Fugou Keiji – 11 [All that glitters is not gold]

Holy crap, Fugou Keiji. You managed to stick the landing and somehow brought the entire show together in a single 20 minute episode. There are twists, there are turns and there are even a few jokes so lets dive right into this finale!

Right off the bat, lets talk about this ending, because I loved it. So much happened and the twist was both fitting yet surprising. Somehow throughout the entire season I never suspected what happened, which we will talk about after the break for spoilers, yet in hindsight it makes a lot of sense. So because the next few paragraphs are going to be spent with me gushing about the ending, lets talk about how the episode went right here at the top huh? All in all I think it did a great job of picking the ball up and running with it after the last few somewhat dropped it narratively. We got a 2nd round of character arc finales, a satisfying narrative finale and even nice callback all the way to episode one. I really enjoyed it and I think Fugou Keiji deserves props for that. Now for the details!

First up, lets talk Shigemaru, because this was by far my favorite twist of the episode. It explains so much and resolves so many of the issues I had with his presentation earlier. Why wasn’t he talking with Daisuke? Why did he kill his wife or have any interesting family related dialogue? Him not actually being Daisuke’s father but actually the Butler using him as a scapegoat was fantastic in that regard. Maybe Fugou Keiji could have set it up a little better, but even without much prior information it felt like something was off. So between this, the mystery of whether or not he was alive or faked his own death, and his health we have 3 mysteries wrapped up in a single reveal. Add on to that his nice little fight with Kato and his constant appearances and it makes for a satisfying twist.

Meanwhile the Grandmother Kikuko does much the same by addressing my issue with how random the villains felt. Kikuko has been around from the beginning, and has been suspicious for the same amount of time. Kikuko refused to cooperate with both investigations, she kept trying to stop Daisuke, etc etc. She was around for every major plot point in Fugou Keiji, always influencing things from just off to the side. She also managed to provide another moment of character growth and challenge for Daisuke who’s arc I thought was done. Now instead of just arresting his father, whom murdered his mother, he is instead arresting his loving Grandmother and last remaining family member. Suddenly everything he thought he knew before is wrong, his motivations jumbled. Will he make the right choice, can he still stand by justice in the face of all that? Its a sudden, but welcome character finale.

Fugou Keiji also managed to work the otherwise unused “Adollium” bit into its plot as well. The whole “mankind will misuse it” shtick is a bit rote, I will admit. However Fugou Keiji used it well, offering Daisuke a “Deal with the Devil” sort of situation. Does he take the deal, save his grandmother and become the leader of a multi-billion dollar organization safeguarding the world? Or does he follow his personal morals and get justice for his mother, Cho and Takei? All this only for Kato to come stumbling in and blindly take the choice from him. Some might see that as anticlimactic, Daisuke didn’t make the choice after all. But for me it fits perfectly as Kato was always the moral center of the team, keeping Daisuke on the straight and narrow. And this is just another example, presented in a comedic form. They are a team.

This, along with the after credits scene, does a lot to really secure the series overall tone as well. Up until now it had been fighting between being a comedy and a mystery, with the two sort of getting in each others way at times. But this ending did a great job of finally merging the two. Of using the comedy for narrative effect in a meaningful character driven way. It takes all the overly mysterious half-baked political drama and instead throws it out the window for some fun. No doubt this is a very odd argument to hear from me after all these posts where I complained about the lost potential of Fugou Keiji. And in a way that’s all still there, some of it at least. But the reveal that the villain wasn’t actually Daisuke’s father and the 2nd round of finale’s just… felt fresh for me.

Finally we come to the after credits scene. Though considering it takes up almost half the episode, really its the credits that are early. It’s a nice callback to the start of the season where Daisuke was working alone. Only now everyone is involved, the entire division gets to play with HEUSC for their own silly hobbies and Kato gets to use Daisuke’s resources to fight crime globally. He has been recognized as the “Millionaire Detective”, with his own bat symbol and everything. And best of all, despite all they have been through, Daisuke is still a cocky prick. I really expected him to pick Kato up, especially after the flashback. So it was a nice bit of comedic subversion for him to let him fall. But this time in a playful manner rather than the cold “I don’t care” one he started it. It’s subtle, but fun.

So all in all, how was Fugou Keiji this week? Well as I said at the top it was a complete and utter surprise. I was prepared for a rather dull finale. After all, the bad guy had been beaten and now we were in the final moments. I never expected to get that huge a twist in the final 15 minutes of the show and for it to work that well. Yeah the show isn’t perfect, yeah maybe the middle episodes could have done more. But at the end of the day I found Fugou Keiji to be entertaining from beginning to end. It looked good, it sounded good and it was solid enough until the end where it flipped everything on its head for a triple back flip landing. I’ll be talking more about it in my final review, but suffice to say: I enjoyed it.