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|  "Re(5):LUPIN THE THIIIIRD!!! Maou is Coming" , posted Thu 18 Jan 10:07:  
quote:
I think you can get a really solid introduction to Lupin by watching the Hayao Miyazaki movie, followed by watching Cowboy Bebop. I can explain this in greater detail later, or Maou can deeply analyze this content and explain how right it is in the current milieu in spite of being inaccurate in the scheme of the entire oeuvre.
Fear not, Badoor, you need only look to the previous thread!
Spoon is mostly right, and Cowboy Bebop channels Lupin very consciously, but start with Lupin vs. the Clone/Mystery of Mamo. This is the truest the screen ever came to the spirit of the comics. You may or may not like it (you will like it, or else), but this will help determine if you like Lupin as such. Miyazaki's Castle of Cagliostro is one of the finest adventure films ever made, though whether or not it is the best Lupin film in light of its "mellowed out older Lupin" is up for debate. All the other characters are in perfect form.
Even shorter version: watch Clone/Mamo, Cagliostro, select Miyazaki-directed episodes of Part II (Albatross: Wings of Death and Farewell, Dear Lupin), Fuma Conspiracy, Alcatraz Connection, Episode 0: First Contact, and Part IV. But others here can tell you that there are many ways and films with which to enjoy your new Lupantic lifestyle!
人間はいつも私を驚かせてくれる。不思議なものだな、人間という存在は．．．
[this message was edited by Maou on Thu 18 Jan 10:09] |
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| "Re(6):LUPIN THE THIIIIRD!!! Maou is Coming" , posted Fri 19 Jan 01:22
quote:
Even shorter version: watch Clone/Mamo, Cagliostro, select Miyazaki-directed episodes of Part II (Albatross: Wings of Death and Farewell, Dear Lupin), Fuma Conspiracy, Alcatraz Connection, Episode 0: First Contact, and Part IV. But others here can tell you that there are many ways and films with which to enjoy your new Lupantic lifestyle!
That's a good listing, although I'm surprised you didn't sneak Dead or Alive onto the recommendation list. Then again, your list is already a good dozen hours worth of Lupin so that should be more than enough for a normal person.
Spoiler (Highlight to view) -
Twelve hours is nowhere near enough.
End of Spoiler
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| | "Re(10):LUPIN THE THIRD! & other spring animes" , posted Mon 26 Mar 00:11:
quote:
Holy mackerel, I turn away for one week, and Lupin III Part 5 finally gets a promo video and an air date of exactly two weeks from now at 1:29am on the 4th, sort of like Part 4, on NTV. GET ON IT
Yeah, the art on the front page is kind of crappy, but the actual design in the trailer looks identical to Part 4, a fine turn of events. Meanwhile:
I always liked Zenigata. He looks like a goofball but he is competent and a good person. The problem is that he has to face terrible monsters INDEED
Ah Nice! So it's basically Lupin vs Social media(SNS), lol. Can't run away from it, it's all over the place! 
And talking about upcoming April animes, quite coincendentally there's also one called the SNS Police https://www.sns-police.com/ ...aaand also another one called Oshiri Tantei, which mean ASS DETECTIVE. We're not talking figuratively here, for anyone who can brave themselves to check the official site. Really, and I thought Pop Team Epic was weird.
For vintage lovers, there's a new Captain Tsubasa, Cutie Honey, and GeGeGe no Kitarou coming up. I don't think Kitarou is too well known though, is it?
Personally I think I'll be looking forward to the Lupin, Persona 5, and Professor Layton spinoff anime. A dark horse which I'm not sure what to make of is Megalobox, which is supposed to be a 50th anniversary tribute based on THE LEGEND OF SUCESS JOE... yes, seriously.
[this message was edited by Professor on Mon 26 Mar 00:13] |
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| "Re(2):Re(10):LUPIN THE THIRD! & other spring" , posted Tue 27 Mar 22:42:
quote:
For vintage lovers, there's a new Captain Tsubasa, Cutie Honey, and GeGeGe no Kitarou coming up. I don't think Kitarou is too well known though, is it?
I'm mostly curious to see how they'll handle the new Legend of the Galactic Heroes series, considering it has only 12 episodes while the original goes well over the 100 mark and part of the charm is how it backs up its huge scope with a high episode count while rarely making any single one feel superfluous, even when it can set a whole episode aside for a history lesson.
I'm a bit weary of the new designs (although Oberstein at least looks the part), but most of all I'll be disappointed if they leave out Hortense Cazzelnu( sp? Cazerne?), the smartest woman in the universe, who keeps herself safe from the violence on the ground or the exploding ships in space while giving insightful advice to her husband (in charge of logistics, a valuable position in any war or civilian effort) from the relative safety of her kitchen. It's kind of amazing how even the series wiki fails to do her justice, and I can't even find her dialog on Youtube, but just about every time she opens her mouth she quietly beats many a tactician in the series.
i also wonder if they'll make an infamous politician from the series look like someone who's been on the news a lot, since that sort of thing is so frequent nowadays - apparently the new series is basing itself more on the novels and possibly their character description, but how wonder how specific some of those descriptions were...
...!!
[this message was edited by Loona on Tue 27 Mar 22:56] |
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| "Re(3):Part 5 goes live" , posted Wed 4 Apr 15:28
Watched it as soon as I saw this, haha.
I was expecting the OP to not compare to part 4 but wow they sure weren't aiming high. The art style seemed like it was trying to imitate something, but I am the opposite of an art expert here so I can't really think of a good excuse for how jittery and awkward it was. Always love the theme music though, and I do have a soft spot for the accordion! The ED music is lovely too, and if I'm not mistaken that's Sawashiro herself singing, but part 4's closer was just so good the bar is set a little too high.
The episode itself was indeed a bit slow, although I liked the (perhaps inadvertently, given what it was setting up) smart touch of Lupin and Jigen adopting disguises even when they're in gallivanting about, which makes logical sense but never seems to happen that much. Also the bold move that acknowledges a great deal of Lupin III's history in the episode itself. I just hope that doesn't mean this will turn into another Red vs. Green situation. The girl character is whatever, as eccentric redheaded computer hackers go she's no Cowgirl Ed and her explanations of her situation and why she wanted to leave seemed really unnecessary, but I guess they needed to establish that she's so "wired in" that she has no common sense.
The Lupin Game idea has me intrigued, though. It could make for either an extremely clever thriller or an incredibly stupid one, depending on the level of tone-deafness it chooses to take with social media. While I don't think it'll last for the whole series, I hope it's given the proper time to develop as a clever threat and isn't just completely outsmarted by the end of episode 2.
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| "Re(5):Part 5 goes live" , posted Tue 10 Apr 11:38
Overdue reaction: hmm. It's impossible to equal the energy that Part IV brought back to the series, even if the animation quality is roughly similar and the music is excellent. There's certainly fun little touches like Jigen being disguised as the old man from Cagliostro, or the "welcome, Mr. (Yuji) Ono" sign by the greeter in the airport. But after the strong sense of place from Part IV, France seems kind of wasted on this high-tech yet depressingly familiar smartphone stuff.
It's a hard formula to balance: Lupin has always been on the cutting edge of things technologically, right down to the first film essentially predicting modern cloning as early as 1978. But on the other hand, the early directors also recognized that the appeal of Lupin in postwar Japan was the sense of the global, a thief who could go anywhere exotic and escape the mundane, which means that even without a series-long geographic setting, the sense of place always matters in the best entries of the series---whether it's globe-trotting through very specific national settings like Lupin vs. the Clone/Mystery of Mamo, or a clearly defined country estate like Cagliostro. Plus here, the high-tech is pretty boring since everyone has it (Lupin needs to be able to teleport to stay ahead of the curve), and the French setting is irrelevant, at least for episode 1.
As for the girl...another tough call. Fujiko was literally a different person each time in the early comics, which isn't that different from the Bond Girl approach that so many animated entries have fruitlessly employed. But after literally sixty years of history (continuity or not) of interation between the main characters, a "new girl" will always feel like a weak add-on unless she has a very strong personality and independent plot arc, like Rebecca did in Part IV. At least Ami chose a very good and Lupintic place to hide her gun.
人間はいつも私を驚かせてくれる。不思議なものだな、人間という存在は．．．
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| "Re(6):Part 5 goes live" , posted Thu 12 Apr 13:37
The grievous crimes of shameless Maou-blogging and double-posts are a certainty if the rest of the Cafe doesn't intervene with posts soon!
After episode 2: I still don't think the experimental opening succeeds, even though I was pleasantly reminded of Part IV when I realized that it too made an initial experimental attempt with the blocky police car sequence near the end, but at least the Lupin theme on accordian is probably even better. And like others have said, the ending would be quite good...if only "I Won't Love You If You Don't Say It Right" hadn't been literally the classiest thing to happen to Lupin since the "Treasure of the Flame" opening sequence of Cagliostro.
More generally, the enormous shadow of Part IV follows this series wherever it goes. After the consistent Italy setting, France is irrelevant here, and I literally forgot where everyone was half the time...and adding insult to injury, they went to a fictitious country, a crime against the realism that made Lupin a show for adults from the start: real cars, real cigarettes, real guns, real liquor brands, etc. That's an unforced error seen by other recent misfires like Fujiko TV series' pseudo-Cuban Missile Crisis episode.
It's funny, too: the hyper-modern tech really does make everything seem ironically mundane. Maybe this Lupin, with all the net instigation of violence and harrassment, is a little too realistic. Rather than the liberating feeling of a theif who can go anywhere, everything just feels kind of dreary. Or maybe I'm just sympathizing with Jigen and his disdain for idiot children with their tech.
I read in interviews that they were experimenting with displacing Zenigata's high-strung reactions into his new colleague, leaving him rather calm. This kind of reminds me of some early patterns in the comic, but I think that Part IV got the "serious threat but still easily agitated" balance better. Ah well.
On the other hand, I'm pleased to see the end of episode 2 and the episode 3 preview bringing in a classic element that is not tied with tech: GOONS! From the comic to Lupin vs. the Clone to Part III, goofy looking one-off bad guys with ecclectic and impractical weapons have always been a joyous part of the series.
人間はいつも私を驚かせてくれる。不思議なものだな、人間という存在は．．．
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| "Re(8):Part 5 goes GOON" , posted Thu 19 Apr 09:59:
Animation analysis: Let’s head back to Part II (red jacket), with this magnificent English article covering the key animators and studios involved! With 155 episodes, it can be hard to seperate the wheat from the chaff, beyond the obvious two superior Miyazaki-directed outings. Sure, you could go with the periodic favorite episode polls, but why not just head directly to the Telecom episodes, or your favorite animator?
Promotional goods: After all the expensive Lupin outfits they’ve been selling for Part IV comes a breakthrough clothing campaign that’s actually practical: “Steal Fujiko’s cleavage!” (I'm not joking.) It’s…a really good idea!
Episode 3: It’s really fun to see Lupin wasting an eclectic cast of random goons from the Nezumi Clan per the comics, and with major enemies like Sherdock and Dr. Furanken among the assassins. The social media stuff still doesn’t add anything for me, though I’m not sure if it’s just that I’m unfairly associating “modern tech Lupin” with the mostly abyssmal 2000s TV specials.
I finally realized that Part V takes the polar opposite approach to Part IV on setting. Part IV's direction let characters wander in and out of a consistent, living setting, with mostly unconnected episodes. Part V’s “France” has been a total red herring so far, with characters converging on a featureless, fictitious country, yet the story continues across each episode. I still feel like it’s a bit of a loss. Even Part II’s scattered episodes could achieve a great sense of place: humble episode 5 mostly centered around trying to smuggle a truck whose body has been replaced with melted down gold bars from Switzerland, but it also shows the struggles to find an open border and literally superimposes a map across the screen as everyone works their way south from Switzerland to Italy. Even if it’s not as vivid as Part IV’s Italy, there’s a lot to say for being somewhere. Part V is kind of fun but it’s…nowhere at all.
人間はいつも私を驚かせてくれる。不思議なものだな、人間という存在は．．．
[this message was edited by Maou on Thu 19 Apr 11:57] |
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"Re(8):LUPIN THE THIIIIRD!!! Maou is Coming" , posted Sat 20 Jan 06:42
who follow the path of a warrior
