Den of the Cyphered Wolf

Tuesday, April 29, 2014

Watch Rin Daughters of Mnemosyne

You know what part of me wants to do what I did with A Woman Called Fujiko Mine with Rin Daughters of Mnemosyne (I reviewed it like a year ago which also deals with issues of sex-positivity and sexual dimorphism but my brain is spent right now so all I'll say is that if you liked  A Woman Called Fujiko Mine watch Rin Daughters of Mnemosyne.

Southfield April 28, 2014 Regular City Council Meeting



Southfield Regular City Council Meeting held April 28, 2014

Topics Discussed Include


  • Various Appointments
  • A Resolution of Recognition of Malaya Watson Finished In 8th Place on American Idol 
  • The New Lawrence Tech Biomedical Engineering Building
  • Establisment of an Industrial Development District For the Metro Center Complex to Help Facilitate the P.A. 198 Abatement Process
  • A Treasury Management Services Agreement With Huntington Bank

An agenda and related documents can be found here.

The Problem of Fiction and Informed Consent AKA I Think Way Too Damn Much

So what made me turn my brain of with Fujiko Mine in the first place was a scene in which Fujiko, "teaches" a bunch of Catholic school girls how to have sex.

Two things ticked me off about this and both are related to informed consent. First of The Woman Called Fujiko Mine is basically a grand thesis on Sex-Positivity... and other stuff, but lets stick to Sex-Positivity.

Safe-Sex is fine as long as all parties have informed consent. That I absolutely agree with, but kids can't have informed consent, especially when adult authority figures are involved. PERIOD.  Thus my "Fujiko, the pediphile rapist!" rant".

But I went beyond that. Lesbian, transgendered  (literary) lolita fetish porn I think I called it and yep it is.

[Note: In retrospect I now get that the scene was a double metaphor for Fujiko being a lot of young girls first experience with female sensuality and how male authorial intent has played a pediphillic role in that. Took a while and a couple reviews but I got there.]

I, in general believe in sex-positivity which includes porn at least live action porn.

I'm not super stodgy about it as hypocrite thy name is Miles, but "Fujiko, the pediphile rapist"  flipped the switch in my brain. Fictional characters don't have the same sort of volition as flesh and blood people. Erotica, pin-ups, hentai, erotic painting all in some way feel exploitative, especially when they engage the male gaze, and whenever I ...dally in that stuff I feel a sense of guilt.



Damn you e e  cummings, and my inability to resist Mega City 5000.

And I projected a bit.

Still though it does posit a question. When is it okay to use the female image, female sexuality, in fiction? If what makes sex okay is informed consent and fictional characters can't consent because... fiction, fictional characters, including visual images, are by their very nature are objectified, raped.

Never is waaaaaay too black and white, and fiddles with my notions of free speech and the marketplace of ideas. Art or at least an art landscape without sex, without ... arousal feels like a lie. Yet there are still times when things are over the top, and make no mistake Fujiko Mine is over the top, over the top for a reason but still over the top, and it feels wrong.

There is the fact that people base their real life expectations of women, (also people of color, homosexuals, and the transgendered by the way) off the fiction.

I don't have an answer for that but as a guy who writes it's on my brain.

Ah screw it and relax Miles in moderation all seven, including lust are okay that's kind of the point of sex-positivity.

Guess I now have to shut up about yaoi though. Damn, and it made such a good target.


Let's Play the Or Not Game

A "friend" of mine has intimacy issues. It takes this "friend" a long time to become comfortable enough with people to interact with them at all let alone romantically. Because of this fact, this "friend" has had very few romantic experiences. People around, this "friend" have noticed this and have occasionally asked, "this friend" if they are gay.

This "friend" having such limited romantic experiences does not know who they are attracted to, does not feel the question affects them in their daily life, and prefers leaving the answer open as answering it even unto themselves would have certain implications.

This "friend", not particularly caring about romantic interaction in general does not want to take on the implications of being homosexual or bisexual, or transgendered without actually knowing or particularly caring one way or the other, since "this friend" finds the question moot and is constantly annoyed by it.

As a result, this, "friend" is particularly interested in the framework of post-structural feminism which rejects sexual and gender binaries.

And this "friend" swears to God that if anybody makes a thing out of this, "friend" will kick their asses!

Southfield April 28, 2014 Special City Council Meeting


Special Southfield City Council Meeting held on April 29 2014

Topics Discussed Include

  • Bids for Uninterruptible Power Supplies
  • Bond Refinancing That Would Aid in Road Maintenance
  • A Proposed Moratorium on Exterior Lighting to Accent Building or Architectural Features.


An agenda and related documents can be found here.

Trancending Canon

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.


Monday, April 28, 2014

FUJIKO MINE!!!! and Goemon in Drag

I'm tacking this on to my origi... 5th post on The Woman Called Fujiko Mine but if I just leave it there I know no one will read it, and I feel it's important.

P.P.S. FUJIKO MINE!!!!!! and Goemon in Drag
Open in a dark room facing a starry window an emanciated yet emancipated man wakes up from a dream.

Fujiko... Fujiko...Aisha

He rubs the hollows of his eyes as he reaches for a cigarette lighter in the moonlight of the window pane.

Aisha.

Not again. I need sleep. Four nights now. Four tiresome nights. But still I can't get this woman called Fujiko out of my mind.

And then it hit me like a ton of bricks.

Too literal, always too literal. Miles.

My first reading of Aisha was that she was a metaphor for all of the Fujikos of the past. And the writer's reluctant duty towards them. But questions, so many questions kept me up.

I'm still being too literal.

I'm not a woman. I can't speak for them so fear lept in my heart. Was I wrong? So I looked and read. And guessed and doubted.

And then came the dawn.

Too literal.

Aisha means a lot of things. She means everything.

In a general sense she can represent all of the feminist issues in this series and her relationship to her mother can represent the writer's cruel corrupted duty to them.

She can represent the female audience, the female spectator that feels betrayed yet fascinated by Fujiko's promiscuity especially when as little girls watching the movies and shows they came to slowly realize the world's restrictions on their own sexual identities and came to hate Fujiko.


She can represent the failure of feminism to return freedom to these women, and its lashing out at all female sexuality.

And that ending where "this Fujiko" kills Aisha's mother can represent both the failure to find the Ur-Fujiko the Fujiko independent of all of that, independent of non-diegetic manipulation, and female writer's who reluctantly play into all of that...stuff (if you haven't guessed by the opening its four in the morning and the fourth night I'm running on fumes).

Fujiko's forgiveness and understanding of their tortured souls, all while still being bound within her own constraints. And that puts a new spin on that Catholic school girl scene.

Seductive Fujiko may have been these girls first experience in seeing and engaging with female sensuality. And the idea of it may be uncomfortable but it rings true true. And for some that experience may have been meaningful enough that she shouldn't just be destroyed.

Aisha means everything, and I am still vexed.

On my fourth night of screaming FUJIKO MINE, in my bed in my underwear trying to puzzle out the mystery of this woman all I am left to say is that any show that can do that is important impressive.

Oh and I finally got Goemon in drag as both he and I got over our Madonna complexes towards Fujiko and just learned to accept her as she is. The Woman Called Fujiko Mine.

Ironically the show spends less time setting up the Fujiko/Lupin romance than it does the Goemon/Fujiko relationship. He's the only character she lives with. He's the character to pick up the pieces after Lupin's breaking speech or at least is the only one there to. But he has had a flaw the entire show. His Madonna complex keeps him from engaging with Fujiko on a sexual level. In episode 11 we see a shot of him cleaning/stroking his sword while trying to puzzle out Fujiko's deal an obvious visual reference to the act of masturbation.

I have no clue how the show views that, but again Goemon's fatal flaw is his inability to engage in female sexuality.

In the last episode in drag he makes the declaration that Fujiko is his girlfriend. Again that's a little vague but it does at the very least entail character development as he's gotten over his initial Madonna image of her.

Sunday, April 27, 2014

1,2,3, Lets Jam AKA Time to Talk on Cowboy Bebop

This has been a long time coming but it's time.



As a metatextual comment on Lupin the 3rd, The Woman Called Fujiko Mine is stellar, brilliant, genius. As a sexy, quasi-serious contemporary revival, not so much. It's more concerned about analyzing itself and the nature of its characters than just being itself and those characters.

But then I got to thinking. You know I already have my sexy serious contemporary revival of Lupin the 3rd.

And it's called Cowboy Bebop.




While I like Lupin the 3rd, I love Cowboy Bebop. It was the anime that made me start taking the medium of anime, no animation seriously. I think part of what made me expend so much brain power while watching The Woman Called Fujiko Mine,  was the subconscious understanding that since Lupin the 3rd the is spiritual parent of Cowboy Bebop, Fujiko Mine could also be read as commenting on it.

But right now after my depressing "mind control rape of Fujiko/Fujiko the Pediphile Rapist" dissonance revelations. I need my sexy serious contemporary revival of Lupin the 3rd. (I ain't letting anybody take that away from me. Hell no! Cold dead hands and a magnum.)

Let's Jam!




"I Think You Do Better As A Thief Bounty Boy," The Children of Lupin
I just want make it clear the tonally and visually Cowboy Bebop owes a lot to Lupin. Most people know that but in light of Fujiko Mine I want to talk about it a little.

Spike Spiegel's caracter model is a literal cross between Lupin and Yusaku Matsuda. And that guy deserves more than I can give him by plagiarizing Wikipedia. So moving on.

Also Feye Valentine's is basically a modern Fujiko. Except while she and Spike do have sexual tension their character dynamic is closer Mr. and Mrs. Smith's dynamic after the big fight when they are not so secretly trying to kill each other.

Eh they aren't that bad. But neither of them is trying to woo the other the way they would if this were an actual Lupin joint.

If anything their relationship is about slowly revealing thier complexities to one another where non-romantically they care about each other's well being making it a much more serious statement about human relationships, than "Fujicakes".

And Jet seems like a melding of both Goemon and Jigen depending on the context of the scene.

Lights, Cameras, and Music 
Cowboy Bebop is a very cinematic show. While I want to talk about the influence Lupin had on it you can't ignore that this thing is wearing film and music references on its sleeves.





To create that cool noir feel the show uses and embraces Yoko Kanno's soundtrack, which is some of the best music I have ever heard in my life.  My first experience with blues wasn't John Lee Hooker, or Mississippi Fred, or Muddy Waters, or Howling Wolf or Led Belly, or Lightning Hopkins, or B.B. King, or Little Walter, or Sister Rosseta Tharpe or Big Mama Thornton.

It was "Spookey Donkey" in those magical first scenes, whispering in my ear thoughts of home, not my home, but the idea of home. Not prestine, not perfect, but this is where I sleep. This is where I breath. This is my space. This is my spirit. This is me. Home is a very important concept to me and this moment, in this show, in this this song was when what it means to me was crystallized. When an idea that is so difficult to put into words was communicated to me without them.

Lady has soul.

And just in case the music didn't speak for itself, which is impossible, every episode title is a music reference.

The blazing question every fan of the show has to ask themsevlves eventually is would the show still hold up without it.  Hidunno. To me the music and the show are too married for that question to matter.  You can't take one without the other.

But back to the visuals the show seems animated to be like a movie, animated mostly to allow greater visual freedom when the setting and cinematography demands it, it is (mostly, the faces are expressive and have their moments.) devoid the "cartoonyness" I had seen up until that point in animation.

Character Independent of Story
One of the reasons why I stalled on discussing one of my favorite shows is that Bebop is very episodic (as was Lupin). I mostly like to tackle media from a writer's perspective talking about overarching themes, motifs, character developments. You get the drift.

But in shows like this that's hard. Yes there is an over arching plot, and yes characters do move a bit. But from episode to episode that's not the point.  The point is just to experience these people.

Will they sometimes open up to you and talk about their past. In due time sure, but in the moment, when money is on the line who has the time.  And that's what makes the character development meaningful.

Towards the end of the show almost everybody gets a back story episode. But these characters are not their back stories. Sure that's a part of who they are but that's not all of who they are. They (oh my god Ur-Fujiko) exist independently of all of that.

And that creates a really great contrasts because each character also gets their own introduction episode to establish not their story, but their character. Not what they are, but who they are.

By the time we do learn their back stories these guys are already fully realized characters. It's even that way when it comes to their arcs. These aren't guys being pushed around by a story but the other way around.

You Can't Run Forever
If I did say there was one over arching theme though it would be how the past affects us.  All of our main cast are desperately trying to operate independently of their back stories. For the most part they do, but every few episodes...

And that really to me seems to be the point of the last few episodes. It's the point where all of those pasts force the characters to stop living in the moment, and do so in a way where the status quo can't be returned to.  Where they and the audience can't pretend this is a normal walk in the beach.

While there is an ensemble cast Spike is the main character and the big back story that the series concerns itself with. The other characters get a back story episode or two  but  the arc of the series, the development and movement is about getting him to stop living in the moment and confront his past. So now I guess I do have to start talking plot and setting and all that good stuff.

Cowboy Bebop is a science fiction show, but it feels closer to old-school noir or even a 70's neo-noir. Spike left a crime syndicate and has been running ever since. Its hinted that he was pretty high up the ladder, the young heir to the throne so to speak.

The plot as we know it takes place three years later. Spike's on the run living a different life and in a way is a different man. We don't see much of that old Spike, a few flashbacks here and there, but despite our expectations almost every one of his old crime buddies is glad to see him.

Bad things have been happening since he left and whenever they see him its a relief.  Even if it means going to war they're willing to fight for him because to them its better than the alternative. Vicious, Spikes old buddy who's been murdering his way up the ladder and sabotaging all attempts peace in the underground.

But almost every time Spike leaves the world that's a "bad dream that (he) never wakes up from."

He runs back to the series status quo. Back to the Bebop, back to his home, until finally he can't.

Spike has already lived his story, and what we the audience are watching is the epilogue as he struggles to find meaning in it.  The calm cool suave Spike is the spike who doesn't care about that meaning, the Spike who doesn't care for narrative, the reliance on which always seems to bite him in the ass. Screw that. Who he is doesn't depend on the plot. He's bigger, stronger than that.

But that's not the only Spike we see.  And if you've seen the show you know what happens to that other Spike.

See you Space Cowboy.

Saturday, April 26, 2014

Anime Review The Woman Called Fujiko Mine (Redeux, Last Time I Promise, Oh and This Is An Actual Close Reading with Spoilers and Quotes Because I Was Stupid Last Time Around)



Okay so yesterday I sat down and watched a The Woman Called Fujiko Mine. Over the course of a whopping 4 blog posts my thoughts evolved. Hot damn! The show was smarter than me.

In a perfect world you little stinkers would read everything I have to say and witness in real time me trying to puzzle this stuff out over the course of about 15 hours. You're not though. Most of you will read the first post and take it a face value and that's not fair to the show which now feel is absolutely brilliant so I'm going to watch it again, re-read everything I've already written and try to cobble this bad boy together into something cohesive.

My mistake the first time around was treating this as just another swingin' Lupin joint but it's not. It's really a metatextual statement of one of it's key characters, Fujikio Mine, whom for the first time in the series long history is being primarily written and directed by women so let me take a moment explain what Lupin The 3rd is and Fujiko's typical role in it.

Lupin The 3rd is a loooooooong running Japanese franchise that chronicles the misadventures of Arsene Lupin III the grandson of yes that Arsene Lupin, trying to do his granddad proud. I am most familiar with it through the second television series from 1977 which I still watch when I'm bored and just want something fun to do for a half hour.




It holds up pretty well but Lupin has been around the block.

This show markets itself as being closer in tone to the original manga but I wouldn't know since I haven't really read it so I'm going to just ignore that aspect of it, against my better judgement. The show really delves into the nature of long running fiction and legacy characters, and gender politics by making metatextual comments about, Lupin the 3rd mainstay Fujiko Mine.

And thus we enter the problem of Fujiko Mine. In just about every version of Lupin III she's a little different.  Though there are some constants. The most obvious is that she's almost always Lupin's sort of kind of love interest.

In the series, think of their dynamic as Mr. and Mrs. Smith during the second act right around that big fight.

She's normally is working on the same job as the boys and is trying to use them to get the goods. Of course Lupin knows this and is trying to outwit her, all the while being blatantly attracted to her. Both being aware of this attraction try to use it to their best interest in a sort of spy vs spy type of thing.

On Fujiko's Sexuality
Because of the nature of her character Fujiko is one of anime's earliest sex symbols. That's important.

Gone are the wink wink nudge nudge "if you know what mean" jabs of other adaptions. This Fujiko is a sexual creature.

Before I made the mistake of thinking that that was for the benefit of the audience without thinking about the implications.

In most other adaptations to Fujiko sex or rather sexuality is a means to an end. Her character is flirty and fanservicey because that has a tendency to distract whoever she's planning on thieving from, at least in the text.

Here, on the other hand it's clear the character actually enjoys that stuff to a degree and feels no qualms about it. Despite everything old Fujiko in a way was chaste willing to use her sexuality for everything except sex. Everything but her own physical pleasure. This one doesn't have that problem. In previous adaptions Fujiko's virgin-whore thing was  penned by male writers in order control of her sexuality. Here she and by extension her female writer aren't bound by that crap.

If it makes narrative and character sense for her to have sex with a Zenigata of all people  she's going to have sex with him and might even enjoy the experience. We seeing a Fujiko without a lot of the rules around her.

Same goes for violence, but I'll get to that.

In my first review I said some of the sex was uncomfortable. I'll get to the main scene I was talking about in a bit, but what I never considered is that it was meant to be.

Again the show is a metatextual statement on Fujiko, and you can't talk about Fujiko Mine without mentioning her sex appeal.  But that sex appeal can exist independently from the audience.  The character was designed to "turn on" her voyeurs.

But she can enjoy her sexuality and sensuality independently of her audience. And that an interesting notion made all the more remarkable because that line in the show is so subtle. It doesn't feel the need to condemn all enjoyment of Fujiko's sexuality just take the control of it away from the audience so we know what's happening on screen isn't "for" us.  I will revisit this.


The Mystery That is Woman
Fujiko is one of the oldest regular characters of the franchise, but it is "Lupin The 3rd" in most adaptations we experience Fujiko from the perspective of a bemused Lupin.  What attracted to me to this show was the idea of a perspective flip, seeing that dynamic and these characters from perspective of Fujiko. What does she really think about everybody?

On a literal, superficial level in that respect the story fails. We don't know much more than we would have otherwise by the end of it. But on a deeper level not so much. The story is about metaphorically telling the story of Ur-Fujiko, the Fujiko that exists outside of individual episodes and movies but within the consciousness of media.

That's not just the story of Fujiko, that's the story of the feminine image. Remember Fujiko is the "Mae West" of anime. She's been around long enough to have weathered the changing cultural ideas regarding these issues giving the character the authenticity especially when written by a female screen writer to speak on them.

And because the nature of a fictional character requires constant adaptation she's not just speaking retrospectively. She's forced by media to be a creature constantly in flux, able to speak about the 1960's with just as much interest and authority as she can the 1990s, because she was there.

Let's Talk Style for a Moment
All of that was leading me up to talking about the opening which in my first watching I mostly ignored. Stupid. Stupid. But I want to take a moment to talk about the animation style and tone of the show in general.

Lupin the 3rd has been in the shadow of the Castle of Cagliogostro for a long time. This show is trying to and succeeding to make a clean break from that interpretation of the material. And the biggest clue is it's art style which even in my original review I loved.

The show is trying to go for a 1960's french vibe mixed in with some old fashioned Edo stuff which complements the story roots and history. And also just looks damn cool. The same goes for its music. Before my brain started working I said that that fans should watch the show because "it's not uninteresting or unoriginal enough to invalidate its own existence"

This is what I was talking about.

The art style alone is worth the price of admission.


That Opening
The opening is really really really surreal. But now that brain's turned back on, and I've seen the entire show I think... think I get it. And describing in detail will help me describe the show. Also note that I'm going with the dub on this. It might be a little unfaithful but my brain is already straining.

The opening should have been a clue to me not to take things too literally and what this thing was about. I am stupid. Okay let's break this into two parts the imagery, and and the poetry.


The poetry

The opening is Fujiko's voice actress

Cease what you are doing and gaze at me. Stop everything save for the thrumming of your heart. 
Theft, it is an especially sweet vice more elegant than vandalism and more complex than simple robbery. A beautiful blend of secrets and crime and mischief and fear, like dear Heathcliff (of Wuthuring Heights) I am defined by my all consuming passion. Stealing is my greatest carnal pleasure, a pleasure for which I will risk my life, a sexy prison from which there is no escape. Why am I this way? Who can know? Who is the slave and who is the master? Do divine eyes fall upon me any longer, or have they given up? The rush of the theft allows me to forget all and yet distantly remember all as well.

Run and speak not; Hide and run not.  When you've found me, punish me when you've punished me kill me. Save me. Little boy there is nothing left to steal from you. You've long been an empty shell, just as I have. So if you would gaze at me cease what you are doing, stop everything, save for the thrumming of your heart.

How the hell did I ignore that.

There are a lot of relevant themes running through there but before we do let's talk about who is speaking.

This is before the show proper starts. So in a way the story's Fujiko doesn't exist yet, though it is her "voice" that's speaking.  The who is speaking question changes a lot of how you read this passage.  Is it someone outside the the text in our world? Is it this story's Fujiko? Is it one of her doppelgangers? Is it a Fujiko from a previous adaptation?

My reading is that it's all of them. This right here is the Ur-Fujiko reflecting on her own existence outside of the text Something something theory of forms something.

Since yeah she's a thief you're inclined to take all of this talk of thievery literally. Except there is the line "simple robery". She's not talking about literal thievery. This Fujiko is an abstract concept, an idea, and adaptation are all by definition the reuse or "theft" of old ideas, taking something that belong to someone else and making it your own.

But the theft of every idea involving Fujiko in a way is a theft of the Ur Fujiko. And her feeling towards that theft aren't vengeful but are her, "greatest carnal pleasure." She sees herself doing the same stealing those ideas and incorporating them into herself.

"The theft allows me to forget all and yet distantly remember all as well." Again a reference to the nature of adaptation.

At the same time Ur-Fugiko is aware of how little control she has over herself.  Her life is, "a sexy prison from which there is no escape."

"Do divine eyes fall upon me any longer..."

From this point she seems to be pleaing to the writers. Don't put your words in my mouth. Destroy the versions of me that have been tarnished by that but let me speak for myself.

Then there is the "Little Boy there is nothing left to steal from you" bit. Again this is the first female written version of this character. She's flat out telling the guys we have nothing left to add.

Beyond that I might as well talk about all the sensual imagery there.  This is her talking. This the ultimate authority of the character speaking in that voice. That says something. That the Ur-Fujiko independent of male writers would speak that way.

Furthermore the first and second lines are subtly different. Suggesting that Ur-Fujiko can change. She is not abosolute and that change involves the gaze, i.e. the male gaze. She goes from demanding it to moving beyond it.

Let's move on to the imagery shall we.

Imagery

Again this isn't the story's Fujiko, this is but rather Ur-Fujiko, the abstract concept of Fujiko. The imagry is a metaphor for history of her as a concept.

I'm going to talk about the shot through I think sixth shots which show a naked Fujiko bound in roses. Dispite the fact that we have no real context of those shots her body is still displayed sensuously. Being bound by roses is a pretty heavy yet ambiguous visual metaphor. All the more so when we see a male hand tweak a nipple.

The imagery does not go so far as to straight up say the character has been raped.  The shot of her screaming could be read that way but its like a half second long.  We don't know how Ur-Fujiko truly feels about her sexuality. We know she is sexual and sensual but we don't know much more than that.

There is also the fact that in this these images we often see more than one Fujiko. Because well there is more than one Fujiko. And this story is about that.

At the little boy part I mentioned earlier we see Fujiko surrounded by classical statues. Who was most notably obsessed with perfecting the visage of the human form in stone?

Lupin and Co.
The first few episodes are MOSTLY standard fare, albeit a bit more serious than usual, but just as much as Fujiko is an adaptation, so is Lupin and everybody else. And this show takes subtle barbs of their depictions elsewhere. Nothing so far as to be disrespectful. But enough to lampshade parts of their characters elsewhere played down.

Lupin for instance is horndog and always has been but here there are places where it's not played for laughs.  And one of the great charming rogues loses that charm.

Goemon's honor thing pretty much gives him a madonna complex as his image of Fujiko is shattered by the reality of her when she's not playing a bit for a job. And, Jigen's ability to see past the sexy is portrayed as mild misogyny. "I just hate women." It's not thick enough so the characters feel like caricatures or even out of character but it is strong enough to make a statement about the premise and history of the show.

In both cases the story frames their inability to engage with feminine sensuality as emasculating. That's an interesting statement. Especially in Jigen's case as he is pretty much the male macho gangster archetype right out of a noir. That says something.

TheN there is the fact that Fujiko stole Jigen's gun.



Everybody is Fujiko
Again my greatest failure when watching this the first time was taking everything at face value, viewing the story literally without accounting for it's context.  This show is designed to comment on Fujiko's role and define her as character by communicating and understanding the journey her character has taken metatexually.

Nearly every female character represents a historical aspect of the character's portrayal, and many of them end up getting killed by this Fujiko. Or at least she has a part in their death. For the record whenever I say, "this Fujiko" I mean the literal textual Fujiko of this story, not Ur-Fujiko or any sort of metaphorical Fujiko.

This parallel is subtle early in the story and gets more and more blatent until she literally let's her past identity die in the last episode. Which I will talk about later as will I get into the implications of some of these "metaphorical" Fujikos

But I want to really get into the show's concept of multiple identities.  After many of the arc there will be a scene where Fujiko says she related to the departed. That she saw something of herself in them.

Well let's go back to adaptation.  This Fujiko is not ur-Fujiko.  The show seems to have an awareness of this. No, the show seems to be about this. Apart from the opening we the audience have never seen or interacted with Ur-Fujiko. All we have done is interacted with incarnations of her, with this Fujiko only being the latest (unless some new Lupin Special came out when I wasn't looking)

Despite that, because this Fujiko is written and directed by women she has the authenticity to speak on the behalf of Ur-Fujuko. To comment on her past selves, which are represented  by these "Metaphorical Fujikos"

I will delve into what her comments are, in a bit, but that setup is brilliant.

The Image, Art and The Audience
At least two episodes involve cases the idea of art being divorced from image. The second one is about issues I want to talk about indepth later so let's talk about the first and its "Metaphorical Fujiko" Aiyan.

Aiyan  is a masked Oprah singer who Fujiko fills in for, in one of Zenigata's bids for Lupin, who is planning to steal the jewel encrusted mask. Everybody is Fujiko.

Is it the mask, Aiyan's image that makes her who she is?  Or is her identity intact independent from it.

The big twist is that the real Aiyan engineered the entire mask thing so she could retire in peace while nobody noticed in effect making a new Aiyan. Adaptation.

Aiyan speaks directly to the idea that no Fujiko on Tv or in film is the original Fujiko, nor can claim to be.

They are all including this Fujiko just wearing the mask.


Oscar and Catholic School Girl Sex Scene
I love Lupin the Third. I'm not a super fan or anything but I have an affection for the franchise. The thing that really made me turn off my brain, really just dismiss this series, was the catholic school girl sex scene.

With that rolling around in my head I can never ever EVER watch Fujiko flirt and think it's sexy or even harmless again. This scene his retroactively ruined every other piece of Lupin the Third media out there for me!

I wanted to ignore it! I wanted to just move on! I wanted to lock in the cabinet of things I pretend didn't happen in my favorite franchises.

It took me a while to get over that. I hadn't loved this version but I felt it was harmless thus far.

THIS SCENE AIN'T HARMLESS!

FUJIKO IS A PEDIPHILE RAPIST!

BUT!

After I calmed down. After I thought about it, I see it exists for a reason. I see that it's trying to say something. And succeeding at saying it.

"Fujuko's sexuality exists outside of the voyeuristic audience." I dislike that scene but I can't think of any other way of taking back her sexuality from the audience.

If you turn her into a Madonna she's no longer Fujiko.  She has to be,  no is sexual. There had to be a way of maintaining her sensuality but doing it in a way where it's clear this is not for the audience.

They constructed a sensual voyeuristic sex scene that no guy wants to enjoy.They turned Lupin The 3rd into (literary) Lolita lesbian fetish porn.

And to get into genius of this I have to fast forward. It's revealed that the "student" is actually Oscar, a character I had previously written off.

Okay last time around I said I was getting a Silence of the Lambs vibe from this guy. And  in a few later episodes I was. I have conflicting feelings about Buffalo Bill or any character ... influenced by him. He is the nightmare of anybody icked out by transgendered themes. An embodiment of all that fear.

He's creepy as all hell though so eh...good villain?. But I groan a little anytime I see anybody wanting to do it again. You have to earn your lady-skin coat damn it! And in retrospect this show (and Monster) does earn it.

So early in the series Fujiko has sex with Zenigata, whom Oscar had a crush on. Oscar goes a little nutty and starts posing as Fujiko.

But metatexually a dude posing as Fujiko has some implications. Writers try to fit into "the skin" of their characters all the time and he is basically the walking representation of the male impersonation of Fujiko and women in general throughout fiction. He is a "metaphorical Fujiko"

And that Lolita sex scene is with him, linking it to the male impersonation to the character as if to say, how is this different from what's been going on in the past.

Furthermore he doesn't just pose as Fujiko making this bit more than about just her character.

God damn it, that's smart.

Brilliant but because the sex scene comes first none of that was running through my head when I first watched it. No. I was thinking,  GREAT, FUJIKO THE PEDIPHILE RAPIST!

Well now that my brain back is on and I can notice things I didn't the first time, the show is ripe with reoccurring visual metaphor. Particularly owls and butterflies.

Both of these probably have deeper implications but I'm pretty sure represent voyeurism. The ever watchful audience. When the show wants to make a statement about how the character interacts with the audience you'll find one of those two hanging around.   My general impression is that owls represent the male audience, while butterflies represent how they desire the female Galatea that is Fujiko to behave And I've got more to say on that so let's move on.

The Painted Lady
This show isn't about this Fujiko Mine or even A Fujiko Mine but THE FUJIKO MINE, the Ur-Fujiko Mine.

And by thinking too literally I missed the biggest, most obvious, sledgehammer to the face ohhhhhh that's what we're talking about version they could have given.  The painted lady.

So let's talk about her.

So episode, 9 is the episode that kicks off the Fujiko is maybe not who you think she is plot. And I should have been paying more attention.

So the "score" here is a painted woman, a living canvas.  A work of art that "exists only for the pleasure of its audience" at those words my eyes should have been opened.

She exists only as a canvas for her male artist, auctioned off to the highest bidder. He even painted her tongue obsessed with her beauty robbing her of her ability to speak and in some fundamental way interact with the world.

Through out the episode Fujiko is on a mission to seemingly steal the thing but 2/3 of the way in we realize it's deeper than that. She relates a bit too much to the living canvas and wants to destroy it, and she's doing all of that without really understanding why. It's just instinctual for her.

Fujiko, the Ur-Fujiko exists independent of the text, independent of of her image, independent of the art...or does she? On one level she is a brand, a piece of IP, a painting worth millions, often bought and sold as intellectual properties are.

And the show is clear we, the audience are scum for treating her like that, as are all the, "artists" who facilitate it. She's lives and breathes as all good characters do, and how dare we turn her into nothing more than a painting to be bought and sold for her beauty

Of course this Fujiko doesn't actually say all that prefering to adher to the Terminator school of identity reconciliation in this episode. Oddly enough it's Lupin who gives the big speech on this one. Which seems like it might have been an inner monologue of the writer at one point.
Lupin: We're surrounded by extremely volatile natural gas. One spark from this baby and we're all crispy critters. What do you want from this lady anyway?

Fujiko: Think about it why do I steal (adapt) anything, I can sell her to the highest bidder for a ton of cash.

Lupin: If that were your game you'd want her in pristine condition. Wouldn't want to scratch her, any damage tanks the price and you know it. So what are you really after Fujiko? You want to kill the poor girl. No that's not it. That's not it all. It's yourself you want to kill.  Your life has been manipulated by strangers. When you steal, when you eat even when you breath everything you do is a part of somebody else's plan. People you don't even know threw your destiny off course. But you have to go on living powerless and pathetic. You see yourself when you look at her and you can't take it. Isn't that right Fujiko Mine.

Fujiko: And if it is what then?What am I supposed to do?

Lupin: Do you think I (male writers or/and the past versions of the franchise) am the best one to ask?

And it's wierd that this revelation isn't coming from Fujiko but Lupin. Because it's his franchise and because he's always been two furry ears short of being a modern trickster god himself he can deliver that monologue Coyote style, invoking that's it's not "this" Lupin talking, but Ur-Lupin (who in this show most often seems to be speaking for/as the author), looking beyond the text, beyond the audience, beyond the writers, who really wants to see a fully realized Fujiko, a fully actualized Fujiko.

Fujiko and characters like her present a problem. She has a well deserved place in culture. And not all of that is due to her bra size.  Yet  all of that stuff has become so untangled into the character that you can't say screw it, we're starting from scratch because you would in fact be doing just that. Starting from scratch and doing away with that cultural icon.


God that is an important passage. Just selling the lady for the money won't do  Keeping her the same isn't right. And killing her to put her out of her misery won't work either. This entire thing is about trying to give the character of Fujiko Mine back control of her life. To allow her to subvert the expectations of the audience and even her writers. To blank the canvas and make her a woman again.

This show is trying to thoughtfully get Fujiko Mine and by extension every meaningful female character written by men into a place where it's okay to talk about and write them, all the while dealing with and acknowledging the yes sometimes negative influence male writers have had over them.

Lupin doesn't know how to do it. That part is up to Fujiko herself.

The Ur-Universe
This part is going to get complicated, because from here on out the series is done with pretending like it's a normal Lupin the 3rd series.  And on first watching I didn't get that this is instead about trying to save, "Ur-Fugiko".

To allow this to make sense it my head I have to think about it sort of sideways. The ending of episode 9 is where "this Fujiko" stops being "this Fujiko" and begins to speak for and act as as "Ur-Fujiko" and really the last 5 episodes are a giant drug fueled (seriously there are drugs in this show that's not a statement on the visuals though it could be) metaphor for her journey.

What threw me off is that episode 10 takes place almost entirely in a drug hallucination. That should have a a big blinking light but I was an idiot. Nothing there is literal. Even within the story everything is a fiction. I was waiting for the story to tell me what it all means. When the story can't without breaking itself.

The drugs allow the tale to explode the fourth wall. Letting the story take place in an realm beyond the text without fully escaping it.

The drugs allow "this Lupin" to travel to to the Ur-Lupin world, which is a dead barren wasteland and learn the metaphorical story of Ur-Fujiko Mine.

Furthermore all of these characters act subtly differently then they had for the rest of the series. Zenigata who everywhere else is...off is his most Zenigata here breaking up with his this story only partner to do things on his own.

This is the space of the idea of Lupin the 3rd. Explaining how it all went wrong, why these characters are in danger, and how to save them.

Remember how I said owls represent the audience. Guess who the villians of this thing are? The owls engage in mind control, and in the realm beyond the text what does that mean? The male audience and the fear of that audience are controlling these characters THESE characters that exist beyond the text. The audience is controlling the very idea of Ur-Lupin, Ur-Zenigata, Ur-Jigin and Ur-Fujiko who should exist as fully realized characters not puppets of the audience.

Next up we meet Fujiko's (father) and it gets weird.  He speaks as a detached jaded creator who lost the thrill of creation and through that lost the one thing that mattered to him. His daughter. And there are so many ways to read that. Lost the franchise, authorial control, the character of Fujiko, all of it.

We even see the image of him butchering a fake Lupin.

After that see a childlike Fujiko. We've basically been taken back in time to a "young" Ur-Fujiko explaining the story of her creation and god is she breakin' the wall.

Lupin: Doctor where are you?

Ur-Young Fujiko He's not here anymore. There's no reason for him to be this is my tale.

Lupin: No these are the affects of the drug thats all when I wake up things will be back to normal

Ur-Young Fujiko: Are you sure some people get lost here. They don't know where the exit is and they get stuck here forever.

Lupin: So how do I find the exit.

Ur Young Fujiko: You just have to find something connected to reality to capture me like maybe... like pain.

Lupin: Wait, why are you here? 
Ur-Young Fujiko Don't be silly I already told you this is my tale.

Fujiko Mine,  the creative writing professor ladies and gentlemen. How do you create characters that feel real, that breath?

Also I didn't touch upon earlier metaphors but I should have the method that makes all of this work is the fear of death. The fear that if these characters don't do what the owls(the audience) want, don't submit to their will, they will die.

The story frames that fear as unnatural. That these characters have lives and all life comes to an end even fictional ones. Eventually the franchise will die but these characters did well at least they lived good lives.

Let's Talk About Dudes
So after that... we're back in the normal story though we will drift in and out of it. Drugs. We're catching up with "this Fujiko" after that breaking speech Lupin gave.

But this really is the episode where Mari Okada really talks about the series independent of Fujiko as she's mostly out of the picture of this one.

I already gave one reading of the importance of Oscar, but as I rewatch this I'm finding another and I have to admit my own guilt.

Beyond all the Fujiko stuff Oscars primary sin is his possessiveness of Zenigata. It's framed as romantic thing but how did it start. Because Zenigata was his idealized version of masculinity. How many pieces of media have stagnated out of fear of feminizing the masculine. Refusing to male characters more complex because that complexity would be confused for weakness.

This isn't just about female characters and this is all about that. The effects of misogyny in fiction on men.

Look let's face it not every female character is going to be written by women and vice-versa but guys have we no pride in our creations? Does the fear of gender politics drain the soul out of the the collective fiction. Do those fears limit us from creating breathing characters?

The Woman Called Fujiko Mine
So as I've said this show has the ambitious goals of

  1. Acknowledging the influences, both the negative and positive, males have had in informing the character. 
  2. Acknowledging the lack of power said character has over her image.
  3. Acknowledge that despite all of that Fujiko as a character has meaning.
  4. Get everybody in a place where we are willing to admit all the above but still feel safe engaging with, enjoying, and continuing the legacy of this character.
  5. And tying that to every other meaningful fictional female character written by men in existence.  

Okay.
First of we have to deal with the image of Fujiko. In the finale we get a whole mess of dopplegangers. At first they're just visages but then we realize they're actual people, brainwashed and forced into the role of Fujiko Mine culminating in one being oscar (what did I say before)

How many characters, stories and ideas could have been brilliant but have been pushed into blandness by being forced to be knockoffs of some original work.

Through out this thing I can feel the writer struggling with that fear, Dream Lupin turning down the offer to steal Fujiko. And the whole second half seems to be a giant critism of the first for sticking to closely to the classic idea of the character. Keeping the painted lady pristine.

"This Fujiko" needs an out. A metaphorical way to both condemn and celebrate Ur-Fujiko.

"This Fujiko" isn't completely herself.  But she's no one's puppet either.  This is going to get trippy.

Up until this point the plot has been hinting that Fujiko has been brainwashed. That everything she's ever done has been the result of some puppet master.  In the end though show splits the difference.

She has implanted memories but blocked them out...and more or less was the same person before being implanted anyway. I don't think that works. It creates all sorts of dissonance. But it's the later twists that keep me hanging on.

The person orchestrating the let's face it mindfuckery, was the person's who's memories "this Fujiko" had.  The person causing her torment was a restrained older version of her. A version of her that couldn't be Fujiko.  We have another metaphorical Fujiko.

Beyond that there is also the twist that her broken-Fujiko's, Aisha's accomplice was her "mother". Her female mother who felt guilty and indebted to her.

That is just cracking the DVD case right there.  But "this Fujiko" condemns the mother/metaphorical
writer for this behavior.

Aiesha dies and we're in freedom and we're just left with this woman called Fujiko Mine.


P.S. The Dissonance
Nope not doing another one. I said this was the last and it will be.

But.

The ending is too happy.

I finally worked through that dissonance from the ending, and the revelation woke me up at 2 in the morning bringing me to tears. This whole thing is a metatextual tragedy.

This whole thing, this whole 13 episode thing has been about explaining through Fujiko Mine that legacy characters and female legacy characters in particular are vulnerable to non-diegetic factors and that Fujiko has for most of her existence has been a slave to those factors.

At first glance the ending seems to be about giving her back her life. Giving her an identity beyond all the fan service.

But.

The "liberated" Fujiko shoots and rebukes the story's mother figure, a possible metaphor for the female writer of this story, who she feels has been a complicit accomplice in the breaking of Aisha who is a metaphor for Fujiko herself.

Remember all the metaphors about Fujiko's identity being a fabrication...being a lie.

IT STILL IS.

That ending is too clean, absolving the audience, contradicting everything that came before. This show broke Fujiko and is doing its damnedest to put her back together, to take her backwards to pretend like it hadn't said or done any of the stuff it had over the 11 episodes prior to the 2 part finale.

But it had. That cat is out of the bag. But the story needed to end in a place where we all felt safe and comfortable.

Fujiko kills the shows mother/ female writer figure.

With the themes of story the ending that seems to make the most sense, the ending that seems to feel the most true is Fujiko's mental breakdown in episode 9 at the realization that she's a fabrication, "a painted lady".

Remember "this Fujiko" is more or less out of the picture for the next 2 episodes, in a series bearing her name.

"This Fujiko's" story has been told.

If I ignore the "false ending" of the last two episodes and go with that reading I'm right back where I was at my second venom filled blog post about the retroactive rape of Fujiko except the writers were aware of it. The writers knew what they were saying, and were solemnly admitting their failure to "salvage" Fujiko this time around. To find the Fujiko beyond the text.

It makes you reconsider every appearance of Fujiko in the franchise, including the ones earlier in this series. The character is a puppet of the narrative as she sexes it up this series. And in one of the most convoluted endings I've ever seen denies that even though that was what this whole series was about explaining.

There are subtle hints that the writers even regret taking the money to make the attempt to save her. Both Goemon and Lupin are offered suitcases of money to take a job and refuse the gig (at least at first). And in Lupin's case the gig is "stealing Fujiko". Remember that metaphor in the opening. Remember how many times Lupin speaks as though he were the author of this thing breaking the fourth wall with his fascination of her character.

Owl: I would like for you to steal (adapt) Fujiko Mine

Lupin: Barging in like this how rude, and I'll pass on the job thanks.

Owl: This is something you already intended to do. I am just asking you to make good your threat promptly

Lupin: (In his head kind of): My threat huh . Oh, that one (Fujiko Mine will be mine.) so they've been watching me all this time the one job where it's not about impulse. This is the woman I want and I don't like to share.

Owl: And here I always thought it was a point of pride that you always stole what you said would

Lupin: I don't care much for owls their night vision is to good, but there are questions I want answered. What do these feathered freaks want with her? Just who is Fujiko Mine?

The scene plays out as a writer refusing to take a jab at writing a character they have loved all their lives even though as a strictly hypothetical they were always planning to make that attempt despite being worried the idiot who actually took the job would botch it.

And then in the end Lupin is forced to take the job through money and mind control.

Remember this was all in that coke fueled 10th episode, after "the true ending" It's like an elaborate explanation of how this all happened, in a metanarrative space. Though I've already been there.

And with the show's opening they must have tried their damnedest to reclaim Ur-Fujiko.

Also they've connected Ur-Fujiko to all female legacy characters.  What happens to all of them when somebody, perhaps a plucky female writer wants to do something with them?  Ms. Marvel? Wonder Woman?

THIS HURTS.

P.P.S. FUJIKO MINE!!!!!! and Goemon in Drag
Open in a dark room facing a starry window an emanciated yet emancipated man wakes up from a dream.

Fujiko... Fujiko...Aisha

He rubs the hollows of his eyes as he reaches for a cigarette lighter in the moonlight of the window pane.

Aisha.

Not again. I need sleep. Four nights now. Four tiresome nights. But still I can't get this woman called Fujiko out of my mind.

And then it hit me like a ton of bricks.

Too literal, always too literal. Miles.

My first reading of Aisha was that she was a metaphor for all of the Fujikos of the past. And the writer's reluctant duty towards them. But questions, so many questions kept me up.

I'm still being too literal.

I'm not a woman. I can't speak for them so fear lept in my heart. Was I wrong? So I looked and read. And guessed and doubted.

And then came the dawn.

Too literal.

Aisha means a lot of things. She means everything.

In a general sense she can represent all of the feminist issues in this series and her relationship to her mother can represent the writer's cruel corrupted duty to them.

She can represent the female audience, the female spectator that feels betrayed yet fascinated by Fujiko's promiscuity especially when as little girls watching the movies and shows they came to slowly realize the world's restrictions on their own sexual identities and came to hate Fujiko.


She can represent the failure of feminism to return freedom to these women, and its lashing out at all female sexuality.

And that ending where "this Fujiko" kills Aisha's mother can represent both the failure to find the Ur-Fujiko the Fujiko independent of all of that, independent of non-diegetic manipulation, and female writer's who reluctantly play into all of that...stuff (if you haven't guessed by the opening its four in the morning and the fourth night I'm running on fumes).

Fujiko's forgiveness and understanding of their tortured souls, all while still being bound within her own constraints. And that puts a new spin on that Catholic school girl scene.

Seductive Fujiko may have been these girls first experience in seeing and engaging with female sensuality. And the idea of it may be uncomfortable but it rings true true. And for some that experience may have been meaningful enough that she shouldn't just be destroyed.

Aisha means everything, and I am still vexed.

On my fourth night of screaming FUJIKO MINE, in my bed in my underwear trying to puzzle out the mystery of this woman all I am left to say is that any show that can do that is important impressive.

Oh and I finally got Goemon in drag as both he and I got over our Madonna complexes towards Fujiko and just learned to accept her as she is. The Woman Called Fujiko Mine.

Ironically the show spends less time setting up the Fujiko/Lupin romance than it does the Goemon/Fujiko relationship. He's the only character she lives with. He's the character to pick up the pieces after Lupin's breaking speech. But he has had a flaw the entire show. His Madonna complex keeps him from engaging with Fujiko on a sexual level. In episode 11 we see a shot of him cleaning/stroking his sword while trying to puzzle out Fujiko's deal an obvious visual reference to the act of masturbation.

I have no clue how the show views that, but again Goemon's fatal flaw is his inability to engage in female sexuality.

In the last episode in drag he makes the declaration that Fujiko is his girlfriend. Again that's a little vague but it does at the very least entail character development as he's gotten over his initial Madonna image of her.

Or maybe I'm just an idiot over thinking everything until I become an oruboros.

Ohhhhhhh. THE Woman Called Fugiko Mine

Let's rewind.

I saw a recently made adaption of one of my favorite Japanese franchise, Lupin The 3rd entitled The Woman Called Fujiko Mine. I dismissed it. While I now think it's brilliant, as a textual literal adaptation eh it's kind of boring.

I went in thinking "Oh my God there going to tell us everything about Fujiko. Right on. Let's do this." And they are but THE woman called Fujiko isn't this Fujiko Mine, at least not literally.

So after one and half posts of calling this show stupid,



I found out it was the first time the character of Fujiko mine in her long history was primarily written and directed by women. That knowledge gave me the clue I needed to stop thinking literally and start thing metatextually.

This show isn't about THIS Fujiko Mine or even A Fujiko Mine but THE FUJIKO MINE. The one that exists independent of text.  The one who we're talking about when we have our little powwows about who is the hottest women in anime. THAT Fujiko Mine.

Almost every female/feminine character in this thing can be called some sort of metaphor for that Fujiko Mine. I still don't know what to make of Goemon in drag though.

Anyway. And by thinking too literally I missed the biggest, most obvious, sledgehammer to the face ohhhhhh that's what we're talking about version they could have given.  The painted lady.

So let's talk about her.

So episode, 9 is the episode that kicks off the Fujiko is maybe not who you think she is plot. And I should have been paying more attention.

So the "score" here is a painted woman, a living canvas.  A work of art that "exists only for the pleasure of its audience" at those words my eyes should have been opened.

She exists only as a canvas for her male artist, auctioned off to the highest bidder. He even painted her tongue obsessed with her beauty robbing her of her ability to speak and in some fundamental way interact with the world.

Through out the episode Fujiko is on a mission to seemingly steal the thing but 2/3 of the way in we realize it's deeper than that. She relates a bit too much to the living canvas and wants to destroy it, and she's doing all of that without really understanding why. It's just instinctual for her.

That contrasts to her later statements about being and always have being her own woman. Which statement is really true. There is a dissonance there. I don't know how to reconcile it though.

The painted lady is a Fujiko Mine. And she relates to THE Fujiko Mine, and even this story's Fujiko Mine.

Once this Fujiko stops and thinks about her actions. Thinks about just destroying the painted lady and realizing that she was going to do so because of her own insecurities she stops and has a mild mental breakdown.

The next episode is pretty much devoid of Fujiko as Lupin and Zenigata try to find and understand Fujiko's past.

I pretty much turned my head at that moment. In my mind the show had robbed Fujiko, "The Mae West of anime" of her own will and then rather than letting her find it again just had the boys goofing around. I AM SOOOOOOOOO SORRY.

But that entire trippy episode does feature Fujiko. It's the trippy trippy drug induced story of the "original" Fujiko, in her infancy.

The show eventually makes her the bad guy by having her attempt to force this Fujiko (if you haven't caught on I'm using "this" to indicate the story's Fujiko) into conforming to her identity and at the slightest hint that she's grown past it kill her but it also paints her as a victim, the result of her father's torture and the anguished guilt of her impotent mother (who in a way is also Fujiko though this is getting long).

This Fujiko isn't the only one who's had her mind messed with. But this Fujiko is also the only Fujiko that survived past that. How is she special? How is she more "authentic" than the rest?

Friday, April 25, 2014

Damn It I Hate When I'm Wrong on the Internet (A Revisiting of The Woman Called Fujiko Mine)

Okay. My big problem with  The Woman Called Fujiko Mine was the ending, which to me seemed to excuse all the male pandering of her character. Because of that I was in a head space where I felt nothing the show could say about that male pandering could be valid, and I turned my brain off.

I AM SORRY!

I was sooooooooooo wrong.

The story was directed and written by women. That's not to say that automatically makes everything the story says is right, but that that information did reboot my brain so I knew where to look.  And by god is it there.

When you realize that this is the first time.. how did I put it, "The Mae West of anime" has actually been in the control of women, the themes of the show start to fall into place,  and things I didn't pay attention to or thought were.. stupid all of a sudden seem brilliant.

Transgendered Themes
Okay last time around I said I was getting a Silence of the Lambs vibe.   And I was. I have conflicting feelings about Buffalo Bill or any character ... influenced by him. He is the nightmare of anybody icked out by transgendered themes. An embodiment of all that fear.

He's creepy as all hell though so eh good villain. But I groan a little any time I see anybody wanting to do it again. You have to earn your lady-skin coat damn it! And in retrospect this show (and Monster) does.

Well any writter who's a dude and is writing female characters is Buffalo Bill in a way. And a character like that can easily be used as a metaphor especially for a legacy character like Fujiko.

Keep in mind this is the guy she's making out with in the Catholic school girl scene which has the male gaze all over it. Also turning Lupin's playful flirting into creepy lechery touche.

There is an episode or two where this guy is running around as her, doing stuff she wouldn't do, all while, "the authorities" are blaming her for this crap.

That says something about control of the female image in media. I'm keyboard to heading it right now so I'm not sure what. But damn how did I miss that.

This character eventually repents but is forced by the system back into this role of "being Fujiko"

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Legacy Characters
This is going to be heavy. There are lots of Fujiko's running around in this thing. And all of them have something to say. I just described one.  Let's talk about "the many"

In an attempt to rescue Fujiko our protagonists find a room filled with Fujiko "dolls" people some of whom are men dressed up to look like her. Going meta yes there is more than one Fujiko. As I hinted at in my original review there is a lot of Lupin the Third media out there. I know of at least 4 TV shows and like 10 movies/specials. And you could argue that each one features a different Fujiko.

That's an important idea. But the not counting, "Bill Fujiko" the show concerns itself mostly with the interaction of two and this is going to get complicated.

We find out that Fujiko has implanted memories. In a way the Fujiko the story follows is not the original Fujiko, IN STORY.

Well then.

Hmmm.

Do go on.

The original Fujiko, who's not quite Fujiko either trippy, was tortured and brainwashed by her Dad. For really complicated reasons she decided to carry on that stuff in the hopes of creating a sort of vicarious successor, implanting her memories into the stories Fujiko.

From that point the question becomes how much of Fujiko is Fujiko and how much is just the ephemera of the past.

Like having to write a character with 40 years of baggage while trying to make this incarnation of her seem independent original and fresh.

Furthermore the "Original" insists on keeping the dead visage of her dad around even though he's basically a rotten out corpse. And the entire reason she is a villain is her inability to let go of his plans. Like say the inability to let go of the original direction a legacy character was going until stagnation set in.

The past memories didn't keep though. This Fujiko barely remembers all that stuff. Like a writer who due to the shear amount of a content on a legacy character probably won't be able to go through all of the back issues or remain consistant with every single appearance over the course of said character's history.

And the original get's jealous that Fujiko gets to be Fujiko without (most of) the drama. There is something about gender politics there but I'm not touching it. Though it could also be read as the "originals" feeling uncomfortable that someone else gets to build off work.

The big thing is that the ending explains that this Fujiko who the story treats as the authentic Fujiko (the current one written by actual women)  says that she is who she is because it's her nature. Not because of her implanted back. This Fujiko isn't who she is because 50 years of accumulated continuity (again often written by dudes who watched too many Bond movies) but because of choices of her current writer and director.

Bravo and I am a stupid stupid idiot.

One Reading of Fujiko (I got to get this out of my head)

So its been about two hours since I watched The Woman Named Fujiko Mine and I need to get this out of my system.

Fujiko is probably the oldest anime sex symbol around. She beat Yoko from Lagann by about 50 years. Feye Valentine is an obvious homage to her. She's the Mae West of anime.  If you wanted to speak about how anime deals with the feminine she's the character do through.

Right now anime is having a discussion about fan service. And Fujiko is the proto-typical fan service character. Before fan service was a thing she was sunbathing on the beach.  One reading of her statements is that her character at this point operates independently of current anime fan service trends. That nobody is making her do the stuff does.

Buuuuuuut

This is fiction. Somebody is making her have voyeuristic lesbian/transgendered sex with Catholic school girls and yes she does that. They turned Lupin the Third into fetish porn!

Eghhhh.

Somebody up the chain had to think that was a great idea! Somebody had to think that was integral to Lupin the Third. Somebody had to think that was integral to Fujiko's character, which this entire thing is supposed to be explaining.

Look I get it. She will totally seduce the guards. It's part of her established character that she will do what it takes to get the loot including bang a dude. Heck that's half of her old episode introductions as the surprise girlfriend/fiancee of whoever happens to be the mark this time 'round,  but let's be honest when you go that far it's not for the "character's sake". You're doing it for audience reaction.

Eggggh. Are we that ill-regarded?

Remember this is the franchise that launched  Hayao Miyazaki's, one of the most respected film makers of Japan, career. Turned into fetish porn! And not just Rule 34 fetish porn. Cannon! Licensed!

And that last scene seems to me to be trying to justify it all. Trying to say no no. This is who Fujiko is and always has been, and we feel no guilt or remorse for annnny of it.  Look look she's cool with it. So we good? We good?

Well she kind of has to be doesn't she. You wrote her to be fine with it. Meta-narritively that's kind of how brainwashing works.

You took control over her body and made her do all that crap.

I got to watch some Lupin III classic.

P.S. I found out after I wrote this that the director and head writer were women and that makes things make a little more sense. I still have problems with it.  But I get it more. Fujiko in any reading represents female sexuality. Part of my problem was feeling as though it were a bunch of dudes in a room justifying her objectification. With that tidbit if feels more like she, or rather the female staff are justifying her sexual liberation and claiming it as a part of her identity independent from any influence those dudes in a room might have had over her character in the past. Better.

Still though Catholic school girls?

You know know that whole plot makes a lot more sense. Hmmmm.  I think I may need to write this thing over. Dudes being forced by the machine to dress as Fujiko...

An older model disappointed about how restrained she is wanting to get revenge of the more liberated current version.

...All of a sudden it's starting to make sense.

... A room filled with female constructs.

Yep I need to go back to the drawing board.

Anime Review: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine

Note: 2015 Update
Okay it's kind of starting to bug me that this version is picking up in traffic when like 2 days later I changed my mind and wrote another much more comprehensive review

You know when we start talking old school anime (let's say Pre-Dragon Ball) my standard isn't Gundam. It isn't Astro Boy. It isn't Slayers or Kimba the White Lion It's.



That's not to say I'm a Lupin The Third expert or aficionado but I recognize that anime as a medium has evolved. Everything produced even outside of Anime is a product of its time and environment and that requires certain considerations when watching older shows as trends, tastes and techniques changed, despite that Lupin The Third holds up really really well. If it's a lazy Saturday and I need to kill a half hour there you go.

It is the epitome of retrocool.

Enter The Woman Called Fujiko Mine



The show is a perspective flip on the traditional Lupin formula by telling the origin of Fujiko and Lupin's "relationship"..."rivalry"... thing from her perspective rather the obvious.  In most of the old shows Fujiko was a bit of a spanner. Everybody knows she was going to betray them but Lupin was so attracted to her that he doesn't care, trying to outwit her and maybe in the process impress her enough to get his mac on with sweet sweet Fujiko Mine, while his buddies are pissed he let her do it to him, no them, again.

Sometimes it worked sometimes it didn't both the outwitting and macking. But regardless it's an interesting character dynamic. Lupin wanting to flirt but also devoting half an episode to a Fujiko contingency plan.

But here is the thing we always see the Lupin/Fujiko thing through the perspective of Lupin. Remember in every interaction they have Fujiko is trying to use the fact that he digs her to play him. So we've never really gotten to see how she feels, gotten inside her head. And that's what this show is about. Revealing how her interactions with the cast play out from her side.

One thing from the get I'm not so keen on however is that every dude in the show is now attracted to her which somewhat dimishes the usual interactions between all of them. Again the usual rub is that Goemon and Jigen desperately try to convince Lupin that eventually Fujiko will screw them with Lupin grinning in that way he does and saying he hopes she does. "Damn it, Lupin pay attention! This is serious! If she... and we... and the mark... then we end up with bupkis!" How's my Jigen?

The first couple of episodes take us back to before the crew ever teamed up, back when they were all doing their own thing and it really does show how much they all need each other. This is Jigen and Goeomon alright, but before they mellowed, back when they were just sell-swords. Hell in just about any adaptation they're about three times quicker than Lupin to take off the gloves and get serious.
But here there is none of that humor and camaraderie between them because it doesn't exist yet.

It has a weird style that makes it feel more like a 1960's French avant-garde piece than a normal anime, which makes sense.

The original was basically a reworking of Lupin's granddad's french adventures for a 1960's audience. Part of it is the  animation that gives it an art deco vibe and the jazz soundtrack which is glorious. Despite its more stylized animation it also seems to be less cartoony than the old shows, trying to play the gentleman thief thing straight or at least straighter than the old show.

In addition there is no way anybody is going to confuse this thing for a kids show so the violence, Fujiko's sex appeal, and Lupin's attraction to her is way more blatant than I've ever seen it. Let's just say Lupin gets a little gropy. Heck everybody is that way and it can be distracting.  I know they want to make this a darker Lupin but having all of that does lower everybody's likability when we're in a world of supposedly charming rogues.

Then again perhaps that was the point. This is a darker, more sexualized show than usual. Lupin is horndog. He always has been but depicting that has always been difficult in the show which let's face it was marketed towards kids. You got some cat and mouse flirting and maybe some fan service but nothing much more than that. Here things get a little rapey.

And that's before Fujiko learns to use her sex appeal after which, things can get weird and uncomfortable and since it's dabbled through out the show it's really hard to ignore in favor for the usual charm of the set up. It might be trying to say something about the franchises usual sexual politics and I'll get to that later.

Anyway like most Lupin media this show is episodic, at least for the first half, each show being self contained and character development showing up slowly as each version of the characters you see is subtlety different. That's interesting as the biggest complaint I have about the old show is how everything felt the same. You seen one episode you've seen them all.

On the other hand the individual plots themselves seem to be all over the place as what it is Fujiko is actually after is only explained in the last couple of minutes of each one.  Because of that nothing she does makes sense as your watching it and because of all the sex, as stated some of which is uncomfortable you lose the point of the narrative.

I'd just wish more often they'd tell you what the score was. Not the plan mind you but the take just so I'd better understand as things were unraveling what everything had to do with everything else.

That's all, for the relatively normal first half that is, the verdict is that  it isn't unfaithful enough to be called a betrayal and isn't uninteresting or unoriginal enough to invalidate it's own existence. If you are a Lupin the Third fan you should watch it, BUT there is so much Lupin the Third media out there, so much BETTER Lupin the Third media out there.  If you just want to get your fix go somewhere else.

Now for the mind fuckery of the second half.

Lupin the Third has always been about the status quo. Sure Jigen, Geomon, Lupin and Fujiko have back-stories but that was never the point of the show or even really the movies. The last 4 or so episodes try to give Fujiko a backstory and Lord Jesus is it trippy.  Okay I have to talk about this.

It changes everything so run now.

You heard me run!

RUN!!!!!!!!!

Fujiko who's been a mainstay of the franchise since the 1960's, who is and has been the love interest of the eponymous character, is a product of brainwashing experiments, oh and not like someone captured her did that crap for an episode or two. This shit is now retconned cannon, and has been going down for YEARS.  No, her entire existence is a lie.

If the show had something meaningful to say about her character, gender roles, the nature of long running fiction or anything, maybe I could roll with it, but the plot seems smaller than that., more like a quick one off movie than a game changer.

This revelation brings the sexy femme fatale Fujiko into question if she wasn't doing all that stuff of her own volition.  And the audiences view of the character and their relationship to her needs to change accordingly.

It's the type of thing that makes you view every other appearance of the character into question. It something that the show needs to address.  It does but how much you're willing to roll with is going to be a thing.

To me "I'm me and always have been speech" she gives seems in a few ways like a cop out. They built this plot up, without the presence of Fujiko mind you (she's the last person in the main cast to get the memo), and that bugs the hell out of me, but they built it up damn it.

Again if sexy fan service "Pussy Galore" Fujiko is a victim of brainwashing it also means that the audience has retroactively been eye groping a rape victim. Don't set that up unless you're willing to actually do something with it, especially when the show is so sexually charged. We have been a bit voyeuristic with the entire franchise's 1960's Bond girl view of her.

Apart from that there is another character who is giving of a transgendered vibe. I don't like the character. Not because of that, though he does give out Lambs vibes at times but because said character adds very little to the normal character dynamic, if anything he makes Zenigata boring, as rather than do his normal impassioned Javert shtick he's in a bland mentor role.

Pops is many things but he ain't boring.

In this show Zenigata shows signs of competence and that and that's always interesting the futile but impassioned chase of that damned Lupin or in this case Fujiko, but the show keeps going to this other character who just seems out of place. Mostly its just that I don't care about anything surrounding him and when a plot has to involve him or a scene I want things to get back to the good bits.

For instance the 5th episode which is as close to classic Lupin as this thing gets. That one actually holds up. You got Fujiko tricking everybody into stealing a Macguffin. You got Lupin working with while trading barbs with Jigen in a death trap. If the show was that I would be on board, though in the end I guess I know where to get that.


Note: 2015 Update
Okay it's kind of starting to bug me that this version is picking up in traffic when like 2 days later I changed my mind and wrote another much more comprehensive review.

On Visual Novels

I am a geek, but I am not am omega geek. Sure there are a lot of genres and... facinations I would like to pursue, but pursuing all of them would be exhausting and expensive. Yes I know of comics, manga, dojenshi, doujinshi, the con scene, videogames, modeling, fan art, cosplay, light novels, and all that good stuff, or at least that they exist but I mostly stick to actually participating in a few hobbies I really dig. Anime and movies.

But because both Robotics; Notes and Steins; Gate are based on visual novels I feel the need to talk about the medium a little. Keeping in mind that I have very limited knowledge.


Okay when I was in college my lit professor wanted to open up the class to the idea that literary quality can be judged independent of medium and genre.  "Chillers and Thrillers" what did you expect. We read a few classic thrillers but also a few contemporary ones some of which weren't...printed.

Enter Patchwork Girl.

Patchwork Girl is not a visual novel, but it did relatively early in computing history demonstrate the capability of non-linear story telling in a digital space.

<Crickets>
...

You cretins! Fine then M.S. Paint Adventures.  Happy.  Probably the closest thing I can think of to a well known western-centric example.

Visual novels combine text, images and and interactivity to make what's basically a digital choose your own adventure story.

Most anime are adaptations, in particular adaptations of manga (comics) but every now and again you'll find one that's an adaptation of a visual novel.


And it's interesting to me for a couple of reasons. First of visual novels have... conventions. A lot of them involve a dating subplot where the ending is tied to the girl you've been courting. That is a loaded statement and I do not feeling going into the politics of that, but it's there and a lot of the anime based on visual novels have a not so subtle shipping angle based on the original player character's choices. ZUTARA4EVAZ!!! Nah Avatar ended just fine.  It was probably one of the best damn endings I've ever seen in a show actually. You know I need to talk about that one of these days.

For those who don't know shipping is the romantic pairing of characters in a show, mostly by fans but creators can be stinkers about it. Though there are some weird ones.



I bring this up because the big problem of these shows is tying together multiple endings and plot lines together in a way that makes sense and since a lot of the endings are tied to which girl you spent the most time with, which girl explained her motivation and back story to you, who's skills sets were around when, things can get weird. Stuff has to be explained to the anime audience that the novel crowd would have found out more organically.

If you look for it you can see both Robotics;Notes and Steins;Gate, and while I'm at it Fate/Stay Night trying to write themselves out of this problem and I think they mostly succeeded, but it is a problem. Heck the central confict of Gate is the main character realizing that he cares about the well being of all the girls in his life and is being forced by fate to choose in some cases literally which one lives and dies. His solution is to go "Nope. Not doing this again. REBOOT BUTTON, BITCHES!" until "You can't fight fate" starts having an effect on his sanity.


The issues in Steins;Gate are big enough, and pathos deep enough that the all the girls are important to me angle doesn't seem douchey. But I've seen adaptations that leave off important arcs, or stitch them together into an incomprehensible mess. Making the success of Gate and Notes all the more remarkable to me.

Thursday, April 24, 2014

Anime Review: Steins;Gate


In my dreams I think of time and space rather than a 4-dimensional plane as a digital video map with an infinite number of layers (in my head I call it the map of creation), on which we have an undetailed fixed view. But what if someone was able to change the view of the map. They wouldn't necessarily be able to read it any better but this discovery would be integral to creating a system by which one could travel to different points along no scratch that within the map.

The creation of such system would mark a distinguishing point on said map, one that might attract travelers.

Or in layman's terms why wouldn't future time travelers want to influence the invention of the time machine?

Thus is the plot of Steins;Gate.

The story of the invention of the time machine.

Our friendly neighborhood mad scientist somehow discovers that he is the only person in existence who can maintain awareness of other timelines he's experienced. Someone just pressed CTRL+ -.

I really really like this show but unlike Robotics;Notes I don't have one big thing to say about but a lot of little ones.

I really really dig the idea of a person's consciousness being able to transcend timelines. That premise alone is really intriguing. Mostly it's not anything physical that's traveling back. Or at least nothing big. Just a few em waves, and that goes a long way to making the plot seem more plausible than your typical time travel fare. It's also obvious that the show is dealing with very rudimentary tech. The first iteration of something greater so to speak.  And well that's how engineering works. You think we just farted out motherboards.

The show really does go into the implications of time travel. Especially when a guy just blunders into it. At least Doc Brown had rules and supplies, and animal testing. These guys are just doing it FOR SCIENCE!!!!!!

Like Robotics;Notes the show kind of does a 180, but rather than that 180 being the plot it's the tone as the protagonist tries do undo everything he did in the first half after realizing the implications creating a damned paradox machine.

Also this show has one of the best depictions of transexual people I've ever seen. It doesn't mock(well maybe a light poke or two), doesn't pull any punches. It just describes the feelings of someone who feels they were born in the wrong body. On the one hand the science behind flipping it is a little "folksy" for show with such a grounding in science but still it's got courage, and is deft enough to attempt and succeed with that subplot.

Furthermore there are subtle gender subversions elsewhere in the story that challenge traditional assumptions and that's always interesting. 

We have character development. The main character was always a little nutty but that was always because he never took himself or what he was doing seriously. Who would? It's a hunk of junk. When it starts going bad, the plausible transformation of his character is astonishing to look at yet he's still undeniably the same guy but he gets that this isn't just goofy kid stuff anymore.  

One plot hole, I suppose, is the idea that only three (two depending on how you look at it) people concurrently figured out time travel. My view is when it comes to intuitive information, or more objectively mathematical logic i.e. the stuff science is made of these, sorts of leaps are made contemporaneously by multiple parties when better technology for measurement comes along. Rule one never assume your opponent is stupider than you. If you can figure it out so can they. If you have access to information chances are so do they. If you know they probably know.  The plot hinges on nipping time travel in the bud by stopping the guys who invented it, but I argue somebody else is destined to figure it out soon enough, and what then Einstein. We're right back where we started. It's like trying to stop the invention of the gun. Good luck with that.  


Of course I'm also the evil sort of sumbitch who says that at least it was us who invented the bomb and not the Germans. Imagine it. Hitler with nukes. Ehghhhh.

Damn I am getting more militant as I get older. 

Speaking of which the third act really does make time travel an allegory for nuclear technology, and that's something I haven't really seen before. That was an interesting place to take the show especially after the more "gee whiz" first act.

Overall I really really really like this show and it's one of the better anime I've seen in a while.

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