[Kamen Rider Die]

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



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.