FINAL NEW Episode Reviews—Three Classics: Eps. 143, 151, 153
Aug 5, 2016 14:08:37 GMT -5
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Post by Jean Luc de Lemur on Aug 5, 2016 14:08:37 GMT -5
143 The Miami Bank Raid Anniversary
or, The Miami Bank
Going off Ben Ettinger’s article on Lupin III Part II animation credits, I’d initially thought of this series of reviews as contrasting the flat, cartoonish style of Yuzo Aoki (inspired in part by Monkey Punch’s original comics and the look of The Mystery of Mamo) and the more rounded, naturalistic style of Telecom (continuous, both in style and staff, with the first series, and the style of The Castle of Cagliostro). The problem with this was two-fold: it left a lot of the second series out and it’s not a real dichotomy. This episode is, in fact, storyboarded by Aoki and produced by Telecom. With the exception of Miyazaki’s epsiodes (where he got special latitude in terms of story), there’s not really much separating the Telecom episodes on paper from any other Lupin III Part II episode. Why then do Telecom episodes, especially these three, have such a sterling reputation?
The first, and most obvious (especially for the older, more craft-oriented anime fans that makeup a lot of Lupin’s fandom) is that they look so much better. I’m limiting the screencaps per episode here—there’s too much to choose from. Plus every moment is expertly choreographed, and in a lot of cases screencaps don’t do them justice—after the above screencap, for instance, there’s a scene where Lupin deploys a burrowing device and a closeup of the pneumatics shifting. At any particular moment it doesn’t look like anything, but together, with all the elements shifting in opposing directions, it’s a dynamic little moment (Ettinger thinks the first half of this episode alone used more animation frames than the average Lupin III Part II episode). If there’s a visual theme this episode it’s buoyancy—with extended sequences underwater and in mid-air, it’s a joy to watch all the floating, three-dimensional movement.
And the above screencap is not really representative of the episode’s tone, either—it’s generally bright and bold, much like Miami itself. There’s a lot of variation in tone, though—the scene above is after Lupin’s gang has abandoned him, refusing to do such the penny-ante job of robbing the failing Miami Bank. You can see Lupin’s disappointment in his stance, but there’s still a tense electricity in the air as he looks at his target. It’s a subtle scene, and it’s matched by the voice acting—in these last episodes in particular it’s more subdued. While the bodies of the Lupin gang are more naturalistically rendered, their faces are a bit more cartoonish with larger eyes. But this allows for more subtle rendering of facial expressions.
On paper, this episode is similar to a lot of other Aoki-headed episodes: it’s full of little gags, relies on some fairly silly technology, the Americans are (affectionately) stereotypical Americans in vaguely-1920s dress (probably the biggest Aoki tell), and gives Lupin an embarrassing moment when his crew abandons him. But nothing’s executed with his typical broad brush—even when ridiculous it feels more real, and to me that makes it more effective. The burrowing machine, for instance, even dips a little after it punches through a wall before righting itself to punch through the next one—gravity still works in Lupin’s universe, even if it’s easier to overcome in the finale.
But the real strength of the episode comes from the subdued voice acting, which was evidently a consequence of Telecom’s production of these episodes. While the cartoonish style of some of Aoki’s episodes was a big part of their visual appeal, the cartoonish voice acting and general pitching of everything to eleven kills most of them for me. But with the subtler acting (and design) here elements that turn potentially over-the-top jokiness into dramatic irony, such as when Lupin’s gang abandons him. It’s done quietly, almost under Lupin’s nose. And rather than giving him anover-the-top, emasculated response, the subtler interpretation of Lupin’s situation allows him to display an almost grim determination.
Make no mistake, “The Miami Bank Raid Anniversary” is a joyously silly episode. But the episode takes itself just seriously enough to keep that silliness from becoming overbearing, and by toning down the voice acting allows Lupin to keep his sense of cool.
Recommended?
Enthusiastically—visually ingenious, both in service of gags and of character
Stray Observations
• Since it’s election season, I can’t help but include this screencap of Lupin and Zenigata windsurfing:
• The central plot point of the episode (amazing I barely got to plot—that’s how good the execution is) is that the struggling Miami Bank wants Lupin to rob it as a publicity stunt, making this the second episode this season to deal with Lupin’s media image, here used to the bank’s advantage. It’s an interesting contrast to the most recent series, where Lupin tries to protect his identity from even flip-phone cameras.
• The subtitles consistently call Zenigata “sergeant” rather than “inspector” for some reason.
151 The Arrest Lupin Highway Operation
or, To Arrest Lupin, the Mission at Highway
This episode has a reputation as being part of a sort of holy trinity along with Miyazaki’s pair of episodes, though it’s less-known in the English-speaking world because it was not released (dubbed) on VHS along with the other two. And it deserves to be—it is quite good and very much in the non-stop action mode of the other two, and is best described as an extended riff on the car chase in The Castle of Cagliostro, but with a kei van rather than the famous FIAT.
The story’s tightly constructed—Lupin aims to hijack a convoy of diamonds, but Zenigata’s watching and has set a trap. His first attempt, with Fujiko, is foiled by Zenigata, who takes her captive. Lupin’s job, then, is to both rescue Fujiko and retrieve the diamonds. It’s all expertly done, but this is also what separates the Miyazaki episodes from “The Arrest Lupin Highway Operation”—this is just a basic Lupin story, without the extra turns and surprises.
But it’s also just a basic Lupin story—it’s largely lacking in the superfluous gags and diversions of many Lupin III Part II episodes. “The Arrest Lupin Highway Operation” draws strength from that simplicity, allowing the tension of the situation and ingenuity of the solution to carry everything.
Recommended?
Very much so, it’s one of the best of the series and fully earns its “holy trinity” status. I’d write more but there’d be little to do but unwrap the mechanics of the story, which is the joy of watching.
Stray Observations
• Most Lupin III Part II episodes take place during the day, but aside from the vibrant beach scene at the beginning (which I’d forgotten about when I rewatched the episode for this review) it takes place from dusk until dawn over a single night and mostly outdoors, giving it a unique atmosphere. The dusk allows for a different, more earthen color palette, while the night is full of blues, greys, and rusts. While a lot of the late nineties-early 2000s “darker and grittier” Lupin specials adopted a night-primary aesthetic, they went for cruder blacks with standard cartoon colors highlighted, which (to me, at least) looks cheap in comparison (especially since I suspect it was partly a means of saving money on backgrounds and details).
• Despite the fact that almost all of the action is automotive it’s surprisingly hard to identify the cars here. Lupin drives a a small Japanese kei (a Japanese low-vehicle-tax classification with strict size and engine displacement limits) van, but given that this isn’t a segment with big stylistic distinctions it’s hard to identify—it comes closest, by a not-definitive hair, to looking like a Subaru Sambar, which was sold in Europe at the time. Incidentally the police cars look like contemporary Subaru Leones, which were not used as police cars in Europe, but I think they’re supposed to be Alfettas, which were.
• Fujiko wears a green sweater with white bell-bottoms, a look which would (almost) recur in episode 153, though with a t-shirt—if the entire series were made by Telecom one wonders whether this would be her standard outfit, or at least standard work outfit, rather than the varying-by-pisode (and often admittedly ridiculously awesome) fashion plates. However Fujiko does change into a dress in the end—who was carrying it over the whole episode?
153 The Bills that Came from God
or, Money from Heaven
All the police cars here are late seventies FIATS, but when Goemon cuts away one’s sheetmetal it reveals a rear engine. Big FIAT sedans were always front-engined, but I wonder whether this is an intentional error.
In an interview Hayao Miyazaki and Yasuo Ōtsuka talked about how the vehicles of Cagliostro were the ones they loved in their youth—there’s a sense of nostalgia in the film, and that extends down to the design. Blu-ray screencaps of newspaper marriage announcement in Cagliostro even showed a late sixties date, whereas this series (and the original) explicitly take place either when they were produced (or in the near future in the series finale’s case). The FIATS here, too, look like they’re FIAT 124’s from the mid-sixties, bearing the pre-Columbian8 logo.
Midcentury Europe was a high-water point for mechanical diversity in cars, with automakers experimenting all sorts of drivetrain layouts before the mass-market oddities—including rear-engined cars—were whittled away as competition intensified, engineering costs rose, profit margins shrunk, and companies merged. Incidentally FIAT helped drive this trend, both by inventing the transverse front engine layout that underpins almost every car retailing under $40,000 today (incidentally the 124’s layout was a fairly conservative, but well-executed, front engine-rear wheel drive car, which still underpins a lot of luxury marks).
The rear engine is a minor detail, but it’s a revealing one (and testament to the stunning attention to such details this episode has). There’s a nostalgia here, too, and probably a stronger one than in Cagliostro. It’s for a world with a slower pace of life, a more pristine nature, and where the built environment was imbued with unique, place-specific character—part of the story revolves around rebuilding a church, even. The recent alternation between contemporary (the most recent series and specials) and period (The Woman Called Fujiko, Jigen’s Gravestone) settings raised, perhaps unintentionally, the question of how well Lupin is to a modern setting, based largely on aesthetic and technological grounds (Jigen’s Gravestone, in particular, focuses on the emergence of modern surveillance technology). “The Bills that Came from God” reveals this to be an old question—even by the late seventies Lupin’s mix of modern style, tinkerer’s skills, and old-world quirk was starting to seem a bit anachronistic.
While it’s far more irreverent than Cagliostro—the robbery’s set in motion by Jigen shooting a laxative into Zenigata’s mouth, for instance—but “The Bills that Came from God” has a similar nostalgic air. Taking place in the Swiss Alps, the animators take full advantage of their setting, keeping most of the episode at a languorous pace where almost every scene has some spectacular mountain view in the background. There’s also a fair amount of variation in weather, too—most of the episode takes place under clear, Miyazakian blue skies, but we also get a dramatic Alpine thunderstorm and its sunny aftermath. We also get some beautiful color in the sky at the episode’s climax, taking place early in the dawn. It mirrors those early episodes of the first Lupin series, which often reached their conclusion on moody dusks.
It’s also a return to that naughtier, charming Lupin from the first episode—compellingly classy and humorously vulgar (“Is Lupin Burning?!” even features a bit of literal toilet humor as Lupin masquerades as a plumber; he masquerades as a contractor here), both protagonist and villain. His object this episode is INTERPOL’s stash of confiscated money, his recorded message to Zenigata telling him that villains stole this money and villains would get it back. Most of the episode has Lupin deceiving a local nun, taking advantage of her good nature in order to both aid their theft and provide cover from Zenigata.
Getting Lupin to be legitimately bad while remaining charming and sympathetic is a hard balance to find. Usually the second series doesn’t try, subsuming Lupin’s worse traits in goofiness and making him more lucky than skilled. These three episodes, thanks again to the subtler voice direction, allow Lupin to keep his edge while keeping him fundamentally likable. This episode and “The Arrest Lupin Highway operation” are all the more remarkable because they only feature Lupin against Zenigata rather than some worse foe, another easy means of making Lupin sympathetic.
This is the last of my episodic reviews, and it feels appropriate that in such a nostalgic episode we’d return to Lupin’s original characterization here, if in a lower-key setting. This is Lupin as he was originally meant to be, a Lupin who, by 1980, was starting to recede into the past. Appropriate that Miyazaki would place the unabashedly heroic Lupin of his finale in the near future.
Recommended?
Yes—expertly crafted with subtle characterization, a beautiful almost-final episode—twilight and dawn at once.
Stray Observations
• The bulk of this review is a stray observation gone out of control, but I’m glad I was able to finally incorporate the car-watching into the main body of the review. It’s honestly one of my favorite aspects of the franchise.
• In one of the worse/funnier subtitle mishaps, “Lord” is mistyped as “Load.”
Next week I will re-up a lightly revised (with revisions in typewriter font) edition of my old review of Miyazaki’s two episodes of Lupin III Part II, with a series wrap-up (with top ten episodes) and future plans.
or, The Miami Bank
Going off Ben Ettinger’s article on Lupin III Part II animation credits, I’d initially thought of this series of reviews as contrasting the flat, cartoonish style of Yuzo Aoki (inspired in part by Monkey Punch’s original comics and the look of The Mystery of Mamo) and the more rounded, naturalistic style of Telecom (continuous, both in style and staff, with the first series, and the style of The Castle of Cagliostro). The problem with this was two-fold: it left a lot of the second series out and it’s not a real dichotomy. This episode is, in fact, storyboarded by Aoki and produced by Telecom. With the exception of Miyazaki’s epsiodes (where he got special latitude in terms of story), there’s not really much separating the Telecom episodes on paper from any other Lupin III Part II episode. Why then do Telecom episodes, especially these three, have such a sterling reputation?
The first, and most obvious (especially for the older, more craft-oriented anime fans that makeup a lot of Lupin’s fandom) is that they look so much better. I’m limiting the screencaps per episode here—there’s too much to choose from. Plus every moment is expertly choreographed, and in a lot of cases screencaps don’t do them justice—after the above screencap, for instance, there’s a scene where Lupin deploys a burrowing device and a closeup of the pneumatics shifting. At any particular moment it doesn’t look like anything, but together, with all the elements shifting in opposing directions, it’s a dynamic little moment (Ettinger thinks the first half of this episode alone used more animation frames than the average Lupin III Part II episode). If there’s a visual theme this episode it’s buoyancy—with extended sequences underwater and in mid-air, it’s a joy to watch all the floating, three-dimensional movement.
And the above screencap is not really representative of the episode’s tone, either—it’s generally bright and bold, much like Miami itself. There’s a lot of variation in tone, though—the scene above is after Lupin’s gang has abandoned him, refusing to do such the penny-ante job of robbing the failing Miami Bank. You can see Lupin’s disappointment in his stance, but there’s still a tense electricity in the air as he looks at his target. It’s a subtle scene, and it’s matched by the voice acting—in these last episodes in particular it’s more subdued. While the bodies of the Lupin gang are more naturalistically rendered, their faces are a bit more cartoonish with larger eyes. But this allows for more subtle rendering of facial expressions.
On paper, this episode is similar to a lot of other Aoki-headed episodes: it’s full of little gags, relies on some fairly silly technology, the Americans are (affectionately) stereotypical Americans in vaguely-1920s dress (probably the biggest Aoki tell), and gives Lupin an embarrassing moment when his crew abandons him. But nothing’s executed with his typical broad brush—even when ridiculous it feels more real, and to me that makes it more effective. The burrowing machine, for instance, even dips a little after it punches through a wall before righting itself to punch through the next one—gravity still works in Lupin’s universe, even if it’s easier to overcome in the finale.
But the real strength of the episode comes from the subdued voice acting, which was evidently a consequence of Telecom’s production of these episodes. While the cartoonish style of some of Aoki’s episodes was a big part of their visual appeal, the cartoonish voice acting and general pitching of everything to eleven kills most of them for me. But with the subtler acting (and design) here elements that turn potentially over-the-top jokiness into dramatic irony, such as when Lupin’s gang abandons him. It’s done quietly, almost under Lupin’s nose. And rather than giving him anover-the-top, emasculated response, the subtler interpretation of Lupin’s situation allows him to display an almost grim determination.
Make no mistake, “The Miami Bank Raid Anniversary” is a joyously silly episode. But the episode takes itself just seriously enough to keep that silliness from becoming overbearing, and by toning down the voice acting allows Lupin to keep his sense of cool.
Recommended?
Enthusiastically—visually ingenious, both in service of gags and of character
Stray Observations
• Since it’s election season, I can’t help but include this screencap of Lupin and Zenigata windsurfing:
• The central plot point of the episode (amazing I barely got to plot—that’s how good the execution is) is that the struggling Miami Bank wants Lupin to rob it as a publicity stunt, making this the second episode this season to deal with Lupin’s media image, here used to the bank’s advantage. It’s an interesting contrast to the most recent series, where Lupin tries to protect his identity from even flip-phone cameras.
• The subtitles consistently call Zenigata “sergeant” rather than “inspector” for some reason.
151 The Arrest Lupin Highway Operation
or, To Arrest Lupin, the Mission at Highway
This episode has a reputation as being part of a sort of holy trinity along with Miyazaki’s pair of episodes, though it’s less-known in the English-speaking world because it was not released (dubbed) on VHS along with the other two. And it deserves to be—it is quite good and very much in the non-stop action mode of the other two, and is best described as an extended riff on the car chase in The Castle of Cagliostro, but with a kei van rather than the famous FIAT.
The story’s tightly constructed—Lupin aims to hijack a convoy of diamonds, but Zenigata’s watching and has set a trap. His first attempt, with Fujiko, is foiled by Zenigata, who takes her captive. Lupin’s job, then, is to both rescue Fujiko and retrieve the diamonds. It’s all expertly done, but this is also what separates the Miyazaki episodes from “The Arrest Lupin Highway Operation”—this is just a basic Lupin story, without the extra turns and surprises.
But it’s also just a basic Lupin story—it’s largely lacking in the superfluous gags and diversions of many Lupin III Part II episodes. “The Arrest Lupin Highway Operation” draws strength from that simplicity, allowing the tension of the situation and ingenuity of the solution to carry everything.
Recommended?
Very much so, it’s one of the best of the series and fully earns its “holy trinity” status. I’d write more but there’d be little to do but unwrap the mechanics of the story, which is the joy of watching.
Stray Observations
• Most Lupin III Part II episodes take place during the day, but aside from the vibrant beach scene at the beginning (which I’d forgotten about when I rewatched the episode for this review) it takes place from dusk until dawn over a single night and mostly outdoors, giving it a unique atmosphere. The dusk allows for a different, more earthen color palette, while the night is full of blues, greys, and rusts. While a lot of the late nineties-early 2000s “darker and grittier” Lupin specials adopted a night-primary aesthetic, they went for cruder blacks with standard cartoon colors highlighted, which (to me, at least) looks cheap in comparison (especially since I suspect it was partly a means of saving money on backgrounds and details).
• Despite the fact that almost all of the action is automotive it’s surprisingly hard to identify the cars here. Lupin drives a a small Japanese kei (a Japanese low-vehicle-tax classification with strict size and engine displacement limits) van, but given that this isn’t a segment with big stylistic distinctions it’s hard to identify—it comes closest, by a not-definitive hair, to looking like a Subaru Sambar, which was sold in Europe at the time. Incidentally the police cars look like contemporary Subaru Leones, which were not used as police cars in Europe, but I think they’re supposed to be Alfettas, which were.
• Fujiko wears a green sweater with white bell-bottoms, a look which would (almost) recur in episode 153, though with a t-shirt—if the entire series were made by Telecom one wonders whether this would be her standard outfit, or at least standard work outfit, rather than the varying-by-pisode (and often admittedly ridiculously awesome) fashion plates. However Fujiko does change into a dress in the end—who was carrying it over the whole episode?
153 The Bills that Came from God
or, Money from Heaven
All the police cars here are late seventies FIATS, but when Goemon cuts away one’s sheetmetal it reveals a rear engine. Big FIAT sedans were always front-engined, but I wonder whether this is an intentional error.
In an interview Hayao Miyazaki and Yasuo Ōtsuka talked about how the vehicles of Cagliostro were the ones they loved in their youth—there’s a sense of nostalgia in the film, and that extends down to the design. Blu-ray screencaps of newspaper marriage announcement in Cagliostro even showed a late sixties date, whereas this series (and the original) explicitly take place either when they were produced (or in the near future in the series finale’s case). The FIATS here, too, look like they’re FIAT 124’s from the mid-sixties, bearing the pre-Columbian8 logo.
Midcentury Europe was a high-water point for mechanical diversity in cars, with automakers experimenting all sorts of drivetrain layouts before the mass-market oddities—including rear-engined cars—were whittled away as competition intensified, engineering costs rose, profit margins shrunk, and companies merged. Incidentally FIAT helped drive this trend, both by inventing the transverse front engine layout that underpins almost every car retailing under $40,000 today (incidentally the 124’s layout was a fairly conservative, but well-executed, front engine-rear wheel drive car, which still underpins a lot of luxury marks).
The rear engine is a minor detail, but it’s a revealing one (and testament to the stunning attention to such details this episode has). There’s a nostalgia here, too, and probably a stronger one than in Cagliostro. It’s for a world with a slower pace of life, a more pristine nature, and where the built environment was imbued with unique, place-specific character—part of the story revolves around rebuilding a church, even. The recent alternation between contemporary (the most recent series and specials) and period (The Woman Called Fujiko, Jigen’s Gravestone) settings raised, perhaps unintentionally, the question of how well Lupin is to a modern setting, based largely on aesthetic and technological grounds (Jigen’s Gravestone, in particular, focuses on the emergence of modern surveillance technology). “The Bills that Came from God” reveals this to be an old question—even by the late seventies Lupin’s mix of modern style, tinkerer’s skills, and old-world quirk was starting to seem a bit anachronistic.
While it’s far more irreverent than Cagliostro—the robbery’s set in motion by Jigen shooting a laxative into Zenigata’s mouth, for instance—but “The Bills that Came from God” has a similar nostalgic air. Taking place in the Swiss Alps, the animators take full advantage of their setting, keeping most of the episode at a languorous pace where almost every scene has some spectacular mountain view in the background. There’s also a fair amount of variation in weather, too—most of the episode takes place under clear, Miyazakian blue skies, but we also get a dramatic Alpine thunderstorm and its sunny aftermath. We also get some beautiful color in the sky at the episode’s climax, taking place early in the dawn. It mirrors those early episodes of the first Lupin series, which often reached their conclusion on moody dusks.
It’s also a return to that naughtier, charming Lupin from the first episode—compellingly classy and humorously vulgar (“Is Lupin Burning?!” even features a bit of literal toilet humor as Lupin masquerades as a plumber; he masquerades as a contractor here), both protagonist and villain. His object this episode is INTERPOL’s stash of confiscated money, his recorded message to Zenigata telling him that villains stole this money and villains would get it back. Most of the episode has Lupin deceiving a local nun, taking advantage of her good nature in order to both aid their theft and provide cover from Zenigata.
Getting Lupin to be legitimately bad while remaining charming and sympathetic is a hard balance to find. Usually the second series doesn’t try, subsuming Lupin’s worse traits in goofiness and making him more lucky than skilled. These three episodes, thanks again to the subtler voice direction, allow Lupin to keep his edge while keeping him fundamentally likable. This episode and “The Arrest Lupin Highway operation” are all the more remarkable because they only feature Lupin against Zenigata rather than some worse foe, another easy means of making Lupin sympathetic.
This is the last of my episodic reviews, and it feels appropriate that in such a nostalgic episode we’d return to Lupin’s original characterization here, if in a lower-key setting. This is Lupin as he was originally meant to be, a Lupin who, by 1980, was starting to recede into the past. Appropriate that Miyazaki would place the unabashedly heroic Lupin of his finale in the near future.
Recommended?
Yes—expertly crafted with subtle characterization, a beautiful almost-final episode—twilight and dawn at once.
Stray Observations
• The bulk of this review is a stray observation gone out of control, but I’m glad I was able to finally incorporate the car-watching into the main body of the review. It’s honestly one of my favorite aspects of the franchise.
• In one of the worse/funnier subtitle mishaps, “Lord” is mistyped as “Load.”
Next week I will re-up a lightly revised (with revisions in typewriter font) edition of my old review of Miyazaki’s two episodes of Lupin III Part II, with a series wrap-up (with top ten episodes) and future plans.