FUUTO PI

Episode 7

This episode of FUUTO PI opens with Shotaro and Philip stumbling through a snowy blizzard in a mountainous, rural region, and my immediate fandom-addled thought was that they'd wandered into Kamen Rider Blade. That's not the case, of course, but it's also not far off, since the premise of this week's arc-introducing episode does come off like our dynamic duo winding up in a different kind of story from their usual city-based superhero antics. Apart from Kamen Rider W's usual noir-y standards, what we're getting here is a classic closed-space mansion murder mystery, a structure that's apparent even before people start turning up dead. And while I don't know where this one is going, I do feel like out of all the stories this series has started for us so far, this is actually the one I find most engaging from the get-go.

With this story in particular, FUUTO PI looks to be further embracing the freedom afforded by its status as an animated adaptation. One immediate effect of that is getting to play with the setting. Earlier on, the series reveled in recreating some of the familiar Toei shooting locations we'd come to know as Fuuto, but by now they've realized they can transplant the characters to places like this isolated mansion said to be on the 'outskirts' of the city, a village unto itself with its own backstory and settings ripe for loading up mysteries to be unraveled. It helps make the series feel like it's growing into its own identity, while still centering its styles and depictions on the familiar foibles and mystery-solving prowess of our double-detective leads. This episode is still as much 'setup' as either of the previous storyline starters in FUUTO PI and is itself a 'stock' mystery concept, but I still found myself more driven by it because it was showing off a sort of story that wouldn't have happened, at least not this way, in the old show this new one is springboarding off of.

It also helps that this episode sees the show using its medium for some more immediate escalation than it felt like previous stories got up to. It's like, oh right, when you're drawing a show meant to be watched by adults on a late-night time slot, you can just have a character turn up dead and impaled on a tree branch as a swerve. Of course I'm not arguing that FUUTO PI is more inherently mature, and/or better because of that, than its Sunday-morning progenitor; I'm just recognizing and appreciating the series for thinking to do the most with the hand it's dealt itself. If you want to sell me on a murder mystery, shocking me with the kind of murder I otherwise wouldn't expect from this series is a great hook in an inciting episode like this, and they smartly play off of that moment into a sweet suited-up fight out in this snowy setting. We get to see the flames of W's HeatJoker form melting the icy areas surrounding them and explosively interacting with the alcohol-derived powers of this newest Dopant—that's smart design to keep us dialed in.

FUUTO PI also seems to be smartly keeping its broader, overarching plot moving as well. The big bad owner of the Aurora Memory, who calls himself Kanamori here, introduces himself to our paired-up P.I.s, with an insinuation that he's rather involved with this otherwise isolated mystery. As Terui (still criminally underutilized at this point in the show) put it at the beginning of the episode, something bigger is building in Fuuto at this point in the story, and he is hoping to intersect with Shotaro and Philip and compare notes. Developments for another day, I suppose, and it feels only a little shortchanged to have Tokime reach characteristic understandings with Shotaro and Philip in the last arc only to leave her waiting off-stage as this next story begins.

But even with that separation anxiety, it's cool to get a chance to focus on Shotaro and Philip really working as a duo. Seeing them side-by-side illustrates their different approaches to analysis, like how Shotaro's understanding of cultural context lets him pick out what's going on with Mr. Kagamino in this little masquerade in his mansion, which Philip's more rote base knowledge wasn't able to catch. It reminds us that, yes, these two are skilled, impressive detectives, and lends credence, at least for the story's sake, to the people of this house being amused enough by their presence to let them stay a while. Granted, a lot of the other plot elements introduced to make this marriage-managing-murder-mystery work feel only a little shy of contrived, with the location and its customs clearly designed to set up the premise of this story. But the best mystery novels are about the interest of those mysteries, not granular world-building. Several of the involved players in this one so far, especially the masked suitor-ettes (one of whom turns up dead), feel a little shallow to start here, but we'll see how that expands as the plot goes on. For the moment, at least Philip acknowledges how messed-up this whole setup is and how clearly unhealthy all the people participating in it are.

It might simply be that I've at last accepted and settled into the pacing FUUTO PI is enforcing for its stories, but this still felt like the strongest introduction for an arc yet. It genuinely feels like an expansion of what Kamen Rider can do and show in this different format, while also being a mostly-effective mystery story introduction on its own. Those latter basics are the sort of thing that make this stuff work for general anime viewers following along with this show, which is appropriate given that strong genre fundamentals were what made Kamen Rider W such an effective 'starter' Rider show all those years ago. More than showing off the familiar locations or trotting the characters out to repeat their catch-phrases, it's that approach that demonstrates how this anime 'gets it' in terms of remaining true to the legacy of its source material.

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FUUTO PI is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Chris is a freewheeling Fresno-based freelancer with a love for anime and a shelf full of too many Transformers. He can be found spending way too much time on his Twitter, and irregularly updating his blog.