Seven-o are investigating the hospital where Doug is kept, in an episode that has left me completely uninterested, yet angry. Brace yourselves for a bumpy ride.

Plot

Doug is in the hospital. He is injured, so he’s taking this opportunity to have a well-deserved break and refuses to fill in his paperwork so that he is unable to come back to work. Kirill is on his case and constantly tries to convince him to get it done, when some weird kid shows up and asks him to sleep with him for money, thinking he is a woman. Apparently, the kid is doing this with every woman he sees, and somehow this is connected to his father being ill… but we’ll get to that later. Yes, the kid’s dad is ill. In the meantime, Pink and Kay turn up to investigate a case of ex-patients of the hospital turning up to be Anthem users recently found dead. The doctor denies any involvement and expresses his interest in researching the medicinal potential of the drug; Kirill casually mentions that he has full knowledge of the genetics behind how Anthem works and Pink and Kay are naturally shocked. Back at the headquarters, Kirill explains that he used to study genetic and once wrote a pretty major paper on bioengineering, but, you know, then he became a cop and stuff, cause he’s old enough to have done all these things. Sigh.

Back in the hospital; Kirill finds the kid sleeping in the park and takes him home. The kid has some sort of miserable sniveling story about his dad dying and nobody cares but for some reason Kirill’s sister and her boss show up and they all have dinner together, along with his landlord… huh? Kirill meets with Doug and finds out an ex-patient is loose and currently on overdrive. They hunt him down; eventually convince him to tell him where he got the Anthem from – unsurprisingly, it was the hospital doctor interested in Anthem. Upon their arrival at the hospital, they find him trying to convince the kid’s dad to take Anthem, and he’s lying next to a curtain that’s hiding a bunch of Anthem users with distorted bodies; boy that must be a good sound-muffling curtain that is. Dad doesn’t take the Anthem, doctor gets his ass kicked, end of story. Nobody cares.

Episode Highlights

I am now about to nag: So, brace yourselves, darlings. What the heck was this episode. I have to focus on the kid’s behavior (no, I do not know his name). He casually walks around trying to pay women he never met to sleep with him. The fact that his dad is ill justifies his appalling behavior, somehow, because being abusive if you are going through a hard time is OKAY! If your dad is ill, it’s okay to treat all women like objects to be purchased in order to cheer him up, because god forbid daddy dies without a hot chick! The dad is not worried. He’s proud! His son walks around waving money at the face of strange women and this is supposed to be cute/funny/anything other than worrisome.

Pseudo-progressivism: I have in the past mentioned that I find this show to be progressive in the way it portrays the LGBTQ community. I am taking that back. I don’t know if I should even talk about Kirill dressing up as a bride to please the dying dad and how ridiculously cheesy that was, but let’s just focus on something the kid says to Kirill: ‘You don’t only look like a girl, you also act like one’. What the hell. I’m not sure if I need to chew this down in the way shower gel commercials have, but really? Is that the progressivism of the show? Homosexual couples, non-binary and trans characters, and all with a low-key tone of misogynistic discrimination? In its current state, the show is sending mixed messages – on one hand, they are portraying their fictional society as egalitarian, on the other, a kid’s discriminating behavior is seen as adorable because of his dying father. I can’t help but then think that the characters of the show are simply being tokenized. And I am not impressed.

The hospital: Oh, so we’re gonna do one of these episodes where there’s a hospital and there’re experiments, and there’s this doctor character that seems okay, but wait! He’s actually the villain, genuinely evil, he is, trying to subscribe illicit substances to his patients… Never seen this setup before, this is completely new information, oh yes.

Kirill is a genius: Hey did you know that Doug’s partner is not dead, it’s his other partner that’s dead, and they were a kid, yeah, and Kirill’s sister, she’s actually alive, and you know what – she’s a crossdresser, yeah! And Kirill studied genetical engineering but he’s been quiet about it because that’s totally like Kirill who can’t shut the fuck up about anything AND works in a place that basically deals with users of a substance that causes genetic mutations! Let’s add more useless things to the script that do not originate from OR go anywhere!

I don’t care:  I don’t know how to verbally emphasize on this – I couldn’t care less about that horrible, horrible kid’s character. Your mom died? I don’t care. Your dad couldn’t get laid all his life because he was trying to raise you? I don’t care. You are acting like a douche because of all this? I-DON’T-CARE. I just don’t. There is no buildup, no passion, no empathy, and I don’t care about what happened or happens to you. I sure do hope that you’re not getting anymore screen time though.

Doug: Honestly, best part of the whole damn episode. Doug walking around the hospital dressed in his hospital gown, taking the chill-pill, not giving two shits about work. Thanks Doug. Thanks for being true and easy. Cause that’s all we know how to process, after all.

Nope

Sorry, no.

How did you find this Double Decker: Doug & Kirill episode? Let us know in the comment section. And don’t forget to check the rest of the Fall 2018 anime reviews on MANGA.TOKYO!

Double Decker! Doug & Kirill

Fall 2018 | Anime Info | Simulcast