Lupin III: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine

This is not Lupin III.

If you came here expecting hijinks, hilarity, high energy, and happiness in a cheerful caper comedy you are most certainly NOT going to find it. This series is dour, depressing, downbeat and, honestly, really freakin' ugly to look at. Shadow detail is achieved by the animators rudely pencilling in charcoal lines across the characters and backgrounds and it looks HORRIBLE as well as frequently not matching the lighting of the scene. It also reboots the history of the characters and has them meeting and learning about each other so don't expect Lupin, Jigen, Goemon, and Fujiko to pull off a big, happy heist as a team while Inspector Zenigata bumbles after them in this 13-episode bore. The plot is a confusing, senseless mess, the characters are all wrong, the dialogue is stiff, grim darkness is abundant...it's the complete opposite of what you want from a Lupin III series.

Not even the popular theme tune made it. I realize that Yuji Ohno is getting very old these days but the music they use in this show is wrist-slittingly dull. The show's opening number even begins with Fujiko ordering "Cease what you are doing!" Take that advice and switch it off. This series is an insult to Lupin III. Absolutely horrible.

Big Lupin III fan here. The first three seasons constitute some of my most beloved entertainment experiences in my life ! My tv is usually on PlutoTV with the Lupin the 3rd channel on every hour I'm home for years now.

Okay now on to this series. I saw the Funimation trailer which had this amazing track and like every guy who watched the series I love Fuji cakes also. So I watched this series a couple of times.

I'm no expert on women, but this Fujiko has a different personality to my beloved Fuji cakes from the long running TV series starting in the 70s. Fujiko in this series does things that are the opposite of the Tv series Fujiko. The Fujiko in this series being reviewed is the interpretation of Fujiko by a guy who does not know a Fujiko in his life. For those guys reading this who have had the amazing luck to spend time with a dime (a woman who is a 10) you know Fujiko's personality in the long running series is that of an actual woman.

There is a scene in this current series being reviewed with Zenigata and Fujiko which I suspect raised alarm bells with most viewers that this series got the main character wrong.

This is an introduction to the classic Monkey Punch characters.Even if it is visually attractive and the narrative quite interesting, it is not the same as the original 70s cartoon. It certainly keeps some stuff from the original series, like the characters' behavior. Lupin is still full of himself and really clever at what he does. Fujiko rivals him, but counts on her beauty as an extra. Jigen is remarkable at shooting. Goemon is an old school samurai. I think the sickest character is Fujiko and Jigen the least mental. The main flaw is the characters' appearance. Even if they wear the same clothes as in the 70s, the drawings do not reflect their personality as well as the old ones.

And this comes from a guy who, by watching the classic rupan sansei series, has deeply fallen in love with the character of Fujiko Mine because she's factually the one more trustworthy of the entire Rupan Sansei Gang (don't let the "unreliable femme fatale" gimmick fool you, she's the one with more courage, cunning and thievery skills in general), so I was fully onboard with focusing on her...but it doesn't make up for the absolute boredom these episodes give you, or the feel that these stories elaborate on past event without providing a reason why you should care in the first place. That said, I liked the first episode and I appreciated the fact that Jigen and other character's caricatural and childish 70's misoginy of Rupan Sansei part II (I sincerely don't understand how anyone could take it seriously in any way to begin with) was removed and replaced with a more subtle and believable approach, so my rating is not a one like I do with a lot of series I stop after three episodes like it happened in this case but I don't recommend it anyway.

This series kept me off balance. While the first episode introduced a seemingly straightforward though bizarre story about a competition/flirtation between thieves Lupin and Fujiko, subsequent episodes got increasingly perplexing and surreal, motives and characters darkened, and my understanding of what the series intended kept shifting. A few episodes in I thought it was a sort of nonsensical thing most notable for its striking animation, but as the end approached the pieces came together like the threads of David Lynch's Mulholland Drive, and I realized the series' meta nature.

Here I should mention that I am not that familiar with the Lupin series. I saw the Miyazaki movie, and I think that might be it. So I have no issues with a revisionist reboot. I do find Lupin's character doesn't entirely fit in this world. He is inherently so goofy in looks and movement that he doesn't quite mesh with a story with his name in the title. But that slight objection didn't keep me from finding the series as a whole utterly fascinating.

I had other objections as I watched the series. Fujiko's mix of psychopathy and what seemed like exploitative nudity bothered me at times, but in the context of the series this all makes sense. Oskar's character also seemed problematic, but I read a fascinating analysis that put him in an entirely new light.

And that's the thing about this series; you can't just watch it, or just watch some of it. You have to watch all of it and then think about what it's all about. And now I need to re-watch it to see if the most perplexing parts make sense with my new understanding of what was happening. Although I suspect that, as with Mulholland Drive, it's never going to totally make sense.