Today we’re returning to The Woman Called Fujiko Mine! The show’s first episode was pretty stunning in all regards, from its gorgeous and utterly idiosyncratic art design to its sharp-edged spin on the Lupin mythos. Lupin isn’t a dreamy, dashing rogue here – he’s kind of a shithead actually, a dude who gleefully refuses to see Fujiko as a legitimate rival, and who simultaneously condemns her for relying on her beauty while lusting after that beauty at all times. Basically, this Lupin is exactly the kind of guy you’d expect to be a self-obsessed master thief, and Fujiko is a weary but driven heroine in a world designed to deny her. From its echoes of Belladonna of Sadness to its over-the-top heist sequences, Fujiko Mine is defined by a salacious arthouse-slash-grindhouse kind of cool, and though I could easily see the production toppling under the difficulty of consistently animating these wild designs, everything in that first episode was carried out with beauty and style. Let’s dive right into the second episode of Yamamoto’s The Woman Called Fujiko Mine!
Tag Archives: Lupin III
The Woman Called Fujiko Mine – Episode 1
Today we’re starting off on a new show, as we check out the first episode of The Woman Called Fujiko Mine! This one’s a pretty interesting property in all respects – it’s ostensibly an entry in the Lupin III master thief franchise, but its acclaimed director Sayo Yamamoto decided instead to focus on Fujiko Mine, the femme fatale who generally plays more of a supporting role in Lupin’s stories. My experience with Lupin III is very limited – I’ve essentially just seen a couple scattered episodes and Miyazaki’s Castle of Cagliostro, which I’ve been lead to believe isn’t really representative of the mainline series’ less family-friendly style.
My experience with Yamamoto is a bit less limited, but still pretty far from exhaustive. I watched her breakout hit Yuri on Ice!!!, but didn’t really find it that compelling. I felt the story essentially lost its focus after the excellent first few episodes, that lots of irrelevant skating performances killed its pacing, and that the combination of so-so character writing, a total lack of interest in conveying skating as any sort of tactical competition, and consistent animation issues prevented its big setpieces from really landing with much impact. The show’s success makes sense to me, but as an art object, I wasn’t really that moved.
Outside of that, my experience with Yamamoto is limited to a few of her terrific opening/ending segments, as well as her reasonably solid Space Dandy episode and her other collaborations with Shinichiro Watanabe. As for Fujiko Mine’s writer, Mari Okada is one of the great wildcards of anime, equally capable of stirring character-focused melodrama and godawful character-focused melodrama. She undoubtedly possesses one of the clearest voices in anime writing, but unlike the reliable craft solidity of someone like Gen Urobuchi, her stories’ narrative fundamentals can range from bulletproof to wibbly-wobbly nonsense.
Where these two voices and this particularly property intersect, I don’t really know. Fujiko Mine has a cult reputation, but my experience with Yuri on Ice has left me wondering if Yamamoto is simply not my style of creator, and so I’m interested in checking my own reaction here. Let’s start with the first episode and get to the capers!
Fall 2015 Season Preview
It’s time! Time at last to start thinking about putting this lousy season behind us, time pick our heads up from the anime-parched earth and take a glimpse towards the horizon. Is that a mirage in the distance, taunting us with the thought of media sustenance? Are we doomed to wander this barren waste forever, continually lowering our standards until eventually we forget anime was anything more than a vehicle for monstergirls and pee jokes?
Nah, there’s some new shows coming out. Some of them look pretty good, too! We’ve got long-awaited manga adaptations, sequels to steady favorites, new entries in venerable franchises, and even some tasty-looking originals and wildcards. My overall bench isn’t terribly deep, but I’m confident I’ll be happy with at least a couple of them, and even outside of my picks, every season holds surprises.
As always, I won’t be running down every new show here – there’s vast selections of shows I know I’ll never be interested in, and even among those shows, if there are any standouts, I’ll hit them during preview week anyway. If you want the full list, you can check it out over on anichart – here, I’m just gonna break down what I’m excited about, along with maybe a reason or two to feel optimistic. So let’s get to it!