Background
Fuuto P.I is an anime adaption of the famous Masked Rider series. For those unaware, Masked Rider is a famous Asian series reminiscent of the Western “comic book” style hero, with many different media adaptations since the 1990’s.
Opening Scene
We begin with an out of context flashback to a traumatic event. Going to the present day, we meet our protagonist; Shoutarou Hidari. He is a detective — a P.I (private investigator) for hire. He is busy taking photos of himself at the edge of a pier.
As his boss yells at him on the phone to hurry back to the store, he notices a beautiful young woman walking towards him.
A Fair Skinned Weird Lady
Shoutarou notes that this woman is extremely beautiful and throws out a pickup line. She says she’s very hungry and asks if maybe he will be the one to satisfy her.
Shoutarou misunderstands and believes that she’s asking him for money. He backtracks and walks by, thinking that he must’ve dodged a bullet. He turns back around to look at her, only to see she’s disappeared off the edge of the pier — the only thing in that direction being water.
A Client In Love
Shoutarou returns home to converse with a new client. The client has seen the same beautiful woman and we learn that she’s referred to herself as a witch. The witch had stolen his bag as well as almost ¥300,000 before running off.
The client, however, seems to have fallen in love with her, and wants to confront her and ask her to stop stealing. Our P.I protagonist seems to be neutral about his reasoning. Even though it won’t work, a job’s a job.
And so, he sets off to find her again.
A Tip-off
Shoutarou is well known by the locals in the city of Fuuto. He gets an anonymous tip as to where the witch could be. Upon finding her, he confronts her and she runs away, seemingly running through the sky.
He chases her and eventually she leads him into a corner. She calls him extremely naive, as well as revealing her name is Tokime. As our protagonist chases her again, the world around him begins to change.
Eventually, he’s no longer standing in the Fuuto he’s known all these years.
One Last Confrontation
As he escaped this ‘pocket world,’ he finds himself trespassing inside of a private building. He’s caught and removed, but not before learning that the police are also searching for this so-called ‘witch.’
When he meets with his client one more time, he exclaims that he has to see Tokime next time our protagonist finds her. He’s absolutely certain that he has to at least try to convince her to stop stealing before the police get to her.
They find her bathing in a public fountain. After chasing once again for awhile, both Shoutarou and the client are caught in her pocket dimension.
We end the episode by seeing our second protagonist — Shoutarou’s partner Philip — appear and state that it’s apparent he needs some help.
End episode, roll outro.
Opinions / Analysis
Coming from somebody who’s unfamiliar with the Masked Rider series, I’m finding it a bit difficult to keep up. From what I understand, Philip and Shoutarou fuse or merge together to become the Masked Rider, even though they operate independently from one another otherwise.
Tokime’s character right now is a bit boring; she’s just a mysterious “beautiful woman” being chased by everybody around her. I’m wondering how deep her character will go, or whether she’ll be surface level.
It’s a bit too early to tell whether she’ll develop as a character; but I really enjoy the comedy aspect of Shoutarou apparent in his monologue.
