.png

Truly we received the Ultimate W.

Anyway this was a rather fun ending to the case and I really enjoyed the wrap-up this time. Especially with the true twist of Kuya not being a drinker and him drinking tea this entire time! That actually caught me off guard the first time around.

As for Manga changes... oddly enough the Kuya and Kanna stuff played out basically the same in the manga as it did in the anime. Idk if they show up any further because well, I've stopped reading at this point (will get into that at the end). But it seemed to me just like a nice way to send off the characters.

That said!

-So the first change is the anime being courteous last part and giving us three suspects instead of two to give the illusion of choice in who did it. Because when I said Shotaro and Philip ran into someone after chasing the Alcohol Memory in the manga, that someone was Kuya. Which meant there was only two choices in the manga compared to the three the anime went with for its cliffhanger.

-The biggest change though is Bando's reveal. In the manga he already shows up as Aurora and doesn't give his name. It's only during the denouement that Shotaro and Philip sus out that Aurora was the guy they met at the mansion. I can only imagine that them finding out Bando's name comes into play during the next manga exclusive arc that the anime chose to cut, the 'p is a Devil' arc and they put it here just to have that.

Speaking of 'p is a Devil' though, yeah we're going to be skipping to the fifth volume's arc next time. Considering what little I heard from the content of it as I was airing I can only assume they did this to give us a satisfactory conclusion in 12 episodes and also likely took important and key details from the manga's 4th volume and transplanted it wherever they could into our final episodes. Which is why I hesitate to ask anyone on stepping up to summarize it given it might contain spoilers.

And normally I'd be like "Okay I'll do a spoiler tagged review or something or a vague summary by reading the manga". The only people who have subbed Futo PI, Genm Corp, only ever got up to the second chapter of the 'p is a Devil' arc. And I don't plan on reading an incomplete arc so that concludes my fun little gimmick of mentioning manga differences.

Oh, for sure, it's just funny to me how much Kuya's like I Gotta Turn Into A Better Man To Be Worthy Of Kanna, when those two barely (if ever?) share any non-group-chatter dialogue, and we got maybe one quick scene of him being heartbroken that she'd fled the competition. That is some real devotion from Kuya!

And thanks for all the manga notes! It's crazy to think that, amongst all the U.S. push for this anime, that no one bothered to import and localize the manga. We got Kuuga (badly), but this comic got skipped? Disappointing!

That was a fun arc: good little mystery with a few plot twists, some memorable characters, a couple of good action sequences, and a climax with just the right amount of batshit lunacy. I really like the whole premise around the Alcohol memory, it's something new that we didn't get to see on the original show and it did a good job of tying into both the Sonozakis and the new villains. Absolute banger of a three-parter and the kind of thing that makes me bummed out that there are only three more episodes and still no sign of any more to come.

Also, love all the talk about Extreme being the ultimate W while Gold Extreme is just hanging out in a corner, moping because it only gets to show up in movies.

There's an Indonesian scanlation that's up to chapter 75. I'm not sure if that's at all helpful.

So, here's my take on that: Xtreme is the ultimate Shotaro/Philip suit, while Gold Xtreme is the ultimate Shotaro/Philip/Fuuto suit. This story was all about Shotaro and Philip as the perfect team, so Xtreme is the apex suit for that premise; also, they weren't in Fuuto!

FUUTO P.I. EPISODE 10 - “SUPERHUMAN R - A PASSPORT TO SHADOW FUUTO”

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/w/fuuto10a.png

And here we are, in the final story of Fuuto P.I. (Season 1, he said optimistically?)

It’s clearly rushing through some backstory to create a way for Team Double to come into direct conflict with Shadow Fuuto. I spent about four seconds wondering if I’d somehow skipped an episode when Tokime and Shotaro commiserate over Tokime’s broken Memory being a Joker Memory, like Shotaro’s. It’s a huge piece of relevant information, but it’s given an In Media Res reveal that almost plays backwards to how you’d normally want a dramatic detail to be dropped on an audience. The characters have already digested it, so when they talk about it, it lacks an emotional payload, so they quickly flash back to when it had that emotional payload. Incredibly weird! The start of this case has the same weird cadence, where we’re constantly doubling back on dialogue scenes to provide missing context. It’s a slightly disorienting ramp up to the season’s conclusion, but it’s probably unavoidable when you can only tell four stories in a season.

None of that really matters once Tokime’s abducted (maybe?) to Shadow Fuuto, as the tension ratchets up and never really dissipates. The search for Ritsuka’s grandfather takes a backseat to Tokime’s abduction and the machinations of Bando’s group, against the backdrop of Fuuto But Evil.

I like Shadow Fuuto quite a bit as a source of menace. My favorite detail is all of the red HVAC units – wind, but artificial and monstrous. Can’t think of a better way to convey that something is the malignant opposite of Fuuto than that! The villain we get to go along with that, Reactor… he’s okay? It’s a fun design, but he’s a full-on henchman, so there’s not a lot of thematic insight his presence can provide. He works for Bando, but he’s not responsible for the schemes or the goals; he’s the power and the defense, not the brains. The fight is splashy, but sort of rote by now: Reactor is Way Too Powerful, and the Maximum Break Is Useless. It’s… I mean, it’s what I’d derisively term an Anime Fight Scene, but I don’t want to critique an entire medium with so little knowledge of it. It’s the kind of fight where I mostly tune out, because we’re another fight or two away from either a Double powerup, or a crucial flaw being observed in the villain. What we get now is just an opponent whose power is On Another Level than our heroes are used to, and that doesn’t mean a lot to me. I like fights where the villains are cunning, not just overpowered.

Not crazy about this one, really. It’s rushing through an investigation to get us to Shadow Fuuto, and then Shadow Fuuto is just a fight against a guy who none of the normal attacks work on. It’s dangerous for our heroes, but it’s a kind of danger that doesn’t feel especially clever or compelling. I’m hoping that the next part creates a dilemma for our heroes that isn’t just some dude who can no-sell every attack.

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/w/fuuto10b.png

I almost want to imagine part of the rushed feel is likely including things from the 'p is a Devil' arc that we skipped. Since I recall some people saying that some important stuff drops in that arc.

That said, the Reactor Dopant is fun for many reasons, mainly for bookendings but it's a fairly cool design as far as cool boss Dopants go.

Anyway, to hammer in home that these Dopants are designed more for drawing/animation consumption instead of Tokusatsu, look no further than the original concept for Reactor, the Invention/Steam Dopant.

http://static.wikia.nocookie.net/kam...20190315205920

The first Dopant drawn up before Magma, and not used due to the design being too hard to create a physical costume for. Eventually the Steam Dopant was adapted into the Reactor Dopant. And while this is far from away the final story for Futo PI, it is the last arc of this season. And what an arc/Dopant to end it on huh? A Dopant that was revised from the first Dopant design.

That is neat, yeah. That's a real Decade thing to do, taking an unused design and then reintegrating it, just to make everything feel more valid. Nice touch!

So here we are at the final arc, and we have another new writer in the form of Toshizo Nemoto, who was the showrunner for the concurrently airing Ultraman Decker. And we meet the other two villains from the OP, revealing that the little boy is Brachiosaurus and the Ahnold wannabe is Reactor. Speaking of whom.

Sentai-lert

Nikaido is played by Kenji Nomura, who’s played a few villains in different Sentai shows, most notably Kobold in GoGoV, Debo Hyougakki in Kyoryuger, Barashitara in Zenkaiger and Aunja in Hurricaneger 20th. Within Rider, he was WrestlerG in Gotchard.

And also…

Rider-lert!

The old man Team W is hired to rescue is voiced by Atsushi Ono, who was previously the voice of Kamen Rider Jam in Gaim’s epilogue episode (replacing the guy who played Kougane in the movie and episode 37).

And also, we get a Joker Dopant Memory. I’ll discuss that when it’s slightly more focused on.

Very cool! Thanks!

Dude reminds me of Umibozu from City Hunter but with hair. :lolol

I forgot that they revealed what Tokime's Memory was on the show. Back when we were watching A to Z I looked up whether or not there was ever a Joker Dopant, since it's the only one of the core six to not get a monster form in the movie. The search redirected me to the Tokime page and I thought "yeah, that makes sense."

FUUTO P.I. EPISODE 11 - “SUPERHUMAN R - IN SEARCH OF A CONNECTION”

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/w/fuuto11a.png

Kind of amazing to think that the penultimate episode of the season largely shrugs at the idea of explaining the purpose and/or goal of Shadow Fuuto, in favor of reinforcing the heroic dedication of Team Double in the face of baffling and overwhelming odds.

I’m not sure it’s the wrong choice, even if I cannot begin to imagine how one (1) remaining episode will have enough room to adequately explain Bando’s objective, Tokime’s past, Shadow Fuuto’s significance, and probably a climactic battle. There’s still so much to do, in order to create the conditions for a resolution to this story, and so little time left to accomplish it. But, shit, the whole point of this story is that the only thing you can do sometimes, when things are at their most impossible-seeming, is to just get back to work. Maybe that’s all it really takes?

It’s a nicely low-stakes alternative to mysterious portals and endless Dopant armies. I like that. I like that Shotaro sort of freezes up when confronted with everything going wrong, and just sort of prays that something good will happen. Akiko – my FAVORITE CHARACTER – knocks some sense into Shotaro, pointing out that nothing’s going to get solved without some actual deductive effort, so maybe he should start there. The crux of any detective story is the accumulation of clues, and the only hope Team Double has of turning things around is if they can keep trying to gather those clues. This isn’t a dumb luck team of headstrong adventurers (that would be OOO, next year), this is a team of seasoned investigators who keep sleuthing until they find the key detail that points to victory. They don’t hope for a solution, they go out and find it.

That focus on shoe-leather and dedication makes for a weirdly optimistic middle chapter of this three-parter, considering we still don’t have much in the way of answers or actionable intelligence. (We find out that Road Dopants are building Shadow Fuuto for Bando, but that’s not really a data point that was haunting our heroes before now.) It’s nothing that drastically changes the odds for Shotaro and the gang, but there’s a sense that the pieces will fall into place as long as they keep working the problem. It’s a nice message, that you can always think your way through enough of a problem to make it manageable, with some help from other people. It takes all of Fuuto to help save Fuuto sometimes.

A bit surprising, how little this episode worked toward a conclusion. The Brachiosaurus kid is a little creep, but he doesn’t impart any new information about Tokime. Bando never even shows up in this one outside of flashbacks. But it still manages to feel like the heroes are closer than ever to stopping the villains’ schemes, and all because they just worked together on the problem. Hard to dislike an episode like that.

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/w/fuuto11b.png

Solid middle chapter of an episode, and I'm glad while we're on our way towards a confrontation we haven't started said confrontation yet. Will say though I love the idea that Road, this pretty unique memory when we first see it, can be easily mass-produced and there's just an army of these hungry dudes.

That being said, wow you are putting a lot of pressure on 1 Cour of an Anime Adaptation of a currently ongoing Manga (140+ Chapters) to do some big wrap-up on things that'll likely take longer than these three episodes will allow.

It's a very weird decision. You've only got four stories in the season, so I'm not sure that spending a quarter of your allotted time trying to come up with a satisfactory stopping point ("conclusion" feels like a laughable thing to say) after a mere three stories... I mean, it'd be like if W had Shotaro and Philip confront the Museum after its own Episode 6 -- you can do it, but it does not feel like the smartest plotting.

I'll probably come down definitively on one side or another after Episode 12 of Fuuto PI, but I'm starting to feel like even introducing Bando before the finale was a mistake. There's just so little time to set him up and pay anything off, you know? Better to introduce Tokime and Shadow Fuuto in 1-3, then just avoid it for 4-9, and maybe leave on this season with the note of there being someone behind it all, and that's Bando, cliffhanger, done for a season. That, or every episode needed to be building to this in a more pronounced way. The in-between way of slowly seeding clues and stuff... no time! You've got no time to just dole out little bits!

I'm... legit not sure how that'd even be possible.

We're talking about a 1 cour manga adaptation. They're not making this story up as they go, they're going through an already existing story with its own moving pieces and pacing. Unless you want filler or heavily altering the source material, then there's not much the crew can do here. They already had to cut an arc from the manga to maybe kind of get a more satisfactory stopping point. In which they've already had to do double duty adding in what pieces of the prior arc to this adaptation to make it work.

Oh, ha ha, I did not realize you were addressing me in that original comment. Whoops! We are coming at this from, uh, not the same viewpoint, I guess.

I don't think I'm putting a strong emphasis on a conclusion for this season? I didn't feel like this story was ever going to wrap up -- for whatever value of "wrap up" you feel is appropriate for a 12-episode season -- in just four stories. I don't think where we're at is bad entertainment-wise, it's just structurally problematic and somewhat lurching in its storytelling. I don't know if skipping stories to get to this confrontation with Bando in Shadow Fuuto is worth it, since (as you pointed out) there's dozens more chapters of the manga to go, and no promise of any further episodes of the animated series. I think it's okay to suggest that the show should've maybe gone All Bando or No Bando, rather than splitting the difference?

Again, since I feel like I'm maybe not coming across as I intended: What they made was fine, and I get that it's adapting as much material as they can in the time allotted. But I think it's fair to wonder if, knowing how much time they had allotted, they maybe could've made other changes to the source material in order to better balance the pacing of their narrative. Or just not done this particular story in the first season, in favor of lighter material that was easier to fit into 12 episodes?

I have zero idea how you got the idea that we're gearing up with some sort of final fight with Bando.

So En-chan’s already mentioned the perspective that our starter villain who W beat as easily as any of Museum’s patrons was just a mook in Street’s grand scheme of things, so I’ll mention that in the manga, the kid actually succeeded in getting Tokime to strip naked, but as I mentioned a while ago, this is being marketed as a kids show in some countries, mostly Asian ones.

That said, I do love Tokime finding her resolve at the episode’s end.

I don't! I never did!

It's a good arc for Tokime on this show, absolutely. Oh, and:

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/...hdayhibiki.png

Maybe it's just me, but your emphasizing over his place in the story over the last few posts, your disappointment at Reactor not being a high rank in the enemy organization, as well as a "confrontation with Bando in Shadow Futo" (which isn't even what's happening) gave off that impression.

My bad for the misunderstanding.

When I say "Bando", I'm only ever using that as shorthand for "the Shadow Fuuto storyline", since that group doesn't have a canonical name in-show yet. It's easier to use his name, since he's the focal point of that storyline in the opening credits and elsewhere. I definitely don't think that we're going to see Bando defeated once and for all in Episode 12; we barely even know what his deal is!

My gripe (if you want to call it that -- I like this show! I liked the last episode! I feel like that's maybe being overlooked!) is that I feel like this show would've been better off either going all-in on the Shadow Fuuto storyline, or not trying to get to a season-ending confrontation with that group in the fourth storyline. It's one thing for an open-ended manga to pace its confrontation this early (although it sounds like this is earlier than the manga had it?), but it's a little soon for an anime with only four stories to tell.

As always, this is just how I'm taking the show! It's not a judgment, and it certainly isn't meant to invalidate someone else's experience with it! I feel like things are getting a little contentious in this thread, so please don't take this as some condemnation of the series! I am enjoying this show!

I forgot how much I liked Reactor as a villain. He's just a dude who has a job that he takes pride in and doesn't appreciate having people maskedly riding all up in his business. Does that business involve murdering a whole bunch of people in order to create a shadow dimension city for blatantly nefarious purposes? Yes. Is that going to keep him from committing 100% to the job? No. Does he have possibly the single most impressive mustache in any form of Kamen Rider media? Probably.

I really did enjoy his No Trespassers thing with Double and Accel. He's not trying to kill everyone, he's just working the door, basically. Kamen Riders gotta go (for now!), while Tokime and Rando are loose ends to tie up. Nothing personal, just business. It's a good take on a lieutenant!

FUUTO P.I. EPISODE 12 - “SUPERHUMAN R - DEATH, AND…”

https://kamenriderdie.com/images/kr/w/fuuto12a.png

Let’s see how we did!

• EXPLAIN BANDO’S OBJECTIVE

Not great? There’s some post-battle investigation into the deactivated Joker Memory that lays out some of Bando’s mad-science bonafides: he was another Foundation X guy, and vanished a few years back. His activities in Shadow Fuuto put him outside the scope of the Gaia Library, so he’s literally and figuratively a blank page for Team Double. Beyond that, he’s as mysterious as ever in Reactor’s death scene. He’s grateful for his lieutenant’s dedication to the mission, but what exactly that mission is remains unrevealed. As far as an Answers episode is concerned, even in the limited scope of laying out a single motivation or goal, this ain’t it.

• EXPLAIN TOKIME’S PAST

It continues to amuse me that no one in the cast is like You Have The Exact Same Weird Hair Color As The Mystery Supervillain So There’s Probably A Connection There. No one’s real genre savvy, I guess!

While this episode didn’t really do anything to further reveal Tokime’s past (beyond a no-boys-allowed full body search for a Memory injection port), it massively succeeded at making this final episode feel like a comprehensive conclusion to Tokime’s heroic actualization. Far from being the distant and closed-off character of the introductory story, she’s now giving heroic pep talks to guilt-riddled old men and swearing to defeat her own past through a heroic dedication to Fuuto. She’s finally a hero in her own right, and that’s honestly all this show really needed to do for me to feel like these 12 episodes found themselves a solid stopping point.

Tokime’s really the point of this show, you know? She’s the POV character to what’s going on, and she’s pretty much the only one that can change and grow as a result of the stories being told. (As I talked about at the end of W, Shotaro and Philip literally aren’t designed to do either!) Giving her a story where she single-handedly escapes from danger and safeguards a client’s dreams… that’s it? That’s all I really wanted. And she does it with the sort of deductive cunning and bold action that typifies Team Double’s approach to the mystery genre.

• EXPLAIN SHADOW FUUTO’S SIGNIFICANCE

Nothing much, really, but I do like how Bando’s emotional investment in Shadow Fuuto mirrors Team Double’s defense of Fuuto. There’s a really fun symmetry to the two groups trying to keep their homes safe, and I still like that a lot as a longform narrative.

• PROBABLY A CLIMACTIC BATTLE

Yes! Absolutely! And it’s a great one, worthy of a season finale or act break or indefinite hiatus or whatever the hell you want to call this current stopping point. Philip’s hilariously detailed explanation of Reactor’s whole thing creates a path to victory that’s all about fighting smarter instead of harder, and I always appreciate that. It’s a fight that pushes Reactor’s main advantage – limitless power build-up – into a disadvantage, and then lets physics do the rest. It’s not the longest or most intricate fight ever, but it’s great to see Double working through a complicated problem, and Reactor’s willingness to fight and die for his cause makes his defeat sort of tragic in a way that feels appropriately epic. This one hits different than the previous Dopants of the season, as it should.

I liked this ending. I liked how it sort of sketched in a little bit how Bando’s group thinks about themselves, but I mostly enjoyed how the story’s really one of how Tokime is done dwelling on a past that’s out of reach, and ready to embrace the present. It’s not a finale, really, but it nicely sets up a new stage. I really hope that there are more episodes to come someday!

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So here we are, at the end of the first (hopefully not the only) season. And it ends with what many interpreted as a hint to watch the main show, but a few more people who were more familiar with the manga pointed out that it also served as a lead in to the arc after this one, which is a partial retelling of both the flashbacks in W Movie War segments from Shotaro’s perspective, with… I’m sorry, I seem to have read too far ahead.

Also, I’ve got to question why Tokime not having a slot was enough for Team W to acquit her of being a Dopant? Have they forgotten about the concept of Gaia Drivers?

https://youtube.com/watch?v=3gTPb60n...5a3My8f18By3U9

Good point! They're definitely making some assumptions here about Tokime's significance to the Shadow Fuuto group, that she couldn't possibly have been a higher-up. Hope that doesn't come back to haunt them!

Maybe one day we'll get a Season 2.

But overall that was honestly a fun finale. It was great to see Tokime shine on her own and then we get a confrontation with Reactor leading to a really cool reprise of W Prism Xtreme set to the OP just to showcase how strong these Shadow Futo guys are.

I do appreciate how cautious Bando is about things though. The man sees this and is like "Yeah no, we can't do direct confrontations right now". Really fun to see villains who are absurd levels of powerful also realize that their fights could easily be their last if their opponents figure out a way to beat them.

That said, we got a little bit of animated Kamen Rider Skull in this and that's honestly what matters. Though not as much as the subs deciding to go with the correct label for the prequel to W's adventures, "Begins Night", none of these "The Night Where it all Began" shenanigans.

But wow, we actually did it. Because as far as I'm aware the Futo PI Stage doesn't have any subs so I don't know if you're going to cover it. I don't know if I'll rewatch along with every Rider, I mostly did this since W was my first Kamen Rider and it's been over a decade since I last saw it. But I had a lot of fun.

My favorite thing to the Shadow Fuuto storyline is how hard the villains/"villains" are trying to keep this from being a problem that Team Double has to solve. The worst thing a criminal can do in a mystery is make the detective curious, so everything is about trying to stay under the radar as long as possible, and focusing more on closing off avenues of confrontation (Reactor's so mad at the goons who open a portal!) rather than taunting foes into combat. It's a fun dynamic!

If it had subs, I'd cover it in an instant. I just checked the cat site a couple days ago, and it's still unsubbed. Maybe someday!

I'm glad you had a good time!

THREAD WRAP-UP

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And that's a wrap on "Kamen Rider Die rewatches Kamen Rider W (and watches Fuuto P.I.)"!

I'll be back in August for "Kamen Rider Die watches Tokumei Sentai Go-Busters"!

Have a great spring and summer!

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No matter how many times it shows up and how critical it ends up being, I will never remember that Accel's little tank buddy exists when it is not currently on screen. Meanwhile, I'll never forget Ixa's stupid dinosaur barrel tank, which is objectively less memorable. Memories are weird, which I suppose is a decent takeaway from W, as a sub-franchise.'

So, thoughts on the final episode? It was good. As usual, I like how the 3-episode structure gives stories more room to grow and to indulge in some extended denouements. Reactor remained a fun villain through the end of it and even got some decent pathos out of his final scene. Tokime getting a chance to shine in her own part of the case was also very appreciated. We also got a little bit of the show trying to make Foundation X happen again, which is always adorable.

Final thoughts on the cartoon? Loved it. More than I remembered even, and I definitely remembered enjoying it. W is, as discussed, a show that has a pretty evergreen concept behind it and the cartoon absolutely highlights how well that works. Tokime is a fantastic addition to the cast, capably serving as a new viewer surrogate, a major point of mystery, and a source of new dynamics for the existing cast. If we ever get more live action W, somehow, I would be crushed if she's not involved.

I definitely hope we get more of this someday. I don't know a lot about the Japanimation industry, but I do know that years between seasons is more common than not. It's not just that there are a lot of open plot threads that need to be resolved, it's mostly that I really liked this cartoon and want more of it. If this is it, though, I appreciate the hell out of it ending the way that it did, with Tokime asking for the full story of W's history and Shotaro starting with the opening scene from the first episode of the original series. Excellent enveloping.

Whoa, that was sudden! I was expecting more dramatic build-up for such an important announcement. So, uh, what made you decide on Gobusters?

That would be great! I found Fuuto P.I. to be a worthy continuation of the W story, and it'd be great to see how far an animated series can take things.

I'll probably talk more about it in a few months, but it's largely a mixture of the suit designs and the creative team.