Lupin III: Part 3 ep01
After the announcement of a possible new series put me in the notion, I thought I'd have another crack at the much maligned pink jacket season.
First impressions are not too promising. I managed to find a better translation than the common HK bootleg version (annoyingly nothing to say who the group is), so the dialogue flows reasonably well, but the story still feels pretty daft. The art is oddly bloated compared to more or less every other version of Lupin and there's a much more slapstick approach to the action. It starts well enough, but Lupin's plan to rescue Fujiko (airhead mode, captured and loses clothes before the ad-break) is needlessly over complicated and the gadgets feel rather contrived in that 'shark-repellant bat-spray' kind of a fashion.
Still, I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt for the time being. There is a definite feeling that the episode was trying to reintroduce all the characters, so hopefully things might improve now that's out of the way. Norio Wakamoto was a welcome addition as a thug bearing a curious resemblance to Spike Spiegel and I'm vaguely intrigued by the decision to make it a two-parter - not something I've ever seen in Lupin before.
After the announcement of a possible new series put me in the notion, I thought I'd have another crack at the much maligned pink jacket season.
First impressions are not too promising. I managed to find a better translation than the common HK bootleg version (annoyingly nothing to say who the group is), so the dialogue flows reasonably well, but the story still feels pretty daft. The art is oddly bloated compared to more or less every other version of Lupin and there's a much more slapstick approach to the action. It starts well enough, but Lupin's plan to rescue Fujiko (airhead mode, captured and loses clothes before the ad-break) is needlessly over complicated and the gadgets feel rather contrived in that 'shark-repellant bat-spray' kind of a fashion.
Still, I'm willing to give it the benefit of the doubt for the time being. There is a definite feeling that the episode was trying to reintroduce all the characters, so hopefully things might improve now that's out of the way. Norio Wakamoto was a welcome addition as a thug bearing a curious resemblance to Spike Spiegel and I'm vaguely intrigued by the decision to make it a two-parter - not something I've ever seen in Lupin before.
