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EP. REVIEW: Double Decker! Doug & Kirill


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Gina Szanboti



Joined: 03 Aug 2008
Posts: 11306
PostPosted: Fri Oct 26, 2018 12:43 am Reply with quote
Well, he's actually the Boss, but I'm not sure if he was actually Zabel or not. He said Zabel was dead, but I assumed he meant that metaphorically, in that he no longer had to play that role. Or also, that they put Ricky in his 813 clothes and burned him, so 813, aka Zabel is now dead.

What I understood was that A broke his ankle when he was arrested, but then was later released and disappeared. That's when Zabel supposedly killed A. But I think A killed Zabel (or rather, had B do it) and took his identity, but then got busted again (by then his old injury, apparently well tended by the government way back when, had healed just fine, but he used the cane to hide the sword, and make himself look more helpless). With Ricky on the inside, being locked up wasn't such a big deal, he could still communicate with B and enforce his commands through him. But being executed would be a problem, so they devised all this for him to escape.

I think the body they found was Zabel, who at some point got a plate added to his leg, pre or post mortem, doesn't matter (well, it would to actual forensic investigators, but never mind) to make him appear to be A.

Does that work? Or am I missing something glaringly obvious?
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Agent355



Joined: 12 Dec 2008
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 26, 2018 12:59 am Reply with quote
^You're probably right, I just didn't catch all that detail when I watched it. I don't know why I thought Esperanza would put all that effort into an escape plan for low-level Zabel, but if he was actually A in disguise it makes sense.
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Gina Szanboti



Joined: 03 Aug 2008
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 26, 2018 3:57 am Reply with quote
The other thing is that the person we knew as Zabel said he killed A to make B the Boss, but at the end we saw that B was still happily subordinate to Zabel. So either Zabel was really A, or Zabel killed A to make himself Boss. I think the former makes more sense.
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Yttrbio
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Joined: 09 Jun 2011
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PostPosted: Fri Oct 26, 2018 8:45 am Reply with quote
Alternatively, the whole "A to Z is their ranking in the internal structure" thing was just totally nonsense. It feels like something the show would do.
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Agent355



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PostPosted: Mon Oct 29, 2018 3:36 pm Reply with quote
What the hell is the show trying to do with Kirill's sister?!

First and foremost, I hate the tonal whiplash of Kirill being completely sincere about how much he wants to find his sister while the show treats it like a joke. Doug being motivated by his first partner's death at the hands of Esperanza isn't treated as a joke and Kirill's trauma shouldn't be,

I found the bait-and-switch scene positively painful to watch. So much so, that I kept putting it on pause. At one point, I went on Twitter and wrote: "Why does this anime torture Kirill?!" Checking other people's responses to the episode, I was spoiled that Kirill's sister is biologically male. When I saw the scene myself, I was even more confused---are they implying that this is a man posing as Kirill's sister? Or that Kirill's sister is transgender and Kirill just didn't know that? What's the significance of their name not being "Milla" but "Valerie"? If anything, Valerie is a more feminine name than Millla! Milla I could imagine as nickname for a longer a masculine Russian or Eastern European name.

And the last name is still the same--are they Kirill's cousin or something? Why do they hide from security cameras---do they have a criminal past? Associated with the wrong people? Just so many questions.

On the positive end, I loved the Cops parody and Kirill's reaction to gaining some fame (even with a mosaic'ed face!) And I think that drunk was on to something---is this a two sunned parallel universe? An alien planet? Maybe their whole world is a reality show and they're unaware of it---the Truman Show on a societal scale. That would be a great twist!
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Brack



Joined: 15 Oct 2005
Posts: 281
Location: UK
PostPosted: Mon Oct 29, 2018 5:08 pm Reply with quote
Worth noting the drunk man's story is similar to the plot twist of another Sunrise anime that Double Decker! can trace its lineage to spoiler[namely Big O].

Not sure if that's just a joke or foreshadowing.
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AA751



Joined: 13 Nov 2017
Posts: 72
PostPosted: Mon Oct 29, 2018 5:30 pm Reply with quote
For anyone curious about the name reveal. Vrubal is a Russian name. Kirill and Valery are male slavic Russian names. Milla is a slavic female name.

So when Kirill sibling says he's Valery...that's a male name. It's not feminine like Valerie in the west.
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Agent355



Joined: 12 Dec 2008
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 29, 2018 6:07 pm Reply with quote
AA751 wrote:
For anyone curious about the name reveal. Vrubal is a Russian name. Kirill and Valery are male slavic Russian names. Milla is a slavic female name.

So when Kirill sibling says he's Valery...that's a male name. It's not feminine like Valerie in the west.

Thank you! I appreciate your clarification---I was not familiar with any of the names except Mila (and the women I know named Mila use it as a nickname).
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SHD



Joined: 05 Apr 2015
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PostPosted: Mon Oct 29, 2018 6:49 pm Reply with quote
Agent355 wrote:
First and foremost, I hate the tonal whiplash of Kirill being completely sincere about how much he wants to find his sister while the show treats it like a joke. Doug being motivated by his first partner's death at the hands of Esperanza isn't treated as a joke and Kirill's trauma shouldn't be,

Or perhaps it's you taking this way too seriously. Kirill's angsty backstory is so by-the-numbers and so obviously a set-up to both Kirill being in the story at all and a potential character arc for him, that it would be seriously eyeroll-worthy if it was treated seriously - if you watched Tiger & Bunny you should remember how the entire fandom treated Barnaby's backstory as a joke, making fun of it, using it for memes, etc., even though it was treated as dead serious by the show, because it was just so terribly unoriginal and tropey. (People only started taking it seriously when certain revelations happened re: Barnaby's memories.) So in Kirill's case, that other characters keep tuning out whenever he starts going on about it, or that it suddenly gets (seemingly) resolved halfway into the story in the most banal way imaginable, etc. are instances of the show being very honest and self-aware about riding Trope Train and subverting those tropes wherever it can. Also, Kirill in general is not treated very seriously, I mean his whole character is kind of a joke most of the time.

And re: Doug's backstory... you think so? For one, the entire "his old partner is dead!" thing turned out to be a joke when Kirill learned that actually Derick was totally alive - only for it to end up as another joke when it turns out that Doug does actually have a dead partner. And sure, the show did get serious at one point about that, except that scene ended with Kirill headbutting Doug and basically stealing the scene. Also, the title of the next episode that is ostensibly about Doug's revenge is a pun (instead of "ware ni ari" ie. "revenge is mine" it says "wari ni are" which is along the lines of "sorta lame" although it's difficult to translate without context) that is not-too-subtly hinting that it might just not be entirely serious, either.

Agent355 wrote:
--are they implying that this is a man posing as Kirill's sister? Or that Kirill's sister is transgender and Kirill just didn't know that?

It's Kirill's sister (or brother, or whatever). As for their gender situation, when the reveal happens they're in the men's room and Valery uses "ore" (a very masculine pronoun) and refers to Valery as their "real name"... actually, come to think of it we never actually saw "Milla" wearing stereotypically feminine clothes in Kirill's flashbacks. So regardless of their gender orientation, I think the actual question is why was Valery "Milla" for all those years and not the other way around.
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#alfrescoCR



Joined: 13 Jan 2017
Posts: 172
PostPosted: Mon Oct 29, 2018 7:17 pm Reply with quote
Brack wrote:
Worth noting the drunk man's story is similar to the plot twist of another Sunrise anime that Double Decker! can trace its lineage to spoiler[namely Big O].

Not sure if that's just a joke or foreshadowing.

it's a good reference, same writers, same studio, i like it. And kirill even mentioned they have two suns.
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Denys Lalande



Joined: 28 Jan 2018
Posts: 88
PostPosted: Mon Oct 29, 2018 9:49 pm Reply with quote
[sigh] And in all of this, No One seems to be noticing the headlines on the newspapers. (I won't go into specifics, but: Go back through the episodes so far, and read the headlines of the stories in the newspapers. Notice a couple of themes developing?)

Couple that to:

-- Apollon Media being a Reality TV Maker (both here, and in _T&B_), and;
-- the drunk guy's comments about where he came from

and one starts to wonder: "Is this the Real Life? Is this just Fantasy?" >;)
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SHD



Joined: 05 Apr 2015
Posts: 1752
PostPosted: Tue Oct 30, 2018 2:15 am Reply with quote
Denys Lalande wrote:
[sigh] And in all of this, No One seems to be noticing the headlines on the newspapers. (I won't go into specifics, but: Go back through the episodes so far, and read the headlines of the stories in the newspapers. Notice a couple of themes developing?)

Couple that to:

-- Apollon Media being a Reality TV Maker (both here, and in _T&B_), and;
-- the drunk guy's comments about where he came from

and one starts to wonder: "Is this the Real Life? Is this just Fantasy?" >Wink

Not no-one... Razz And to add to the list there's also some of Travis' lines, particularly the one about how "they" from above wanted to see more of the other characters (in episode 3), etc. Generally there might just be a bit more to the show's self-awareness than it seems.
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#HayamiLover



Joined: 22 Jul 2018
Posts: 796
Location: Eastern Europe
PostPosted: Tue Oct 30, 2018 6:06 am Reply with quote
Quote:
Double Decker has seemed to be decently LGBTQ-friendly on the surface so far, winkingly shipping several of its main power-couples together and playing up their romantic chemistry


I very much doubt that the material for slash shipping can be called LGBTQ-friendly content. With the same logic, you can call Senran Kagura a feminist show because of a strong female MC.
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RubyRed



Joined: 17 Aug 2017
Posts: 31
PostPosted: Tue Oct 30, 2018 10:51 am Reply with quote
Honestly, the only episode of D&K I've found interesting so far was last week's. The show spends way too much time mocking Kirill and shoving Doug's "awesome detective skills" in our faces, imo. I thought ep. 5 finally helped the narrative break out of that mould and portray Kirill as something other than a total joke, but this week's episode completely went back on that promise.

I'm definitely going to keep watching until the end (unless the writers decide to pull a Seikaisuru Kado on us or something), but I'm now certain that I'll never like this as much as T&B (which wasn't one of my favourite anime or anything, but still much more entertaining and emotionally engaging than this try-too-hard buddy cop show).
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SHD



Joined: 05 Apr 2015
Posts: 1752
PostPosted: Mon Nov 05, 2018 4:47 pm Reply with quote
Quote:
But then the episode pushes things too far, having Travis explain that virtually all of Doug's mannerisms and motivations are tied up in this singular origin story of one girl getting killed.

As far as Travis is a reliable source of information, anyway... For one, he kept peppering his story with "probably" which could be because he didn't personally know Doug at the time, or it could be part of, well, something else. I don't really have any proof for anything so I'm not going to push any theory, but I'm just saying, this wouldn't be the first time that Travis sounds kind of "off" to me.

Anyway, I was a bit surprised that the story was played out seriously, but I liked it - a pretty traditional story but with enough individuality and leaning into things to carry it. I also liked that Doug would have killed the guy had the gun not misfired, after all his talk of not being out for revenge I like the show confirming that in fact he totally was, and it took blind luck that it didn't completely consume him. (Also, I can't really get over the fact that he was actually "drinking" with a little girl during these 8 years. I know it was just a misdirection/joke, but just the idea of Doug being so completely out of touch cracks me up.)

Not related to the show itself but I watched this episode with subs, and I was really weirded out by the translator relying on "them" to obfuscate Pat's gender. That is, every character who talked about Pat either knew that she was a girl (most everyone), or thought she was a man (Kirill and the information seller guy), and yet every time anyone used a pronoun it was "them" instead of "she" or "he". Is this a thing in English now or was this just the translator going way too far to preserve a surprise, at the expense of naturally flowing dialogue and characterization? (I mean, does Good-Looking Joe come across to anyone as the sort of guy who would care about potentially misgendering someone?)

And sure, the twist in the story was that Pat was a little girl, but the emphasis is on her being a young child, not that she was female, so if the translator was going out of their way to avoid giving that away I really don't think it was a good idea. I mean, the reveal would have worked just as well with characters who knew the story using "she" - Doug could have had an adult woman as a partner, he could have been drinking whiskey in her memory, etc.
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