This week on Fugou Keiji we get flashbacks in flashbacks as Kiyomizu recounts the unsolved Kambe murder mystery! We have politics, intrigue, corruption and a dash of homicide. So without further ado, lets jump right in!
As far as the episode goes, it was rather weird. The whole first half was a flashback, complete with black bars and everything to make sure we knew. And while it was a good flashback, laying the groundwork for everything else, the 2nd half went off the rails a bit. We will talk about spoilers after the break but this is an example of Fugou Keiji’s identity issue rearing its head again. In the last few episodes it seemed that Fugou Keiji had decided what it wanted to be, a serious detective drama. However this episodes ending bit with the VR clashed with that. Except unlike previous instances of this, such as the old ladies and the boy-band, this one was actually used in a narratively important way. This wasn’t a throw-away absurd gag but rather a serious part of the narrative, and it broke it a little for me.
Let me be clear, I enjoyed this episode. I think 90% of it was a really good detective drama with loads of setup. Seeing Takei, Cho, Kato and Daisuke all chase their respective threads, slowly drawing them all together, was great. I didn’t actually realize that Takei, the young cop from Cho’s flashback, was the head of the 1st Division until halfway through the episode. However Fugou Keiji did a lot of preparation for that reveal, introducing him as the 1st Division head first and then his young self before merging the two. Using him and his position as both an anchor and our major indication that time has passed and people have moved on. It also places an opponent for our leads, someone gunning for Daisuke, in a position of power. Simultaneously tempting Kato/Cho while making Daisuke’s life difficult.
Meanwhile the murder plot inside the flashback was no slouch either. From the beginning Fugou Keiji did a good job of making it seem suspicious in all the right ways. Presenting it as a robbery/murder, while cleverly setting us against the police rather than the culprit. From the beginning it was made clear that the higher ups were hiding something, as solving her murder was never the episodes focus. Along the way we also got to see more of Cho’s rebellious streak, stealing photo albums, the key, etc. It was great work showing how invested Cho and Takei were in the whole thing. Only for the higher ups to wrap it all up in a nice little bow with Shigemaru’s, Daisuke’s father, apparent suicide. I say apparent though because we all know what really happened. He was murdered, the question being why and by who.
This brings us to Daisuke, finally revealing his motivation for joining the police force to begin with. He isn’t in it to play cop or enjoy himself. He joined specifically to pursue his mothers murderer, to find out what happened to her and why. Just so happening to land in the same division as the lead investigator and his boss’s department. It adds a new layer, a new way to look at all of Daisuke’s old scenes. Suddenly what looks like him just playing at being a cop, at throwing money around without a care is… still that, but now in a story relevant way. I really can’t understate how good of a job I think Fugou Keiji is doing with this transition, this slow rolled murder mystery. Obviously there are places it could improve, but for what I originally thought would be a gag-comedy, its turned out well.
This brings me to both my favorite, and most disappointing, part of the episode: lines of battle. Fugou Keiji did a lot of work this episode shifting things around. Previously it was Cho investigating Daisuke, with Kato torn between. But now we have Daisuke/Kato/Cho up against Takei’s investigation, all of them wrapped up in the Kambe family itself. It’s a classic 3 way conflict where each side could easily get in the others way. Incriminating each other, saving each other, etc. The Kambe family could lean on Takei through his superiors while Takei is superior to Kato/Cho while Daisuke goes to war inside the Kambe family itself. There is loads of potential intrigue and conflict here, plenty for the 4 episodes remaining and then some. And then Fugou Keiji had to go and disappointment with the ending.
Simply put, I think the ending of this episode was rushed. It wasn’t bad, the core concept behind the whole thing is fantastic. The ending lines asking if Takei became a father he could be proud of resonated beautifully with the opening flashback between Cho and Takei. However I think Fugou Keiji rushed it, that it needed a few more episodes to stew. Let Takei get into conflict with our leads, let him butt heads with Kato and Cho. Build up what their relationship is like all these years down the line, introduce us to Takei’s struggle between his position and his sense of justice. Then, once all of that is coming to head, and only then should you drop that ending line. Because of how rushed Fugou Keiji was to deliver the emotional catharsis it lacked a lot of the weight it otherwise could have had.
On top of that, I simply didn’t enjoy the VR reveal. I like Fugou Keiji’s ridiculousness when it is used for gags. Things like the aforementioned boy-band and such are great moments of levity and do wonders for the tone. But when that ridiculousness is used in a serious way like this, it just falls flat. The VR sim was so out there and fantastical that it completely took me out of the otherwise serious crime drama we have going on. It also blurs the line on who exactly the “good guys” are. As we see that both Kato and Cho consented to this, consented to gassing a man and running through some of his most private memories. It not only stretches believability in the setting, but in our characters. And without any of the setup of Daisuke convincing them to do this, it comes off as cheap.
So all in all, how was this episode of Fugou Keiji? At its core, I really enjoyed. I think there is a lot to like in this show and that the core drama is well done. When Fugou Keiji is on and firing on all cylinders its a fantastic crime drama with loads of moving parts in its story. But every now and then it indulges itself a bit to much. It loses track of its narrative, of its tone, and in its quest for some fun and levity ends up hurting its serious drama. I don’t think Fugou Keiji is going to fail, I fully expect to enjoy it until the end. But every time something like this comes up I cant help but think “This could have been Anime of the Year”. Maybe it still can. We still have 4 episodes left after all.
