Anime Midnight Matinee: Fuuto PI Portrait of Kamen Rider Skull! Ooo, I’m kind of excited to try this movie out. Though I’m not well versed in the Kamen Rider universe, and I don’t follow the live action stories in this series, I really liked the anime Fuuto PI, and I’m hoping the movie addition to this series will be just as fun as the anime. For all the Kamen Rider super fans out there, sorry if it sounds like I’m missing the point in my movie review! I liked the anime Fuuto PI not because of the transforming super hero elements, I just like the PI and detective story parts. Lol, like I said, I’m not exactly a Kamen Rider fan. So coming from the very biased, not very educated or experienced point of view of a non fan, let’s see how this transforming super hero movie compares to the anime that I like for all the other parts! First Impressions!The animation is really good! There are some scenes that the animation is particularly smooth and detailed. Very impressive. I also really like the story. It has a lot of the detective elements that I liked from the original series. Yeah, there’s plenty of transformations into a super hero, and those were fine, but the detective parts were really good. I really liked the mentor character in the story Mr. Narumi, he is like the classic hard boiled detective from a 1920’s detective novel. Every little detail of this character was great for detective stories fans, from the fedora hats he loved to his impeccable suits to his gravelly voice. The StoryI really like how this story was presented. This movie is really more of a pre-qual to the anime series rather than a continuation, but it’s framed as a narration. The main character of the anime series, Shotaro is sitting on the docks of Fuuto city telling his assistant Tokime about how he became Kamen Rider. Then most of the story is actually a flash back of his childhood and teen years when he met a detective that saved his life from a monster attack and he soon became obsessed with becoming the down and out detective’s assistant. It took years of determination, but eventually Mr. Narumi accepted him as an assistant. But Shotaro could tell that Narumi was definitely keeping him at a distance and not trusting him completely. As Shotaro was trying to win Narumi’s trust and acceptance the city they both loved and wanted to protect was being attacked by more and more monsters. Finally one day Shotaro comes into the detective’s office to find that Narumi is gone. The office gets a phone call and Shotaro learns that Narumi is on a big and dangerous case and left him behind! And even worse, Narumi also left without his “Secret Weapon” as the mysterious caller called it. So Shotaro grabs the case that the secret weapon is supposed to be in and chases after Narumi, with the hopes of helping. Of course, considering that Shotaro’s super cool detective mentor isn’t with him anymore, clearly things don’t go according to plan after Shotaro catches up to Narumi, but there are plenty of monster fights, evil villains, and damsels to rescue! In ConclusionThis was a great detective movie with lots of intrigue, a very cool detective, and some very good fights too. If you’re a fan of detective anime I would definitely recommend this one. That being said, it honestly could have more mystery in it. The minor plot twists weren’t very surprising, and it really felt like more mysteries could have been added so it was more like the anime series. I guess they trimmed the mystery stuff to add in more super hero stuff, which was fine, but I kind of wanted them to lean more into the detective story. But other than my totally biased want for a little more mystery, it was a solid movie with a good story, great characters, and excellent animation! #anime #detectiveAnime #fuutoPiKamenRider #Japan #JapaneseCulture #movieReview #paranormalAnime