I don’t understand all that much of what’s happening in Fuuto P.I., but I am enjoying it. There’s a sure-footedness to this treatment which suggests a staff comfortable with the material, and experienced enough to know how to present it. Kamen Rider is not best-known as an anime (or manga) franchise but the premise seems very well-suited to the mediums in question. The question of whether something is retro or dated always comes down to personal opinion, but for me there’s a pleasant familiarity to this series.
Thankfully Fuuto Tantei is including at least some exposition for the likes of me, but I assume a lot of what we’re seeing is already established in the mythology. Like the “Gaia Memory” bit which turns out to be the source of the mysterious witchcraft Shoutarou and Philip are investigating. It sounds roughly similar to what we often see in manga takes on this sort of premise, with stuff like Boku no Hero Academia and Tiger & Bunny offering examples. I also got the sense that the middle-schooler Akira who gives Shoutarou the collection of rumors is a recurring character (as perhaps is the narrator/Kamen voice supplied by Tachiki Fumihiko).
It seems that using the Gaia memory sticks once distributed by an organized crime family, not traded on the black market) turns a human into a “Dopant” (obviously an established plot point). Through some fancy information gathering Philip is able to narrow down this one to “Road”, which is what created the alternate reality we saw in the premiere. But that alternate world is created from the flesh and blood of the user (ick), which apparently makes them turn cannibal in order to replenish themselves.
Seeing Tokime as a man-eater is quite a shock, and Shoutarou doesn’t seem to be buying into the idea. It’s suggested that he (like his client) could be blinded by love, but it turns out he’s right – she’s just piggybacking on the real dopant’s execution of Road to engage in theft. The real culprit is Sabu, one of the henchmen in the local Yakuza family. That said, it should be pointed out that the boss was perfectly willing to take out Shoutarou along with Tokime when he thought she was the one who’d dismembered one of his men. As it stands we’re headed for the first Kamen Rider showdown of the series, as Philip and Shoutarou gattai and prepare to take on Sabu.
Even if this show is speaking a language I don’t really understand a lot of the time (and I don’t mean Japanese), it’s familiar enough to follow without too much trouble. It’s nicely-executed right down to the OP/ED sequences and BGM, all of which suit the tokusatsu-hardboiled detective hybrid genre quite nicely. It also falls during a slower part of the week, which means I can afford to give it a little more leeway in deciding whether it merits weekly coverage. Either way as long as it manages to entertain at this level I’ll certainly keep watching.
