FUUTO PI

Episode 9

With most of the mystery soundly solved in last week's episode, things are primed to be all about payoff this week. Yes, we open with a dramatic confirmation that the original Alcohol Dopant orchestrating this dating-game-gone-horribly-wrong was in fact Granny Kiku, but her end of the story and the connections it has through the rest of the plot is basically all we had left to uncover. Instead, the most surprising aspect of the whole situation is the fact that Kuya turns out to have been completely ignorant of the plan, spinning this story into a slightly more sympathetic yarn about the extremes some people will go to in order to protect their loved ones. It helps fill out the episode a bit more strongly after simply following the clues and solving the murder-mystery had propelled the previous parts of this arc effectively enough.

It could use that, since in its efforts to get all that info out alongside other elements, this episode of FUUTO PI can feel a bit bogged down. Having Kuya unaware of his grandmother's machinations allows for a somewhat understandable instance of her just dumping out all that exposition about her history and motivations. But then the little wrap-up party back at the detective agency by the end of this episode also spends quite a while reiterating the mechanics behind the experimentation process we'd pretty much already understood, while throwing out references to tie things in with earlier Kamen Rider W lore, as well as setup for the next (presumably last of the season) story. In-between those bookends are things like this anime's debut of Shotaro and Philip's CycloneJoker Xtreme form, necessitating its own infodump from Tokime so those anime-only viewers know what this thing is and how it works. It's clunky, to say nothing of the bothersome realization that the actual reason for Tokime showing up at this point was mainly so she'd be here to give this explanation.

That said, this plot is as good a place as any for them to have Xtreme show up. It's been all about showing the truly in-sync version of Shotaro and Philip's working relationship, so the most uniting expression of that makes for a natural climax. And though he's been expressly cordial about it ever since his romantic realization, I have to wonder if this wasn't Philip getting his own little one-up on Tokime. "Yeah, you may have caught Shotaro's eye, lady, but look at what I get to do with him!" That kind of showing off is pretty much the entire point of Xtreme's appearance here, as its deployment turns the fight against Kiku into a curb-stomping while Tokime tells us how cool all these toys are. The finisher does look plenty nice, anyway, and the structure of it is meant as another showcase of Shotaro's half-boiled tendencies, his caring nature trying to spare Kiku for both her and Kuya's sake. It's a nice sentiment, especially as Kuya's whole role and revelations about his character in this go a long way to making him a somewhat more surprisingly sympathetic player. And it helps that it's not the only showcase of suited-up combat in this episode.

Terui's confrontation with the other Dopant (she turns out to be using the Scream memory, by the way) outside is followed up on primarily to finally formally introduce the big bad villain group for this story, with Yukiji Bando just outing himself to the Riders after it previously looked like he might try slinking away. This is the other reason Tokime's been brought in: it's so she can witness Bando and react to him in indication of her obvious past ties to the group. It's in and around this part of the plot where I might fully question FUUTO PI's ability to keep new viewers invested in the same way as returning fans of the live-action series. Many of the references and ties to the previous Museum organization that get mentioned here are mostly surface-level flavor, but there are just enough bits thrown out over the course of the episode, particularly regarding Philip's own past with the family, that it could come off as a denser lore-dump than necessary. I admit this is a tricky aspect for me to fairly assess, deep into all this content as I personally am. And speaking from that perspective, I do like the potential of these connections to make the world of Kamen Rider W feel a little more layered, and maybe even provide some new vectors for Philip's character to follow. Feels like he's gotten more distinguishing developments throughout this show than Tokime, the alleged center of this new story. Not that I'm really complaining about that.

These extra complications thrown in at the ending of this storyline make it come off less tightly-constructed than the previous episodes, but it all still mostly works. The fight with Scream is cool, since we get to see W and Accel team up in their ultimate forms. And while there are some instances of absolute bullshit in that explanatory wrap party (like finding out that Philip apparently whipped up a whole signal-boosting device while we weren't looking), most of it seems in service of clarifying every leftover aspect of the mystery as it was solved. Some of it feels arbitrary, like the mansion's signal-jamming equipment being the clue to the evil experimentation taking place within. But others, like Kuya's status as a non-drinker being a point that would have eliminated him as a suspect much earlier, are more fun in the sitcom-finish way I expect from shows like this era of Kamen Rider. Even with this uneven last part, I'll say this was the strongest arc for FUUTO PI yet, less on account of the connections to earlier content it ended up throwing out, and instead mostly because of the ways it showed off connections between characters, especially Shotaro and Philip themselves.

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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.