Post by Jean Luc de Lemur on Sept 2, 2022 2:39:34 GMT -5
22 “Explore the mystery women’s palace!”
or, “Lupin in paradise”
Since Part VI I’ve been looking to other places where Lupin’s been discused and discovered Lupin III comic book guys, people who believe there is essentially right or essentially wrong Lupin, as opposed to opinions about well-done or poorly-done Lupin. Right Lupin, they believe, is in the later part of the first manga series and the second one, the near-forgotten Lupin III Jr. kids’ manga, the second “Red Jacket” series, The Mystery of Mamo, and thanks to its critical reevaluation the third “Pink Jacket” show . It’s a preference for more gag-oriented than story-oriented Lupin stories, a looser, “cartoonier” style of animation, and more generally a desire to get closer to Monkey Punch’s true intent, whatever that was.
One thing thing that sometimes coexists with that reverence for Monkey Punch is a desire for future iterations of Lupin to contain fewer “adult themes,” which strikes me as odd. Hell, the Monkey Punch-approved Mamo philosophizes about the role of the intellect in the nature of lust on top of the slapstick rape attempt from our protagonist, hardly kids’ stuff. I can see why there’s some interest in Lupin III Jr..
It’s just impossible to avoid sex in Monkey Punch’s own work and especially in Part II. That’s not always an uncomfortable thing, though. He had a bawdy sense of humor that, even if it’s not something would write today, did translate well to screen.
“Explore the mystery women’s palace!” is a direct adaptation of a Monkey Punch chapter from the second manga series (right in the Lupin traditionalist bailiwick), which is itself a loose modernization of a Japanese folktale about an ironic treasure; the episode even establishes its setting with backgrounds reminiscent of a traditional shanshui-style landscape. Still, it’s a modernization filtered through Playboy (Monkey Punch supplied cartoons for the Japanese version). Lupin, aiming to infiltrate a mythical palace of eternally-youthful women, finds himself invited in after rescuing one of its inhabitants from a tiger. It is the stuff of his dreams: opulent, well-stocked with wine, and populated by eager, busty, beautiful women in various states of undress. Lupin’s cheeks are red for much of the episode.
One of the challenges of adapting Monkey Punch chapters is their length—they’re short. Part I tended to stretch the stories out, indulging in atmosphere. Part II tended to clutter them, adding scenes and gags to pad out the run time. “Explore” does something more interesting, though, and something that makes it a standout episode of Part II—it layers the story. Lupin entering is the first layer, Zenigata’s pursuit and entrance into the palace is the second layer. Fujiko’s previous attempt at infiltration is a sub-layer. Jigen’s attempt to rescue Lupin, later aided by Goemon, adds another layer. You even get an intersecting layer from the palace as LEAD’s underlings report back from their battle outside.
One of the least-liked dictates of Lupin’s directors’ bosses at TMS was the request to include the lead five in every episode. While they were sometimes shoved into padding, the layering of characters’ mini-arcs instead in “Explore” used of them well without feeling they were obligatorily inserted.
The dynamic of Lupin and Zenigata here is particularly special, putting work behind, getting drunk together, and each having parallel trips through the palace, in search of and semi-accidentally stumbling on its secrets (which includes a fun, drunk, dumb luck-driven sequence of Lupin evading various booby traps in search of the bathroom).
The only downside was the ending. The women’s key weapon was an aging gas, which in the final assault on the castle is turned against the women themselves. It sits poorly with me in the same way a lot of “just desserts” stories in this Lupin series do. Aging the women seems less dramatic irony than the reassertion of a conservative morality, punishment for the sins of vanity and voluptuousness. A loose attitude towards sin is part of Lupin’s appeal, though, whether committed by friend or foe.
Highly Recommended for its storytelling and character work.
52 “Emanuelle whispers like an angel”
or, “Emanuelle in Bangkok”
Lupin meets Hercule Poirot’s granddaughter, Emanuelle Poirot, who’s decided to dedicate her little grey cells to the practicing crimes rather than solving them. Emanuelle Poirot is far more Emanuelle than Poirot. I’m no Christie fan and I’m only familiar with Emanuelle as a punchline but it’s obvious this Emanuelle is more her first name than last.
There’s really not much to say about this episode. It’s basically an excuse for the animators to exhibit constant toplessness, near-toplessness, cleavage, and protrusion. The energy the writers and animators brought to the episode definitely filters onto screen. The bawdiness adds an en energy that other, similar Part II stories lack. As noted last week Part II was churned out at an industrial pace, so the horniness adds a human touch and sense of spontaneity that’s too rare.
Inessential, as it’s still a pretty stock episode despite the animators’ literally ungirdled enthusiasm.
Editorial note
“Emmanuelle whispers like an angel” might have been the last episode of its kind, as the producers gave more consideration towards the younger end of the audience. Explicit contemporary references[/a] mostly disappeared (certainly for the best in the long run) as did sexual content in general. While Lupin would still occasionally try to get in bed with Fujiko, often he’d want to “marry” her. Female co-stars were typically not romantic or sexual interests and their behavior often was juvenelized, as was Fujiko’s. It was certainly not always the case (despite its childish tone the last season had some of the series’s darkest episodes), but the show—and the franchise—lost one of its flavors.
Lupin has largely followed culture as a whole on sex, including in its younger bawdier years. There’s little sexual or event romantic content the Pink Jacketed Part III. While it was intended (and was) a show for adults, you see the same dynamic elsewhere in mid-to-late 80s action-adventure, such as in Dalton’s turn as James Bond. Afterwards, TMS’s desire to capture new generations of younger audiences as viewers of the original shows aged mostly, though not entirely, deterred sex and nudity through the 80s-90s-00s run of specials and films. None of that’s necessarily bad—the faults of those works don’t stem from lack of libido, and many sexless or family-friendly works (thinking specifically of The First) are very good.
There has been a return to sexual themes since the 10s, but generally in a more serious way. The Woman Called Fujiko Mine launched the “Lupin Renaissance” but remains sui generis, covering almost every base of female sexuality though central to the show’s arc—and most people’s memory of it—was sexual assault. It comes up in Part IV, Part V, and even in Part VI—largely a conservative reaction[/i] to Part V—had a very out-of-place episode about a high school rape-murder-suicide (and just about it—Lupin and co. barely appear)!
It’s not the main depiction of sex contemporary Lupin—The Woman Called Fujiko basically touched all the bases, Part V is unique for its depiction of actual intimacy. That hasn’t stuck in people’s minds, though, and I can see why people are burnt out (I certainly as after Part VI, but I was burnt out on everything on Part VI).
The Takeshi Koike films have a little bit of the roughness, either exploitative or impish, of Monkey Punch’s work—only a little bit, of course. That’s the irony of going back to Monkey Punch’s original intent, of course……hey, that Lupin III Jr. sure is underrated, isn’t it?.
I think there is a missing space for sex, or at least sexiness, if we’re going back to “original intent” and it’s on the soft and playful side (and Hayao Miyazaki arguably took it to the male end too in “Wings of Death: Albatross”). I don’t think the Playboy cartoon approach would necessarily work so well today, but just as storytelling has been modernized in the 10s why can’t more adult humor be in the 20s?
or, “Lupin in paradise”
Since Part VI I’ve been looking to other places where Lupin’s been discused and discovered Lupin III comic book guys, people who believe there is essentially right or essentially wrong Lupin, as opposed to opinions about well-done or poorly-done Lupin. Right Lupin, they believe, is in the later part of the first manga series and the second one, the near-forgotten Lupin III Jr. kids’ manga, the second “Red Jacket” series, The Mystery of Mamo, and thanks to its critical reevaluation the third “Pink Jacket” show . It’s a preference for more gag-oriented than story-oriented Lupin stories, a looser, “cartoonier” style of animation, and more generally a desire to get closer to Monkey Punch’s true intent, whatever that was.
One thing thing that sometimes coexists with that reverence for Monkey Punch is a desire for future iterations of Lupin to contain fewer “adult themes,” which strikes me as odd. Hell, the Monkey Punch-approved Mamo philosophizes about the role of the intellect in the nature of lust on top of the slapstick rape attempt from our protagonist, hardly kids’ stuff. I can see why there’s some interest in Lupin III Jr..
It’s just impossible to avoid sex in Monkey Punch’s own work and especially in Part II. That’s not always an uncomfortable thing, though. He had a bawdy sense of humor that, even if it’s not something would write today, did translate well to screen.
“Explore the mystery women’s palace!” is a direct adaptation of a Monkey Punch chapter from the second manga series (right in the Lupin traditionalist bailiwick), which is itself a loose modernization of a Japanese folktale about an ironic treasure; the episode even establishes its setting with backgrounds reminiscent of a traditional shanshui-style landscape. Still, it’s a modernization filtered through Playboy (Monkey Punch supplied cartoons for the Japanese version). Lupin, aiming to infiltrate a mythical palace of eternally-youthful women, finds himself invited in after rescuing one of its inhabitants from a tiger. It is the stuff of his dreams: opulent, well-stocked with wine, and populated by eager, busty, beautiful women in various states of undress. Lupin’s cheeks are red for much of the episode.
One of the challenges of adapting Monkey Punch chapters is their length—they’re short. Part I tended to stretch the stories out, indulging in atmosphere. Part II tended to clutter them, adding scenes and gags to pad out the run time. “Explore” does something more interesting, though, and something that makes it a standout episode of Part II—it layers the story. Lupin entering is the first layer, Zenigata’s pursuit and entrance into the palace is the second layer. Fujiko’s previous attempt at infiltration is a sub-layer. Jigen’s attempt to rescue Lupin, later aided by Goemon, adds another layer. You even get an intersecting layer from the palace as LEAD’s underlings report back from their battle outside.
One of the least-liked dictates of Lupin’s directors’ bosses at TMS was the request to include the lead five in every episode. While they were sometimes shoved into padding, the layering of characters’ mini-arcs instead in “Explore” used of them well without feeling they were obligatorily inserted.
The dynamic of Lupin and Zenigata here is particularly special, putting work behind, getting drunk together, and each having parallel trips through the palace, in search of and semi-accidentally stumbling on its secrets (which includes a fun, drunk, dumb luck-driven sequence of Lupin evading various booby traps in search of the bathroom).
The only downside was the ending. The women’s key weapon was an aging gas, which in the final assault on the castle is turned against the women themselves. It sits poorly with me in the same way a lot of “just desserts” stories in this Lupin series do. Aging the women seems less dramatic irony than the reassertion of a conservative morality, punishment for the sins of vanity and voluptuousness. A loose attitude towards sin is part of Lupin’s appeal, though, whether committed by friend or foe.
Highly Recommended for its storytelling and character work.
52 “Emanuelle whispers like an angel”
or, “Emanuelle in Bangkok”
Lupin meets Hercule Poirot’s granddaughter, Emanuelle Poirot, who’s decided to dedicate her little grey cells to the practicing crimes rather than solving them. Emanuelle Poirot is far more Emanuelle than Poirot. I’m no Christie fan and I’m only familiar with Emanuelle as a punchline but it’s obvious this Emanuelle is more her first name than last.
There’s really not much to say about this episode. It’s basically an excuse for the animators to exhibit constant toplessness, near-toplessness, cleavage, and protrusion. The energy the writers and animators brought to the episode definitely filters onto screen. The bawdiness adds an en energy that other, similar Part II stories lack. As noted last week Part II was churned out at an industrial pace, so the horniness adds a human touch and sense of spontaneity that’s too rare.
Inessential, as it’s still a pretty stock episode despite the animators’ literally ungirdled enthusiasm.
Editorial note
“Emmanuelle whispers like an angel” might have been the last episode of its kind, as the producers gave more consideration towards the younger end of the audience. Explicit contemporary references[/a] mostly disappeared (certainly for the best in the long run) as did sexual content in general. While Lupin would still occasionally try to get in bed with Fujiko, often he’d want to “marry” her. Female co-stars were typically not romantic or sexual interests and their behavior often was juvenelized, as was Fujiko’s. It was certainly not always the case (despite its childish tone the last season had some of the series’s darkest episodes), but the show—and the franchise—lost one of its flavors.
Lupin has largely followed culture as a whole on sex, including in its younger bawdier years. There’s little sexual or event romantic content the Pink Jacketed Part III. While it was intended (and was) a show for adults, you see the same dynamic elsewhere in mid-to-late 80s action-adventure, such as in Dalton’s turn as James Bond. Afterwards, TMS’s desire to capture new generations of younger audiences as viewers of the original shows aged mostly, though not entirely, deterred sex and nudity through the 80s-90s-00s run of specials and films. None of that’s necessarily bad—the faults of those works don’t stem from lack of libido, and many sexless or family-friendly works (thinking specifically of The First) are very good.
There has been a return to sexual themes since the 10s, but generally in a more serious way. The Woman Called Fujiko Mine launched the “Lupin Renaissance” but remains sui generis, covering almost every base of female sexuality though central to the show’s arc—and most people’s memory of it—was sexual assault. It comes up in Part IV, Part V, and even in Part VI—largely a conservative reaction[/i] to Part V—had a very out-of-place episode about a high school rape-murder-suicide (and just about it—Lupin and co. barely appear)!
It’s not the main depiction of sex contemporary Lupin—The Woman Called Fujiko basically touched all the bases, Part V is unique for its depiction of actual intimacy. That hasn’t stuck in people’s minds, though, and I can see why people are burnt out (I certainly as after Part VI, but I was burnt out on everything on Part VI).
The Takeshi Koike films have a little bit of the roughness, either exploitative or impish, of Monkey Punch’s work—only a little bit, of course. That’s the irony of going back to Monkey Punch’s original intent, of course……hey, that Lupin III Jr. sure is underrated, isn’t it?.
I think there is a missing space for sex, or at least sexiness, if we’re going back to “original intent” and it’s on the soft and playful side (and Hayao Miyazaki arguably took it to the male end too in “Wings of Death: Albatross”). I don’t think the Playboy cartoon approach would necessarily work so well today, but just as storytelling has been modernized in the 10s why can’t more adult humor be in the 20s?
