The Woman Named Fujiko Mine #13 — Guest Starring Hatsune Miku

June 27th, 2012

 

Okay, so it’s more like auto-tuned, but still… why?

Impressions:

Man, what? They have super computers now? The tech level in the Lupin has always been a little fluid, but jumping straight to super computers, brain warping things, lasers, etc, seems a bit much. Especially since two months ago they were making a huge deal about the atomic bomb. Lupin and Fujiko were actually wandering inside the computer, inside an amusement park, where an old woman is taking care of a random girl hooked up to the most advanced tech in the world. Again, did anybody stop and ask "Does this make sense?" The most hilarious part though was how at one point, she (well, he at that point) dropped Fujiko down a trapdoor, but she somehow ended up roping something and walking right back up the stairs approximately about 50 seconds later. Did nobody realize this on the storyboards? Was there supposed to be some other scene and nobody realized the flow of events?

Anyway, practically the entire episode was spent explaining the utterly nonsensical ending thing concerning practically random girl Aisha and how Fujiko got pulled into all the weird life support/brain stuff/live on outside this arm body while fake-maiding it up which made her go a little batty with the mixed brainings. Oscar was the same more or less and the last we see of him is crashing a truck (obtained from god knows where) into the amusement park and burning all the naked women to death. Uh… okay? The head owl didn’t even end up actually being a guy. There’s a point where the twists get out of control, Okada, and you passed that about a month ago. Piling more on is not helping. There was a little bit of owl-Jigen fighting owl-crossdressing-Goemon, but I’m not entirely certain why. Probably because they felt they had to toss that in somewhere.

Final thoughts below.

 

Final Thoughts:

It’s been an odd ride, but for much of it, the core problem remained the same; Fujiko. She’s just a very poor lead character that isn’t particularly interesting on her own. They can try to spice her up by being all edgy and flaunting sex, but she’s still designed from top to bottom to play off of Lupin and has no real point besides that. Weirdly, as the focus on her grew in the last episodes, she all but disappeared from them to be just a random widget/damsel in distress. Unfortunately though, very little of the owl/crossdresser/hallucination/non-lethal bombs/manlove arc made an iota of sense, and pulled such nonsense as the giant Fujiko amusement park, people literally entering flashbacks, and characters coming back from the dead an episode after being ‘killed.’ It’s a shame too because there were some good themes and ideas buried in all the "I bet you never saw THIS coming," but they were so drowned out by everything else.

The show does do a good job with its retro and gritty visual style and presentation for the most part. It just suffers from trying to be far too clever and surprising, which makes it succeed at neither. Someone badly needed to rein in Okada’s writing at a lot of points. Less is more. Even outside all the weird nonsensical twists (entire final arc, lesbian school girl episode), there were other episodes so hamhanded (Doomsday Clock/Cold War and Goemon’s intro) that it was painful. And again, Fujiko is a tremendously poor lead that is best left as just a continuing nuisance to Lupin instead of the lead. At least they eventually toned down all the closeups on her nipples.

So it’s a notable entry in the Lupin franchise, but really not one that anybody should go run out and see. It’s at least better than most of the recent specials, but that’s not saying all that much. 

Posted in Lupin III | 4 Comments »

4 Shouts From the Peanut Gallery

  • KLAC_OF_PERSONALITY says:

    hmm quite the unexpected story end on this finale ep

    fujiko going no on white owl here lupin voice to rescue blast white owl but it’s a corpse.
    white powder appear got jigen seeing owl people with lupin run from shooting.
    zenigata trying to reason wake up oscar but not working.
    fujiko get chased rescue by goemon for why goemon is fujiko’s boyfriend.
    so let fujiko go to meet jigen with both being owl headed exposed.
    fujiko enter room with push letter walls oh her lupin to climb meet final boss.
    reveal a girl named aisha who control it all by eye contact computer device.
    lupin reveal more that experiment with lead to aisha being main control of devices.
    with cause mind control, brainwashing, etc on all being experiment.
    here owl person appear reveal more flashback that count was dead.
    but aisha continue the works on experiment little girls but failed.
    til maid appear but the maid is fujiko yea she was also experiment.
    yet see fujiko’s life from steal to “do it” got aisha interest.
    til fujiko’s locked past got aisha hmm so cue destroy it all.
    then experiment goes hmm with oscar doing “kill all bad girls” with gas tank truck.
    then lupin grab aisha & oh boom reveal owl person is aisha’s mom.
    so now lupin take aisha to safety while fujiko point gun on aisha’s mom.
    with aisha’s mom be take care of aisha.
    lupin & fujiko show aisha the world long enough for her to rest in peace.
    now all said & done lupin car jump to fujiko but car goes poof.
    jigen & goemon call it draw to take their leave.
    zenigata look crime scene & wonder where oscar?
    goemon sit on boat while jigen pickup lupin & fujiko take her plane ride.

    the end.

    indeed quite hmm story give so many twist, confuse, etc yea mix of inception indeed quite a story i think now wait for dub.

  • Erixil says:

    I love your reviews on the series. You pretty much sum up every episode of WTF-ery that this was. And I was so excited for this show but seriously wtf XD

    AND Lupin and Fujiko didn’t even get it on in the end. XD

  • shadow says:

    and fujiko too is rescue in it episode ?