Damn it I just can't get it out of my head. I honestly think The Woman Called Fujiko Mine has it in it to be a classic text on post-structural feminism, sex-postitivity and reader-response theory.
But. I still think it fails as "a swingin' Lupin III joint". Fujiko Mine does not feel the need to explain AAAAANYTHING because its trying to be exemplify the above rather than comment on it.
Show and don't tell I suppose, still.
It does not care if it's audience gets it. It doesn't care if its audience understands, and that's weird for Lupin III which is normally narratively simple. There are bad guys and Lupin and co. rob 'em blind while lookin' like bosses. Who's the mark? What's the con? What's the score?
I know which one of those I feel is more important in the end, but anime especially television anime hasn't gained enough critical acceptance yet that I think people will look for a classic text on post-structural feminism, sex-positivity and reader-response theory in a Lupin III television anime and that the first audience to "read" this text will be dismissive of it because it fails as a Lupin III television anime, I know I was.
Which leads me to ask the question how do we as society decide which media works are worth academic study.
I am and always have been an opponent of the methodology that education in the arts is to create a common cultural reference pool, canon if you will. That notion privileges some works above others, works that have something important to say and could greatly influence the world if they were discussed in the public forum. For example my guess is that despite its brilliance it's going to take Fujiko Mine another 10 years before the lights go off, and people who have reference for the sociological and literary theories its operating on engage with it.
And that's a damn shame.
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