7 “A Wolf is a Wolf,” “Pilot Film,” & 8 “Everyone Meets Agai
May 22, 2015 11:30:15 GMT -5
moimoi likes this
Post by Jean-Luc Lemur on May 22, 2015 11:30:15 GMT -5
This whole set of reviews has been edited to get Ōsumi’s name right—inconsistent name-ordering across sources and the neat symmetry between his first name Masaaki, and Miyazaki made me think Masaaki was his family name when I wrote this review. A few typos have also been fixed throughout.
7 A Wolf is a Wolf
After long anticipation, we’ve finally reached the first episode directed by Miyazaki and Takahata. “A Wolf is a Wolf” immediately comes off as more lighthearted than its predecessor, returning to the previous theme, more lighthearted theme with the Japanese ye-ye girls singing about a Walther P38. It’s easy to go through the episode and find elements that feel more lighthearted than what’s come before—it’s certainly the slapstickiest episode of the series, and the ending sequence with Lupin’s car might edge out Lupin and Goemon’s battle in “Introducing Goemon XIII” as the show’s most “cartoonish” moment.
But so far Lupin’s been a very variable series, shifting radically in tone from one episode to the next. Although the tone is more ruthless in the show’s premier, Lupin still bangs a guard with hammer as if he were Bugs Bunny outwitting Elmer Fudd. And “A Wolf is a Wolf” isn’t lacking in violence, either—Lupin and his comrades haven’t given up their indifference to killing. In addition to someone getting multiple shots in the back, we actually see Goemon slash someone ventrally—it’s a brief moment, but the flash of red and widening of the figure convey what’s happening easily enough, making it one of the most subtly gruesome moments in the series.
So we’re clearly not entirely in the kinder, gentler world of Miyazaki’s Lupin just yet. This is the beginning of what I’ll call the transitional period—Ōsumi still hasn’t had his final directing credit, and beyond directors there’s still overlap in terms of writing staff. While I haven’t been able to find out more than the schematic view of what went on behind the scenes of Lupin III, it’s clear that there was no clean shift between the Ōsumi and Miyazaki-Takahata eras.
“A Wolf is a Wolf” is an appropriate entry for the show’s transitional period, too. Goemon returns, and this show does not do recurring guest characters—he’s a semi-regular now (as his appearance in the opening credits may have tipped off). And Goemon seems significantly more mature than in the previous outing, not just in terms of his character—he’s a better strategist and takes control of situations rather than being a pawn in larger struggles—his face is looks a bit more deeply lined, and he’s grave in a way that doesn’t seem naïvely self-serious. And he confidently draws his attractive pupil Rinko to his side, much to Lupin’s frustration.
It’s appropriate, since by now Goemon’s graduated from student to instructor. The show still acknowledges a bit of oddness around Goemon’s purpose in the world, and he’s teaching at (of all things for this week’s review) a training retreat for underworld martial artists. It’s an interesting collection of period styles, too—jeans, army surplus, an incongruous “PEACE” t-shirt and a bare midriff from “Rinko” (in a nice twist for this show—I warned in the introduction about “unusual effectiveness of disguises”—both the audience and Lupin are temporarily unsure about whether they’re seeing through a disguise or not).
“A Wolf is a Wolf” is a wonderful episode for small details. The episode opens with a nice sequence of Lupin trying his hand at swordplay and karate, failing miserably but making some elegantly fluid movements before he ruins his sword and hand. There’s also an elegant touch the literal bug Lupin uses as a listening device, a bit of flair from Lupin that presages whimsical microelectronics to come.
The series is stabilizing, with the side effect of each episode becoming a little bit less unique. Worth noting, though, is that we’re already getting a subtle shift in Lupin’s character from more aggressive to more evasive, another means of easing us onto his side. Once again Lupin isn’t motivated by greed, but by honor. He shows up to a sword fight with a gun and suit of armor, bringing to mind The Man with No Name and Indiana Jones. Of course, given the materials science—really, materials fantasy—of Lupin’s swordsmen means the armor and bullets don’t do him much good, but Lupin still ekes out a win by planning ahead, figuring out where to run and letting his opponents fall into their own traps.
Recommended?
Yes
Lupin III Pilot Film
It’s appropriate that, having finally established the gang, we go back to the original Lupin pilot film to see how it all began. Given the popularity of the original comics, the decision was made to make a proof-of-concept short animated film as a prelude to a full-length feature. The pilot film, directed by Ōsumi, ended up being a prelude to the television series instead and only became widely known when packaged as a DVD extra. Although a number of these scenes were reused in the opening sequence, it’s still worth looking at the pilot itself.
For the most part the cartooning style is noticeably more caricatured than in the TV show, with characters’ forms stretching for whatever the scene demands, in accordance with the original comics. Most striking is how different Lupin sometimes looks—although we get glimpses of his original form in the opening, he’s truly grotesque here—a tubular, almost prismatic body with thin, stick-like arms and legs and a giant, blockish jutting chin. It doesn’t appear everywhere, though—it’s almost as if over the course of the film Ōsumi [and team—Ōsumi himself did not draw] was trying different means of how to figure out how to translate Lupin to screen.
The backgrounds, though, have that same sort of atmospheric moodiness we see in a lot of Ōsumi’s episodes, particularly in the evening conclusion—the vegetation’s more abstracted here, too.
Although the film does have a very slight plot, it is still a promotional film and proof of concept, and as such more time is spent establishing the characters, even than in an actual pilot. This goes down to clothing: It’s also the beginning of the red jacket color scheme, which will return in the late seventies but was changed around for the TV show. . We also get to see a number of potential outfits for Fujiko—“from mini to maximum”—and Lupin, who’s shown with a larger variety of potential outfits than he ends up wearing in the actual show (unfortunately). The potential for more “cool, evil or casual” looks was, unfortunately, never explored.
Another aspect that wouldn’t return until the later seventies is the just how lusty Lupin is towards Fujiko. In the comics Lupin’s sex drive is much more explicit, and he goes as far as being a serial rapist. This was, needless to say, dropped pretty quickly from the animated Lupin, but there is a vestigial remnant (and I’m not sure if its origin is here or in the comics)—Lupin tries to get into dives out of his clothes and into bed with a reluctant Fujiko and is foiled with a foot in his face. It’s not nice, but it’s easy to ignore because of its outright cartoonishness and Lupin’s comeuppance (it reminds me a bit of Homer choking Bart in terms of negating something horrible via cartoonishness, though here the power dynamic’s reversed).
Lupin in the series is less lustful and more of a romantic. He has a weakness for Fujiko that, after the first episode, has a big component emotional infatuation in addition to physical attraction, and his only conventional romance so far, with Linda in “Farewell, My Beloved Witch” saw him completely moon-eyed. Despite some instances of implied sex between Lupin and Fujiko early in the series, though, for the most part Lupin’s involuntarily celibate, with Fujiko always outsmarting him (or pairing up with Goemon). It also tells us a lot about how the series works: unlike someone like Bond, who manages to always get what he wants (saving the world, saving the girl, and usually getting in bed with his female opponent to boot), Lupin often outwitted and almost never gets the girl.
The plot is very, very light, as befits a twelve-minute film that needs to make room for extended character introductions. After a brief sequence where it’s established that Lupin likes to prank Zenigata, we get to a brief mystery over who poisoned Lupin’s sake, which serves as a means of giving us fuller introductions to Lupin, Jigen and Fujiko. We then find out Zenigata and the police—aided by an elderly detective who never appears again—are outside ready to storm in.
This is also when we get our introduction to Goemon, who, in keeping with the comics’ (and to a lesser degree the series') storyline of initially making him a foe to Lupin, joins forces with Zenigata. It’s a somewhat unusual dynamic, and Fujiko, Lupin and Jigen—despite some initial distrust—are usually tight, with Jigen—whose eyes are mostly visible—even giving Fujiko an appreciative glance after she disposes of a policeman.
Recommended?
It’s short—only about twelve minutes—and very slight, but it does give some insight into how the personalities of the characters and their dynamics evolved, and makes an interesting study in contrasts. It’s inessential, though, apart from Fujiko’s little dance interlude, which is the most sixties thing ever.
8 Everyone Meets Again: The Trump Plan
“Everyone Meets Again: The Trump Plan” reuses the denouement, and to a lesser extent, the opening of the original pilot film. There’s no reuse of animation as in the beginning, though—everything’s redone, and the opening’s only a rough mirror of the original (Lupin calls the antagonist of the week, reveals he’s messed with stuff on his desk). Given the new animation style, Goemon clearly being part of the team, and Zenigata being replaced as the main villain the reuse of plot elements seems a bit odd—perhaps an ending with a man-lifting kite was too good to pass up.
The parallels at the beginning and end do highlight some of the differences between Ōsumi and Miyazaki & Takahata styles, though. Perhaps the most notable is the difference in coloration—Masaaki’s colors, while rich, are a bit more realistic and muted, which suited the somewhat more moody tone of his stories. Miyazaki & Takahata, on the other hand, light bright, clear jewel tones, and they’re on full display in the ball thrown by the episode’s antagonist, Mr. Gold. And his party’s also a great showcase for a distinctly-1971 fashion sense—if you’re suffering from Mad Men withdrawals this isn’t the worst episode of Lupin III to watch.
Although we’ve met a handful of other characters so far in Lupin III, very few of the guest characters exhibited much in the way of personality. One of the most striking things in “Everyone Meets Again: The Trump Plan” is the sheer amount of character in everyone. Mr. Gold’s overall shape isn’t that alien to the series (we’ve seen corpulent and grotesque criminal bosses before), but there’s a sense of jolly privilege about him that makes him a bit more memorable that previous foes, with his facial hair going beyond regular 1970s decadence into something from the 1800s. Indeed, a new level of grotesquerie seems to spread across everyone, with Miyazaki and Takahata having a lot of fun with the various European faces.
Beyond Gold’s sideburns, the entire show hearkens back to the nineteenth century—although he has a very jet-age retinue, his loves money as an object, literally surrounding himself with gold, not some more modern for of accounting. Lupin, somewhat incongruously, says he “hate{s} money-lovers like him” (is this Miyazaki tipping his hand over his discomfort with Lupin’s profession?). And despite planning it, the episode’s big heist isn’t actually Lupin’s idea. Fujiko wants to steal a set of cards lost by Napoleon, illustrated in a style reminiscent of period illustration (anticipating Miyazaki’s later work in the opening sequence of Castle in the Sky). She gets the idea from a sort of hallucination involving the joker card—while this could have been hauntingly psychedelic in one of Ōsumi’s style, Miyazaki and Takahata are ultimately too clear and direct to really make it work.
Indeed, Lupin III’s transition to lighthearted, all-ages action is nearly complete. We still get a few fatalities, but the stories are clearer and more airtight logically, even if they still require a bit of fantastic physics. This comes with advantages and disadvantages—on the one hand once you understand the parameters of Lupin’s world it’s easy to get in, but Ōsumi’s more oblique storytelling style also allowed for a bit more flexibility in logic and a nice sense of altered consciousness that made the more fantastic elements—and plot jumps—feel natural.
Stray Observations
• We have a fake-out falling-out between Lupin and Goemon here. Although I gather that shifting alliances were a major feature of the original comics (what else would one expect from a bunch of self-interested thieves?), it never really develops in this series. The gang breaking up and working against one another is a major plot point of the first film, The Mystery of Mamo, and it’s again sparked by Goemon being disappointed in Lupin’s dishonorable behavior.
• Fujiko’s Renault Alpine is gone here, replaced by a Saab 96 (she’s after my heart with these cars). One way that Miyazaki and Ōsumi are very well matched is their attention to detail in mechanical things.
Recommended?
Yes—it’s probably the first Lupin episode that’s just a fun, lighthearted heist, and one of the best-looking episodes yet
Next week we say goodbye to Ōsumi Masaaki as “An Assassin Sings the Blues” and see even more liney animation with a series review of the 2012 prequel series A Woman Called Fujiko Mine.
7 A Wolf is a Wolf
After long anticipation, we’ve finally reached the first episode directed by Miyazaki and Takahata. “A Wolf is a Wolf” immediately comes off as more lighthearted than its predecessor, returning to the previous theme, more lighthearted theme with the Japanese ye-ye girls singing about a Walther P38. It’s easy to go through the episode and find elements that feel more lighthearted than what’s come before—it’s certainly the slapstickiest episode of the series, and the ending sequence with Lupin’s car might edge out Lupin and Goemon’s battle in “Introducing Goemon XIII” as the show’s most “cartoonish” moment.
But so far Lupin’s been a very variable series, shifting radically in tone from one episode to the next. Although the tone is more ruthless in the show’s premier, Lupin still bangs a guard with hammer as if he were Bugs Bunny outwitting Elmer Fudd. And “A Wolf is a Wolf” isn’t lacking in violence, either—Lupin and his comrades haven’t given up their indifference to killing. In addition to someone getting multiple shots in the back, we actually see Goemon slash someone ventrally—it’s a brief moment, but the flash of red and widening of the figure convey what’s happening easily enough, making it one of the most subtly gruesome moments in the series.
So we’re clearly not entirely in the kinder, gentler world of Miyazaki’s Lupin just yet. This is the beginning of what I’ll call the transitional period—Ōsumi still hasn’t had his final directing credit, and beyond directors there’s still overlap in terms of writing staff. While I haven’t been able to find out more than the schematic view of what went on behind the scenes of Lupin III, it’s clear that there was no clean shift between the Ōsumi and Miyazaki-Takahata eras.
“A Wolf is a Wolf” is an appropriate entry for the show’s transitional period, too. Goemon returns, and this show does not do recurring guest characters—he’s a semi-regular now (as his appearance in the opening credits may have tipped off). And Goemon seems significantly more mature than in the previous outing, not just in terms of his character—he’s a better strategist and takes control of situations rather than being a pawn in larger struggles—his face is looks a bit more deeply lined, and he’s grave in a way that doesn’t seem naïvely self-serious. And he confidently draws his attractive pupil Rinko to his side, much to Lupin’s frustration.
It’s appropriate, since by now Goemon’s graduated from student to instructor. The show still acknowledges a bit of oddness around Goemon’s purpose in the world, and he’s teaching at (of all things for this week’s review) a training retreat for underworld martial artists. It’s an interesting collection of period styles, too—jeans, army surplus, an incongruous “PEACE” t-shirt and a bare midriff from “Rinko” (in a nice twist for this show—I warned in the introduction about “unusual effectiveness of disguises”—both the audience and Lupin are temporarily unsure about whether they’re seeing through a disguise or not).
“A Wolf is a Wolf” is a wonderful episode for small details. The episode opens with a nice sequence of Lupin trying his hand at swordplay and karate, failing miserably but making some elegantly fluid movements before he ruins his sword and hand. There’s also an elegant touch the literal bug Lupin uses as a listening device, a bit of flair from Lupin that presages whimsical microelectronics to come.
The series is stabilizing, with the side effect of each episode becoming a little bit less unique. Worth noting, though, is that we’re already getting a subtle shift in Lupin’s character from more aggressive to more evasive, another means of easing us onto his side. Once again Lupin isn’t motivated by greed, but by honor. He shows up to a sword fight with a gun and suit of armor, bringing to mind The Man with No Name and Indiana Jones. Of course, given the materials science—really, materials fantasy—of Lupin’s swordsmen means the armor and bullets don’t do him much good, but Lupin still ekes out a win by planning ahead, figuring out where to run and letting his opponents fall into their own traps.
Recommended?
Yes
Lupin III Pilot Film
It’s appropriate that, having finally established the gang, we go back to the original Lupin pilot film to see how it all began. Given the popularity of the original comics, the decision was made to make a proof-of-concept short animated film as a prelude to a full-length feature. The pilot film, directed by Ōsumi, ended up being a prelude to the television series instead and only became widely known when packaged as a DVD extra. Although a number of these scenes were reused in the opening sequence, it’s still worth looking at the pilot itself.
For the most part the cartooning style is noticeably more caricatured than in the TV show, with characters’ forms stretching for whatever the scene demands, in accordance with the original comics. Most striking is how different Lupin sometimes looks—although we get glimpses of his original form in the opening, he’s truly grotesque here—a tubular, almost prismatic body with thin, stick-like arms and legs and a giant, blockish jutting chin. It doesn’t appear everywhere, though—it’s almost as if over the course of the film Ōsumi [and team—Ōsumi himself did not draw] was trying different means of how to figure out how to translate Lupin to screen.
The backgrounds, though, have that same sort of atmospheric moodiness we see in a lot of Ōsumi’s episodes, particularly in the evening conclusion—the vegetation’s more abstracted here, too.
Although the film does have a very slight plot, it is still a promotional film and proof of concept, and as such more time is spent establishing the characters, even than in an actual pilot. This goes down to clothing: It’s also the beginning of the red jacket color scheme, which will return in the late seventies but was changed around for the TV show. . We also get to see a number of potential outfits for Fujiko—“from mini to maximum”—and Lupin, who’s shown with a larger variety of potential outfits than he ends up wearing in the actual show (unfortunately). The potential for more “cool, evil or casual” looks was, unfortunately, never explored.
Another aspect that wouldn’t return until the later seventies is the just how lusty Lupin is towards Fujiko. In the comics Lupin’s sex drive is much more explicit, and he goes as far as being a serial rapist. This was, needless to say, dropped pretty quickly from the animated Lupin, but there is a vestigial remnant (and I’m not sure if its origin is here or in the comics)—Lupin tries to get into dives out of his clothes and into bed with a reluctant Fujiko and is foiled with a foot in his face. It’s not nice, but it’s easy to ignore because of its outright cartoonishness and Lupin’s comeuppance (it reminds me a bit of Homer choking Bart in terms of negating something horrible via cartoonishness, though here the power dynamic’s reversed).
Lupin in the series is less lustful and more of a romantic. He has a weakness for Fujiko that, after the first episode, has a big component emotional infatuation in addition to physical attraction, and his only conventional romance so far, with Linda in “Farewell, My Beloved Witch” saw him completely moon-eyed. Despite some instances of implied sex between Lupin and Fujiko early in the series, though, for the most part Lupin’s involuntarily celibate, with Fujiko always outsmarting him (or pairing up with Goemon). It also tells us a lot about how the series works: unlike someone like Bond, who manages to always get what he wants (saving the world, saving the girl, and usually getting in bed with his female opponent to boot), Lupin often outwitted and almost never gets the girl.
The plot is very, very light, as befits a twelve-minute film that needs to make room for extended character introductions. After a brief sequence where it’s established that Lupin likes to prank Zenigata, we get to a brief mystery over who poisoned Lupin’s sake, which serves as a means of giving us fuller introductions to Lupin, Jigen and Fujiko. We then find out Zenigata and the police—aided by an elderly detective who never appears again—are outside ready to storm in.
This is also when we get our introduction to Goemon, who, in keeping with the comics’ (and to a lesser degree the series') storyline of initially making him a foe to Lupin, joins forces with Zenigata. It’s a somewhat unusual dynamic, and Fujiko, Lupin and Jigen—despite some initial distrust—are usually tight, with Jigen—whose eyes are mostly visible—even giving Fujiko an appreciative glance after she disposes of a policeman.
Recommended?
It’s short—only about twelve minutes—and very slight, but it does give some insight into how the personalities of the characters and their dynamics evolved, and makes an interesting study in contrasts. It’s inessential, though, apart from Fujiko’s little dance interlude, which is the most sixties thing ever.
8 Everyone Meets Again: The Trump Plan
“Everyone Meets Again: The Trump Plan” reuses the denouement, and to a lesser extent, the opening of the original pilot film. There’s no reuse of animation as in the beginning, though—everything’s redone, and the opening’s only a rough mirror of the original (Lupin calls the antagonist of the week, reveals he’s messed with stuff on his desk). Given the new animation style, Goemon clearly being part of the team, and Zenigata being replaced as the main villain the reuse of plot elements seems a bit odd—perhaps an ending with a man-lifting kite was too good to pass up.
The parallels at the beginning and end do highlight some of the differences between Ōsumi and Miyazaki & Takahata styles, though. Perhaps the most notable is the difference in coloration—Masaaki’s colors, while rich, are a bit more realistic and muted, which suited the somewhat more moody tone of his stories. Miyazaki & Takahata, on the other hand, light bright, clear jewel tones, and they’re on full display in the ball thrown by the episode’s antagonist, Mr. Gold. And his party’s also a great showcase for a distinctly-1971 fashion sense—if you’re suffering from Mad Men withdrawals this isn’t the worst episode of Lupin III to watch.
Although we’ve met a handful of other characters so far in Lupin III, very few of the guest characters exhibited much in the way of personality. One of the most striking things in “Everyone Meets Again: The Trump Plan” is the sheer amount of character in everyone. Mr. Gold’s overall shape isn’t that alien to the series (we’ve seen corpulent and grotesque criminal bosses before), but there’s a sense of jolly privilege about him that makes him a bit more memorable that previous foes, with his facial hair going beyond regular 1970s decadence into something from the 1800s. Indeed, a new level of grotesquerie seems to spread across everyone, with Miyazaki and Takahata having a lot of fun with the various European faces.
Beyond Gold’s sideburns, the entire show hearkens back to the nineteenth century—although he has a very jet-age retinue, his loves money as an object, literally surrounding himself with gold, not some more modern for of accounting. Lupin, somewhat incongruously, says he “hate{s} money-lovers like him” (is this Miyazaki tipping his hand over his discomfort with Lupin’s profession?). And despite planning it, the episode’s big heist isn’t actually Lupin’s idea. Fujiko wants to steal a set of cards lost by Napoleon, illustrated in a style reminiscent of period illustration (anticipating Miyazaki’s later work in the opening sequence of Castle in the Sky). She gets the idea from a sort of hallucination involving the joker card—while this could have been hauntingly psychedelic in one of Ōsumi’s style, Miyazaki and Takahata are ultimately too clear and direct to really make it work.
Indeed, Lupin III’s transition to lighthearted, all-ages action is nearly complete. We still get a few fatalities, but the stories are clearer and more airtight logically, even if they still require a bit of fantastic physics. This comes with advantages and disadvantages—on the one hand once you understand the parameters of Lupin’s world it’s easy to get in, but Ōsumi’s more oblique storytelling style also allowed for a bit more flexibility in logic and a nice sense of altered consciousness that made the more fantastic elements—and plot jumps—feel natural.
Stray Observations
• We have a fake-out falling-out between Lupin and Goemon here. Although I gather that shifting alliances were a major feature of the original comics (what else would one expect from a bunch of self-interested thieves?), it never really develops in this series. The gang breaking up and working against one another is a major plot point of the first film, The Mystery of Mamo, and it’s again sparked by Goemon being disappointed in Lupin’s dishonorable behavior.
• Fujiko’s Renault Alpine is gone here, replaced by a Saab 96 (she’s after my heart with these cars). One way that Miyazaki and Ōsumi are very well matched is their attention to detail in mechanical things.
Recommended?
Yes—it’s probably the first Lupin episode that’s just a fun, lighthearted heist, and one of the best-looking episodes yet
Next week we say goodbye to Ōsumi Masaaki as “An Assassin Sings the Blues” and see even more liney animation with a series review of the 2012 prequel series A Woman Called Fujiko Mine.
