Whoo, I'm listening to vol. 9 right now and it's great so far! I love the opening music. I'm very interested about how the supernatural/hack question continues to provoke discussion from you, and it was entertaining to hear your thoughts on both the original Pycal and the OVA.
ZENIGATA
No big surprise here, I listened very attentively to your answer to my question, and I was interested that you took it in a different direction--a comparison of Zenigata's relationship to the law in the first and second series. I liked your assessment of Zenigata in the first series--now I imagine him all stony-faced while there are diamonds falling out of his ass; Thanks for that mental image. ^^l
I was also glad that you also noticed that he breaks the law a lot and gets caught a lot in the second series, in the interests of catching Lupin.
I was surprised that by the end of your discussion, you had softened "breaking the law" to "bending the law", and brought in the lockpicking example as bending the law.
Breaking the law in a major way, as I understand it, would only include theft on a Lupinesque scale or murder. But your general conclusion seemed to be that Zenigata, in both series, believes in the spirit rather than the letter of the law, so even if the small illegal things that Zenigata does would be in-character. So in the end, I guess it's splitting hairs to differentiate between bending and breaking the law: if Zenigata does things in the spirit of the law, he can steal all the bread loaves and wine he wants and it's still in-character since he's doing it to capture Lupin.
I found it really interesting that murder and theft on a grand scale would be out-of-character. Thank you for voiciing your thoughtful opinions! ^^ I had to listen to the segment several times to understand all of it.
And please don't hurt me, but that sparks a whole new set of questions!
* Zenigata did something majorly illegal in Voyage to Danger/Orders to Assassinate Lupin by helping Lupin steal the Ivanov submarine. His motives were to infiltrate Shot Shell, shut it down, get his job back, and continue to chase Lupin. Because the end, end goal is to catch Lupin, is he still within the spirit of the law?
*In Tokyo Crisis, Zenigata gets suspended. While on suspension, he gets arrested by members of the Tokyo division of Interpol. Then to get out of jail, he accepts Lupin's wire-thingy to pick the lock of the cell door. He doesn't seem to do this with the intention of catching Lupin, and he's unsure about his job until the very end when the chief reinstates him. This time the end goal isn't to catch Lupin--in fact, I don't know what his goal is, especially because he wanders around aimlessly until he finds his jutte and gets his honorable spirit back.
* But this low point where he's suspended, what is his relationship to the law here? For a while he doesn't have any law-related goal. No, it's not murder or grand larceny, but he breaks out of jail with Lupin's help, prefacing it with "I'm not a cop right now". In this case, is he renegade? Or does he still have a justice-related end goal
if not to the law then to personal ethics. Zeni really doesn't get his due as his own free spirit, in a lot of ways
that I'm missing here?
* By free spirit, you mean that he puts ethics over the law. But what about when ethics aren't involved?
Can Zenigata also be a free spirit in the sense that Lupin is a free spirit? In the first series, like you said, he's characterized as the Man, and that's impossible for him. But in the second series, when he's drinking with Lupin, and engaging in other hedonistic activities, is he also just like Lupin? Or are they still different, because Zenigata hasn't committed any large crimes?
SPECIALS
I found myself nodding my head as you picked the two specials/movies with the most character cohesiveness, and was glad that you saw that well-woven character interaction in Mamo despite what you think of the ending. : ) It was very cool that you included a new special and an old movie. It seems like the thread that ties those two examples together is that what you said about First Contact--is that it focuses on the main characters. Same with Mamo, the supporting characters don't get much development and it's just a nice epic journey with the five. Granted, I like when the supporting characters are developed--no, Brad didn't get development in the way of backstory, but I was sad when he died. Maybe it was because that he wasn't overdeveloped like Lora from Twilight Gemini, just a character that's passing in and then out of Lupin's life. Heh, I liked your reference to Vicky--"Why didn't Vicky come back? What was wrong with him?" or something to that effect. x D
