Secret Santa Review: Double Decker: Doug & Kirill
The disappointing follow-up to Tiger & Bunny
Welcome to Anime Secret Santa, a gift exchange — founded by our friends at Reverse Thieves and currently run by the Taiiku Podcast — where the gifts are anime review recommendations.
Unless you’re a real seasonal anime sicko or a fan of the superhero anime Tiger & Bunny, you probably haven’t heard of Double Decker: Doug & Kirill, let alone watched it. A 2018 spiritual successor to Sunrise’s 2011 series Tiger & Bunny, Double Decker maintains that show’s buddy action-comedy formula, albeit with a cop show spin this time around. It was never as popular as Tiger & Bunny, and when it cropped up on my Secret Santa’s list of recommendations I barely remembered having heard of it.
As I’m neither a Tiger & Bunny fan nor a sicko — or at least not one of the correct variety — I knew going in that I wasn’t likely to enjoy Double Decker all that much. But Anime Secret Santa is all about being open minded so here goes!
The titular Kirill Vrubel is a dim-witted but enthusiastic beat cop in the future city of Lisvaletta whose primary goal in life is to “become a hero.” He gets his chance during a hostage situation where he meets our other title character, Doug Billingham. In contrast to Kirill’s impulsivity and childish dreams, Doug is a laconic detective burnt out from a long crime-fighting career. The two pull off an unlikely victory, nabbing Kirill a spot in Doug’s anti-drug unit Seven-O. From there the show settles into a series of procedural episodes as the team tracks the dealers and users of a dangerous illegal drug called Anthem that grants its users extraordinary abilities.
A text synopsis doesn’t capture the other important feature of Double Decker: that these are some pretty boys, and this is most certainly a show targeted at the largely female core fanbase of Tiger & Bunny. (One can’t help but wonder whether “Double Decker” refers only to Seven-O’s two-man buddy system, as stated in the show, or something a bit more intimate.) Kirill is slender and effeminate, to the point of being repeatedly mistaken for a woman, while Doug fits into a more masculine “cool guy” archetype. There’s a large female supporting cast as well — the majority of Seven-O are women in fact — and zero fanservice whatsoever involving any of the women. Though there are some moments featuring the boys, including a gag in the first episode where Kirill goes commando. For the mission of course!
All this is to say it’s not exactly a show for fans of hard-boiled detective stories. Early on Double Decker’s narrator cuts in to make fun of Kirill and comment on the show’s tropes, the first of many fourth-wall-breaking asides that litter the show. That’s all well and good, and some of them are pretty funny! But the series never settles into a good comedic rhythm. It semi-frequently dips back into dramatic material about the impact of Anthem on its unsuspecting victims or characters’ backstories, only to undercut the drama with a joke.
Kirill is usually the butt of those jokes, but the “Kirill’s an idiot” gag can only carry the comedy so far, and the rest of the cast rarely elicits more than a light chuckle. There are occasional moments that pull off a good laugh, like an episode in the latter half of the series where Kirill reveals he’s secretly the author of an influential academic paper on Anthem, much to the chagrin of his condescending coworkers. Doug and Kirill have a proper level of personality contrast, with Kirill chasing after the cool and collected Doug like a loyal puppy, but the chemistry never quite arrives, even in the finale when I would expect this kind of show to focus on their growth as partners.
Sunrise’s production is mediocre all around. Fight scenes are minimally animated and perfunctory, the cast members occasionally appear off-model, and — most egregiously of all — hand-drawn characters are frequently replaced with CG models, even when they’re just standing around. I suspect this has to do with the costume designs, which consist of tacky, over-designed, and brightly colored battle jackets worn by the Seven-O team. It’s possible the designs were too much for the team to properly draw week after week on a tight schedule, forcing them to resort to jarring CG replacements.
It all comes off as a bit half-baked. When the series exits its procedural formula to gear up for a climactic ending, it stuffs multiple ludicrous twists into the span of three episodes, including a last-minute villain swap. This leaves the story with no time to establish tone or build up stakes, and ironically makes it more absurd than dramatic, at precisely the point when Double Decker is finally demanding to be taken seriously. Series writer Tomohiro Suzuki has an impressive pedigree, writing scripts for series like Frieren and ACCA: 13-Territory Inspection Department, but this is one of his first original series, and it shows in the sloppy pacing and inconsistent tone.
Double Decker isn’t really made for me in the first place, but even so, this is a real disappointment. More than anything else it’s a vehicle for its two main boys, and your enjoyment will hinge on whether you find their not-quite-a-couple dynamic charming and their character designs appealing. Beyond that it doesn’t really work as either a self-aware genre parody or a cyberpunk police procedural, and suffers for trying to be both of them at the same time.