[Kamen Rider Die]

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



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.