Double Decker: Doug and Kiril is from the same studio and creative team who brought us Tiger and Bunny – a series that I’ve only seen in part, back when Neon Alley was a Thing That Existed. So, I can say, with a degree of confidence, that you need to know nothing about Tiger & Bunny to get into this series.

Also, it’s a series that has a plot twist that comes even more out of nowhere than the plot twist and general escalation in Darling in the Franxx.

The series is set in the city-state of Lisvaletta and follows Seven-0, a special branch of the city’s narcotics division tasked with stopping the spread of a new drug called Anthem. Now, the drug has a 70-80% chance of painfully killing users stone-dead, but the other 20-30% of users instead get superpowers, which is enough to get people to roll the dice.

Thus, the Seven-0 branch gets a whole bunch of special equipment to fight super-powered individuals without being super-powered themselves, including a serum that can counteract the effects of Anthem.

Our protagonists are the title characters. Doug is a grizzled veteran who fits almost every aspect of that archetype (as the show’s smart-ass narrator mentions, he’s kind of an asshole).

Kiril is a wet-behind-the-ears rookie who is looking for his missing sister, and who is kind of a doofus. He also ends up serving as our audience perspective character, both in terms of having to be brought up to speed about Anthem, along with some other bits of worldbuilding.

The show is not without issues – again, the twist comes almost out of nowhere, to an even worse extent than Darling in the Franxx – so if you, like Geoff of Mother’s Basement, felt that Darling in the Franxx‘s shift was enough to put that show on your Worst of the Year list, you’ll probably want to skip that this show.

Also, while the show tries on the GLBT representation front, it stumbles there. We have an implied lesbian couple, some yaoi-baiting between Doug and Kiril, and an explicitly depicted Trans character who ends up being fridged as part of the backstory for one of the members of Seven-0. That said, the trans character is not played for laughs, and the fridging is done in an unfortunately plausible manner as opposed to being casually murdered by a villain, so there’s that small thing going for it.

All of that in mind, the show is executed well, though it’s one with some cringe-worthy elements. Still, it works, and I enjoyed it enough to be willing to give it a recommendation, though admittedly one that was not without the aforementioned recommendations.

Double Decker: Doug and Kiril hasn’t been licensed for a home video release – but it got a simuldub from Funimation, so it’ll probably get a release from them in the future.

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