[Kamen Rider Die]

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



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!