#I have no background in actually analyzing art but I've just tried to pin my feelings to the page here and hope it does something haha

[vaguely-concerned]

Mildly obsessed with the sheer contrast between how Fujiko and Jigen tend to be framed in this show, even when they're within the same scene (a head's up: I'll be mentioning stuff around some uh. extremely dubious consent and also suicidal ideation and suicide that's going on in Jigen's introduction ep in this post, just so you know!)

an illustration of what I mean more generally: Jigen by himself seems to often be framed against planes of white or shades of desaturated grey without a lot of detail -- there's this real sense of emptiness, and also symbolic of death and grief, I think. (Ciccolina also wears a white dress while you see her fascination with him, and the thing that binds them together is essentially suicidal ideation, while her own actual signature colour is an unsettled green.)

meanwhile Fujiko is constantly framed by circles and elaborate designs in vibrant intoxicating colours (peacock vibes!), in a way that's both stunningly beautiful and uncomfortably claustrophobic -- like she's constantly framed and hemmed in by the beauty of both herself and what she surrounds herself with. dare we say... almost cocoon-like, considering all the butterfly motifs going on all over the place. (also that GODDAMN OWL in the window up there... pls I want to go home).

a very smart anon ask I got also pointed out that a lot of the shots in episode 2 specifically make the characters look like actors on a stage, which adds that extra sense of artificiality and alienation to the whole thing and makes us subconsciously question their agency, which I thought was such a great observation!

this theme/contrast keeps going after that first introduction episode too (this is from the end of episode 8)! there's not quite as concentrated an amount of it after the intro, but it still feels consistent.

and the way those themes are divided up when they share a space is so interesting too:

interesting detail about this scene, by the way: the colour of the sofa... thingy goes from purple when Fujiko is in the room and dominating the space, to the green that's associated with Ciccolina once Jigen wakes up alone after Fujiko y'know. roofied him or whatever that was. (yeah gee I wonder why he doesn't trust her much lol)

so his own theme is almost monochrome and other people sort of... impose their colours on his 'world' whether he wants that to happen or not, metaphorically. it tells such a strong visual story about not being able to put up boundaries. which -- at first I heard Ciccolina's comment that his weakness was women and just went '*wheeze* are you sure about that one lady', but actually and especially in this installment... it's kind of true, if in an unorthodox way. his actual problem is that he doesn't seem able to set a single solitary healthy boundary with women. like he lets himself get hard dubconned into fucking in an ACTUAL COFFIN because Ciccolina framed it as the only thing that would keep her alive and they've entered into this exceedingly fucked up codependent dynamic where it's his job to do that for her psychologically as well as physically as a body guard. there doesn't seem to be any physical attraction or desire on his part through the whole thing but there is an unspoken idea that if someone who depends on him needs something from him, it's his duty to give it no matter what that does to him. Oh boy. Hey mr mafia boss man did you ever consider maybe y'know... getting your wife a fckn therapist instead and not have this whole Situation play out lmao

(Fujiko does seem to pick up on this fairly quick -- she tries a couple of rounds of her normal come-hither tactics, but it only takes her a few goes before she gets that no, he really is just uncomfortable and uninterested by the whole thing, but also... he won't use hard physical force to stop her, which is how she gets the drop on him eventually.)

then there's this at the end -- Fujiko is wearing Ciccolina's shade of green, lending credence to her saying Ciccolina reminded her of herself -- and thus essentially by being her co-conspirator in killing herself, she's in some small metaphoric way doing the same to herself. thus rendering Jigen only a completely baffled bewildered suicide weapon with very little agency in this situation lol. rather cruelly literalizing what he keeps telling people -- that he's just a hired gun; the magnum isn't just his life and his past, it's the sum total of what he's been living as (and it's been killing him!): a tool in other people's hands. at first I was a bit ?? about him getting out of the killing business under his own initiative, but when I look at it like that it makes sense -- in this continuity he sort of gets this last wakeup call that it's only so long he can keep lying to and dehumanizing himself before that takes over and becomes the truth. on the road he's on there's death ahead either literally or spiritually, and in this uh 'timeline' he gets out of there before he succumbs to it completely. (and as I've said before, I personally think First Contact!Jigen was actually further along that road when he met Lupin, so in an odd way this is a softer less broken Jigen, just in a much more fucked up show haha)

I do find it kind of heartbreaking how those completely central parts of him -- that capacity for dedication and care and loyalty and devotion, clearly yearning and fighting to still exist even within the supremely dysfunctional circumstances he's in -- both hurt him so bad and are maybe the biggest part of why the wakeup call works on him in this episode. he went and did something so completely counter to his own nature because he let himself be a tool with no will of its own for so long, and it startled him out of it, I think. (I mean she did also actively trick him in a truly screwed up way, but it is kind of the end station of how he's been living as well.)

with the added imagery of this being like a stage in this ep, they're also finally walking off the stage after Ciccolina's love note to death play is over, back into the world.

AND finally... here's a little thesis I have -- everything going on in TWCFM is always ultimately mostly about Fujiko in the end, even if she's not on screen for something. (and good for her honestly she deserves her day in the limelight.) so this little plot of Ciccolina's is actually telling us something about a part of Fujiko -- a reflection of someone who would want the only person who gave her hope to kill her, because...? because she wanted to force him into proving that the hope was never true after all, or as a test of it? because she thought he was the only one with the right to decide for her (after all in her mind he already did once)? because she wanted to hurt him as badly as he had hurt her by making her keep living? to show him something, since it's heavily implied he goes to that place in his head a lot as well? all of the above and more? well, there are some interesting parallels with the uncanny spoken word poetry in the opening credits here, huh, with its empty boys with nothing left to steal and the whole 'kill me, save me' setup of contradictions.

but then in episode 9 you have a very similar thematic thing going on where Fujiko sees herself in another woman and tries to destroy her as a way of destroying herself (rather more actively and viciously this time around of course lol), and instead of being reduced to the instrument to make it happen that time Jigen is the healthily protective nurturing force that stops her from being able to. Lupin might be the one to actually understand why she's doing it and in a way is what helps her stop before she goes through with it, but Jigen is the one who responds to an innocent abused girl in the middle of it all in, y'know, a human way. (The Woman Called Fujiko Mine!Lupin is like... an inscrutable unknowable trickster god come to gaze at Fujiko and Understand as if he can see the narrative from the outside, and he's quite hard to really like. get attached to for me, but I do like that his basic disposition is pretty much the same as always under that. and he is the one who brought Jigen in for this job too, like he knew he'd be needed.)

man I still have so many thoughts about it I can't quite explain, but it's definitely something about Ciccolina being an adult and the Tattooed Woman being coded as a child, essentially. Fujiko can work with the damaged and depressed but adult and in control through manipulation parts of herself, but she wants to utterly eradicate the young vulnerable innocent parts that have been hurt. which is not uncommonly how that works out in real life trauma too. (complicated a bit by the revelations in the last few eps, but thematically overall in the show I think this is what's happening).