#i finished watching twcfm I'm having Thoughts

[franeridan]

auuurrghhhhhhhhhhhhhrrrrhhhhhhhhhaaaaaaaaakkkkkkkkggggghhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhHHHHHHHHHHHHH

[maryellencarter]

so apparently having a new lupin thing i am distinctly enjoying (lupin zero) is what it took to get me around to watching the lupin thing i had not seen yet that i really hadn't heard anything positive about (part 6, not counting "the times" which i have already seen and loved the hell out of, but have not managed to watch since july because... you know)

thoughts so far, as of finishing episode 7 (i'm watching the subs then the dub for each episode, which helps me follow details better but definitely takes longer):

* wow. so you know how i like to say about part 5 that, love it or hate it, that is a piece of media that knew exactly what it wanted to do and went for it? this is the opposite. the only episode so far that seemed to have an actual goal in mind is the one where the goal was "i am going to retell an ernest hemingway story, and also insert into the dialogue the titles of every other hemingway story in the same collection", which sure did do what it set out to do, but was it a thing worth setting out to do?

...well, given that i am told the guest writers for each non-main-plot episode in the first half were all instructed "you must base your episode on a specific piece of crime fiction", i have to admit that playing the world's most pretentious version of the game where you try to write a paragraph without any E's in it was... probably the most Mamoru Oshii possible way of complying with a stupid requirement, and definitely hewed closer to the spirit of the rule than the one where NPCs with names relevant to Ellery Queen did fuck-all of importance.

episode by episode:

* "enter sherlock holmes". in which sherlock holmes looks a great deal like somebody tried to make a 2D version of first!jigen and failed to grasp why first!jigen is sexy. also in the english version all the brits are dubbed by american-sounding americans, which is the most auditorily disorienting version of sherlock holmes i have heard (although i must admit i never did get around to watching the veggietales version, but if there's one thing the veggietales guys have demonstrated their commitment to doing from day one, it's accents... and now I'm humming "oh no, what we gonna do")

where the fuck was i? right. so albert gets worfed to demonstrate that holmes is a badass. why on earth albert would be doing spy work personally in a country where he *doesn't* have millions i've strings to pull, i have no fucking idea. also him going straight to "shoot myself in the head with my last bullet" as an exit strategy compares really badly to the bit in part 5 which... either it was supposed to mirror this, or somebody just failed to do their research, but that moment near the end of part 5 where jigen's on the run alone, down to his last bullet, there are multiple guys about to come around the corner and capture or kill him, and then albert rescues him.

and yeah, that's a moment where you have to wonder if it crossed jigen's mind to use his last bullet for himself instead of going down fighting a hopeless fight, but jigen has never been someone who -- i can't recall a single moment in 53 years that we've seen him actively ready to die. he does plenty of self-destructive shit, but even when a fight can't logically be won, he keeps fighting, even if all he can do is run his mouth. having albert jump straight to suicide in a scene that *has* to be a callback... it doesn't feel right thematically and it doesn't speak to a great understanding of albert as a character (such as he's been so far).

oh yeah, also there was the intial setup for the antagonist secret society "the raven", whose mysterious hooded executioner blew up a guy in protective custody in scotland yard. they weren't terribly impressive. even though i haven't actually seen twcfm, only read spoilers, i feel like a creepy bird-themed secret society is maybe something you're not gonna beat that show on using well?

* "detective and crook". in which jigen and goemon also get worfed to further prove that holmes is a badass. jeez, guys, just give him purple eyes and lavender hair already, huh? lupin also continues his mary-poppins-esque habit of never explaining anything. we do get jigen riding on the back of fujiko's motorcycle, which is a rarity (and keeping his hands where they belong, as opposed to Lupin). fujiko sticks a scroll of paper down her cleavage a la first contact, so that the camera can zoom in on it for maximum jiggle physics opportunity. and lupin blows up a whole-ass demolition site full of cops including zenigata and yata -- none of whom get hurt, but *wow*, that's a life choice.

* "adventure along the (replica) transcontinental railroad". in which lupin wears the biggest turban you ever saw, npcs with ellery queen names do nothing much, fujiko gets whole-ass tied to railroad tracks dudley do-right style and nearly beheaded, jigen and goemon ride a bicycle built for two and also pretend to be cosplaying as themselves in order to throw zenigata off the scent (in the dub, goemon suggests that zenigata page lupin to the front desk like a lost child, which is delightfully goemon), and jigen gets to do some fancy trick shooting that i still don't understand after seeing it twice in order to flip a railway switch and send the runaway train onto a siding. he shot a streetlight and something flew out and somehow that made the switch do the thing?

* "the killers in the diner". in which mamoru oshii plays silly buggers with hemingway titles, lupin and jigen in disguise are voiced by other actors until they're revealed (which has barely ever happened... in the english dub at least, i can think of *one* time a disguised lupin was voiced by lex lang for a scene, that's it), fujiko appears to be disguised as an extremely depressed pippi longstocking for reasons that are never explained, and a bunch of japanese people get to take a fairly reasonable stab at pronouncing "dulles". also it's established that fujiko is bad at cooking, which i think might have been fanon previously but i can't think of anywhere else it was actually established.

* "the imperial city dreams of thieves". a two-parter in which lupin gets dropped into a world based on the works of japanese mystery author edogawa ranpo (this was a pen name based on the name "edgar allan poe"). it's pretty solidly paced for the most part, which is not something you can really count on part 6 for so far, but it's also... well.

so. it's a story set in the late 1920s, about a giant mysterious golden clock/orrery from mongolia, guarded by the heirs of genghis khan, one of whom decides that entrusting it to a young female japanese "explorer" (visually coded very much like the white egyptologists of the era, similarly dedicated to bringing back other cultures' precious artifacts for display, and treated as an unquestionably virtuous character) is obviously the wise and correct choice to keep it out of harm's way -- the youthful guardian of the device accompanying the explorer back to japan as a bodyguard and servant, as well as continuing to guard the clock.

the japanese imperial army, who (the episode does not explain) are most of the reason there's all this war and unrest on the mainland that make the clock's guardian decide it's better off in civilized japan (okay the episode *all but* says the civilized part out loud)... where was i? right. the japanese imperial army, who are busy conquering mainland countries in the whole pan-asian empire thing they did in the run-up to world war ii (christ, it's been forever since i studied that part of history... if i recall, their selling point was "asia for the asiatics", as in they wanted white people out, but in practice they wanted to rule all of asia themselves, so it was more like "asia for the japanese empire") -- the japanese imperial army want the clock in order to give it to a puppet dictator they'll install in mongolia. our young explorer, who is the daughter of a powerful... department store conglomerate?... look, i'm sure it packs some kind of an emotional punch in japanese, but now i'm just cracking myself up imagining the heiress of like woolworth's or sears roebuck facing off against the fbi.

anyway. as i was saying. our young heroine declines to give away the clock, as having it on display at her family's department store is clearly the best place for the cultural artifact that determines rulership of mongolia. (i'm being sarcastic. the episode isn't.) kidnapping and shenanigans ensue.

also, as you would expect from an alternate universe story, there are characters who look exactly like the lupin crew. lupin is put into the role of "golden mask", a phantom thief edogawa ranpo created based on that most popular of phantom thieves, arsène lupin (the first). fujiko becomes "black lizard", a femme fatale originally working with the villain and face of the japanese army -- i think the villain's name is daidouji, but i think leia also picked that out for one of jigen's aliases in one of our stories, so either she has something she could explain to me or that's a very confusing coincidence.

goemon, it will turn out, is also his real-world self along with lupin -- i'll get there in a minute. zenigata is a fictional (secondary-fictional) police inspector with a slightly different name and an almost identical hat. and jigen... jigen is one of the factors that make this episode what you might call, on the internet, Problematic.

so. the villain is a very large japanese army guy named colonel daidouji. his ever-present shadow and sidekick is a very, very familiar-looking major whose name is not initially given, and who very nearly manages to put a bullet in lupin on first meeting him.

now, jigen's au version being evil, y'know, it's a hard sell, it's not impossible that i'd buy it if it was done right, but the thing is that you never have to buy it. tv shows have this need to make au versions of the heroes always still have some kind of heroic core. the really steep issue comes with what kind of a hero he turns out to be.

the character who looks like jigen is eventually revealed to be a character named major yoshiaki hongo from the works of a writer named minetaro yamanaka (whose first google result for me is, uh, the wikipedia article on antisemitism in japan, that's... probably not irrelevant to my point here?). major hongo, at least as described in the episode, is a badass soldier who goes undercover to root out corruption, which is all very well and good... except for the part where his little speech about who he is and what he's doing here, in both languages, leads with "fighting for the liberation of asia". aka, as we discussed, conquering it for the japanese empire.

which, together with the whole misappropriating cultural treasures with the enthusiastic cooperation and servitude of their native owners arc... really, really makes one wonder about many choices that were made.

(oh yeah, it turns out the whole thing is a virtual reality mindfuck, major hongo's badassful hero reveal moment is basically the last thing that happens before everybody explodes into pixels except lupin and goemon, it turns out somebody was trying to get a passcode to lupin's hideout, which they failed at because he was just that smart, but also a couple of shots at the end of the episode imply that everything did actually happen for real somehow. that part is confusing and rushed. the loving morals about cultural artifacts and the liberation of asia from non-japanese rule take precedence.)

(okay, major hongo had a faceoff with goemon who cut a notch in his cap brim so you could see one of his eyes, that was a *very* cool bit of visual design that you could never do with proper jigen because he would murder you for slicing his hat. and then goemon toppled dramatically off a bridge because he is the biggest drama queen in the entire cast and we're talking *including lupin iii*.)

like. i grew up on (western) fiction from this era and earlier. the part where i notice or mind the imperialism is aftermarket. i can, if i try, shut it off and enjoy the show. but, like writing an episode composed largely of ernest hemingway references... is that a goal worth having? especially in a worldwide political climate like this where it's very beneficial to notice the overton window shifting before it slams shut on your damn fingers.

* "an untold tale". in which zenigata is summarily slandered by both lupin and the writers. lupin deduces that the zenigata he's working with is actually sherlock holmes in disguise based on the premise that zenigata is not someone who does things like... run headlong into danger? selflessly protect innocent bystanders? kick ass? stick to a trail?... and is instead someone who, while having a solid idea of lupin's next destination, goes and gets blackout drunk and passes out in a bar instead of staking it out or at least yelling "LUPIN" a lot in the general vicinity.

i guess there's also plot, supposedly. this consists of lupin explaining his movements at a certain time, clearly and in order, over a flashback that agrees with his description. No unreliable narrator in sight. No evading every question like it's "give Jigen rubber bullets and practice dodging" day at the hideout. Just reading pages of boring exposition while being ineffectually shot at by a Colonel Sebastian Moran wielding one of the clunkiest air-guns I've ever seen the man burdened with.

(I haven't gotten around to watching the dub of this last-named episode yet, but I hear that somebody majorly failed at googling, overcommitted to "all R's in the Japanese must become L's in English", and created the character of Colonel Sebastian *Molan*. I'm not sure I'm gonna have spoons for that one for a bit.)