[Kamen Rider Die]

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

Quote:

Originally Posted by Kamen Rider Die

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.

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!