Alright folks, it’s time we return to The Woman Called Fujiko Mine. This distinctive series’ last episode was mostly unusual in terms of how not unusual it was – that is, it was pretty darn close to a classic Lupin adventure, from its heavy focus on Lupin and Jigen, to its consistent portrayal of Fujiko as an unattainable prize, to its ultimately straightforward grave-robbing narrative. If it had any single thematic intent, it was to emphatically reiterate that to people like Lupin and Fujiko, the ownership of valuable objects is nearly meaningless – it is only the chase for those objects they revere, the covetous glee of wanting something precious that isn’t yours. This show has regularly contrasted that thief’s creed with various characters’ attitudes towards Fujiko herself, and in episode five, she used the power of her unattainability to spin Lupin like a little toy top. In the end, these two chases collapsed into one resolution, as the team’s need to abandon the blue peacock led to Fujiko disappearing into the sunset as well.

As fun as it was, I’ve been informed that episode is basically the only “traditionally Lupin” installment in this series. With that in mind, let’s see where Fujiko’s journeys take us next, as we navigate power, gender, crime, and much else on this thrilling ride!

Episode 6

I always forget she mentions Wuthering Heights in the opening. That book is profoundly anime in its melodrama, and its two leads basically embody what Fujiko seems to see as the glory of wanton, amorous self-destruction. Pretty great book

We open with a shot of beautiful flowers in the courtyard of a girls’ private high school. Anime in general loves to use flowers as a visual metaphor for youth and growing up, particular women growing up, and this imagery can easily be twisted in directions that emphasize either romance or purity. Given this is Fujiko Mine, I’m guessing her entrance into this place is going to thoroughly disrupt the assumption of innocence or docility that’s often tied into such imagery

These are also common to yuri anime specifically, but that’s not necessarily implied. So far we’ve just got the classic boarding school melodrama staples, with an immediate focus on the gossip of the crowd. Shots hone in on just gossipers’ mouths, or present the crowd as an even block of shaded color, condensing their personalities into one faceless social force of antagonism

“Prison of Love.” Fair enough, this is probably gonna be a riff on Class S yuri

That’s not a surprise – The Woman Called Fujiko Mine is all about how social forces seek to define Fujiko as a woman, and her strategies for either refuting or embracing that for the purpose of manipulation. “Lesbian love is a phase that won’t last past high school” feels like just the kind of assumption Fujiko would love to toy with in order to win some jewel, only to discard once its diminishing confines are no longer useful for the job

Fujiko’s style of manipulation is exemplified by her Goethe quote, which describes how women must naturally conduct themselves in order to align with social pressures, whereas men have the great arrogance to believe their instinctive behavior is always correct

A butterfly dances beside Fujiko, before being snapped up by her closing book. A fine enough metaphor for what she’s likely planning for this girl

I really love the shading and lighting through this sequence. It’s a more restrained color palette than this show usually embraces, with basically everything painted a different shade of blue, but the prominent shading still makes this feel like a dreamlike moment

Everyone in class seems to have fallen in love with her, because how could you not

“If you flutter your wings in the outside world, you will find your feelings for me are just the vagaries of youth.” Fujiko’s advice to one admirer echoes the assumed status quo, though it’s a little different when you’ve fallen in love with your femme fatale homeroom teacher

Isolde Brach is our actual focus character. Her first name is that of a forbidden and doomed lover, I’m sure this will go well

This episode has some of this show’s most gorgeous backgrounds yet. The venue of this elite women’s school offers us an array of flowering gardens and arched libraries and sunny hilltops, all brought to life with Fujiko Mine’s wonderfully ornate, angular linework

Fujiko draws attention to Isolde’s pendant. This is likely Fujiko’s target, but it has a very different implication for Isolde – it bears the virgin Mary, and was given to her by her father. Her father was a “very kind man,” but he kept her away from the world and taught her himself, until he died a month ago. Between the virgin iconography and her story of her father, it seems like this pendant essentially embodies the male-ordered repression endemic to these school stories

The other girls hunt down Isolde, and cut off the hair Fujiko admired

Aw shit, it was a double fakeout! Isolde is actually that shithead subordinate of Zenigata, who successfully played on Fujiko’s assumptions about all these girls. Fujiko is beaten at her own game

Apparently the real Isolde’s father was a scientist with a famous unreleased formula, and Fujiko is attempting to gain the second part of the formula from her

“Mine Fujiko… he made love to you… to this body.” Our inspector buddy has some pretty serious issues to work through regarding women, sex, and his feelings towards his superior officer

And then he repeats Isolde’s initial poem of love, only to end it on “Lupin, I will use this ugly bait for you.” He seems repulsed by his own feelings of lust, and then projects that sense of repulsion outwards, saying instead that Fujiko is the repulsive object. It’s a way men have shamed women for simply inhabiting their bodies for all of history – men’s feelings about women’s appearances are treated as something the women themselves provoked and must be held accountable for

And outside, an owl takes flight, leading into the ad break

We return with a visit to what that owl has always implied – Fujiko’s scarring childhood. We once again get an image of Fujiko in an ornate room that seems entirely composed of different shades of sea blue, with electronic squeaks in the background making it seem like this is a tape that’s malfunctioning

“Fujiko, I’ll record everything about you. Blood, tears, and saliva.” So has she been forced to perform as an object for the amusement of some overbearing “owner” ever since childhood? That would certainly go some distance to explaining her transactional perspective on relationships altogether

Owls with human bodies take notes as cameras flash. It’s a brilliant way of building and maintaining mystery, as the fact that we’re not entirely sure what’s happening feels true to the experience of dreaming about childhood trauma – a sequence of discrete events morph into this Dark Thing, a ball of untouched memories jumbled into an amorphous, continuous experience

The policeman uses himself as bait for Lupin as well, and seems to revel in the feeling of being ogled, being a vulnerable prize. Everything I learn about this man sounds like another long series of therapy sessions in waiting

I appreciate how for all Fujiko and Lupin go on about being master manipulators, they are both instantly defeated by a cop pretending to buy into their sexy, dangerous criminal shtick

Fujiko’s other admirers raise tulips, an extremely specific motif of yuri romance, and then… attack Lupin with a bunch of submachine guns. Lupin’s entrances always seem to move this show into more farcical territory, complete with comedy beats like them shooting this statue’s bird “free”

Now all the girls have fallen for Isolde. Everyone frames affection here in terms of “stolen something precious,” which echoes both Fujiko’s general view on romance, as well as this genre setup’s specific focus on purity

The inspector’s face lights up when he hears from Zenigata, his expression neatly aligning with his “enraptured schoolgirl” disguise. This episode is clever as hell

Oh my god, the shadows of the tree branches in this held shot, so good. This show is excellent about using its unique shading style to make shadows an active part of compositions, here encroaching like creeping fingers as the policeman feels his fortunes sink

Ah, Oscar, that’s his name

“I won’t forgive her. That spittoon who peeps at and treads on my feelings!” This is a part of the anger that drives all such men – the fury at having their vulnerability be revealed to a woman, even if that vulnerability is only their lust

And Done

Holy shit, folks. I knew we’d be getting right back to the thematically dense stuff, but I didn’t think we’d be immediately jumping to the richest and most philosophically ambiguous episode yet. This episode basically used “the predatory assumptions about youthful female feelings and lesbian love” as the base setting for a story that would go on to directly examine the relationship between male feelings and female societal customs, the genuine ambiguity and mutability of teenage affection, the ease with which we are led to believe that which we want to believe, and much else besides.

What another show might well consider a reasonable punchline (“the male-centric assumptions regarding youthful femininity, as well as our hypocritical conceptions of purity, make it impossible for any young women to honestly express herself, and doubly so for those whose desired expression flouts social norms”) was essentially the assumed starting point here, a truth of adolescence that both Fujiko and Oscar manipulated for their own ends. I feel like that might characterize The Woman Called Fujiko Mine as a whole – this is a show that totally gets it in terms of its social commentary, but which would rather illustrate such truths incidentally, over the course of its gleefully circuitous and incredibly stylish capers. I should probably watch more Sayo Yamamoto shows, huh.

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