Alright folks, it’s time for more adventures with master thief Fujiko Mine. I’m happy to be more excited for this viewing than ever before, as the show’s terrific third episode went a long ways towards emotionally investing me in this overall narrative. I’m guessing a great deal of that simply came down to Goemon, who actually developed a pretty charming relationship with Fujiko, if a mostly one-sided one. While Lupin and Jigen both kept their emotional distance and generally acted like hard-boiled spy thriller props, Goemon was vulnerable and silly and honest at basically all times, making for a very endearing counterpoint to the show’s natural self-seriousness.

Granted, Goemon isn’t the main character of this show, but I feel like simply having Fujiko gain a real friend will make her own story that much easier to invest in. The Woman Called Fujiko Mine possesses a sense of overwhelming style and self-conscious Cool that makes it often thrilling to watch, but that style also tends to disallow any of the honest, intimate character moments that most appeal to me in fiction, and so my journey so far has been a somewhat bumpy road. Having Fujiko interact with people she quasi-trusts or considers equals helps, as will the natural escalation of the show’s drama, as we move from relatively safe and self-contained heists to ongoing narratives that consistently test Fujiko’s limits. And with the third episode ending on a shot of that ominous owl, I’m guessing we’ll be running into truly threatening foes sooner rather than later. Let’s dive right into another episode of The Woman Called Fujiko Mine!

Episode 4

We open with an ominous figure trudging through stone caverns by the light of a single candle, accompanied by opera singing in the background. Looks like we’re dealing with some kind of occult club and their accompanying rituals

And now some cops are spying on a woman having sex through a keyhole. A very Fujiko Mine transition

Assistant Inspector Oscar arrives, and nearly chokes one of them to death

Having sex with cops to escape imprisonment is apparently just an assumed, mundane part of Fujiko’s life at this point

“You moan with a voice on par with Ayan Maya’s.” Ayan is apparently a famous masked opera singer

Her face was burned away by an “over-enthusiastic fan,” and now she wears a mask. Treated as a commodity to either be owned or destroyed by her own supporters, and now her great talent is basically treated like another male-aimed commodity in this officer’s comparison to Fujiko

Lupin announced he was going to steal her mask, and so Fujiko must protect it. A thematically perfect little conflict – Lupin as the self-obsessed cad bragging about stealing this woman’s protection from the scars of other men, Fujiko unwillingly designated as her defender. Basically all of this show’s conflicts hinge in some way on the roles men and women are intended to play in society

“Do you think we can trust her?” “There’s no such thing as a woman who’s never betrayed someone.” Yeah, there it is. Every conflict ends up interrogating our assumed gender politics, and complicating these assumptions and the roles they imply. Goemon essentially played the role of the “flustered, innocent maiden” last episode, in spite of also being the dude cutting bullets with a sword

“Back when water still ran through here, people called this the ‘Lethe,’ after a Greek river that allowed you to forget your past by washing it away.” A profoundly charged line. We still haven’t seen whatever events in her past Fujiko is fleeing, but the show’s been baiting that reveal all along

Gerenia Palace apparently has a ghost, echoing The Phantom of the Opera. Of course, in that play, it’s the male ghost who wears the mask to hide their scars, not the female opera singer. We’ll see to what end they’ve messed with those roles

“If this Lupin III is planning to steal Ayan’s mask, then he’s as good as dead.” A mustached stagehand warns them about the truth of the ghost. This seems to map to the play’s stagehand, who taunts the crew about the phantom before becoming its first victim

He’s Darenzo, the prop master

Owl insignia on Ayan’s dressing room. We’re getting there!

Oh wow, that police officer is actually Zenigata himself. “Zenigata forces Fujiko to have sex with him and conduct covert operations for her freedom” is a pretty brutal take on the character!

Lupin’s hiding inside the damn horse, and steals Fujiko right off the stage

A stage light falls from the ceiling, and the ghost is above. Another direct narrative beat taken from Phantom of the Opera

The ghost leaves a note saying “Tosca is mine”

God, every dude is either a completely non-sexual being or a total slimebag in this universe. Fujiko is pretty much constantly under attack, and most often by her theoretical collaborators. It doesn’t feel unrealistic, though – her collaborators are all thieves or cops, neither of whom are really known for their progressive worldviews or gentlemanly natures

“What’s so fun about grabbing the butt of a cheap thief?” Zenigata finally gets obnoxious enough to actually prompt a response. God this guy sucks

The stage elevator lowers prematurely, and Fujiko finds herself transported from one cage to another

Fujiko discovers a letter that proves the phantom and Ayan were actually collaborating. Ayan essentially used Fujiko’s own weapon, presenting herself as a helpless woman being preyed upon and allowing her coworkers and the police’s natural assumptions about what women are capable of to do the rest

It turns out Ayan isn’t Ayan at all – she’s actually Nora, a stagehand who worked at the opera five years ago. Layers upon layers of people never closely examining “Ayan,” and assuming they knew the truth of her nature because she was willing to let them

I really like how the stage props in the background add a sense of grandeur to the action of Lupin’s attack

“That’s what you are – just a place for vile men to spit out their passions!” This show has pretty strong feelings about police officers! Of course, this asshole’s behavior isn’t unusual either – blaming women for the things awful men do to them has been a human tradition through all of history

“The mask? I don’t care about that. I’m only here to settle my score with you.” Zenigata and Lupin share a grin, the good old boys who aren’t personally affected by any of this show’s drama. Fujiko is a tool, but Zenigata treats Lupin like an old friend

Lupin makes the romantic implication explicit, playing out the “wherefore art thou Romeo” scene with Zenigata

And we return to the river of forgetfulness, the river of forgiveness

Oh wow, this flashback is phenomenal. The show switches to an entirely new, holistic “under the sea” color scheme and an even more ornate style of background scenery, complimenting that with electronic squeaks and squabbles that sound like a machine malfunctioning. Whatever Fujiko is suppressing, it traumatized her pretty badly

“My next trick is a huge amount of chili blood!” I appreciate that this adaptation doesn’t tone down the farcical nature of Lupin’s schemes at all, it just makes him a huge dickbag on the side. There are plenty of people who are very funny or charming and also incredible assholes

“You’re drenched in blood! What an exquisite beauty!” Both Oscar and Zenigata seem to disdain sex and women, but get an erotic thrill at the thought of violence or blood. More tough but fair reflections on the police force

Darenzo and the real Ayan are reunited

So the truth is that Ayan burned her own face in order to facilitate her replacement by the successor Nora. Once again, Ayan used societal assumptions regarding the nature of female celebrity and male admirers to conceal a truth society could not accept: that she and Darenzo were genuinely in love. The world only valued her pretty face, but it had no value to her

And Ayan tosses her priceless mask in the fire, saying “it’s perfect to keep the fire going for the soup.” It has no value to her, while Fujiko is stunned by the act. To her, nothing really has value except, well, valuables

And Done

Alright, cool, I’m now basically sold. This episode proved that Fujiko Mine doesn’t need a character as silly as Goemon to be emotionally engaging, as Fujiko herself easily pinned down the drama this time, all while running through a narrative that consistently highlighted and contrasted the show’s overarching themes. I felt the general gloom of the theater resulted in a somewhat less visually compelling episode than usual, but greatly appreciated how this episode spun the mysteries of Phantom of the Opera into a narrative that ultimately shocked mostly through its simplicity. At the end of all the gender-focused deceptions and mistaken identities, we arrived at a simple story of two people who loved each other enough to give up everything else. The sincerity of that ending was probably the hard sell for me – in a world defined by misogyny and betrayal, there are still people who believe in each other utterly.

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