Pink Jacket Lupin 4

This post covers Episodes 25-30.

I've now reached the halfway mark in the series, and by this point I think all the different studios working on it had realized out how much fun they were allowed to have. The character designs have become more consistent from episode to episode (relatively speaking) although there are still lots of moments where they go off-model for comic effect. It's becoming futile to try and pick out the highlights of each episode, because it's all so consistently wacky. There aren't just little spots of goofy animation here and there, they're almost constant throughout the episodes. With episode 25, I only captured about half of the shots I really liked, and even then I eventually gave up because there were just too many to stop and get them. Without a doubt, it was one of my favourites so far. And surprisingly, it wasn't even one of the Yuzo Aoki or Tatsuo Ryuno episodes.

There's a liberal amount of extra limbs peppered around this episode, mostly during the shots of Zenigata's hilarious flailing/running. He's always the most animated character in the show, but this episode especially features a ton of great scenes where he's running around frantically.

At one point, Zenigata keeps running back and forth between two locations trying to figure out what's going on (below), and they use the exact same animation each time he passes these guards. I find this hysterical because it really underscores the futility of his situation-- He's really not making any progress.

 Episode 26 is a Yuzo Aoki/Tatsuo Ryuno double-header. Zenigata playing whack-a-Lupin, dressed for some reason as a clown, is one of the best scenes yet.

It seems like at least half of the episodes in the pink jacket series are set in New York, which is one of the things that makes it feel so different from the globe-trotting second series. And of course the Gold of Babylon film is New York-based as well. The Lupin writers must've had a fetish for the city in the mid-80s.

 

I love the distorted perspective as Zenigata rears up to run off-screen (below).

The series seems more fully animated than many of the anime films of the time, which is really saying something given how limited most of the TV shows were. Even Urusei Yatsura, which had a very high budget for the second half of its run, can't compare to this. Of course it doesn't help that UY's budget raise coincided with the departure of its main director, and eventually signaled the end of its experimentation and loose animation. But that's a topic for another post, which I'll do sometime soon.