Double Decker! Doug & Kirill continues to be quite fun, and one of the season’s best-looking series to boot.  Anime which have a genuinely unique visual style are pretty rare, and this one certainly does – distinct even from Tiger & Bunny, in fact.  It’s a case where all the elements – the look, the music, the overall tone – are in synch with each other perfectly.  I wouldn’t say it’s a case of style over substance, because this show isn’t exactly insubstantial – but style is certainly the lead dog.

We meet a couple new (or at least new to prominence) characters this week.  There’s Katherine Rochefort, known simply as K (Anzai Chika), the other rookie who started at the same time Kirill did (and got his job).  And then Apple (Nagatsuka Takuma, though I would have bet a burger it was Murase Ayumu), the squad’s version of Q who can’t get anybody to call him “Doctor”.  K ends up joining Doug and Kirill on their first real case together, going undercover (as reporters) to check out a factory that seems to be connected to Anthem smuggling.

There’s a dynamic here that’s definitely working comedically.  That is, Kirill being a goofball who acts like a grade-schooler with cool toys, and Doug being a quietly eccentric genius who connects the dots as he taps himself on the head.  At some point I hope we get some evolution on that, however, as Kirill functioning mainly as the butt of the series’ jokes probably isn’t going to work forever.  I enjoy him as a comic character, and I find Doug to be really interesting – but at some point there has to be more to them than buffoonery and infallibility, respectively.

That said, the general narrative is still working quite well – and again, it’s style that’s powering the engine.  The set design remains fantastic, the dialogue is snappy and witty (I quite like K’s addition to the team as a food-crazed naif who’s smarter than she acts), and the plots themselves are interesting enough to hold attention for 22 minutes.  I mean, just the shot of Travis’ expression as he looks at Kirill making an ass of himself provides more entertainment than entire episodes of some shows (and I’m not exaggerating about that).  Pop culture gags like the donuts reflect a real sense of wit, too.

At some point early in this episode I began to realize that Doug’s old partner Derrick was in fact not dead at all, and that was pretty much confirmed by the end.  I don’t know how much of a factor Derrick is going to be in the story, but given that Kirill’s desire to prove himself worthy to be Doug’s partner and the insecurity it causes him (which is entirely justified, if we’re honest) seems to be a major theme, Derrick being alive would appear to have the potential for significance.  Next week will apparently start to shed some light on that situation.