Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we arrive at the end of a long and fascinating journey, as we explore the final episode of The Woman Called Fujiko Mine. Over the course of its run, Fujiko Mine has explored the politics of sexuality with a frankness and maturity I’ve elsewise never seen in anime, excepting the more adolescence-focused analysis of Utena. The show has swum through the nuances of femininity as an ideal, sexual agency as a weapon, and the ever-pressing strictures of society with grace, and beyond that, it’s done it without ever feeling the least bit didactic or slow. Beyond anything else, Fujiko Mine has always been fun, never compromising on either its intellectual perspective or its love of adventure.

The show was frankly at its best in its episodic vignettes, where Fujiko was better able to push back against the world’s fetters. But I’m told this final arc ends with a bang, and am eager to see what Okada and Yamamoto have cooked up. For the last time, let’s return to The Woman Called Fujiko Mine!

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Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’ll be diving into The Woman Called Fujiko Mine, as we continue the last act of this fascinating production. Last episode saw the self-hating Oscar meet a tragic end, as he found himself impossibly stretched between who he truly was and the person his idol Zenigata thought him to be. Forced to choose between a disappointing reality and a perfect ideal, Oscar embraced the ideal, and sacrificed himself to preserve Zenigata’s image of him as the spotless subordinate.

Oscar’s story serves as a fitting complement to Fujiko’s, as each of them suffer abuse for their inalterable nature, and each of them cloak themselves in the expectations of society in order to hide in plain sight. It is clear enough that Oscar harbored romantic feelings for Zenigata, but felt incapable of admitting to those feelings. As a result, he projected his self-hatred outward as anger at all women, and in particular anger at the woman who had claimed what he could not. As someone whose guiding light embodied civil order and the default expectations of his society, Oscar was doomed to be torn apart, his every step towards Zenigata demanding a further denial of self.

Fujiko, at least, has embraced the option of saying fuck-all to society’s expectations, and living precisely how she pleases. Social expectations are not inarguable guidelines to be minded, but simply limitations that society inflicts on itself; useful for manipulating others, but possessing no greater moral authority. The only restraints binding Fujiko lie within her own mind: the terror of her past, and the fear that her current existence is still defined by that past, if only in reaction to it. As someone who has used every reductive feminine persona in the book to manipulate her prey, I’d consider it somewhat unfortunate if this production ended on the predictable “her personality is a product of her trauma,” but I’ve learned never to underestimate Sayo Yamamoto. Let’s return to the climax of Fujiko Mine!

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Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’ll be returning to the sensual thievery of The Woman Called Fujiko Mine, and hopefully discovering what the heck is going on with Fujiko. Though she prides herself on her independence, it’s clear that she’s still running from the scars of her childhood, and at least partially defining herself in opposition to the wishes of Count Armeid. The lingering influence of that trauma was made clear in her reaction to the tattooed woman, as she nearly destroyed herself in her attempts to obliterate this shadow of her past.

This shouldn’t have come as a surprise; at the beginning of every episode, Fujiko herself warns us of her urge for “beautiful destruction,” a seduction that leaves both participants as hollow as she believes herself to be. Embracing thievery seems to be a way for her to redefine her fundamental “emptiness” as a strength, a weapon – but ultimately, it seems that framing Armeid’s influence in this way has only tightened his grip on her psyche. Fujiko has taken the insults thrown at her and sewn them into luscious finery, but for Armeid, only total rejection will suffice. Let’s hope her Samurai Friend can help her back to her feet then, as we storm towards the climax of The Woman Called Fujiko Mine!

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Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I am eager to return to The Woman Called Fujiko Mine, which most recently offered one of its most fascinating episodes so far. The tale of the woman who’d become a tattooed piece of art clearly had a special resonance for Fujiko. Fujiko spent her childhood in the captivity of Count Armeid, and has since then seems to have defined herself in opposition to that captivity: where Armeid prized delicacy, obedience, and chastity, Fujiko has defined herself as an embodiment of independence and proud sexual agency.

Of course, Fujiko would undoubtedly hate to be told that her identity is still defined by a man’s influence, even if only through opposition to that influence. But when presented with the tattooed woman, Fujiko couldn’t help but see herself – and thus strove manically to kill this girl, almost destroying herself in the process. Some traumas are too painful to confront directly, but Fujiko has never been one to back down from a challenge. If she truly wants to untangle herself from Armeid’s influence, she will likely have to confront her nemesis, and prove to herself that the shadows of the past can never reclaim her. But however today’s adventure goes, I’m eager to spend more time with Fujiko and the rest of these rapscallions. Let’s get to it!

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Hello everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today we’ll be returning to the beautiful, incendiary production that is The Woman Called Fujiko Mine, where we most recently learned the name of her childhood tormentor: Count Luis Yew Armeid. A figure of seemingly supernatural menace, Armeid has been manipulating characters like the fortune teller Shitoto from behind the scenes, as he attempts to guide Fujiko towards some unknown end.

This production has been refreshingly direct about Armeid’s crimes: it seems clear that he sexually abused Fujiko as a child, and that her resulting trauma manifests through the otherworldly flashbacks to her childhood abuse. An incidental detail like an owl motif on a wall can draw Fujiko right back to those strange chambers, where the specifics of her experience are abstracted into this ominous owl-headed count, the nightmare jailer who haunted her childhood.

In the present day, Armeid seems determined to embody more than just the lingering effects of trauma. Statements like his intent to “test the Third to see if he’s worthy of Fujiko” imply a sense of patriarchal ownership, as if Fujiko is Armeid’s possession, who can only be gifted to another man by her current owner. It’s a not-uncommon cultural assumption, drawn to its perverse extreme by the fact that Armeid was already her childhood abuser. 

Of course, all of this is precisely what Fujiko has spent her adulthood rallying against. She values freedom over all else, and makes it a point of pride to mock and discredit those who’d hope to cage her. She does not see her femininity or sexuality as a “precious gift” to be claimed by some male retainer; she has sex freely and for personal or mercenary reasons, disdaining the idea that woman are “supposed” to be meek and modest. That convention is just another sort of cage, after all.

Ultimately, Armeid seems like the ideal antagonist for a show so in tune with the complex realities of gender as a social construct. He represents basically all of the conservative, patriarchal social values that Fujiko disdains, coupled with the menace of the violent desires those values have worked to sanitize. He is the condescending pat on the head and the underlying threat of consequence in one, and though Fujiko has grown far beyond his influence, destroying him would nonetheless serve as a satisfying denouncement of his wretched perspective. Let’s get back to Fujiko at work!

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Good day everyone, and welcome back to Wrong Every Time. Today I am delighted to be returning to The Woman Called Fujiko Mine, as Sayo Yamamoto and Mari Okada continue to tease unexpected and fascinating results out of their twist on the Lupin formula. Last episode saw Fujiko deftly navigate a clear analogue for the Cuban Missile Crisis, spending a little quality time with “Fiadel Kastro” before Goemon cut some missiles in half. In spite of the episode’s loaded political context, Fujiko’s emphatically apolitical perspective actually resulted in a relatively lighthearted episode, more of a vacation than a revolution.

Fujiko’s disinterest in any larger political or moral framework for her actions is one of the most interesting, revealing aspects of her character. As a thief who loves her work, she obviously has no compunction to act in ways that echo larger moral principles. But beyond that, she seems to have embraced a kind of amorality that serves as an essential defense in a hostile world. Fujiko doesn’t have the luxury of principle – the world has been against her from the start, and thus anything she wants, she has been forced to claim by whatever means are available.

Rather than seeking solidarity with fellow victims and pushing back against this unfair world, Fujiko is content to manipulate the rules as she understands them, using intractable, demeaning cultural assumptions like “feminine innocence and fragility” to mislead her opponents. It’s a savvy response to a situation that is entirely outside her control, the natural deduction of someone who knows she can only depend on herself. Fujiko didn’t choose this world, but she’s happy to exploit it, and I’m eager to see where her adventures lead her next.

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Heck yeah folks, let’s get back to The Woman Called Fujiko Mine! This show’s last episode was a spiraling maelstrom of complex gender politics and confining social expectations, with Fujiko and her various associates serving as gleeful foxes in the henhouse of a girls’ private school. Combining this show’s insightful focus on gendered expectations, social performances, and the nature of feminine power with the classic touchstones of a Class S yuri drama was a masterstroke, and resulted in the most thematically complex and generally gripping episode of Fujiko yet.

On a pure aesthetic level, pairing Fujiko Mine’s ornate, richly textured designs with the stylized and detailed sets of a traditional “boarding school flower garden” resulted in an absolute bounty of beautiful compositions, with elaborate backgrounds sharing space with more metaphorically driven layouts rich in shadow and contrast. And on a thematic level, that episode managed to channel Lupin’s classic reversals and counter-reversals through a nested series of adolescent social expectations, with Fujiko’s manipulation of her love-starved students eventually being countered by an opponent eager to use Fujiko’s own favorite trick – telling your enemy exactly what they want to hear. 

In the context of a deeply repressed private school, Fujiko reveled in assuming the role of sexual aggressor, while Oscar simultaneously gleefully embraced and harshly judged himself for assuming the role of lusted-over “prey.” Their complex roles served as a clever distillation of the emotional contradictions inherent in both repressed adolescence specifically, and how women are assumed to exist in society more generally. And ultimately, Oscar’s contempt for his own actions seemed to echo the contempt society at large serves towards any expression of feminine agency, be they defined as Madonna or Whore. It was a goddamn searing episode, and also somehow light and playful at the same time. I don’t expect another episode quite like that one, but I’m eager to see whatever these charming thieves get up to next. Let’s get to it!

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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!

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Alright folks, let’s check out another episode of The Woman Called Fujiko Mine! This show has been steadily winning me over all throughout its early episodes, with its unquestionable stylistic strengths, clear thematic aims, and general narrative polish giving each of its first four episodes a strong fundamental appeal. Along with Saya Yamamoto’s terrific aesthetic vision and contemplation of female power, the show’s most recent episodes have been further buoyed by a sense of humor and vulnerability that’s given it a clear emotional appeal. That’s been great news for me – while I certainly respected the craft of Fujiko Mine’s first two episodes, its heavy focus on ornamented style and hard-boiled noir storytelling didn’t really give me much to invest in emotionally. For me, character vulnerability is my avenue towards engagement, and both Fujiko and new friends like Goemon have given the most recent episodes a welcome emotional touch. Fujiko herself is a fascinating badass whose fatigued negotiation of an inherently male-oriented world feels more sadly relevant every day. Let’s see whose butts need kicking or jewels need stealing in episode five!

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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!

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