The Last of the Regular Episodes: 121, 126, & 137
Jul 29, 2016 20:20:28 GMT -5
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Post by Jean Luc de Lemur on Jul 29, 2016 20:20:28 GMT -5
121 The Treasure My Grandfather Left Behind
or, A Treasure My Grandfather Left
I mentioned this last week, but here’s a quick review: the fourth season used a standard “mansion” template: there’s a treasure inside the castle, typically owned by an enemy of Lupin’s, guarded by some kind of gimmick that Lupin & Co. needs to get, or Lupin & Co. need to escape some kind of compound. The overall emphasis is on unlocking the mystery of said castle to get in or escape, with and typically there’s some kind of gimmickry along the way. It’s a nice, simple armature one can hang all sorts of things from, and to some degree a lot of these episodes feel a bit interchangeable.
But it can be done right. “The Treasure My Grandfather Left Behind” is probably the best of these. Part of that likely comes from the influence of Cagliostro. This is most obvious in the form of Gregoire II, one of the main antagonists of the episode—he’s obviously based on Jodo, the Count of Caglistro’s henchman. There’s also a bit of an echo in the design of the Gregoire family château—looking a bit like a fairy tale palace but packed with modern technology.
The Gregoires are old opponents of the Lupins, though I don’t believe they appear in Leblanc’s books. In any event Lupin finds an old receipt from Gregoire I to Lupin I guaranteeing him a Venus status made of opal, so Lupin heads over to investigate. Although Gregoire II is still around as lord of the manor, we also get to meet his grandson, the roughly Lupin-aged Gregoire III. It’s a fun little contrast—they’re both masters of disguise and a bit goofy (we know he’s Gregoire’s descendent as soon as we see his cross-eyed portrait), but he’s more laid-back, extending down to his more casual—but still blazer-wearing—wardrobe.
Maybe that’s a symptom of playing defense rather than offense. The château’s interiors give the initial impression of a kind of Penrose staircase, though the animation doesn’t quite pull it off. Despite this big-picture failure, though, this remains the exception in an overall well-made episode. Elsewhere there’s a fine, geometric sense of precision in the castles’ traps, defenses, and the way our heroes evade them. It even extends down to the characters and their poses—witness the pattern on Goemon’s han juban (I think that’s what its called).
The color palette also contributes—bright, clean, and clear, much like Cagliostro or the later episodes of the first series. The big gimmick, while a bit reminiscent of the mix of seventies parapsychology and advanced microrobotics in “Arrest Lupin with Horoscopes”, feels a bit more like a classic Lupin trick of perception, more original Lupin III—or even one of the more surreal entries in The Prisoner—than, well, middling episode of Lupin III Part II. While the story doesn’t lock together like many of those original series classics (think of or “When the Seventh Bridge Falls” or “Which of the Third Generation Will Win”), it achieves a similar sort of effect, and isn’t that close enough?
Recommended
Yes—while it’s not really a classic episode, it has the look and feel of one.
Stray Observation
• I’m usually not one to to mention animation flaws—they’re usually not too noticeable, and this series was churned out on a budget almost forty years ago—but at one point Gregoire III’s crewneck shirt turns into a turtleneck and it really bugged me.
126 Together with Lupin to Hell
or, Take Lupin All the Way to Hell
Here we have the opposite goal from “The Treasure My Grandfather Left Behind”—rather than getting into a mansion Lupin and company—in this case just Jigen—have to escape one. Fujiko enters in a bet with the mysterious and wealthy Lady Black as to whether she can trap and kill Lupin. Fujiko bets in Lupin’s favor, and Lupin finds himself trapped in what seems to be a booby trap filled dungeon.
The major twist of the story comes not from any of the traps but from Lady Black who, it turns out, is actually a man with a touch of Norman Bates to him. Like in “Falling Cherry Blossoms” I don’t think this is quite transphobic, but it gets a lot closer and the fact that we have multiple cross-dressing Lupin villains (and explicit transphobia in one of the nineties specials) is not great.
Having noted that, though, there is something unique about Lady Black’s revenge plans—it’s the rare acknowledgment that Lupin’s actions have consequences even as he moves on to the next adventure. When Lady Black was a child, Lupin acted as a cool uncle for him to look up to. Meanwhile, though, Lupin was seducing Lady Black’s mother (either as part as a heist or just because he wanted her). Even if Lupin’s avuncular regard for young Black was authentic (and there’s no reason to think it wasn’t—we’ve seen again and again that Lupin’s good with kids), Black felt used. Not just used, but used by Lupin’s womanizing, thus his determination to beat Lupin as a woman. Lupin, as a franchise, often obviates the immorality of its protagonist with bits of karmic feedback, but never so clearly as here.
More importantly, we have the rare intersection of Lupin III and Post-Lupin : this whole episode revolves around Lupin fucking someone’s mum.
Unfortunately there isn’t a lot here beyond that—we get more catnip for those looking for Spielberg-Lupin links with the rolling brass sphere, but its behavior is more akin to The Prisoner’s Rover than anything in Indiana Jones. There are some nice little touches here and there—it turns out Lady Black’s trap is a replica of the great pyramid, a structure Lupin’s very familiar with, and it’s great to hear him call it out as “tacky.” The story’s well-constructed but rote—foreshadowing turns the corner into predictability here, robbing us of suspense since we can see deus ex Goemon coming from far away.
Recommended?
• It’s perfectly fine filler—a standard story with some interesting bits draped over it—but that’s all.
Stray Observations
• I think this screencap helps demonstrate how high the “average” bar for the series’s animation has risen in the final season, again thanks to Cagliostro—bright, clear colors offset by early-eighties fashion (and the more naturalistic shift in Fujiko’s design), attention to detail in design, and just a sophisticated look in general, even in lady Black’s “tacky” abode.
• A bit more watch watching with a good view of Lupin’s Rolex Submariner..
• The location’s ambiguous here, though Lady Black’s pretty clearly supposed to live in an Alpine area though Lupin’s trapped in an area that looks like the western United States. In this respect it’s similar to ”Play the Thief’s Symphony“, which goes from the Alps to someplace (implied to be nearby) whose look is inspired by the old west. Then I guessed the Chaîne des Puys—now that I’m thinking about it again maybe Rousillon’s the right place.
137 The Magnificent Team-Play Operation
or, Team Work
This is our final “regular” episode of Lupin III Part II, produced in-house by TMS; the final few we’ll be looking at over the next couple of weeks will be made by the subcontracting studio Telecom for TMS (Telecom is, somewhat confusingly, a TMS subsidiary). There are thirteen more regular episodes after this, but “The Magnificent Team-Play Operation” seems a good place to end (especially since many of those, by my own sampling and reputation, are among the worst in the series and let’s end on a high note).
The episode’s a pretty typical Lupin diamond heist, though with the twist that most of the episode’s runtime is spent in preparation for it. Lupin and Zenigata’s chase at the beginning stems from Lupin trying to infiltrate the museum’s security system and is cleverly done, though it turns weirdly sadistic as Lupin denies Zenigata food (in the form of a freshly-caught fish on a stick) for information.
After this initial intelligence-gathering phase comes the preparation phase, where the Lupin gang prepares their heist. Usually we skip this, keeping the mechanics of the heist as a surprise for the end. As I observed in my first of these second series reviews, there’s a greater emphasis on the Lupin gang as a group. There’s some fun in watching them try to practice and coordinate their actions for the heist, showing to what a degree getting them to agree on anything is a bit like herding cats. It also provides the image this episode is best known for, at least online:
If there’s a twist it’s that the heist gets pulled off perfectly. Everything we see before pays off exactly as planned, and there’s no karmic payback in the end. It makes the episode feel a bit pointless—a lot of the fun comes from the mix of clever planning and on-the-spot ingenuity—but it makes for a nice, almost sentimental—note that closing shot—note to leave the TMS episodes on.
Recommended?
While it ultimately doesn’t amount to anything special, it is a nice look at the planning and process behind the usual heists.
Next week we look at the three non-Miyazaki Telecom episodes: 143 “The Miami Bank Raid Anniversary,” 151 “The Arrest Lupin Highway Operation,” and 153 “The Bills that Came from God.” This is going to be good.
or, A Treasure My Grandfather Left
I mentioned this last week, but here’s a quick review: the fourth season used a standard “mansion” template: there’s a treasure inside the castle, typically owned by an enemy of Lupin’s, guarded by some kind of gimmick that Lupin & Co. needs to get, or Lupin & Co. need to escape some kind of compound. The overall emphasis is on unlocking the mystery of said castle to get in or escape, with and typically there’s some kind of gimmickry along the way. It’s a nice, simple armature one can hang all sorts of things from, and to some degree a lot of these episodes feel a bit interchangeable.
But it can be done right. “The Treasure My Grandfather Left Behind” is probably the best of these. Part of that likely comes from the influence of Cagliostro. This is most obvious in the form of Gregoire II, one of the main antagonists of the episode—he’s obviously based on Jodo, the Count of Caglistro’s henchman. There’s also a bit of an echo in the design of the Gregoire family château—looking a bit like a fairy tale palace but packed with modern technology.
The Gregoires are old opponents of the Lupins, though I don’t believe they appear in Leblanc’s books. In any event Lupin finds an old receipt from Gregoire I to Lupin I guaranteeing him a Venus status made of opal, so Lupin heads over to investigate. Although Gregoire II is still around as lord of the manor, we also get to meet his grandson, the roughly Lupin-aged Gregoire III. It’s a fun little contrast—they’re both masters of disguise and a bit goofy (we know he’s Gregoire’s descendent as soon as we see his cross-eyed portrait), but he’s more laid-back, extending down to his more casual—but still blazer-wearing—wardrobe.
Maybe that’s a symptom of playing defense rather than offense. The château’s interiors give the initial impression of a kind of Penrose staircase, though the animation doesn’t quite pull it off. Despite this big-picture failure, though, this remains the exception in an overall well-made episode. Elsewhere there’s a fine, geometric sense of precision in the castles’ traps, defenses, and the way our heroes evade them. It even extends down to the characters and their poses—witness the pattern on Goemon’s han juban (I think that’s what its called).
The color palette also contributes—bright, clean, and clear, much like Cagliostro or the later episodes of the first series. The big gimmick, while a bit reminiscent of the mix of seventies parapsychology and advanced microrobotics in “Arrest Lupin with Horoscopes”, feels a bit more like a classic Lupin trick of perception, more original Lupin III—or even one of the more surreal entries in The Prisoner—than, well, middling episode of Lupin III Part II. While the story doesn’t lock together like many of those original series classics (think of or “When the Seventh Bridge Falls” or “Which of the Third Generation Will Win”), it achieves a similar sort of effect, and isn’t that close enough?
Recommended
Yes—while it’s not really a classic episode, it has the look and feel of one.
Stray Observation
• I’m usually not one to to mention animation flaws—they’re usually not too noticeable, and this series was churned out on a budget almost forty years ago—but at one point Gregoire III’s crewneck shirt turns into a turtleneck and it really bugged me.
126 Together with Lupin to Hell
or, Take Lupin All the Way to Hell
Here we have the opposite goal from “The Treasure My Grandfather Left Behind”—rather than getting into a mansion Lupin and company—in this case just Jigen—have to escape one. Fujiko enters in a bet with the mysterious and wealthy Lady Black as to whether she can trap and kill Lupin. Fujiko bets in Lupin’s favor, and Lupin finds himself trapped in what seems to be a booby trap filled dungeon.
The major twist of the story comes not from any of the traps but from Lady Black who, it turns out, is actually a man with a touch of Norman Bates to him. Like in “Falling Cherry Blossoms” I don’t think this is quite transphobic, but it gets a lot closer and the fact that we have multiple cross-dressing Lupin villains (and explicit transphobia in one of the nineties specials) is not great.
Having noted that, though, there is something unique about Lady Black’s revenge plans—it’s the rare acknowledgment that Lupin’s actions have consequences even as he moves on to the next adventure. When Lady Black was a child, Lupin acted as a cool uncle for him to look up to. Meanwhile, though, Lupin was seducing Lady Black’s mother (either as part as a heist or just because he wanted her). Even if Lupin’s avuncular regard for young Black was authentic (and there’s no reason to think it wasn’t—we’ve seen again and again that Lupin’s good with kids), Black felt used. Not just used, but used by Lupin’s womanizing, thus his determination to beat Lupin as a woman. Lupin, as a franchise, often obviates the immorality of its protagonist with bits of karmic feedback, but never so clearly as here.
More importantly, we have the rare intersection of Lupin III and Post-Lupin : this whole episode revolves around Lupin fucking someone’s mum.
Unfortunately there isn’t a lot here beyond that—we get more catnip for those looking for Spielberg-Lupin links with the rolling brass sphere, but its behavior is more akin to The Prisoner’s Rover than anything in Indiana Jones. There are some nice little touches here and there—it turns out Lady Black’s trap is a replica of the great pyramid, a structure Lupin’s very familiar with, and it’s great to hear him call it out as “tacky.” The story’s well-constructed but rote—foreshadowing turns the corner into predictability here, robbing us of suspense since we can see deus ex Goemon coming from far away.
Recommended?
• It’s perfectly fine filler—a standard story with some interesting bits draped over it—but that’s all.
Stray Observations
• I think this screencap helps demonstrate how high the “average” bar for the series’s animation has risen in the final season, again thanks to Cagliostro—bright, clear colors offset by early-eighties fashion (and the more naturalistic shift in Fujiko’s design), attention to detail in design, and just a sophisticated look in general, even in lady Black’s “tacky” abode.
• A bit more watch watching with a good view of Lupin’s Rolex Submariner..
• The location’s ambiguous here, though Lady Black’s pretty clearly supposed to live in an Alpine area though Lupin’s trapped in an area that looks like the western United States. In this respect it’s similar to ”Play the Thief’s Symphony“, which goes from the Alps to someplace (implied to be nearby) whose look is inspired by the old west. Then I guessed the Chaîne des Puys—now that I’m thinking about it again maybe Rousillon’s the right place.
137 The Magnificent Team-Play Operation
or, Team Work
This is our final “regular” episode of Lupin III Part II, produced in-house by TMS; the final few we’ll be looking at over the next couple of weeks will be made by the subcontracting studio Telecom for TMS (Telecom is, somewhat confusingly, a TMS subsidiary). There are thirteen more regular episodes after this, but “The Magnificent Team-Play Operation” seems a good place to end (especially since many of those, by my own sampling and reputation, are among the worst in the series and let’s end on a high note).
The episode’s a pretty typical Lupin diamond heist, though with the twist that most of the episode’s runtime is spent in preparation for it. Lupin and Zenigata’s chase at the beginning stems from Lupin trying to infiltrate the museum’s security system and is cleverly done, though it turns weirdly sadistic as Lupin denies Zenigata food (in the form of a freshly-caught fish on a stick) for information.
After this initial intelligence-gathering phase comes the preparation phase, where the Lupin gang prepares their heist. Usually we skip this, keeping the mechanics of the heist as a surprise for the end. As I observed in my first of these second series reviews, there’s a greater emphasis on the Lupin gang as a group. There’s some fun in watching them try to practice and coordinate their actions for the heist, showing to what a degree getting them to agree on anything is a bit like herding cats. It also provides the image this episode is best known for, at least online:
If there’s a twist it’s that the heist gets pulled off perfectly. Everything we see before pays off exactly as planned, and there’s no karmic payback in the end. It makes the episode feel a bit pointless—a lot of the fun comes from the mix of clever planning and on-the-spot ingenuity—but it makes for a nice, almost sentimental—note that closing shot—note to leave the TMS episodes on.
Recommended?
While it ultimately doesn’t amount to anything special, it is a nice look at the planning and process behind the usual heists.
Next week we look at the three non-Miyazaki Telecom episodes: 143 “The Miami Bank Raid Anniversary,” 151 “The Arrest Lupin Highway Operation,” and 153 “The Bills that Came from God.” This is going to be good.
