one thing i really like about oscar twcfm is that they managed to get across in her the very trans feeling of wanting something negatively associated with your gender to happen to you because it'll make you feel more "real". reading between the lines i got the sense that oscar felt like she needed to be objectified in the way fujiko is to feel like a "real woman" (which is a very good metaphor for girls of the week). and that's just the thing that got her and fujiko to see past each other
Hi, this is the same anon who asked if you did an analysis on: "Master Thief vs Lady Looter". I know you said you were working on your website and opted to give me a little taste of what you had written (thanks for that by the way, I'm delightfully fed).
I meant to ask for a general analysis + motif/visual analysis for: "Master Thief vs Lady Looter" AND a motif/visual analysis for TWCFM's opening as well, but I opted out because I felt like asking for all of that was doing too much.
(Not to say that you aren't capable of writing them, I just felt that I, as a reader would be asking for too much since I don't know how much time and energy goes into making one of those.)
Anyways, I love reading your interpretations on the show and it's characters, I find that with every post I'm learning something new. Good luck with your website!
thank you :) it's no trouble at all, i can talk about twcfm for hours
i didn't touch on the visual stuff because it seems like .357 magnum formally introduces the aspect of being unable to get the full story without taking the visuals into account. you can get the point of master thief vs. lady looter without it. most of the visual side seems to be introducing symbolism in the first place. colors-wise, we get yellow/purple for times when we're seeing a "performance"...
green when things aren't what they look like on the outside...
...and red and blue for "the truth" (the latter changing from yellow when lupin takes his jacket off).
other introductions we get:
"does this remind you of anything" generally - the cult leader is overtly compared to lupin and the guards are easy to compare to jigen and goemon if you think to notice them (which is the whole point)
shapes - we get a ton of "two halves of one whole" when fujiko and lupin are together, as well as those big arches when fujiko "marries" the cult leader
nature symbolism - you'll see that in that first screencap, there's leaves/flowers on the right next to the guard/lady respectively. i think butterflies = illusions, so that makes sense with the dress. she has "vines" wrapped around her arms, too, and i explained the veil in the visual motifs post.
cigarettes = sexuality - lupin smokes gitanes when he first converses with fujiko, and zenigata steps on one he just smoked ("women are arbitrary to him").
that said, there's two interesting things we can point out. for one, i think they gave lupin and fujiko jigen and goemon's "thing", with lupin getting goemon's version and fujiko getting jigen's. i think you can pretty easily track the "supposed to"s/"not supposed to"s throughout the episode. (for example, when they look at each other "past fujiko's veil", they're "supposed" to be competing but we're not "supposed" to see that they're competing as equals/while still being involved). unlike the next episode on, figuring these out doesn't change the story, only how fujiko and lupin's relationship comes off, which makes sense considering that they're introducing symbolism in the first place. this is something you don't need to know the symbolism to get.
the other is that we see the buddha again in love wreathed in steam, but there we're leaving things up to chance. here, it's more "obvious". we know lupin and fujiko are involved, but how we took love wreathed in steam (and the rest of the show/series, really) depended on how we "took yellow into account". (brief summary here.) this wasn't in my rough draft because i planned to bring it up in love wreathed in steam.
as for the intro, this aside, i admittedly haven't checked it out all too much. there's some obvious stuff (fujiko trapped by vines) and more stuff that i suspect are allusions to jigen and goemon via fujiko (two fujikos pointing guns at each other with an owl, fujiko kissing herself, etc) but i'm not sure. i'll have to sit on this for a while, i'll post about it if i make any breakthroughs.
the woman called fujiko mine seems to be a literal deconstruction, as in "this is literally what lupin the third is". after a few months of looking into it i'm pretty sure the premise was mimicking the formulas of specific quirks in lupin the third's writing via invoking the specific implicit biases which go into coming up with stuff like that, and to give us ways we can interpret past it.
for example, .357 magnum mimics the formula of the average jigen girl of the week story. the beginning of the episode until the flashback follows the patterns you usually get in the beginnings:
we're introduced to the girl of the week via "ooh pretty girl". the sequence with cicciolina & fujiko (meant to evoke lesbophobia ime) & strip club sequence are functioning the same as us not thinking there's anything going on inside their heads beyond "girl pretty" (also i'm pretty sure the first woman was a direct reference to linda from part 2's the rose and the pistol, which was one of the bases of .357 magnum)
it's established she's supposed to be allotted to jigen either in that she somehow "chooses" him and/or he has a "past" with her that's never explicitly elaborated on because it's obviously romantic lupin is always totally objective and big strong manly men can't just be friends with women don't be silly
lupin (not always, but often enough) slobbers over her to establish that she's worth being attracted to and, contradictorily, make jigen look good in comparison, in .357 magnum they displace the role of "pervert" onto an extra ("does this remind you of anything?") to better illustrate the effect it's meant to have
jigen's established as a "misogynist" (he's supposed to be a big strong manly man but he doesn't have a female partner! AND he doesn’t drool over fujiko like a normal man should! gasp!) to make his later being not a misogynist stand out more
it doesn't always come up in this order but these elements are pretty much always there. that this takes up an outsized chunk of the episode while what it's mimicking only lasts for a few minutes speaks to how little romance there actually is in these "romances", not having lupin involved at all emphasizes how set we are on seeing jigen primarily as "lupin's partner" without lupin even there, and, since these episodes purport to “explain jigen’s misogyny”, all the more obvious leering is directed towards fujiko rather than cicciolina to hammer home the point that we're seeing women as interchangeable objects.
on review for the stuff i'm writing for the [twcfm] website i'm starting to think that drinks/bottles don't = "gay", but misogyny. it's essentially "gay" considering where they got the symbolism from ("their love language is misogyny"), i guess they're using it that way to make fun of lupin the third's definition of "misogyny" as being a gay man. so inclusion of drinks/bottles = "this scene will be interpreted in a certain way due to misogyny". for example we see oscar pour wine on fujiko's body when she's setting her up as "bait" in prison of love, pretty straightforward
which makes it interesting that they included drinks/bottles both on the plane with fujiko and fiadel (analogous to goemon and jigen, long story) in music and revolution, and in the next episode with jigen and lupin eating together, but the contexts are wholly different. fujiko and fiadel are just sitting at the table and they never significantly interact with it
which i guess is meant to illustrate that, despite the imagery being similar, the misogyny is coming from two different places. in the former, the misogyny is us not interpreting it as romantically at face value as the more straightforwardly heteronormative stuff fujiko does with goemon, which only looks more romantic because of benevolent sexism & fujiko being naked. in the latter, it's from both the lack of fujiko while we understand that lupin's still attached to her and our expectation that jigen "isn't a wuss"
it also makes them using a bottle to give fujiko a "penis" in the beginning of blood-soaked triangle make a lot more sense
this also makes me wonder if cigarettes = misogyny too, given the link to jigen, but i'll stick to linking them to sexuality as i have been seeing how else they're used
conversely, i think that they used naked/scantily-clad woman and/or close physical contact or distance to represent heterosexism. (ie, things that "obviously" indicate romance, and conversely to the bottles something we're more likely to associate w/ lupin and fujiko.) so those things = "this scene will be interpreted in a certain way due to heterosexism"
the things this can apply to are much more broad, so they're kind of hard to pinpoint, but i'll give some examples that i'm sure of. for one, the beginning of prison of love and the scene with cicciolina and fujiko in .357 magnum, the heterosexism being how lesbian relationships usually aren't taken seriously & the involved women are objectified on the presumption that they have no agency
fujiko and goemon also get similar visual placement whenever they're on screen together - either representations of chivalry (tiny delicate woman hand above, big strong man hand below), goemon standing over/taller than naked fujiko ("naked woman lower and obscured" is also a good visual representation of him not knowing how he feels about women yet lol) when the face-value focus is on him being the "good guy", fujiko standing over smaller, subservient goemon in black lingerie when the focus is on her being the "bad guy"
lupin taking that cigarette out of jigen's mouth also seems to have been that. like they made sure to show the cigarette coming out of jigen's mouth, jigen facing right, then the next frame the visual emphasis is on lupin while jigen is looking at the tattooed woman
they did some more interesting visual stuff/patterns with their visuals/messing with the kuleshov effect that i think they "broke" in love wreathed in steam (hence the title). i feel like i'll sound like a crazy person if i break it all down in one tumblr post but. there are patterns
also can't believe i didn't make a post about this yet but this is the funniest possible way they could've had him start realizing he's gay. like ok diva
tumblr user rodeodeparis's big music and revolution dissection part 1: fujiko's side
music and revolution's probably my favorite twcfm episode. the way it relays its criticism of lupin the third's writing is "mirrored" - one "side" is about fujiko's writing, the other "side" is about goemon's. the criticism of fujiko's writing is more straightforward - i'll be covering that side first. (goemon's is here.)
don't refer to visual motifs much in this one but they're still good to keep in mind. also copy-pasted some stuff i wrote in other posts because it's relevant here so sorry for the repeats lol
music and revolution and time
one of this episode's big motifs is time. time is of the essence in the mission that fujiko and goemon "conduct" and conduct respectively as well as the circumstances it's happening under, and we see a lot of imagery of clocks interspersed between random shots. however, time is also very, very fluid - we're shown events out of order.
we're given general periods of time in the past/future when certain things happen, so let's start by putting this episode's events in chronological order. this is my best guess:
fujiko approaches fiadel as a journalist, and fiadel figures her true identity as they meet.
fujiko and goemon meet up again.
fujiko and fiadel leave on the plane. their plane is hijacked, and goemon comes to pick them up.
fiadel speaks to the un while fujiko and goemon hang out at the beach.
fiadel rescues fujiko in the detention center.
so, fujiko and fiadel were still involved after fujiko got the oil fields. we should keep that in mind.
music and revolution isn't the only twcfm episode with a non-linear narrative structure, but they're making the fact that they're doing a non-linear narrative structure in this one really evident. time is fluid to a point that we get scenes presented to us in a way that can be a little confusing. however, since they go by fast, it may be hard to notice. for example, after goemon gives fujiko that advice and she says "i'll remember, mr. boyfriend", we fade to black, then to this.
goemon wasn't wearing his kasa during that scene. why's he wearing it now? did he put it on after fujiko left at that moment? or is this happening at the beginning of the episode? did it happen when he saw her board the plane, a scene where he was also wearing his kasa? did this happen in the episode at all? and why's he calling her maria?
then, we get a shot of the plane we already know fujiko boarded, then this.
looks an awful lot like a date, doesn't it?
music and revolution is unique relative to other twcfm episodes in that the face-value plot doesn't track with a majority of what we end up seeing. it's fairly vague and, honestly, kinda boring. and it's a big reference to the cuban missile crisis - it should be dire, but the long speeches, constant timeskips, scant involvement of characters and scenes that should be important to what's going on, and hijackers on the plane throw off anyone who's trying to genuinely follow it.
the face-value premise is a red herring. it's irrelevant to the larger point. i think they chose it because it provides us with more than a few interesting metaphors. we'll get there.
i think that time is fluid here for the same reason it was in .357 magnum and lady and samurai - it's a call to compare relationships. the subject of comparison: combined fidel castro/che guevara expy fiadel kastro (very subtle). even if what they're talking about is relevant to the face-value plot, we see a lot more of him and fujiko than we do everything else going on. when goemon shows up, all the attention - even the attention of the extras - turns to the novelty of a "samurai" being there, and then we come to the story's conclusion. (there's more people calling him "samurai" while that's not what he calls himself.) so, let's compare, shall we?
double consciousness
one of the things the face-value premise allowed them to bring up is double consciousness - how marginalized people are able to view things from both their oppressor's side as well as their own, while people who aren't facing that sort of oppression most likely aren't familiar with the other point of view. It makes a parallel between how small countries have to navigate a world dominated by world powers (in this case, fictional versions of cuba and the usa/ussr respectively) and how women have to navigate a world dominated by men. secret third thing between two things.
fittingly, fujiko is more of an observer of the "important" events of the episode while goemon gets his usual deus ex machina-ey action scenes. at the same time, we see fujiko more, and we see her with fiadel. goemon is relegated to both action hero - “samurai” - and “boyfriend”. given that we're supposed to be comparing relationships and how we seem to have a theme of hidden third things between two things, i think that that the double consciousness theme is also asking us to view music and revolution through a woman's perspective.
not all women have the same point of view, so we should approach this by considering what about fujiko is appealing to lupin the third's target audience at the most basic level. that much is obvious: she's hot. but she spends most of this episode with her clothes on and just talking to a guy while all the seemingly interesting things happen around them. from there, our attention may go to the interesting things happening around them, but we already talked about how convoluted all of that is.
but fujiko and fiadel's interactions in themselves are pretty interesting, too. very palpable romantic/sexual tension between the two of them. (she didn't have to rub his crotch with her foot while reaching for the scissors.) we learn from the beginning that she's fallen into fiadel's favor, and their conversations make the confusing events of the episode a lot more intriguing. we learn about those events mostly through the two of them, too. there's also more than enough drama on the plane, and how the two of them seemed to be so on each other's level that fiadel saw how fujiko saw how to get them out of it.
but we know that she's fake-dating fiadel to get those oil fields. also, she called goemon her "boyfriend" in fiadel's presence. that should be enough to ensure us that what we're seeing isn't actually a romance - she kissed goemon, didn't she? that's easy to say, but...
...if fujiko's just pretending to be into a guy for a goal, saying so bluntly that she's attached to another guy in front of him kind of defeats the whole purpose. if he's suddenly jealous of this other guy, wouldn't he be angry to the point that he wouldn't want or be too distracted by that to give her the coordinates? if he's fine with her having a boyfriend, he isn't seeing his relationship to her as all that important - what's the use in manipulating him into giving her the coordinates at all? what are we paying attention to here - how out of place this seems relative to fujiko's goals (let alone everything we've seen this episode), or the fact that fujiko called goemon "boyfriend" and what that apparently means? why would we be inclined to pay attention to one over the other?
fujiko and fiadel
fujiko and fiadel seem to be very much on each other's level. we get several hints to compare fujiko's two "suitors" throughout the episode. for one, fujiko and fiadel even reference samurai before goemon shows up and everyone else does. for another, they engage in conversation where they seem to fully understand each other. fujiko even asks him things beyond her station as a "journalist", which we later find out he knows is a disguise. she doesn't need to know the answer to this question to get those oil fields.
we see him interact with fujiko several times on screen in a flirty way which she responds to well. we see her do the same, which fiadel responds to well, too. he says her name on his own volition a lot, too - he doesn't need fujiko to remind him.
and, most importantly…
…he could see through her disguise and tell what she's really there for from the beginning without her having to say it.
is fujiko into him? she very well could be, but i don't think that's the point. i think the point is that this isn't the usual sort of thing we see when she's tricking men. all this goes beyond her "using" sexuality. fiadel figured out she's there for the coordinates and chooses to give them to her, and, all the while, they were still interacting in the way that they were both physically and verbally. they were choosing to interact how they were. despite the face value context, fiadel seems much more like her boyfriend to me. we even got that date imagery.
but since fujiko is clothed, we know why she's on that plane, the events of the episode are boring, and she called goemon "boyfriend", we may not be seeing fujiko and fiadel's relationship for what it is. not only that, but in prioritizing her calling goemon "boyfriend" over that being counterintuitive to her goal, we aren't seeing her as a thief. even if we know that she's there for the coordinates, we aren't thinking about her as someone who's there for the coordinates, we're thinking of her as goemon's girlfriend.
and what is fujiko if not a thief? fujiko uses her gun, but she primarily fights with her wits. that means using her body from time to time, but her "manipulation" in music and revolution, to whatever extent that may be, seems pretty non-standard. if fujiko's still manipulating fiadel here, why is what she's doing suddenly less "important" than everything else going on? just because it isn't global doesn't mean it isn't interesting or she has nothing to do. she's getting a ton of screentime, too - it should be more than easy to be invested in what she's thinking.
could it be that our not considering fujiko as important or interesting relative to the plot is because we aren't thinking of what fujiko is doing as important or interesting? would what fujiko has to do be more interesting if she took off an item of clothing or more obviously "seduced" fiadel? isn't it ironic that, despite us giving precedence to "boyfriend", we aren't actually paying attention to how people are interacting?
speaking of, fujiko's characterization in twcfm up to this point has been pretty inconsistent, right? in episodes 1, 3, and 4, she was a kind woman who had to operate under the thumb of skeezy men. in episodes 2 and 5, she was a greedy bitch who tricked men. in the last episode, she was…a little bit of both, you could really interpret her as being either way the whole time. but when you look into it, she was kissing all those girls to steal the pendant, unexpectedly got used as "bait" by oscar, got rescued by lupin, and then we learned she successfully stole what she came to steal - she's more complicated than we may give her credit for at first brush.
in this episode, we're given a lot of reasons to think she's being truthful and deceitful when she's with both goemon and fiadel. we know she's telling goemon the objective truth when she tells him that she really went on that mission to look for the oil fields, but not much else is clear. her behavior with fiadel isn't obviously indicative of either, which may give us another reason to tune her and fiadel out. but how are we so sure that she sees herself as goemon's girlfriend first and foremost?
fujiko and goemon
to quickly summarize some things i already talked about in my a lady and a samurai post for people who haven't read it:
the order of events of the kiss was fujiko approaching goemon, goemon's face being expressionless save for him having the most shading on it he had the whole episode, her leaning in, him backing away, cut to a close up of their lips, her leaning in even more, him opening his mouth (possibly to say something?), her leaning in until their lips touch, cut to a wide silhouette shot where it's revealed that goemon is standing still.
when anyone that episode said "friend", they were saying "furendo", a loan from english. we learn early on that goemon doesn't know what "furendo" means and links it to "companion". when goemon asked if he "just got a real girlfriend", he's saying "garufurendo", another loan from english. he could have meant "girlfriend" as in romantic partner just as easily as he could a friend who's a girl. from all we saw, it could be that he sees her as a friend and is confused about why she kissed him. even if he meant romantic partner, he called her that after she kissed him once, which would mean that he doesn't know what it means to have a girlfriend.
we see fujiko drive away on her motorcycle before seeing goemon ask if he "just got a real girlfriend". she may not have heard goemon call her "girlfriend".
fujiko may not have kissed goemon out of romantic feeling. even if she did, just leaving him after with no follow through until music and revolution seems...weird for someone you came to fall in love with.
so is calling him "samurai friend" after. does she kiss and press her boobs against her friends? the meaning of "samurai friend" is vague, too.
and so is goemon deciding on his own that she's his girlfriend. if he meant it as romantic partner, shouldn't he want to ask her?
pretty much all of fujiko and goemon's conversations that episode (and in the show in general) are exposition save for a bit of their conversation on the end car. most of goemon's dialogue towards her is questioning trying to figure out who she is.
all the things goemon said and did that supposedly straightforwardly indicated attraction to her were ultimately ambiguous and presented with conflicting information (preceding/succeeding expressions, phrases said, actions, vague wording, etc).
so, the end of a lady and a samurai was vague. let's go over what goemon thinks of fujiko in music and revolution. when he learns that fujiko is involved in the mission, he says this...
...after which we get a flashback of "maria".
though fujiko was in disguise when she said this and she could've been lying, we should consider that, in twcfm, she's trying to run from her past. if she was telling the truth, she may not necessarily want a "place in the world" in the way goemon seems to or knows that her place in the world is "running". similarly, "she's still doing these things" suggests that goemon thought she'd stop. we never saw anything that'd suggest that she would, let alone goemon being privy to that.
when goemon sees fujiko's picture in the newspaper, he calls her "this woman" when he should already know her name. also, we see a flashback of maria - specifically, this line from conversation they had on the train - despite his having revealed fujiko. out of everything that happened in a lady and a samurai, this resonated with him the most. why is he surprised that "she's still doing these things" at all? he figured out that fujiko was "like him", so he seems to be at least not surprised that she could be like him. but he's still surprised that she hasn't stopped "doing these things". and this is while he's set on "doing these things" himself.
he refuses the job due to a refusal to get involved in politics until he learns that fujiko is involved. this is not only contradictory to how his mission in a lady and a samurai was to assassinate a world leader, but suggests that he may be approaching his "way of life" with a few unspoken caveats. what makes this mission involving politics not worthy of participation in a way that didn't affect his involvement in the mission in a lady and a samurai? he's more experienced now, sure, but he failed that last mission - is he refusing it out of having learned some sort of lesson? what makes it so that fujiko's involvement is the reason he accepted?
he seems stressed as fujiko comes in...
...gives her some advice to be careful, to which fujiko gives the neutral response of "i'll remember that, mr. boyfriend", and, when it's all over...
...he starts guessing at why she "failed her mission".
though goemon strayed from the plan himself (after he shows up to pick her and fiadel up, fujiko said that it's "different from the original plan"), he wonders why fujiko did. It seems like he wants to assume the best. at first, that she was scared. then, that she's leaving the underground, and her final act was her serving justice. then, she refuses to answer, but he doesn't refuse to ask. after learning that the oil fields are on that very beach, he asks if she's in love with fiadel. (does he know what "girlfriend" means?) again, we saw nothing that could lead goemon to forming any of these conclusions about her. If he knows she's "like him", let alone that she stole that belt, why does he still assume these things? why is this his assumption of "the best", and why is this what he first assumes about fujiko without us being given prior context as to why he could be thinking this?
there's actually a lot more going on here than what it looks like, but let's stick with the face value interpretation for now. none of those things he's assuming are, as fujiko replies when goemon tells her that the children in a lady and a samurai were saved thanks to her, "in her character". she wasn't there to kill fiadel, this isn't her first time stealing something, she doesn't operate on the basis of morality in the same way goemon does, and, no matter how she truly felt about him, she didn't need to be in love with him to do what she did.
the things goemon assumes about her sound a lot more like the sorts of things maria may have felt on this mission. he's calling her "maria" rather than fujiko a lot, too. and this is all while he "revealed" fujiko already - he knows who she is. he should be able to say her name on his own. that's more or less how that last scene in lady and samurai went too - he only said her name after she did - save for him being able to see that she's in disguise…
given all of this, i interpret his interactions with fujiko in the maria disguise and his calling her maria later as a metaphor for how he sees the world - in accordance with his values and good/innocent until proven otherwise. for a more in-universe explanation, i think he's confused about her because she doesn't "work" how he thinks she "should". he made all those maria-esque assumptions about her because he sees good by default and to him, this is "good". he may not be aware that that's the reason.
but is this good? would it be "the best" if she killed fiadel rather than go after the coordinates? she had no reason to - she's a thief, not an assassin. why assume fujiko was scared rather than any other emotion, or that she wants to leave the underground at all, all the while viewing it as a "way of life" for himself and only tagging along to help/protect her? he knows she's "like him" - if he had that in mind, shouldn't he know that she has enough experience to handle something like this? he also knows she was after the belt - he knew she was an "assassin or thief", and she turned out to be a thief. why isn't he putting the pieces together here?
let's put the pieces together for him. fujiko not killing fiadel becuse she was scared, it was the "right" thing to do, or was in love with him being the first assumptions, all because he thought she would definitely leave the underground (and even after she said she wasn't, he still made assumptions), all while being an assassin is a "way of life" for him. as her boyfriend - if that's what he is - what's the difference between their respective involvements in the underground? why can he be an assassin but she can't be a thief? he assumed she needed his help/protection at all when all he really did was come pick her up, too. and he may have enjoyed rubbing that suntan oil on her while, in a later episode, calling her a "tramp" for bringing up the possibility he wanted to have sex with her, despite being fine with her being naked around him...
these aren't "the best". fujiko wanting those oil fields isn't a bad thing. these are the traits of a dainty, fragile yamato nadeshiko who isn't suited for the scary underground and the big, strong manly man who's "supposed" to protect her. (in western terms, goemon is trying his best to see a 1950s housewife.) goemon wondered why she failed her mission when, as a thief, she succeeded in her mission - he wasn't thinking of her as a thief. if he's saying everything he is straightforwardly, he's viewing fujiko not as fujiko, but as "woman". again, what is fujiko if not a thief? no matter what his intentions may be, goemon is ultimately not seeing fujiko for who she is when who she is has already been shown to him.
but that doesn't sound too nice, right? what goemon is asking fujiko doesn't necessarily sound insulting, and we know that he's kind, likes her, has no ill intent, and is genuinely curious about the world. the underground is scary, and fujiko gets put through the wringer a lot by men's expectations of her, no? aren't we reading too much into it when we view it this way, rather than goemon genuinely seeing the best?
but, again, is this "the best"? just because something sounds nice doesn't mean it's good, and just because someone has good intentions doesn't mean that what they're saying or doing is harmless. it could just as easily be that goemon doesn't know the gravity of what he's asking. if that's the case, then it should be on him to learn from this and grow and mature as a person.
instead, by feast of fools, his reaction to a traumatized fujiko being understandably traumatized is to call her a "tramp" to himself and leave her in the cabin. he took her in and made her food then - maybe fujiko didn't "see him for the nice man he really is" and that "he doesn't want something out of her like all the other guys", but fujiko is traumatized here. was it "justified" to leave her to fend for herself because she threw food in his face? if he really was trying to "see the best", wouldn't he understand that she's going through a hard time and stay in the cabin regardless? fujiko's reaction to discovering that he left told us as much.
by the end of the show, we see that he can say her name on his own volition now, but his conclusion as to her "true identity" is that she's "his girlfriend". no elaboration - what he means by that is on us. is fujiko's "true identity" goemon's girlfriend? while you could interpret this as romantic, imagine it was lupin saying it - not so romantic now, is it? referring to a woman by her relationship to a man - wife, daughter, sister, girlfriend - is the oldest form of benevolent sexism in the book. (also, fujiko called him "you". which are we paying attention to, fujiko's "you" or goemon's "girlfriend"?)
would fujiko leaving the underground to be goemon's girlfriend be "the best" for her? what would lupin the third look like if fujiko was goemon's girlfriend rather than a thief? even if you think she may be happier that way (do you think she doesn't enjoy or suffers from what she does? how come?), i don't think it would be as interesting. i'd go as far as to say that i think it would be degrading to her character. fujiko's manipulations and lies are kind of the heart of the series. like, what would fujiko's lie even be about if she wasn't a lying thief? her taking care of a kid and standing around scantily clad next to bincam? if you think of fujiko as the "designated love interest" of lupin, that'd be much more the case if she left him and the underground for goemon, especially since goemon gets sidelined nearly as much as she does. not only would she not have anywhere near as much to do, but we'd be seeing even less of either of them. at least lupin and fujiko compete.
but she could be goemon's girlfriend while being a thief, right? but wouldn't goemon not be "seeing the best" if this is the case, he's just seeing something different? that would mean that this is just goemon not taking fujiko at who she says she is. it could also be that goemon still thinks fujiko is in disguise in some way, but that would still mean he isn't taking fujiko at her word. again, who she is has been relayed to him many times and in many different ways. if fujiko's being nothing but honest, why isn't he trusting her? and why are we seeing this distrust as trust or good faith?
fujiko's tricking men is usually posited as a bad thing despite the fact that that's how she conducts her thievery. despite this, it isn't lupin the third without fujiko tricking men. but it's also not lupin the third without fujiko being naked/scantily clad/hot in general, which is posited as the opposite of a bad thing. "hot women are good, but not when they know they're hot." in terms of that rule, goemon assuming she's leaving the underground is him "seeing the best", but in terms of what makes lupin the third lupin the third, it's him wanting fujiko not to be fujiko anymore. that's the contradiction in fujiko's characterization. in a way, she's kind of a "villain", but, because she's hot, we don't want her to be a "villain". but is fujiko using her sexuality to be a thief actually "evil"? or is it just her doing her job? thinking of it as "evil" requires looking at it from the man's point of view, no? fujiko may be trapped by men's expectations of her, but them expecting her not to use their expectations to her advantage is on them.
plus, we know how this "relationship"'s gonna end. fujiko's gonna use it to steal the formula. no matter how romantic it may seem, how good goemon is, or why you may think fujiko's gonna do it, she's gonna knowingly trick him. how are we so sure she wasn't in a lady and a samurai when she kissed him? because she was being nice? you can pretend to be nice, can't you? or does she have no idea how goemon feels about her, or her "true self" isn't using people, or she can't distinguish romance from friendship, or something like that? if she was lying, this seemingly sweet moment would sting. we'd feel bad for goemon. why aren't we thinking about how she may be feeling? why are we so eager to see what she's doing to fiadel as manipulation, but not goemon?
so, the conversations they have this episode are a lot more complicated than what they look like, let alone not being inherently romantic. goemon gives her that advice, and then he wonders why she didn't kill fiadel while fujiko doesn't give any answers that indicate anything other than the objective truth. the only things they do together that seem to explicitly suggest romance are goemon agreeing to the mission to help her, him holding her hand, and him potentially rubbing suntan oil on her back. but goemon wanting to help her isn't inherently romantic (especially since "girlfriend" can mean "friend who's a girl"), and he grabbed onto her hand so he could keep her and fiadel steady when they fell from the plane rather than as a romantic gesture.
we don't even know if he rubbed suntan oil on her back - we just cut from him making a perturbed face (maybe because she interrupted his line of questioning?) to him holding the bottle. plus, even if he did it, asking someone to rub suntan oil on your back isn't inherently a proposition, and you can rub suntan oil on someone's back without having any sort of romantic or sexual feelings about them. and wouldn't him asking her all those questions she obviously doesn't want to answer, then being annoyed when she interrupted him to ask, then enjoying rubbing suntan oil on her back, then continuing his line of questioning make him an asshole?
also, would we be assuming that they're suggesting romance or sex if it were, say, goemon rubbing suntan oil on jigen's back? (not that he's the type of person who tans, this is just for comparison's sake.) what is it that we're seeing as inherently romantic or sexual about goemon interacting physically with fujiko, let alone a nearly-naked fujiko?
protecting a woman, holding a woman's hand, rubbing suntan oil on a nearly-naked woman's back - taking these things as romantic requires prioritizing not how fujiko and goemon are relating to each other as people, especially since their conversations this episode have more than one possible meaning, but what goemon is physically doing to/at fujiko while they're calling each other "boyfriend" and "girlfriend". viewing goemon as an actor and fujiko as being acted on. everything apparently straightforwardly indicating romance between fujiko and goemon is based entirely in our own perceptions - we're objectifying her, projecting onto him, and not considering the context. from there, how we take what we hear them say depends on how we're personally predisposed to viewing them. even "boyfriend" and "girlfriend", which seem clear, have been established to possibly mean other things and have had their meanings diminished by the time we hear fujiko call goemon "boyfriend" in fiadel's presence.
even in the way the shots are framed reflects this. when they're together, fujiko's often smaller/lower and obscured, while goemon is bigger/higher and clearer. fujiko's body - we don't really get close-ups of her face - gets a lot of visual emphasis in certain moments, too, especially when she's naked/scantily clad. and yet, it's often placed out of focus - in other moments, if we're looking at her, we're choosing to look at her. we usually cut to goemon's face after. in this example, all the the emphasis is on her while we see her take off her bikini top with her face down, after which we get a close-up shot of goemon's face. the face goemon makes here is pretty obviously perturbed and he continues his line of questioning right after. are we seeing this as romantic at all despite the imagery? how come?
on some level, wanting this relationship to be romantic means seeing goemon as inherently good while wanting to believe that fujiko is being good for once. ironically, despite this "romance" seeming sweet, that "sweetness" is relying on prioritizing goemon as a "good man" and seeing fujiko as "woman", not fujiko, which often means reducing her to her body and relation to goemon.
if she was lying when she kissed him in a lady and a samurai, wouldn't that make her evil because she's using her sexuality to trick a man? it seems like she has no reason to trick him, but does that inherently make her intentions romantic or mean she isn't, especially since we know she will eventually? is getting away from a guy she was suspicious of earlier and who's in the same line of work as her that she barely knows who randomly showed up in front of her at night with a sword not reason enough to act nice? either way, by feast of fools, fujiko's lashing out is, no matter how nicely you word it, on fujiko. she wasn't seeing him for the "nice man he really is". this is also kind of the moral basis goemon was introduced on, isn't it?
why is it that we view fujiko being acted on as more inherently romantic than fujiko matching someone with her wits? why are we viewing fujiko's time with goemon as more interesting than her time with fiadel, when she's just as interesting on her own? because she has her clothes off? because she touched him? because it's goemon that's there? why do we want fujiko to be nice to goemon, but goemon's goodness is more stable than hers to the point that, by feast of fools, she wasn't seeing him for the "nice man he really is"? if we're viewing fujiko this way, we aren't viewing her as nicely as we may think we are. and it's not like either of theses relationships are gonna last.
who's fujiko's "real" suitor?
fiadel holds fujiko's hand with explicitly romantic/sexual intentions. goemon holds her hand later on to keep her and fiadel steady after they fall out of the plane, which is given a lot more screen time than necessary for us to get the point. note the imagery, too: big strong man hand below, tiny delicate dainty woman hand above. coloring easily blending into the background - "insignificant". fiadel and fujiko's hands are positioned equally with the colors brighter, but placed out of focus. the other pair of hands is centered.
something else you need to choose to look at: fujiko with just her bikini bottom on. when she and goemon are at the oil fields, she's either out of focus, positioned smaller/lower/further away in comparison to goemon, or shaded darker in comparison to the bright blue sea behind her. the only exception is when she removes her top and asks goemon to rub the suntan oil on her. her body's pretty centered then.
the imagery on the plane with fujiko and fiadel is much more cluttered. we don't even see whether they hug, or kiss, or what. it gets "censored" for us in a way not many heterosexual* on-screen shows of affection are. we never see fujiko and goemon like this, do we?
and that shot of them and goemon after they fall off the plane. holding hands, linking arms - are the implications behind these forms of physical touch in themselves truly representative of the relationships we've been seeing?
by the point fujiko calls goemon "boyfriend" in fiadel's presence, we've spent so much time with the two together and saw them being much more romantic that "boyfriend" feels more like goemon's name - like "samurai friend" - than it does fujiko's relation to him. the only way you can place emphasis on her relationship with goemon at this point is if you're really intent on seeing them as an item - if a gendered label explicitly indicating a heterosexual * romantic relationship means more to you than what you're actually seeing.
* whenever i'm saying "heterosexual relationship/interaction/etc" in this post, i mean "a relationship/interaction/etc involving a man and a woman" like how people call stuff involving a man and a man or a woman and a woman "homosexual", not "both participants identify as straight".
all of this makes me think of something we don't really see much of in the rest of twcfm: lupin being his usual self around fujiko. a lot of the things he says in master thief vs. lady looter make him come off as an asshole to fujiko, but those are just as easy to recontextualize as what we see in the rest of the show. he could just as easily be repeating things he's heard about her like she did with him, right? maybe she was upset at that not because she was upset with him, but because she was upset with how people think of her. that matches up with how she says that seducing people "may be all she has".
and couldn't fujiko saying "if only he hadn't shown up" have been about how she's disappointed that she lost the competition? she does bring up his writing that he's gonna "steal" her on her leg as evidence of his wanting her in a later episode. we see him being "mean" to fujiko when he gropes her in vissi di'arte, vissi di'amore, too. while that was uncalled for, how is she fine staying for dinner with ayan and dorenzo when he shows up if she doesn't like him, let alone challenging him to steal the peacock next episode?
lupin isn't usually so "mean" to fujiko, but he does fall head over heels for her and her body, and we often see her objectified to that end. still, we know she is who she is, and lupin doesn't love her any less. tricking and competing is kind of their love language. in a way, how fujiko relates to fiadel and goemon are sort of like "split" versions of how we usually see fujiko relate to lupin: while they're rivals who match wits, it's just as easy to see fujiko as "the hot girl" that we don't want to trick anyone, let alone him. also, since fujiko using her sexuality to trick people often looks like romance or sex, we may forget that that's how she tricks people. that's what makes a lot of her betrayals surprising, isn't it?
does fujiko tricking people actually mean that she loves them, or inherently mean that she doesn't? does her not obviously using her sexuality around fiadel or having been there for the oil fields mean she couldn't have enjoyed her time with him? and does lupin being mean automatically mean he's a creep to fujiko and doesn't love her anymore?
lupin's pretty obviously a perv around fujiko, but isn't the straightforward reading of goemon's dynamic with fujiko him being a perv towards her, too? if he's "resisting temptation", that'd imply that he'd look more like lupin if he didn't resist. how does it make him less of a perv if he's blushing, backing or looking away, or taking it out on her via misogynistic remarks about how she's a "witch" who uses people? like, the last one would make him a misogynistic perv, not just a perv. the misogyny in how lupin is written to act towards fujiko is a lot more explicit than the same with goemon - that is, lupin "does sex at" fujiko while goemon doesn't. fujiko is an object either way, but one seems "less bad" than the other because he isn't "doing sex at her", which sounds like he's being nicer. what's bad in lupin's perversion - his "doing sex at" women, or his thinking of women as sex objects?
even how much the latter applies to lupin's view of fujiko specifically is negligible. since fujiko uses her sexuality to be a thief, isn't it not actually demeaning for lupin to be into her how he is, generally speaking? like, he sees her as just as much of a thief as he is, always competes with her and anticipates her double-crossing which means he recognizes her intelligence, loves her no matter how much she tricks him because he knows that's what she does best (at the end of a part ii episode, he even says that her betraying him is "what makes her cute"), and never holds her using her sexuality against her. don't get me wrong, he does say misogynistic stuff, but that's on him to learn and grow from (and the writers for writing it) rather than anything inherent in their relationship.
and we aren't seeing fujiko naked or scantily clad much around lupin in twcfm, let alone hugging/kissing him or him. yet, they match each other's wits, too. but we may not be seeing it as interesting as we usually do because they're both clothed, they're farther apart than usual, and they aren't being more "obviously" romantic in their behavior. why is fujiko and lupin's relationship romantic - because she's naked around him and he's nice to her, or because they know and match each other so wel? really, the only way you could see twcfm's ending as anything other than romantic is if you were viewing lupin's speech as him talking down to a woman as opposed to him understanding where fujiko is coming from.
the problem isn't that fujiko is tied to lupin specifically. the insinuation that she'd be "better off with goemon * " not only implies that lupin's attraction to her in itself somehow "demeans" her (ie woman + sex = bad), and not only removes lupin's responsibility in the misogynistic things he can sometimes say (and the writers for writing it) while implying that goemon couldn't possibly replicate anything similar because he doesn't "demean" her with sex, but operates on the baseline problem of her writing that she as a woman exists primarily as a romantic/sexual object for men while positing that the only "problem" with that is that it's the wrong man.
* this isn't about goemon specifically. i'm using "goemon" in place of "another guy"/"a nicer guy". their story together did a really good job at highlighting specific aspects of lupin the third's writing that really needed a feminist deconstruction, though.
plus, it could very well be that we think of lupin as horrible for her because he's a rude pervert while prioritizing his relationship to jigen, who he not coincidentally gets the most screentime with, in one way or another. but is lupin incapable of hurting jigen? jigen's a person too, isn't he? why are we more aware of the possible hurt fujiko could be facing from him? does hurting someone or seeing past them in regards to one aspect or another automatically make your relationship with them adversarial and mean you can't be on good terms at all? and were we still thinking "lupin is rude to fujiko" when fujiko was a "greedy bitch", the focus was predominantly on jigen, and we saw lupin more with jigen than with fujiko in blood-soaked triangle? or did she "show up those silly boys" because "he doesn't deserve her"?
the problem is that fujiko is thought of as "something" "added on" to any man to begin with rather than a person who has a relationship to another person, and "something" sexual rather than a person using her sexuality. her being cast off as a "greedy bitch" when she isn't needed is a different side of the same coin as the interpretation that she couldn't possibly have kissed goemon out of anything other than romantic feeling or confusion because she was apparently being nice: "hot women are good, but not when they know they're hot". twcfm subverts this aspect of her creation by spinning her as someone with agency rather than something that is, an interpretation which you can easily take with you into other entries.
we actually got a really good visual representation of this last episode. the shirt fujiko's wearing here makes her look like a "prisoner", but what's actually making her a "prisoner" here? the fact that she's with lupin in itself? the shirt's actually horizontal stripes (equal) and lupin just rescued her. there's also the flowers - he's in "her" space. they don't have to be kissing/having sex, she doesn't have to be objectified, and he doesn't have to be incapable of fault for them to have the relationship that they do. we need to think past what looks "obvious".
lupin the third is written for the heterosexual male gaze, and heterosexual romances written for the heterosexual male gaze are often not the best, especially in series which center relationships between men. that perspective centers a preference for male homosociality associated with male heterosexuality while coming with a rejection of male homosexuality. this means that female love interests, when there, are often reduced to romantic/sexual objects. the guy "going through the motions" with her should be enough so we can get back to the more important and less "arbitrary" relationships between the guys.
but is his romance with her "arbitrary"? or does a woman being considered a romantic/sexual object make the relationship we're seeing feel less human because the guys are getting more screentime and development? it's easy to dismiss lupin as "just a perv" to fujiko not because that's what their relationship is, but because she's presented to us as "something" to perv over.
fujiko always "puts him in his place" when he's being too much of a perv, right? that's presented as a joke, but it's just as easy to see him as "deserving" of this as it is to see him as incapable of hurting jigen. if he was mean to her and we saw her react in the same way, it'd come off a lot differently. (see why they made lupin seem mean to her now?)
don't get me wrong, perving on people without their consent isn't a good thing either way. the point is that what we're taking as worth "putting him in his place" for isn't how fujiko feels about what he's doing, but the fact that he's being openly sexual to a woman. were the genders switched, would we be putting priority in the same places? it's more than easy to think of fujiko and lupin's relationship on the basis of lupin being nice and/or perverted to her while not considering how fujiko feels about him - a pretty woman being a "prize" that a man either does or doesn't "deserve". even if we think he doesn't "deserve" her, we still know she's ultimately "his".
a question i've asked in a lot of my twcfm posts is, "do women exist to prove that men aren't gay?" in a sense, fujiko's existence is proof that lupin isn't gay. by extension, if you don't see fujiko as a thief, fujiko's existence becomes "proof" that any man within a ten foot radius isn't gay if he doesn't like, punch her in the face or something. but fujiko has a lot more going on in how she relates to other people than her body. with lupin, too - is fujiko suddenly not involved with lupin anymore if she isn't there?
it was easy to see fujiko's dalliance with fiadel as just her tricking him if we were thinking of her as "goemon's girlfriend", but us not thinking of why she was calling goemon "boyfriend" in fiadel's presence meant we were ultimately thinking of her as "goemon's girlfriend" rather than a thief. our perception of her as a thief was based not in thinking of her as a thief, but preferring she be a "thief" in relation to certain people - so, ultimately viewing her being a thief as a bad thing. was that also the case in a lady and a samurai, where we get pretty clear indications that not only is fujiko the opposite "maria", and not only was she suspicious of and acting in front of goemon, but was ultimately there for the paintings?
if we aren't thinking of how she relates to lupin in music and revolution, it isn't because we aren't seeing her as her own person, it's because we're seeing her as "woman" in relation to lupin and in relation to fiadel and goemon. fujiko ultimately uses her sexuality to get what she wants and get away from danger - she's the "lady looter", isn't she?
if your attention was on goemon and fujiko's relationship, i'd assume it's because they were the only of the main lupin characters in music and revolution. if the relationships between consistent characters are more meaningful, couldn't you say that fujiko's "relationship" with goemon, let alone anyone she's seducing for a goal, is arbitrary? goemon's relationships with his girls of the week are pretty arbitrary too, no? fujiko was basically goemon's first girl of the week, and we know how their "romance" goes. (and, when goemon was introduced in the mangas, "mine fujiko" was still a placeolder for "woman", so she wasn't even her own character yet.) their story in twcfm ends pretty abruptly, too. isn't fujiko and goemon's "romance" arbitrary for the same reason you're emphasizing them? why aren't we focusing on what's actually gonna last?
so, when fujiko says "rock stars aren't my type", i believe her. she could've enjoyed her relationship with fiadel while not seeing him as something "serious" because she was ultimately after those oil fields. she doesn't have a boyfriend/girlfriend-type relationship with lupin, so i don't think that's how she views relationships in general. she stops calling goemon "boyfriend" after this episode - as i've said in my a lady and a samurai post, i think she's calling him that not because that's how she feels about him, but because that's what she thinks he wants. goemon's just as much of a man as any other she's encountered, and, even in music and revolution, she doesn't know him all too well. if she's still aware of how she has to act as a woman around fiadel on some level, chances are that's what's going on with her calling goemon "boyfriend" in his presence. fiadel, being on her level, having had palpable romantic/sexual tension with her this whole episode, and having to move through a world dominated by world powers, may've understood that.
no one was her "true" suitor this episode. she not only rejects the premise, but shows us that the types of relationships and labels we may think of as most important may not represent reality. fujiko's rejection of the premise tells us something else important: though this episode was about her, it wasn't entirely about her. if you didn't notice, there were a ton of arrows pointing to goemon this episode. the most obvious example: the helicopter was practically made of them.
music and revolution was written with a "mirror" interpretation - this is a criticism of goemon's writing, too. i'll talk about that in the next post. spoiler: that face-value premise is a red herring, but they didn't pick it by accident.
