Lupin III Part I Episode 02 Review

Episode 02, "The Man They Call A Magician"

 

 

*****SPOILERS*****

 

Synopsis: Fujiko is being pursued by a mysterious and dangerous man, Pycal, who she stole something from. Lupin and Jigen struggle to protect her, but Pycal appears to have strange powers, including being immune to bullets, levitation, and shooting flames from his finger. Though Lupin discovers the secrets behind Pycal's abilities, he appears to fall to his death. But Lupin is clever and turns the tables, using the very same techniques as Pycal to gain an advantage. Pycal is overwhelmed and his secret formula goes down in flames along with him.

 

 

Comments:

 

Lupin, he's a nice man. But he's cool. You know, he uses Walther. Yeah, the machine cries. Bang bang.

 

What the fuck is that song suppose to mean? Lupin guns motherfuckers down like it's going out of style, he's not really that nice.

 

Well, in this episode, the brutality goes both ways. Fujiko finds herself in posession of these top secret films and the guy she stole them from is relentless and frightening in his pursuit of them. The man, Pycal, seems to have magical powers, but they're all based on tricks, involving a hidden minature torch, a carefully placed glass plank (seriously, what did he place that on in the middle of nowhere?), and a super protective artificial membrane whose formula the slides contain.

 

For a while, the show is just Pycal absorbing all the bullets and bombs Lupin, Jigen, and Fujiko can throw at him. He shrugs off everything, but they just keep trying, hoping, I suppose, to wear him down, or something. I guess when you're in a desperate situation like that you figure you have to shoot until you're out of bullets, regardless of the senselessness. In the manga story this is based on, it's treated a bit more comedically, though there's that same sense of dangerous futility to it all.

 

It's pretty startling to see our main character Lupin shot in the back of the head, his car launching itself off a cliff and into the sea, just in the second episode of the show. Unlike the manga, there's this really solemn, creepy scene with Lupin at the bottom of the drink in the destroyed car, presumably drowning, a vision of Fujiko as a mermaid bidding him goodbye, a vision of Jigen offering him a hand, which turns into Lupin grabbing a rope as he regains his wits. It's this really unsettling, pretty somber, dark scene that we don't see a lot of in Lupin anime.

 

Of course, because the writers are smart enough to know when they can't keep a deus ex machina around for too long, the formula for the membrane is destroyed when Lupin confronts Pycal, having used the formula himself. Lupin seems to have no further use for it (though it would have been interesting for him to put it to use every now and then for the limited time it lasts). HIs takedown of Pycal is just as unforgiving as Pycal's own actions, but Pycal is well and truly dead (at least until that OVA he returns), burnt and (presumably) drowned.

 

But like the first episode, I have a big problem with how little the writers care about establishing Lupin's identity. We get plenty of his personality, sure, in his interactions with Jigen and Fujiko. But again, we don't really know who Lupin is, why he has access to all these weapons, or why Fujiko would come to him or their working or personal relationships. If Lupin is a master thief, as we know him by other features, why couldn't he have tried to steal this formula at first, but then Fujiko gets it before him, or betrays him, and Pycal goes after her instead, at first?

 

We still don't know a damn thing about what Lupin actuallY DOES for a living, why he has this headquarters with the targets, with an arsenal. There's no real heist going on here. And we know even less about Pycal, naturally, because he's a one-off character, but so little, too, that we don't know how he came upon this formula, whether he's a scientist, or if he stole it himself (which would explain why those men at the beginning shot him).

 

This was a better episode than the first one, but it wouldn't have made a good beginning, either. And the next episode might be the worst.

 

 

Overall Score:

 

3 out of 5

 


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