FUUTO PI

Episode 6

As expected, FUUTO PI is happy to roll out an explanation of Philip's FangJoker form right at the beginning of this episode for the uninitiated. Of course, six episodes in, I'm pretty sure the show has established which viewers will be sticking around regardless of familiarity with ongoing elements from the source material it'll be dripping in. (Do know that you can watch the first two episodes of Kamen Rider W with English subs over on Toei's YouTube Channel. It won't even get close to covering everything in that series or this anime, but it's a start.) And this episode continues that style, teasing Terui's Rider form for…later. But it's the last third of a storyline that was mostly sewn up last week anyway, so pretty much all there is for this one to do is show off, and it does that well enough.

With the Fortnite-inspired Kamen Rider Geats having gotten its premiere just this weekend, it's indeed timely for FUUTO PI to wrap up its own video-game-based plotline. Philip transforms and goes full feral FangJoker on the Meganeura Dopant for daring to hurt his boyfriend, and as FUUTO PI has been wont to do, it's a great display of the specific sorts of action they can get up to with the benefit of animation. Some Riders are instantly defeated as soon as they get dunked in water, but since we don't need to worry about suit preservation in this situation, we get this slick scene of Fang's blades doing a shark impression as the rest of the confrontation really works to show off how "all over the place" this form's fighting style is supposed to be.

But as with all things in Kamen Rider W, there are multiple sides to balance things. I like the segue into the idea that Philip's berserker rage was more of an aside distraction, and he's still able to shift into his more bookish, analytical mode in explaining how he's actually imminently defeating the Dopant. It's nice to see him get to be cocky about his abilities in a way that isn't just made for him to clash with Shotaro or Tokime for dramatic purposes, and as a storyline that was seemingly supposed to focus on putting Philip over as a character for the audience, I think it finally lands at the very end here. The simple acknowledgement of the growing respect between him and Tokime feels more earned here than before, and while Philip's declared realization of understanding Boys' Love at the end comes off as a bit more of a joke than I'd have preferred given its pivotal role in his character last week (and definitely lets me see what other viewers have mentioned re: this show's desperate attempts to paint Shotaro as aggressively-not-gay as possible) it is still pretty cute, and pretty funny.

In fact, apart from that finishing fight in the first part of this episode, and the messy murder of monster Mihara at the end, this is just kind of an overall cute episode in general. We get plenty of time for resolution between Moriguchi and Maji-P, including the revelation that the real reason he was acting like such a jerk was because he just cared about her so much and was sticking up for her against the company's upper management! We hadn't really heard about them before now, but it's the sort of mystery-resolving swerve I'll buy from this series, and the producer does admit the issues in his attitude and resolve to be better in the future. And it's heartening to see the both of them actually leave the abusive work environment by the end to start their own game company. This story's all about coming to terms with what you actually want, and using those realizations to resolve conflicts – just like Philip and Tokime putting their beef to bed by the end. Tokime gets her own pink Stag Phone, as I predicted, but it feels more meaningful than I initially expected to give it credit for.

Some of the winding-down antics and ongoing mystery-story explanations do feel like they're trying too hard to fill up the runtime of an episode that doesn't have quite enough content otherwise. It just feeds my continual curiosity about what FUUTO PI might look like with its forebear's two-episode structure as opposed to this anime's apparent commitment to three-parters. I don't know if we needed to see Tokime run down a checklist of all of the cute robot animal toys, or barely get to watch the Aurora Dopant in action before he introduces some other allies he'll be working alongside in the future. Stuff like that lends FUUTO PI the appropriate enough vibes of an ongoing Sunday-morning series, but it is also (at the moment) a single-cour anime halfway through using its episode count to tease things out. So long as the fights keep being cool and the mysteries in the moment work out as entertainingly interesting as this one did, the series should continue being fine, but as solid as it is, I feel like I'm still waiting for it to truly pick up with all the potential it's carrying.

Rating:

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.