9 “An Assassin Sings the Blues” & The Woman Called Fujiko Mi
May 29, 2015 7:24:29 GMT -5
Douay-Rheims-Challoner, ComradePig, and 2 more like this
Post by Jean Luc de Lemur on May 29, 2015 7:24:29 GMT -5
Name order stuff corrected throughout
Note: both of these have spoiler tags this week—I think “An Assassin Sings the Blues” is one of the essential episodes of the series and found I could write up most of what I liked about it without going into how the plot was structured, so I took the opportunity to tag spoilers. The Woman Called Fujiko Mine is a relatively recent release in the West, so some of you might still be interested in seeing it.
9 An Assassin Sings the Blues
The show opens with a throwback to the original opening theme and opening sequence—no playful narration from Lupin, a lot more action scenes from the original pilot film, and more of a beat to the opening sequences. Apart from a couple of brief sequences this actually isn’t a very action-filled episode, but it feels appropriate for this one. “An Assassin Sings the Blues” is the final outing for original director Ōsumi Masaaki and the last episode of the original series to really delve into the more adult, crime-pulp aspect of the Lupin franchise, and it even hints at depths that haven’t really been explored in any detail since.
After the opening sequence it would be easy to think that this episode was shown out-of-order (Goemon’s presence as part of the gang shows that wasn’t the case). Our first scene has Lupin and Fujiko in her car (a Triumph this time) having a flirtatious exchange, a bit of a throwback to their interactions in “Lupin is Burning” or “Farewell My Beloved Witch.” In a subtle touch, though, Fujiko only responds to Lupin’s advances after he mentions she can join in on his heist.
What follows is a bravado piece of animation, a close-up pass of the Triumph (rendered in better detail than the characters) as it moves around a corner as the camera turns around it, a sort of invitation to adventure for the rest of the episode. The episode’s full of such movements—there’s a later moment when a gunman’s fumbling with his gun were we see the whole thing from the view from his upper arm. Although the relatively stable proportions and more even coloring show the influence Takahata and Miyazaki were influencing in the production, it’s hard not to read these little virtuosic touches as Ōsumi’s goodbye. The moody, warm-to-cool graded morning and evening skies also make their final appearance.
The episode’s full of nice little details and seems to have been assembled with extra care. One quirk unique to this episode is the use of diegetic music. During the initial burglary the henchman is listening to a Japanese chanteuse on the television, and the final confrontation happens to the tune of Goemon’s flute (though I’m not quite sure if this really counts as diegetic because he’s clearly playing in a different location). With Ōsumi firing we also lose the sort of quietly Japanese elements from the series—this could happen anywhere but for the music and the bamboo grove.
It’s also the last Lupin plot to be less-than-straightforward—though nowhere close to being trippy like the earlier episodes, it’s still less than linear. There’s a lot of flashback, nested flashback, and repetition. The latter might have been stretching for time or for budget, but it doesn’t feel that way. It feels more like memories flashing back and being played over again in Fujiko’s head.
While the episode might be considered a Fujiko-centric one—her former partner in crime and love, Pun (pronounced less funny than it looks), returns. Their falling out had been over a betrayal on Fujiko’s part, forcing their employers to order Pun to shoot her. She let him run, but now he’s resurfaced. And in the chaos surrounding the episode’s theft Fujiko is shot.
She’s out of commission for much of the episode, meaning we spend most of our time with Lupin trying to get Fujiko access to medical care after Pun whisks her away to his hideout. Nonetheless she’s hardly a damsel and resolves the story in her own way. When she half-consciously sees Pun draw a gun as Lupin, carrying her out and facing towards the door, she doesn’t hesitate to shoot her former lover for Lupin’s sake. She acts thinking she’s saving Lupin’s back—the surprise isn’t that Pun dies but the speed with which Fujiko makes her decision to shoot him. It’s a quiet confirmation, showing-not-telling confirmation of the thread from “One Chance for a Prison Break,” which was also penned by this episode’s writer, Tooru Sawaki.
They go to a dance and we get some stills of Fujiko dancing (outside the context of the broader dance from the pilot film she looks like she stole her moves from the Peanuts gang), and don’t really get a view of her face. It gives a feeling, maybe unintended, that she’s working things out, maybe and retreating from her feelings again.
The episode’s penultimate scene confirms Lupin’s involuntary celibacy, and we end with Fujiko looking out on the ocean. There’s turbulence under that exterior, but we don’t get to revisit it until the twenty-first century
Recommended?
Highly—Ōsumi makes the most of his sendoff, and we get one last great, grown-up Fujiko story.
The Woman Called Fujiko Mine
Note: both of these have spoiler tags this week—I think “An Assassin Sings the Blues” is one of the essential episodes of the series and found I could write up most of what I liked about it without going into how the plot was structured, so I took the opportunity to tag spoilers. The Woman Called Fujiko Mine is a relatively recent release in the West, so some of you might still be interested in seeing it.
9 An Assassin Sings the Blues
The show opens with a throwback to the original opening theme and opening sequence—no playful narration from Lupin, a lot more action scenes from the original pilot film, and more of a beat to the opening sequences. Apart from a couple of brief sequences this actually isn’t a very action-filled episode, but it feels appropriate for this one. “An Assassin Sings the Blues” is the final outing for original director Ōsumi Masaaki and the last episode of the original series to really delve into the more adult, crime-pulp aspect of the Lupin franchise, and it even hints at depths that haven’t really been explored in any detail since.
After the opening sequence it would be easy to think that this episode was shown out-of-order (Goemon’s presence as part of the gang shows that wasn’t the case). Our first scene has Lupin and Fujiko in her car (a Triumph this time) having a flirtatious exchange, a bit of a throwback to their interactions in “Lupin is Burning” or “Farewell My Beloved Witch.” In a subtle touch, though, Fujiko only responds to Lupin’s advances after he mentions she can join in on his heist.
What follows is a bravado piece of animation, a close-up pass of the Triumph (rendered in better detail than the characters) as it moves around a corner as the camera turns around it, a sort of invitation to adventure for the rest of the episode. The episode’s full of such movements—there’s a later moment when a gunman’s fumbling with his gun were we see the whole thing from the view from his upper arm. Although the relatively stable proportions and more even coloring show the influence Takahata and Miyazaki were influencing in the production, it’s hard not to read these little virtuosic touches as Ōsumi’s goodbye. The moody, warm-to-cool graded morning and evening skies also make their final appearance.
The episode’s full of nice little details and seems to have been assembled with extra care. One quirk unique to this episode is the use of diegetic music. During the initial burglary the henchman is listening to a Japanese chanteuse on the television, and the final confrontation happens to the tune of Goemon’s flute (though I’m not quite sure if this really counts as diegetic because he’s clearly playing in a different location). With Ōsumi firing we also lose the sort of quietly Japanese elements from the series—this could happen anywhere but for the music and the bamboo grove.
It’s also the last Lupin plot to be less-than-straightforward—though nowhere close to being trippy like the earlier episodes, it’s still less than linear. There’s a lot of flashback, nested flashback, and repetition. The latter might have been stretching for time or for budget, but it doesn’t feel that way. It feels more like memories flashing back and being played over again in Fujiko’s head.
While the episode might be considered a Fujiko-centric one—her former partner in crime and love, Pun (pronounced less funny than it looks), returns. Their falling out had been over a betrayal on Fujiko’s part, forcing their employers to order Pun to shoot her. She let him run, but now he’s resurfaced. And in the chaos surrounding the episode’s theft Fujiko is shot.
She’s out of commission for much of the episode, meaning we spend most of our time with Lupin trying to get Fujiko access to medical care after Pun whisks her away to his hideout. Nonetheless she’s hardly a damsel and resolves the story in her own way. When she half-consciously sees Pun draw a gun as Lupin, carrying her out and facing towards the door, she doesn’t hesitate to shoot her former lover for Lupin’s sake. She acts thinking she’s saving Lupin’s back—the surprise isn’t that Pun dies but the speed with which Fujiko makes her decision to shoot him. It’s a quiet confirmation, showing-not-telling confirmation of the thread from “One Chance for a Prison Break,” which was also penned by this episode’s writer, Tooru Sawaki.
They go to a dance and we get some stills of Fujiko dancing (outside the context of the broader dance from the pilot film she looks like she stole her moves from the Peanuts gang), and don’t really get a view of her face. It gives a feeling, maybe unintended, that she’s working things out, maybe and retreating from her feelings again.
The episode’s penultimate scene confirms Lupin’s involuntary celibacy, and we end with Fujiko looking out on the ocean. There’s turbulence under that exterior, but we don’t get to revisit it until the twenty-first century
Recommended?
Highly—Ōsumi makes the most of his sendoff, and we get one last great, grown-up Fujiko story.
The Woman Called Fujiko Mine
Source
Based on what little I’ve seen of Lupin III franchise after the end of the second series, the overwhelming impression I get is one of routine, punctuated by the odd experiment. A lot of it may be well executed, but there’s nothing really drawing me to a lot of it. There’s a reluctance to stray too far from what’s a winning (or winning enough) formula (if I’m wrong let me know—I haven’t delved very deeply and I’m willing to have my mind changed). This might have been broken, though, by 2012’s The Woman Called Fujiko Mine, released recently in an English version.
This was actually my introduction to the world of Lupin beyond The Castle of Cagliostro, via ComradePig posting the (absolutely gorgeous) trailer. While the look of the series is sometimes described as being closer to the original, this is only partly true. Fujiko’s elevation as a thief is really more the doing of Ōsumi than Monkey Punch, and while there’s something of the lanky style of the original comics here, they were also very sketchy and informal, though Fujiko’s face seems to have been made more generic and is more anime-ish. The style of caricature here is much more formalized, though, and the drawing calls to mind not so much a midcentury comic as a midcentury fashion magazine—feature or advertisement. It’s lovely and appropriate for the often heists of the series, which, if they’re not actually jewel-centric, tend to feature a lot of said shiny pebbles.
One thing I did have trouble getting around in the first episode, though, was the degree of nudity from Fujiko. It felt gratuitous but also quite odd—Fujiko as she appears in Ōsumi’s depiction might be busty, but (allowing for the mutability of the characters early on) she also has the lower body of a busty person, and the thinner, more angular Fujiko from The Secret of Mamo (the film closest in design and spirit to the original comics) is, well, thinner up there too. She’s neither a stereotypical anime babe nor a Barbie, which her design is closer to here (which is made all the more odd in that Fujiko’s officially only 160 cm tall).
Barbie is an apt comparison, actually—this is the only Lupin franchise production to have a female director and head writer—with this knowledge what seems like spank material for people who have never seen a real woman turns into someone playing with their doll (and, if my sisters’ play routines were close to typical, Barbie spent a lot of time nude and Ken spent a lot of time in her clothes, which also happens to Goemon here). Ultimately the first episode is the most nudity-heavy—for the most part the rest feels natural or artful, not gratuitous—and Fujiko herself is a well-rounded powerhouse (she’s the protagonist, after all) so it doesn’t feel like she’s only there to look pretty.
Though pretty she does look—a lot of nice fashions on display for her, and hair that is big. The Lupin franchise, until this point, had mostly remained in the sort of ageless current-day as other long-running cartoon franchises like The Simpsons (with the possible exception of the very metafictional Green vs. Red). A Woman Called Fujiko doesn’t specify a time, but it does have something of a reverse-Archer approach. While Archer seems to take place in the present day with 1960s accessories, A Woman Called Fujiko seems to take place in the early 1960s with the odd intrusion of suspiciously advanced tech. A Woman Called Fujiko is a prequel to the original Lupin III series, and it really feels like one—there’s a lot of psychedelia, but it often feels more beatnik or proto-hippie than post-hippie as in Lupin III. There’s less attention paid to gadgetry (no sense in trying to identify the big American sedans that dominate this series), and a lot more paid to attire scenery—less gadgetry, more décor. It gives the whole series a somewhat “girly” feeling compared to the original—even the lighting, often at twilight, has something of a pink glow to it. If Lupin III is cool, A Woman Called Fujiko is glamorous.
Unfortunately, the show’s sexual politics are a mixed bag of dated and modern, and their dated aspects are concentrated in the character of Oscar, a suspiciously frilly protégé of Zenigata who wishes he were a protégé in the manner of the Greeks of old (you know the ones I mean). His arc, while it could be read sympathetically (and may be in Japan, though frankly Oscar’s plotline put me off of researching deeper into issues of gay representation in Japanese media), it plays out as a series of prejudicial, somewhat antiquated stereotypes. It isn’t even an outgrowth of the character or a story (slightly ambiguously) set in the past—one could edit Oscar’s plotline out of A Woman Called Fujiko and it would make zero difference to how the story plays out. He just seems to be there because the series needed an attractive, somewhat androgynous young male character for whatever reason.
Perhaps it’s convention, or a box to check with target audiences: in both design and storytelling, A Woman Called Fujiko is closer to anime convention than the original Lupin series, though it’s still very much a Lupin show. Compared to the original series it’s turned to eleven in terms of sex, violence and fantasy, though that’s hardly unique to Lupin media (the first film, The Secret of Mamo, works on a comparable level). Some familiar themes also crop up, including the Lupin franchise’s surprisingly consistent leftist streak as Fujiko and Goemon end up playing a role in a sort of bizarro Cuban Missile Crisis.
The show is, Oscar excepted, very well structured. Much of the series is almost deceptively episodic—for around three-quarters of the show each episode’s a separate heist, though as the series progresses we notice running threads through the episodes and story-elements-of-the-week actually come back and become important. This means, like the original Lupin show, it’s easy to watch at your own pace, but there is a sense of mounting drama, mystery and intensity as the show progresses, largely centered on our lack of knowledge about Fujiko’s past.
The show hits a climax in its ninth episode, “Love Wreathed in Steam.” Lupin and Jigen are going to steal an artwork, though it turns out the artwork is actually a woman, developed into a sort of living canvas by a mad artist. She only exists as something to be had or possessed, with no communication beyond basic, infant-like reactions to the world around her. While a bit unnerved by her nature, Lupin and Jigen have no trouble stealing her. Fujiko, though, intrudes on the episode in full locomotive mode, not to steal the girl but to destroy her. It’s an exciting chase, full of righteous anger and, surprisingly, some of the best-placed slapstick of any of Lupin episodes I’ve seen, and highly recommended (plus we get another touch of Buddhism).
However, it is the climax of the series. The final episodes never reach this level of intensity, and the weaving-in of the Oscar plot (though it luckily recedes towards the very end) make the final sequence a bit less enjoyable. Nonetheless the final episodes are an effective finish to the series, and the viewer’s pushed forward both by curiosity and a sense of dread. There are definite hints of giallo. Hints of past molestation put the viewer on edge, and I spent a lot of the final episodes hoping things would turn out, if not okay, in a way that allows Fujiko to retain some agency over her life story.
Like with early Lupin, a lot of the pleasure of watching Fujiko is in the vicarious, “wouldn’t it be great if I could get away with that!” pleasure. To have all her sexing and thieving the result of past trauma would do her a disservice.
Luckily the show backs off. Lupin’s always been full of mad scientists and madder noblemen, and it turns out that Fujiko’s memories simply ended up in the crossed wires of some experiment. It’s not a good situation for the actual victim of the mind-control and sexual abuse (and whose story echoes “Love Wreathed in Steam”), but at least Fujiko’s thieving and sexing isn’t a result of it—this is also a metafictional turn, where the idea living a less-than-virtual life vicariously is mooted. But Fujiko is, it turns out, herself—she’s get’s an “I’ve always enjoyed sex!” moment that made me grin. Formally it’s less than successful—a big exposition dump with a subplot or two resolving nearby—but thematically it works quite well.
A Woman Called Fujiko Mine’s imperfect, and not always in the experimental, risk-taking ways of the early Lupin III episodes, but it certainly captures some of their feel and takes the mood further than Ōsumi could at the time. And the focus on Fujiko—the real master thief of Lupin’s early run, is welcome.
Stray Observations
• Pun doesn’t show up here. While I put the series review here to link with Ōsumi’s last episode, which also deals with Fujiko’s past, there’s no actual continuity between them.
• One of the controversies surrounding the series’s airing was that Fujiko basically gets involved with everyone, even sleeping with Jigen and Zenigata, which struck a lot of long-term Lupin viewers as too much. I actually saw this series before the original Lupin III show, though, and having no head-canon for these characters it didn’t bother me. It even extends the joke about Lupin’s involuntary celibacy back in time, though other Lupin stories paint a more ambiguous picture of their relationship.
• One thing the Lupin franchise is well known for is the extraordinary continuity of voice actors, and Jigen is still voiced by Kobayashi Kiyoshi, the same man who voiced him in the pilot film. Knowing this he definitely sounds older, though even aged Kobayashi’s voice suits Jigen well.
Recommended?
Yes, but with reservations. A Woman Called Fujiko Mine hews closer to anime conventions than the original series, which might make it a bit harder for the less-anime inclined viewers (like me) to get into, and the first episode doesn’t work very well in isolation. There’s a subplot that falls into homophobic cliché (even though I’m sure many read it as sympathetic—you can skip the sixth episode, “Prison of Love,” without losing much) and the nudity and stylization take a bit of getting used to, but otherwise it’s a very well composed series, and the mostly-episodic nature means that it’s easy to pull out an episode to watch. I’ll hold off on judgments about the series’s feminist credentials because I don’t know enough about the topic, but Fujiko is fully-realized (in terms of personality!) and mostly a lot of fun to watch.
This was actually my introduction to the world of Lupin beyond The Castle of Cagliostro, via ComradePig posting the (absolutely gorgeous) trailer. While the look of the series is sometimes described as being closer to the original, this is only partly true. Fujiko’s elevation as a thief is really more the doing of Ōsumi than Monkey Punch, and while there’s something of the lanky style of the original comics here, they were also very sketchy and informal, though Fujiko’s face seems to have been made more generic and is more anime-ish. The style of caricature here is much more formalized, though, and the drawing calls to mind not so much a midcentury comic as a midcentury fashion magazine—feature or advertisement. It’s lovely and appropriate for the often heists of the series, which, if they’re not actually jewel-centric, tend to feature a lot of said shiny pebbles.
One thing I did have trouble getting around in the first episode, though, was the degree of nudity from Fujiko. It felt gratuitous but also quite odd—Fujiko as she appears in Ōsumi’s depiction might be busty, but (allowing for the mutability of the characters early on) she also has the lower body of a busty person, and the thinner, more angular Fujiko from The Secret of Mamo (the film closest in design and spirit to the original comics) is, well, thinner up there too. She’s neither a stereotypical anime babe nor a Barbie, which her design is closer to here (which is made all the more odd in that Fujiko’s officially only 160 cm tall).
Barbie is an apt comparison, actually—this is the only Lupin franchise production to have a female director and head writer—with this knowledge what seems like spank material for people who have never seen a real woman turns into someone playing with their doll (and, if my sisters’ play routines were close to typical, Barbie spent a lot of time nude and Ken spent a lot of time in her clothes, which also happens to Goemon here). Ultimately the first episode is the most nudity-heavy—for the most part the rest feels natural or artful, not gratuitous—and Fujiko herself is a well-rounded powerhouse (she’s the protagonist, after all) so it doesn’t feel like she’s only there to look pretty.
Though pretty she does look—a lot of nice fashions on display for her, and hair that is big. The Lupin franchise, until this point, had mostly remained in the sort of ageless current-day as other long-running cartoon franchises like The Simpsons (with the possible exception of the very metafictional Green vs. Red). A Woman Called Fujiko doesn’t specify a time, but it does have something of a reverse-Archer approach. While Archer seems to take place in the present day with 1960s accessories, A Woman Called Fujiko seems to take place in the early 1960s with the odd intrusion of suspiciously advanced tech. A Woman Called Fujiko is a prequel to the original Lupin III series, and it really feels like one—there’s a lot of psychedelia, but it often feels more beatnik or proto-hippie than post-hippie as in Lupin III. There’s less attention paid to gadgetry (no sense in trying to identify the big American sedans that dominate this series), and a lot more paid to attire scenery—less gadgetry, more décor. It gives the whole series a somewhat “girly” feeling compared to the original—even the lighting, often at twilight, has something of a pink glow to it. If Lupin III is cool, A Woman Called Fujiko is glamorous.
Unfortunately, the show’s sexual politics are a mixed bag of dated and modern, and their dated aspects are concentrated in the character of Oscar, a suspiciously frilly protégé of Zenigata who wishes he were a protégé in the manner of the Greeks of old (you know the ones I mean). His arc, while it could be read sympathetically (and may be in Japan, though frankly Oscar’s plotline put me off of researching deeper into issues of gay representation in Japanese media), it plays out as a series of prejudicial, somewhat antiquated stereotypes. It isn’t even an outgrowth of the character or a story (slightly ambiguously) set in the past—one could edit Oscar’s plotline out of A Woman Called Fujiko and it would make zero difference to how the story plays out. He just seems to be there because the series needed an attractive, somewhat androgynous young male character for whatever reason.
Perhaps it’s convention, or a box to check with target audiences: in both design and storytelling, A Woman Called Fujiko is closer to anime convention than the original Lupin series, though it’s still very much a Lupin show. Compared to the original series it’s turned to eleven in terms of sex, violence and fantasy, though that’s hardly unique to Lupin media (the first film, The Secret of Mamo, works on a comparable level). Some familiar themes also crop up, including the Lupin franchise’s surprisingly consistent leftist streak as Fujiko and Goemon end up playing a role in a sort of bizarro Cuban Missile Crisis.
The show is, Oscar excepted, very well structured. Much of the series is almost deceptively episodic—for around three-quarters of the show each episode’s a separate heist, though as the series progresses we notice running threads through the episodes and story-elements-of-the-week actually come back and become important. This means, like the original Lupin show, it’s easy to watch at your own pace, but there is a sense of mounting drama, mystery and intensity as the show progresses, largely centered on our lack of knowledge about Fujiko’s past.
The show hits a climax in its ninth episode, “Love Wreathed in Steam.” Lupin and Jigen are going to steal an artwork, though it turns out the artwork is actually a woman, developed into a sort of living canvas by a mad artist. She only exists as something to be had or possessed, with no communication beyond basic, infant-like reactions to the world around her. While a bit unnerved by her nature, Lupin and Jigen have no trouble stealing her. Fujiko, though, intrudes on the episode in full locomotive mode, not to steal the girl but to destroy her. It’s an exciting chase, full of righteous anger and, surprisingly, some of the best-placed slapstick of any of Lupin episodes I’ve seen, and highly recommended (plus we get another touch of Buddhism).
However, it is the climax of the series. The final episodes never reach this level of intensity, and the weaving-in of the Oscar plot (though it luckily recedes towards the very end) make the final sequence a bit less enjoyable. Nonetheless the final episodes are an effective finish to the series, and the viewer’s pushed forward both by curiosity and a sense of dread. There are definite hints of giallo. Hints of past molestation put the viewer on edge, and I spent a lot of the final episodes hoping things would turn out, if not okay, in a way that allows Fujiko to retain some agency over her life story.
Like with early Lupin, a lot of the pleasure of watching Fujiko is in the vicarious, “wouldn’t it be great if I could get away with that!” pleasure. To have all her sexing and thieving the result of past trauma would do her a disservice.
Luckily the show backs off. Lupin’s always been full of mad scientists and madder noblemen, and it turns out that Fujiko’s memories simply ended up in the crossed wires of some experiment. It’s not a good situation for the actual victim of the mind-control and sexual abuse (and whose story echoes “Love Wreathed in Steam”), but at least Fujiko’s thieving and sexing isn’t a result of it—this is also a metafictional turn, where the idea living a less-than-virtual life vicariously is mooted. But Fujiko is, it turns out, herself—she’s get’s an “I’ve always enjoyed sex!” moment that made me grin. Formally it’s less than successful—a big exposition dump with a subplot or two resolving nearby—but thematically it works quite well.
A Woman Called Fujiko Mine’s imperfect, and not always in the experimental, risk-taking ways of the early Lupin III episodes, but it certainly captures some of their feel and takes the mood further than Ōsumi could at the time. And the focus on Fujiko—the real master thief of Lupin’s early run, is welcome.
Stray Observations
• Pun doesn’t show up here. While I put the series review here to link with Ōsumi’s last episode, which also deals with Fujiko’s past, there’s no actual continuity between them.
• One of the controversies surrounding the series’s airing was that Fujiko basically gets involved with everyone, even sleeping with Jigen and Zenigata, which struck a lot of long-term Lupin viewers as too much. I actually saw this series before the original Lupin III show, though, and having no head-canon for these characters it didn’t bother me. It even extends the joke about Lupin’s involuntary celibacy back in time, though other Lupin stories paint a more ambiguous picture of their relationship.
• One thing the Lupin franchise is well known for is the extraordinary continuity of voice actors, and Jigen is still voiced by Kobayashi Kiyoshi, the same man who voiced him in the pilot film. Knowing this he definitely sounds older, though even aged Kobayashi’s voice suits Jigen well.
Recommended?
Yes, but with reservations. A Woman Called Fujiko Mine hews closer to anime conventions than the original series, which might make it a bit harder for the less-anime inclined viewers (like me) to get into, and the first episode doesn’t work very well in isolation. There’s a subplot that falls into homophobic cliché (even though I’m sure many read it as sympathetic—you can skip the sixth episode, “Prison of Love,” without losing much) and the nudity and stylization take a bit of getting used to, but otherwise it’s a very well composed series, and the mostly-episodic nature means that it’s easy to pull out an episode to watch. I’ll hold off on judgments about the series’s feminist credentials because I don’t know enough about the topic, but Fujiko is fully-realized (in terms of personality!) and mostly a lot of fun to watch.
