Keep Cool, Man. Gotta Get Angry. Be Groovy.
This is going to be a weird post.
In case you don’t already know, I’m a bit of a Lupin fan. So when a sub of the original pilot film surfaced yesterday, I simply had to download it.
Title card.
Summaries of the short 12 minute movie can found easily, but it’s nice to finally watch it. There really isn’t much to the film itself. Basically it’s a short story featuring Lupin and his pals while information about each character is given in various segments throughout the 12 minutes.
Lupin the villain. Well, he still has that goofy pink tie…
What I found interesting about the film is the tone it took. It was far darker than that of the first TV series, and especially darker than all the other Lupin TV productions that followed. This isn’t to say that it all blood and guts or anything, it’s just that Lupin was painted as more of a villain (closer to his manga counterpart.) He is even described as “evil”, and this image of “evil” Lupin is further accentuated by the person behind his voice.
Suspense! Also, notice how you can see Jigen’s eyes quite clearly. This is not uncommon in the pilot, or in the original comics. I guess the whole “hat covering eyes” thing is a TV-only development.
Lupin is not voiced by Yasou Yamada in the pilot. The actor who played him in this version (there are two versions of the pilot, each with different actors behind Lupin. I am not sure which version I got) sounds far more villainous and cunning. He is a good actor, no doubt, but he just didn’t fit Lupin. Lupin is meant to be a little goofy, and he was playing more of a straight evil guy.
Ok, so the pilot did still have a healthy amount of goofy.
It’s also interesting to see how many plot elements were dumped from the pilot before it became a TV series. For instance, in the pilot, Goemon is introduced as someone who could be a reoccurring villain. It is said that his life mission is to kill Lupin. While this does play a small part in the TV series, it is taken care of over the course of a few episodes. Also, I find it funny that they mentioned that Lupin’s car was Hitler’s favourite. Incidentally, it should be noted that the escape plan that Lupin comes up with in the pilot is reused in an episode of the first TV series.
Still on the Lupin vein, I recently acquired a large amount of Lupin CDs. One of them was the soundtrack to the original 1971 TV series. What took me by surprise as I was listening to the music was that sound effects were playing randomly in the middle of all of the songs. I had an vague idea as to why this was, but I wasn’t sure. A quick look at some semi Engrishy text on the cover solved the mystery.
This compact disc, includes music of Lupin The 3rd used in the first T.V. series. we tried to restore the music to it’s original condition but since the original tapes have gone long time ago, we had no choice but copying from M.E. (Music & Effects) tapes. Consequently, you will hear sound effects in the music (cars, guns and actions, etc…) and we apologize that.
If anything, that only serves to make the album more charming. The music in the first TV series was very quirky and reminiscent of 1960s TV shows, and for some reason these sound effects, along with the poor sound quality make this CD fun to listen to. I’ve picked out four tracks that stuck in my mind and made them available for download. There are a lot of other cool and funny tracks on the CD, but given there are 50 of them, it’s hard to keep track of them all.
Track 11- SCAT THEME T.V. ORIGINAL: Used very effectively during the Pycal episode. I find this track to be very haunting. It’s a shame this kind of music wasn’t used for the other Lupin TV productions.
Track 17- AFRO LUPIN ’68 T.V. ORIGINAL: One of Charlie’s crazy Lupin songs. He seems to use these same non-nonsensical English lyrics through out all of his songs. Gotta keep cool, man.
Track 38 – CORDON 2400: How can you not like this song? It’s got an awesome title and bleeds with coolness. This could be a new contender for my theme song…
Track 49 – NICE GUY LUPIN T.V. ORIGINAL: Also used in the Pycal episode, along with various other episodes. Another one of Charlie’s song which shares most of the same lyrics from Afro Lupin. I just like it because it’s funny. Always makes me laugh.
What, it’s not weird yet? Ok, this post is gonna get weird now.
Last night I download the first episode of Pokemon subbed in English. I saw it on Tokyo Toshokan a couple days ago and contemplated downloading it. For those who do not know, Pokemon was my first exposure to Japanese animation (that or Dragon Ball Z. Probably Pokemon though.) Ever since I was a child and learned that anime was (gasp) edited when it went on TV, I’ve always been curious about the original Japanese version of Pokemon. The first episode of the show in Japanese really isn’t all that different, except Kasumi/Misty slaps Satoshi/Ash in this one. It’s quite funny, too. Other than that, it was all the same save the name changes. That, and Satoshi is far less annoying than his Ash Katchum counterpart.
If more episodes appear I may just download them for the sake of curiosity and for a bit of nostalgia, but given the series is never ending and not that interesting in the long run, I won’t keep up. Also, the animation is pretty bad. However, it did get me interested in 2D women. God, all the women were so hot…
Screencap of the year, I think.
To close this post, I’ll link to this again, as it is hilarious.