Review for Lupin the 3rd: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine

Introduction

It’s a matter of some disappointment that for several years, the only exposure UK audiences had to Lupin the Third was through Hayao Miyazaki’s Castle of Cagliostro movie. Don’t get me wrong, it’s a great movie, a family friendly caper with quality animation and attention to detail. But that’s the problem, it’s family friendly, featuring a thief with a heart of gold, and distinctly non-lethal antics from its characters. It can even be shown on television before the watershed. Lupin the Third isn’t a family friendly franchise. The real Lupin the Third is sort of a larcenous James Bond, and it’s a property that isn’t shy of sex, violence and darker storylines. Miyazaki took Lupin and reshaped him to conform to his own sensibilities, and the resulting movie bears little resemblance to the rest of the long running franchise. But we had Cagliostro first, thanks to Manga Entertainment, and then Optimum, and we got used to that vision of Lupin. When Manga Entertainment finally released some more traditional Lupin in the form of the Secret of Mamo movie, I finally got to see what the character was really all about. To be honest, and after being inculcated by Cagliostro, I didn’t think that much of it, not helped by The Secret of Mamo getting pretty psychedelic there at the end.

So when after a 27 year break, Lupin the Third returned to television screens, it remained off my radar. The new series takes a different approach to the story, serving as a prequel of sorts, and telling its tale from the viewpoint of rival thief /occasional sidekick /occasional love interest Fujiko Mine. When Manga Entertainment announced the licence of Lupin the Third: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine, I remained unenthused, and when the review discs turned up, I approached them with reluctance, the nude shot on the packaging once again assuring that this won’t be the family friendly antics that kindly uncle Hayao created. Then I saw the creator credits, and learned that it was directed by Sayo Yamamoto, and the music producer is none other than Shinichiro Watanabe. Watanabe himself is renowned as the director of cooler than cool shows Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo, and Kids on the Slope as well as the forthcoming Space Dandy. Moreover the last time I saw a show that Sayo Yamamoto directed, and Shinichiro Watanabe music produced, it was Michiko and Hatchin. I adored Michiko and Hatchin. All of a sudden I want to see The Woman Called Fujiko Mine more than any other anime in my to-review pile. Admittedly that was five minutes before I started watching the disc, but it is still enthusiasm!


Lupin III has an egotistical tendency to announce his next conquest before he steals it, just to give himself an extra challenge. Even with the tenacious Zenigata on his tail, boredom is never far away. But all of that changes when he infiltrates a religious cult to steal something precious from the cult leader. Someone is already there with the same intention, the cult leader’s bride to be, master thief Fujiko Mine, and Fujiko Mine is every bit as skilled, brazen, and ruthless as Lupin himself. Could Lupin have finally found his perfect rival? He’s inspired, as he announces that his next conquest, the next thing he will steal, is Fujiko Mine herself. Their paths cross and cross again over this collection of stories, as they also encounter gunman Daisuke Jigen, and samurai Goemon Ishikawa.

Thirteen episodes are presented across two Blu-ray discs from Manga Entertainment.
Disc 1
1. Master Thief vs. Lady Looter
2. .357 Magnum
3. The Lady and the Samurai
4. Vissi D’Arte, Vissi D’Amore
5. Blood-Soaked Triangle
6. Prison of Love
7. Music and Revolution
8. Dying Day

Disc 2
9. Love Wreathed in Steam
10. Ghost Town
11. The Feast of Fools
12. The Woman Called Fujiko Mine, Part 1
13. The Woman Called Fujiko Mine, Part 2

Picture

Lupin the Third: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine gets a 1.78:1 widescreen transfer at 1080p resolution. I found it to be a little soft and understated compared to the majority of Blu-ray anime that I have seen, although that is probably down to the source material. It seems that for Fujiko Mine, the animators are deliberately trying to match the old school style of the earlier Lupin III series. Hence the animation is a lot more simplistic and limited than modern anime, the character designs are recognisably Lupin, simpler, with bold outlines and striking old-school designs, while the whole animation feels rough, hand drawn, and distinctly 2 dimensional. It’s also a very dark anime, with subdued colours and a whole lot of shadow. If the aim was to create an anime that looks thirty years old, they have succeeded admirably.

The images in this review are sourced from the PR and aren’t necessarily representative of the final retail release.

Sound

You have the choice between DTS-HD MA 2.0 Stereo English and Japanese with optional translated subtitles and a signs only track. It’s notable that the 5.1 surround of the US region A release has been downgraded for this version. I went with the original language track and found it to be quite acceptable, with the cast well suited to their roles. What I sampled of the English dub felt a little bland and generic in comparison, but I didn’t listen to it long enough to really give it a fair shake. The Japanese stereo does a fair job of representing the show’s action sequences, but where Fujiko Mine really shines is in the music stakes. No surprise really as serving as music producer is Shinichiro Watanabe, and for this show he’s really gone with the period of the story, giving it an improvised jazz style score that blends perfectly with the visuals. The subtitles are accurately timed and are free of typographical error.

Extras

The Fujiko Mine Blu-ray has been co-authored by Manga Entertainment and Australia’s Hanabee. For some reason, they’ve seen fit to start from scratch, rather than simply port Funimation’s Region A release. That’s why the episode distribution is now 8/5 instead of 9/4, that’s why the English audio is now in stereo instead of 5.1, the audio encoded as DTS-HD MA instead of Funimation’s usual choice of Dolby TrueHD, and why most of the extras have been stripped. No video extras here and no commentaries.

All we are left with is on disc 2, and that amounts to the textless credits, one opening and two closing sequences.

You also get SD trailers for other Hanabee releases including Another, Tsuritama, Dusk Maiden of Amnesia, Mysterious Girlfriend X, Bakemonogatari, and Nisemonogatari. Three of them are MVM licenses in the UK; none are licensed by Manga at this point.

Conclusion

I just didn’t like Lupin the Third: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine all that much, which came as a surprise given the creative talent behind it. It’s got the style and it’s got the cool music in common with shows like Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo and Michiko and Hatchin. It’s also got a similar storytelling style, coming across as an episodic road movie, across which its main characters are explored. Each episode offers something different, reveals a different aspect of the characters, offers a slightly different visual style, or indeed different storytelling style. This should hit all the right anime targets to take pride of place in my collection. But it consistently fell flat through its run, with just the odd episode sparkling enough to gain my appreciation.


I think what didn’t sit well with me was the creative choice to make this show look of its time. It’s a Lupin show, made 30 years after the last one, so it had to look 30 years old, it had to sound thirty years old, the story has to be set during the Cold War, and the storytelling style has to be of the sixties and seventies. So the first thing I’m faced with is limited animation, archaic character designs, and a subdued and depressing colour palette. The second thing is the story of Fujiko Mine, and in true sixties and seventies style, it’s an adult tale with lots of sex, violence, psychedelic drugs, secret laboratories, and mind control. I had to roll my eyes when the owl-headed villains appeared.

The characterisations are certainly interesting, especially as this is something of an origin tale, and not everyone fits their defined roles all that precisely at this point. But it’s these off-kilter characters that left me cold, as if humour was a precious commodity rarely to be doled out in these episodes. For several of the stories too, the actual narrative was clichéd, predictable and plodding. Too often I felt a lack of pace and energy in the stories, and that, coupled with the darker colours and prevalence of shadow often sent me to sleep. I’m almost ashamed to say it about such an acclaimed show, but I had to actually watch two episodes twice because I snored through them the first time.


There is also plenty of fan service in the show, although I would hesitate to actually call it fan service. True fan service is sexual imagery inserted by the animators for the sole benefit of the viewer, and does nothing to inform the characters or drive the story. Fujiko Mine on the other hand is comfortable with sex, and her sexuality, has no embarrassment about being naked, and isn’t shy about enjoying her love life. She can sit by a pool with Lupin, completely naked except for an elaborate piece of jewellery, and she may be seductive or teasing, but she’s more interested in playing with his mind than anything physical. I think that may be one of the indications of a female director, in that nudity is presented in such a matter of fact way, and that conversely implication can be used when you would expect fan service to be more blatant instead.

I did however enjoy at least half of the episodes in this collection. The first three episodes are a lot of fun, as they introduce the characters and begin to explore them. We get an episode with Lupin, an episode with Jigen, and an episode with Goemon to kick things off. I think the hope was that as the show would progress, things would get more entertaining as the characters encountered and began to bounce off each other. There’s also a great, Cold-War brinkmanship episode, with a revolution in Central America getting the superpowers all touchy, and with Fujiko Mine right in the middle of things. That pushed enough of my nostalgia buttons to keep me interested. The final two episodes in the series are enjoyable too. Every sixties and seventies set action series needs a story set in a demented carnival, circus or theme-park, and the final two part story in Fujiko Mine is set in the latter. It’s here that the characters really begin to fall into place, and the story gains a little from pace, excitement and tension. The show certainly gets an ending that leaves the viewer in a positive frame of mind, even if many of the earlier episodes were dull and listless in comparison.


I like Lupin the Third: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine intellectually. It’s a proper, adult anime show that chooses not to cater to the mainstream otaku, expecting moe-blobs and pointless fan service. It is smart, character based storytelling. But in my gut, I just don’t like this show. I found it to be cold, humourless, visually dark, and at times tedious. That coupled with an unimpressive Blu-ray presentation, soft image, degraded English audio, and stripped out extras, makes Fujiko Mine one that I’d rather leave on the shelf.