Category: Lupin III – Mine Fujiko to Iu Onna

Lupin III The Woman Called Fujiko Mine – 4 [Vissi d’arte, Vissi d’amore]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Lupin III - Mine Fujiko to Iu Onna

Whew, its been a long wait since my last post on Fujiko Mine, but I have an excuse, I promise. I’ll let you know what it is when I think of it. In the meantime, this episode on Fujiko Mine we see the return of Lupin and Zenigata in a story straight out off the stage! So lets dive right in.

Right off the bat, this episode was nothing like what I was expecting. I figured we would start to see some team-ups, and in a way we got that with Lupin’s return. However the primary focus seemed instead to be on Zenigata and getting him properly introduced to the plot. We met him before of course, all the way back in episode one, but this is our first proper look at him. And what a look it is. This is easily the most misogynistic episode of anime I have seen in awhile, and I can’t tell if Fujiko Mine did it on purpose. So many of Zenigata’s interactions with Fujiko were demeaning or sexual in nature, really just nailing her with sexist jokes/actions over and over. There is probably something in there about lust vs love, considering the episodes topic, but Fujiko Mine really laid it on thick here.

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Lupin III The Woman Called Fujiko Mine – 3 [The Lady and the Samurai]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Lupin III - Mine Fujiko to Iu Onna

Welcome to episode 3 of The Woman Called Fujiko Mine! Apologies for the wait on this one. This is the only series I dont have a schedule for so I want to wait to write until I know what to write, if that makes sense. This week, just as I predicted this week we meet Ishikawa Goemon, get a fun train heist and just a liiiiitle bit of romance. Just a tad, I promise. So without further ado, lets dive in!

Starting off, lets talk Goemon, because this man is a complete and total Chuunibyou. The way he acts and over-dramatizes everything, taking it far stricter than the situation calls for, is fun. The way he cuts into the mountain, or does a dramatic flourish as he cuts a hole in the top of the train. He just amps everything up to 11, almost as if just to look cool. But what makes it work is that Goemon himself seems unaware of this. He takes it all incredibly seriously with a great degree of sincerity. And the best part is that unlike a vast majority of the Chuuni archetype, he actually has the skills to back it up. One could argue this disqualifies him from being a Chuuni at all, but for the sake of quick descriptions I think it still fits. Overall, he’s a fun character in this wacky series.

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Lupin III The Woman Called Fujiko Mine – 2 [.357 Magnum]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Lupin III - Mine Fujiko to Iu Onna

Its time for another episode of The Woman Called Fujiko Mine! I have to say, its nice to not be on a rigid schedule for once. No weekly showings or anything, just watching and writing when I have the time. Enough about me though, you came here for some Lupin, so lets dive right into it!

Getting into the actual episode, this week we meet Jigen Daisuke, the gunman! I was a bit surprised it wasn’t a follow up involving Lupin in some way. However it looks like rather than following Lupin and Fujiko as a pair, Fujiko Mine is more geared towards Fujiko herself. So she is going to be running the show as we run around meeting all of the core characters of the Lupin III franchise. I am curious then if next week we are going to meet Goemon, or if it will stick to this core trio. We still have plenty of show left to meet the rest of the cast, we are only 2 episodes in. So I think it would be best if Fujiko Mine focused on fleshing out the ones we have now. Either way though I am looking forward to it.

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Lupin III: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine – 1 [Master Thief vs. Lady Looter]

by Lenlo, posted in Currently Watching:, Lupin III - Mine Fujiko to Iu Onna

Welcome all to a very irregular segment for The Woman Called Fujiko Mine. Because of how small this season was, I wanted to fill in our coverage a bit, and thought it was a good opportunity to watch something that’s been on my list for awhile now. And heads up, this series is going to be irregular just as I watch it, so I hope you stick with me, as we watch some Lupin!

Right out the gate, my goodness was that an unexpected amount of titty. I always thought Lupin III was a more… childish show to be frank. An old classic detective show, something more in the Disney style. I assumed things like Goemon’s Spray of Blood being the black sheep of the series. Turns out that was just par for the course, as Fujiko Mine opens with incredible style. Lots of heavy shading and crosshatching, disguising CGI with said shading while at the same time keeping Lupin’s classic character design. The long story short is that Fujiko Mine looks good, like really good. I think Fujiko’s tits are a bit to large myself and show seems to really revel in that sexuality. However overall it visually looked fantastic. I can only hope it keeps this up moving forward because its a nice breath of fresh air in this current season.

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Lupin III – Mine Fujiko to Iu Onna Review – 86/100

by psgels, posted in Anime Reviews, Lupin III - Mine Fujiko to Iu Onna



As the spring season approached, it seemed clear what would be the series with the most interesting staff working behind it: Sakamichi no Apollon, the director of Cowboy Bebop coming back after many years of absence to work with some of Madhouse’s top animators and the always lovely music from Yoko Kanno. And then a new Lupin series got announced.

Seriously, the people involved in this project: it’s directed by Sayo Yamamoto, who directed Michiko e Hatchin, the scriptwriting powerhouse of the recent years Mari Okada wrote the series composition, Shinichiro Watanabe (the same director of Cowboy Bebop) did the music production, Takeshi Koike is behind the character-designs, and on top of them there are some episodes written by Dai Sato (the guy who wrote Ergo Proxy and Eureka Seven) and Junji Nishimura, the director of Simoun. All of these people are responsible for masterpieces, and here they were stuffed into one single project. The result is a breath of fresh air.

Now, I do have to admit one thing:: the influence of all of them is clearly visible, but don’t expect any of them to surpass themselves here. Mine Fujiko to Iu Onna is far from as good as the series that these people became known for. When you set the standard lower and compare it to the series that have come out in the recent years though, it really stands out as something unique that anime definitely needed.

This series just oozes style from beginning to end. The character-designs are just gorgeous and every episode is just chock full of inspired images and artwork that go completely against the trend of current anime. There is a TON of nudity in this series, but the fanservice is completely different from the juvenile fanservice you see in all the other shows these days.

This series is really focused on adventures, just like the Lupin series it’s based on. This time though, the one who stands in the center is Mine Fujiko. The episodes are all varied and very different from each other, and they all are chock full of references and homages to other works of fiction that use often-used female character tropes, which it then proceeds to subvert completely. Seriously, the huge amounts of boob in this series may not make it so apparent, but Mine Fujiko is a very strong and independent character.

Beyond this, this series is also a whole lot of fun to watch: there are some episodes that have great chase scenes, others have great action scenes, yet others are much more focused on well written dialogues and yet again others thrive on using weird plot twists. It’s a really well made series.

There are a few things that do hold this series back though. First of all there are the character-designs in this series: they look gorgeous and really detailed. But they also are really hard to animate consistently, and yet, the creators definitely try to animate as much as they can. The result is unfortunately a lot of jerky movements and facial movements that just look off or strange.

The second is that this series has little character-development, but that’s just a minor issue. The creativity that went into the characters and their re-imaginations, complete with how they play off each other more than makes up for this. This is why I love remakes for anime: a lot of them are really made by fans of the franchise who don’t care about trying to recreate them as accurately as possible, but want to give their own spin to them, and Mine Fujiko to u Onna is no different. the more I write about this series, the more complete it starts to feel, and that’s a sign of a really good series.

Storytelling: 8.5/10 – Loads of variety and a bunch of great scripts that come together really well.
Characters: 8.5/10 – The characters are used really well and play off each other wonderfully. This excuses the sometimes jerky acting more than enough.
Production-Values: 9/10 – Very artistic and unique. The art is where this series set itself apart among the many shows with gorgeous graphics this season.
Setting: 8.5/10 – Where this series rocks is how there is so much to be read in between the lines. It’s a homage and a parody at the same time, and it references a wide variety of different works and uses this really well.

Suggestions:
– Michiko e Hatchin
– Seikimatsu Occult Gakuin
– Ultraviolet: Code 044

Lupin III – Mine Fujiko to Iu Onna – 13

by psgels, posted in Lupin III - Mine Fujiko to Iu Onna

So, what did Lupin decide to end with? With an exposition episode. I really expected an epic action-packed episode instead, but this works too, even though it’s a kind of ending that’s very easy to screw up by rushing through things way too much, or turning the story into something completely different.

This episode was slightly rushed, and it actually was completely different from the rest of the series, but it worked. I like the balls of the creators to go with an anti-climax like this: throughout the enitre series we’ve seen it established over and over again that Mine Fujiko was abused and raped as a childBut no, she was just brainwashed at some point and she had always been a thief like she is now. It’s awesome to see that the creators had the balls to go with such a creative ending, rather than going with the most obvious type of ending and I really appreciate this creativity.

So in the end, we still know very little about who Mine Fujiko really is, but she doesn’t have a ham-handed backstory that screams “pity me!”, and instead we’ve got a main villain with one heck of a messed up backstory. The ending was pretty much a “life goes on”-ending with Mine Fujiko getting revenge on the girl that kept her brainwashed for years, her mother is left behind in her own castle without her daughter, Oscar disappeared, and everyone else pretty much ends up doing what they’ve been doing all along. Normally I’m not too fond of these types of endings, but here they strangely fit: Lupin is a series about adventures, and this series was just a small sample of the places that these people go to. Best ending of the season so far? I’d say so.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Lupin III – Mine Fujiko to Iu Onna- 12

by psgels, posted in Lupin III - Mine Fujiko to Iu Onna

Now this was good. This was a completely trippy episode that had even more visual symbolism than usual. It was both gorgeous, fun and disturbing to watch. It’s in this arc in which we finally get to see the full extent of the trauma that Mine Fujiko had to endure. While all at the same time Mari Okada is on a roll again with bringing her beloved Oscar back on top of introducing yet another person dressing as Mine Fujiko. Dressing up really is a large theme in this series, especially considering how often Fujiko dresses up as someone else.

One thing I’ve noticed is that blogging this series turned out to be more difficult than imagined, mostly because I don’t have much to say about the individual episodes. They really are things to be experienced and there are a lot of very imaginative pieces of art amongst them, and this episode was the same. Just watch this trip.

I do have to say though that the final third of this series is without a doubt its best. It’s filled with imaginative and meaningful episodes that all attempt to be really creative in all kinds of ways: script, setting, theme, mood. And they’re all completely different. The variety between them is great.\It’s here where this series gets much more cohesive, and it really fits this series better than the random stories of the first half of the series.
Rating: *** (Awesome)

Lupin III – Mine Fujiko to Iu Onna – 11

by psgels, posted in Lupin III - Mine Fujiko to Iu Onna

This was another Mari Okada episode. And one impression I’ve gotten after watching this episode is that she really likes Oscar. This was the second episode devoted to him and his crush on Zenigata. Whenever this show focuses on Oscar it suddenly gets so full of shoujo-vibes, completely different from the rest of this series. It’s great for variety’s sake, not to mention that we actually have a bisexual character in a series where the rest of the cast is just straight.

Having said that though, I do have to point out that the end of the episode suffered from one huge flaw in Oscar’s logic: why jump along with that bomb? I mean, couldn’t you just… drop it or something? Right now, his end is basically that he was trying to be someone who impressed inspector Zenigata, he got indirectly rejected and couldn’t bear this so he committed suicide. Was that the image the creators were going for? Still, I liked this episode a lot again. Perhaps also due to this shoujo vibe it had.

The animation by the way also really improved over this episode. This episode finally had some smooth animation again, plus the artistic direction also was at its best again. The smoke effects in particular had some really good animation, so I’m glad that the producers still managed to find enough budget to pay some attention to inbetween animation. On top of that this episode took place in Paris. Having been in Paris a month ago, it really hit home how they portrayed it. Although obviously all hints of commercialization were removed.
Rating: ** (Excellent)

Lupin III – Mine Fujiko to Iu Onna – 10

by psgels, posted in Lupin III - Mine Fujiko to Iu Onna

This was another episode written by Dai Sato, and really: his influence is all over it and I am reminded again why he is one of the top scriptwriters out there. I’ve really missed him: Norageki had his ideas, but not his writing style, while the Tekken movie felt like he was forced to be generic. Here though, he got lots of freedom to tell Mine Fujiko’s backstory. The result is one of the best episodes of this show so far.

This was dark and surreal, and it had a great script that explored Mine Fujiko’s past without having her even in it. I love how it was non-linear on purpose, revealing a bit each time with different images and references, including Hegel of all people. It’s a great way to meet the owl baron as well, and this episode also built further upon episodes 1 and 6. It all comes together wonderfully at the end. Serioulsy Dai Sato needs to write another series. Get him to do some sort of Noitamina series or something. He can make something awesome out of that.

This series is probably really different from what the original Lupin III was, but I like that a lot: instead of trying to relive the original it really went into its own way. This doesn’t come without risks, though. The most dangerous is when a remake can’t choose between trying to be faithful or going into its own direction, or when it doesn’t really have anything impressive to add. Mine Fujiko to Iu Onna isn’t going to win the best of the season award, but it still had plenty of noteworthy things and is another addition to the collection of great remakes.
Rating: **+ (Excellent+)

Lupin III – Mine Fujiko to Iu Onna – 09

by psgels, posted in Lupin III - Mine Fujiko to Iu Onna

So, this episode was nearly entirely dedicated to one big chase scene. It showed Mine Fujiko in a completely different state than usual, making Lupin the good guy to root for for once and making a very big change to the dynamic of this show. Like expected this episode properly starts the finale of this series, but I’m surprised that it’s not centered around the assholes who abused Mine Fujiko, but rather about her feelings themselves and how her past still haunts her.

The one thing I noticed with this series is that it isn’t the easiest series to blog. This series’ strength doesn’t exactly lie in its depth, but rather it’s style, and beyond that it’s just a really enjoyable adventure series that bothers to be different, but I don’t have as much to say about it compared to other series. So yeah, that’s why this entry is rather short.
Rating: ** (Excellent)