Lupin III: A Woman Called Mine Fujiko – 05 [NSFW]

There is no witty caption…only chins. Glorious chins.

While I have your attention (NSFW posts tend to do that) I’d like to thank everyone who voted in the aniblog tourney – even if it wasn’t for us! We’ve already gotten farther than I expected, so I’m pretty damn happy that people like our writing enough to vote and even give our blog some friendly critiquing. Thanks! Alright, better make sure my writing skills are up to snuff so that I feel like I’m working hard for each and every vote. Let’s do this! Summary time!

Lupin pays Fujiko a visit while she’s having a skinnydip in liquid jello covered in jewels (??!) and tries to win her over with a bouquet of roses. She asks for a giant peacock instead. Fair enough. So off to Egypt he goes to brave a bunch of traps (and set some of his own) to get to the hidden prize somewhere in the pyramid. At the same time, Jigen is wandering aimlessly, and ends up getting scammed so badly that he’s forced to take on a high-risk job to earn some much-needed cash. It doesn’t take long before we realize they’re both after the same peacock. Lupin and Jigen fight initially, but Jigen manages to run ahead and put some distance between the two. He shoots through a bunch of traps, surprising even himself, and eventually makes it to an inner chambre with a fairly simple puzzle that most video game veterans would roll their eyes at. Before he can work the switch, Lupin appears, looking proud that his plan of switching Jigen’s ammo with explosive rounds and letting him trigger all the traps first worked.

The two of them hold off fighting for now, and work together to trigger the scale switch and move a mummy onto the trigger platform. Before they can do so, the room dumps them into a pit of swirling sand. With scorpions. This shouldn’t be able to get any worse, but it does. Fujiko appears (she took a safe route) and tells them the sand pit will only stop trying to murder them once it has absorbed blood. She leaves them to fight amongst themselves, but they just shoot a scorpion nest (the mummy) so it falls into the middle of the pit. The blue blood of the scorpion opens the door to the alexandrite peacock, which Fujiko goes ga-ga over. Sadly, they can’t leave unless they stick it in a peacock-shaped keyhole. The pyramid is collapsing, so they have little choice. Fujiko leaves without a single dime added to her name, and with a mind to give Lupin an even steeper demand the next time they meet. Jigen and Lupin also part ways, although quite amiably. This is the closest thing to friendship we’re gonna get.

“I’m outta bullets, wanna settle this with an Ancient Egyptian laser beam battle?”

Bonus:

*sniff* *sniff* Yep, that’s real light, alright.

Jigen: calm, classy, strong…and able to shatter glass with a girly scream when he sees scorpions.

Suddenly, girls asking their boyfriends for diamonds doesn’t seem so bad any more.

 Who knew that real peacocks sparkle more than gemstone ones?

 

End Thoughts:

Jigen’s episode was rather impressive, which made me rather excited to see him return this week. He may be an assassin, but he seems to be morally conscious. He smiles at kids, he feels guilt, and he worries about his past crimes. It’s an interesting mix, especially alongside characters like Lupin and Fujiko who revel in their thieving lifestyles and feel no shame for their decisions. Lupin may be mischievous, but he’s not going to hide it or fret over it. His pure devotion and confidence in his lifestyle may be what kept the judgement scale balanced. Well, that or a cheap trick. Jigen may seem a bit more scrupulous, but don’t forget that he will still shoot your brains out if he’s getting paid for it. They’re not two entirely different kettles of fish.

It was cool to see how Jigen and Lupin met for the first time. The Egyptian tomb setting was a bit of an unfortunate choice, because everything already feels done to death at this point. Sandpits, scorpions, booby traps..*yawns*..it’s lacking pizzazz. Still, I enjoyed seeing Lupin go so far just to win the favour of lady Fujiko. Seeing thieves in love is interesting, because it’s not quite something I would call love. I’d say “Lupin loves Fujiko” is less true than “Lupin wants to own Fujiko.” All thieves want what they can’t have, and even people count as material items that can be whisked away into the night. Fujiko is given a perfectly decent bouquet of alexandrite flowers, but that just makes her thirsty for an even bigger prize. It’s a cute back-and-forth game, and I like how it got Lupin into way more trouble than he expected, only for her to turn up at the end and sweetly ask them to kill each other for her sake. The endless backstabbing never gets old!

Now that we saw a Jigen and Lupin origin episode, does this mean next week will be Goemon’s time to shine? I hope so! I’m totally okay with characters stealing the spotlight away from Fujiko every now and then. So far everyone is in a mostly fleeting relationship with one another, so it will be nice to see if things progress into more permanent partnerships and alliances. I…really don’t know a lot about Lupin III, but I assume that Lupin gets help from Jigen and Goemon more often than he does now in the main series. This week’s episode was good, but rather uninspiring (there’s not a lot to say, so ramble I shall not!). I’m just waiting on next week now to see if we get Goemon or another badass theft. Oh, and boobs, I suppose. I’ll make sure to screencap those for you. :3