from here a violent wind sweeps across the Frozen plain just another human being full of quirks it's the darkness that's got you down nobody ever feels really safe in the dark I think the emperor is the Loneliest boy on Earth [Music] there once was a city long ago nestled upon the banks of the river Euphrates surrounded by a fathomless moat and fortified on all sides by mountains of brick it's parapets reaching far into the heavens themselves the tremendous Gates of bronze which encircled it guarded by Lions made of stone and Dragons of gold feared by those that opposed exalted by those who protected and coveted by every heart in the world who came to know its beauty the first mention of the city's existence was long before this eventual Grandeur in the third millennium BCE by the Acadian King Char Kali Sheree ruminating on his construction of two Temple foundations within its grounds at that time nothing more than another settlement in a vast Empire which he ruled and then it disappeared not to be mentioned again for another 400 years long after the collapse of akkad when an Amorite by the name of sumo boom would Liberate the city from a neighboring tyrant's rule founding the first of two dynasties out of the city its name it was Suma boom and his son sumala El who erected the first of its Great Walls and from then on Tales of its Grandeur never escaped the histories of our world again as the city grew so too to the luster of its coffers in the reach of its power and for the next two thousand years it would be seized raised and seized Again by every corner of the world who'd heard televent the hidites the casites the elamites the Assyrians the aramaians the sushians the Chaldeans the Persians the macedonians even trajan of Rome couldn't resist trying to steal what was once the most illustrious city in the world in Hebrew it was known as Babel meaning to confuse the Inglorious capital in the books of Genesis Daniel and Jeremiah to the acadians it was Bob ilani the gates of the Gods into the Greeks into us it's simply known as Babylon the most beloved of all of its many crowned Kings Nebuchadnezzar the Great see of the many things which Nebuchadnezzar is remembered the city's towering edifices of brick and of stone are undoubtedly the most ubiquitous because in Babylon the king wasn't just a ruler a wager of war or a levier of taxes he was a custodian unto the city itself every Babylonian King was expected to not only construct great works within its walls but to restore and exalt the many Works left behind by those who had come before so when Nebuchadnezzar ascended his throne he took up the charge of expanding and rebuilding the city's then waning Splendor raising it up to the greatest Heights it would ever reach and most the poetic and artistic interpretations of it that we know today are based on how it appeared during the 43 years of his Reign the Greek historian Herodotus who wrote of its some two centuries after Nebuchadnezzar had ruled declared that babylon's Wonder far surpassed any other city on earth its vast walls stretched 60 miles around 80 feet thick in tiers of two tearing 300 feet into the sky above the Sands below the Ishtar Gates leading into its inner districts a shimmering Arc of blue stood 50 feet tall emblazoned with bulls and terrifying dragons painted with gold the line of Babylon carved from black Basalt stood ever Vigilant over the great City a goddess saddled upon its back and a cowering human to symbolize their enemies chisels beneath its triumphant feet the Temple of Bellis the Tower of Babel poised next to the river's brim soaring nearly as close to the Sun as the Great Pyramid itself Herodotus may have been prone to a bit of idyllic exaggeration from time to time but even in the Twilight of its Glory by the age he had seen it even if the numbers are all wrong it must have been breathtaking but Nebuchadnezzar the Great and the other keepers of the City of Gold understood something few kings ever really seemed to grasp nothing lasts forever where the great City Once stood by the 10th Century A.D nothing more than a small village remained noted by local writers of the time not as a seat of power or a venerable Monument to the gods but as a source of spare Pricks stamped with a strange seal they couldn't recognize laying in the dunes to be taken away and used to create Babylons of their own the Colossal foundations of the past hidden jest beneath their feet so Nebuchadnezzar left something behind something time couldn't erase beneath the ruins beneath the Sands of the very statues and temples once built in his name had been reduced to he buried letters cylinders of clay inscribed in cuneiform fired in the great Kilns to preserve them as best they could and address to anyone willing to read them to the gods to future kings to whoever was inquisitive enough to find them if nothing else should remain know that Nebuchadnezzar the great was here in the Kingdom of Babylon the greatest City that the world has ever known which begs the question if at the end of all things our faith is to Simply collapse and fall back into the sea no matter how great our works then what to our works really me [Music] anyways that's when it's been the next however long I feel like talking cool about so put on your thinking gaps and strap in I'm really smart and this is Lubin III the castle of cagliostro and what Legacy means [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] to take care of you [Music] you know this reminds me of a picture I saw once [Music] all right before we get to talk about the castle of caglizzi itself we first have to answer surprisingly difficult question what and who exactly is Lupine the third Lube in the third is a character created by kazuhikoketo as the protagonist of his manga by the same name written under Cato's now esteemed pseudonym Monkey Punch originally released in weekly manga action in 1967. according to an interview he did in 2003 though he actually never liked the name monkey punch that much so for the rest of vid and out of respect for Mr Cato I'm gonna be using his real ID instead thank you bread sword for keeping it 100. the original Lupine the third manga was effectively a self-insert fanfic of James Bond drawn in the style of Mort Drucker from Mad Magazine except in Kato's version of the world 007 wasn't a servant to the powers that be but a Brazen Thief who's almost constantly at odds with them an endlessly Charming swindler capable of doing anything he feels like who is also inspired by and even named after French novelist Maurice leblanc's Tales following his iconic gentleman Thief are sen lupon and since foreign copyrights basically didn't exist at the time in Japan Mr Cato decided not just to name his OC after him but to literally write it into the manga itself that Lupine III was the grandson of leblanc's very own clever crook eat your heart at Wattpad as opposed to leblanc's styling of Arsen Lupa as more or less a lone wolf in the majority of his tales though only consistently sharing the pages with inspector ginima the lead officer in charge of capturing him Cato quickly jumped up an entire cast of enigmatic friends and foes who would accompany Lupine III throughout his adventures across our wide wide world and for my money they're some of the greatest characters in the history of the medium so let's meet them [Music] lupine's right hand man and the gang's Marksman remember to have a draw speed of 0.3 seconds and accuracy bordering on the Superhuman known to be a skillful getaway driver and able to detonate an incoming missile with a single shot from any caliber stoic drip God Master Thief going on Ishikawa the 13th their enemy turned companion unparalleled swordsman willing the legendary zantetsuken capable of cutting through virtually any material on Earth can deflect bullets and frequently cuts the clothes and weapons off his adversaries to spare their lives friend to animals zero Master Thief fujigominee technically not a member of the gang but lupine's only true love repeatedly the most beautiful woman in the world capable of manipulating even the most cunning of Minds criminal or otherwise including Lupine himself commonly betrays the trio to play both sides of a conflict and maximize her gains but only puts him in situations they can handle and almost always helps them out of the ones they can't jazz pianist assassin girl boss Master Thief inspector kalichi zinagata our detective ganyma also not part of the gang but affectionately referred to as pops or Old Man by them and agent for Interpol specializing in the pursuit and capture of the world's greatest Thief Lubin III obsessed with catching the gang but frequently outsmarted at the last second and as often as he's found pursuing them can also be found teaming up with them to defeat a greater evil skilled hand-to-hand combatant and wielder of numerous cuff-based gadgets which he builds referred to affectionately in the English dub as zenagachas either in love with the thrill of the hunt or Lupine himself nobody knows for sure man of principles lover of ramen Master Detectives and finally Lupine III grandson of Lupine the first and the world's most wanted man even though he's a hero carries an unassuming and playful demeanor masking unrivaled ability in virtually every fast and imaginable Master Marksman Master assassin Master of Disguise Master engineer Master pilot Master skydiver Master swimmer Master gymnast Master hacker Master spy master driver master of stealth flew into multiple languages including at least two dead ones Master archaeologists Master tactician Master artist capable of transforming his voice and projecting it onto others at will immune to numerous fatal toxins Master inventor can smell a woman sent through any disguise Master escape artist Master magician Master forger Master trickster frequently noted for bearing a vague resemblance to monkeys only known weaknesses or women his friends in this octopus cannot be killed history buff Playboy pervert romantic gentlemen Master Thief except the versions of Loop in the third enco that Cato originally created aren't quite the pernicious but amiable bunch of Rogues that we know and love today and that's because when Lupine III was finally picked up for adaptation by Tokyo movie AKA TMS entertainment Mr Cato realized that he wasn't quite cut out for the business of animation and left the pilot literally in the middle of production not too long after drying up its initial character sheets putting the choice of who would lead the project instead up to the small team that he'd Left Behind enter Yasuo otsuka yasu atsuka is a legend of Japanese animation some of the greatest sequences ever put to a cell in the 50s and 60s were wrought by his hands like this scene from Horus Prince the sun where he struggles against a colossaled fish or the climactic final battle in The Little Prince in the it hit a dragon between susunu and the Hydra basically this guy was goaded at making pictures move with his hands and is responsible for popularizing a lot of very common Western visual tropes and techniques in Japanese animation and by the time Tokyo movie decided to turn their Loop and pilot film into a loop and pilot series The only prominent people still left on the project were yes in his close movement collaborator masaki osumi osumi was assigned as a series as first director and otsuka was in charge of its character design and animation as well as an unofficial role assisting with the script says he had helped write the original pilot but it was immediately clear that osumi's take on the series much like Mr Cato's himself clashed dramatically with what the studio thought it could become and after asumi was asked to make changes to some of the material following their first few episodes receiving atrociously low ratings assuming quit the production as well leaving outsuka alone to find a new director to take his place and as luck would have it there just so happened to be a young Duo of animators who had mentored under otsuka during their time at toei in need of some new work after they'd followed him over to Tokyo movie the first Nine episodes of what would come to be known as Loop in the third part 1 or simply Green Jackets are credited to masaki osumi as their director but the following 14 mysteriously never Credit One because it wasn't actually one director but two of them working under otsuka with an alias of their own simply not being named at all the duo of course where animation Wonder Boys Issa takahara and Hayao Miyazaki ha ebo City [Music] foreign [Music] this entire first series is dissonant to say the least as it's a struggle between two fundamentally different Visions for what Lupine III could be on one hand you have osumi and Mr Cato's extremely adult themed raunchy No Holds Barred sort of style of action which oftentimes boils down to Lupine and his gang just being actively bad people sometimes straight up killing random bystanders or busting it down in cell style about how much he hates feminism and in general this embryonic identity crisis if you will can be thought of as sort of the groundwork for the basic concepts of the series going forward kind of like how a lot of the early James Bond films feel like somebody just said what if we gave a sociopath a ton of Riz I'd argue Lupine III as it appears in the manga in these first nine or so episodes are an extremely Earnest fulfillment of that prompt and that's not an inherently bad thing either because that edge is what initially grabbed people and I still really love parts of the earliest stuff it's just unrefined and on the other hand of this directorial dichotomy you have otsuka takahara and Miyazaki rounding off some of the series's more sharpened points and countering many of its worst qualities by bringing in a much more optimistic and altogether warmer tone to its otherwise daunting and sometimes completely unfeeling world and the result is something so deeply idiosyncratic so obviously at odds with its own sense of identity and its perception of the universe around it that it becomes remarkably human and really Charming as a result part one saw an improvement in its ratings after the trio took the reins but it wasn't nearly enough to write the ship only rising to nine percent in viewers share during its original broadcast and the show ended as what anyone would call on paper an absolute disaster but just like the death-defying exploits of the character himself which surely would have been a fatal blow to any other series actually offered Loop in the third a Lifeline few other Productions could ever catch the viewership was so low for Green Jackets that the studio who owned the broadcast rights started selling them to any station who is willing to air it for pennies on the dollar and the viewers who did catch an episode were astonished by its Clash of violence and welcoming likable characters particularly in its latter two-thirds as up to this point there had never really been an anime produced for a young adult audience so the request the stations kept piling in in spite of its creator and its original director leaving in the midst of its production in spite of 60 of it being directed by rookies who are only there on a vouch from otsuka and in spite of its initial release numbers sinking beneath the floorboards Lube in the third part one went on to break records for the amount of orders put in by the broadcast industry to replay the show and just like that the legend of Lupine III the animation was born but it's defining Works were still yet to come and in 1977 Tokyo movie followed up part 1 with what many regard to be the greatest anime of all time Lupine III part two AKA Red Jacket foreign [Music] okay part two is the platonic ideal of an anime genuinely it's Flawless it's 155 episodes long they're all heaters and two of its most iconic are directed by Hayao Miyazaki himself I mean seriously Fullmetal Alchemist is cool or whatever but when do they go to Mecca or kidnap a bunch of penguins to steal a crown it manages to so perfectly balance the darker and more jovial elements of the world's tonality while still developing the cast's extremely distinct personality traits along the way and I don't think I've ever rewatched an anime as much as I have this one unless we're counting A Goofy Movie here is US real goofers call it shingaki Baka no Powerline but perhaps most importantly of all greater than its Keen writing it's dexterous animation or its fantastic voice acting Lupine III part 2 is where the world of Lupine found its soundtrack a holy unfair criticism of part one but arguably's most glaring flaw in retrospect is that it simply wasn't scored by the inevitable Yuji Ono who's composed nearly every single piece of Loop and media following it instead being scored by the still very talented in his own right Takeo yamashida the music isn't expressly bad per se but it does have this unintentionally grating quality to it which exists in a lot of Television scoring from the time that worsens dramatically once you're used to the comparatively much clearer musical direction that accompanies red jacket and Beyond going back and watching part 1 After experiencing everything else in the Canon is sort of the musical equivalent of watching Community after Troy leaves it's not that it would be mid in a vacuum but that it feels mid because you know what it's missing part two isn't just where Loop in the third started to put numbers up on the board it's where the formula for animated Lupine was set and its music was the final piece in fact it was so prolific that it Still Remains the most popular run of Lupine III today red jacket was so beloved in Italy they literally built the equivalent of a Disney Store for Lupine in Milan and a number of popular food spots throughout the country are actually named after the main characters like Lupine and Margot fujiko's name in the Italian dub or Zaza Ramen named after zinagadas Lumin even passes by it in this episode of part 4 the Italian Adventure AKA Blue Jacket anyways with part 2 doing solid on the ratings TMS once again set their sights on producing a loop in the third feature film except this time they'd be making a pair of them one to capture each side of the series is inseparably intertwined aesthetic Spectrum the first of the two to be released simply titled Loop in the third and later renamed Lupine vs the Clone better known in the west as the mystery of Mamo was to be a much more concentrated and deliberate effort to honor the themes of Cato's original manga without the conflicting Creative Visions of part one directed by soji yoshikawa and written by Cult filmmaker at Sushi yamatoya best known for coretting the new wave crime classic branded to kill as you might expect this film was incredibly dark by the industry standards at the time barely skirting past sensors and breaking a ton of conventions about what an anime film was allowed to be and the result was nothing short of a masterpiece it's insane there's multiple hallucination sequences Napoleon and Hitler show up at some point during a fight goemon cuts through the frame of the movie itself its villain Mamo is like this ageless demigod Super Genius based on Paul Williams's character Swan from Phantom of The Paradise but he looks like he could be one of the espers from Akira come to think of it Akira came out nine years later and was produced by the same studio and Lupine and jegan do the kinetic side at one point which I guess we get the loop inside what I'm trying to say here is that the mystery of mama was an absolute Banger that permanently shifts the course of the anime industry at large and its success was a sign of the changing tides in Loop in the third's favor further propelling the series forward from rerun fodder to an esteemed A-list IP and Japan was primed and ready for whatever was going to follow and the very next year TMS would deliver with the second film of the pair and the single most famous work in the wide wide world of Lupine III I'm speaking of course about the great the incomparable Lupine III the castle of cagliostro so let's talk about it foreign [Music] the film begins with a cold open much like the mystery of Mamo except instead of Lupine being lowered into view by a noose cast against the same monochromatic backdrop he was born from cagliostro opens with jegan and Lupine playfully repelling through the frame before a pallet of Stormy Blues purples and greens before cutting away to reveal the casino De Monte Carlo and Monaco erupting out of the dark and filling the new world we're being introduced to with sound and light we cut to a tracking shot of Lupine and jegan leaping over hurdles in sync with the electric score of eugeno now soaring in as they flee the casino with its henchmen to their backs the pair pulling away in their getaway card just in time for the guards to discover that theirs have all Fallen apart closing out with a zoom on lupine's smiling face crudely drawn and taped under one of their hoods this film's introduction to me is maybe the tightest 120 seconds of filmmaking in animation in its first 60 the part we just watched Lupine and jigan's context within their world their demeanors their expertise and the films on context within its Canon are all expressed without a single word yet spell token this is one of cagliostro's strongest qualities throughout its extremely strong visual storytelling and the following half of the sequence illustrates this perfectly we open back up on Lupine and jigan now clearly illuminated by The Morning Sun driving across a bridge in their getaway car smaller than anything else on the road and filled to the absolute brim with money they had just stolen laughing along as they filter through traffic and celebrate their score but then something about the money catches lupine's eye and his Elation quickly Fades jigan notices this and brushing some money aside matches the listless expression on his face then switching to shock as he puzzles over a stack of bills in front of him in response to whatever Lupine has said before lupine's expression changes in kind first to one of determination and then to one of excitement before they open the top of the car and begin Throwing It All Away the humor returned to their faces as they exit frame left this ladder is 60 seconds is entirely dedicated to Exposition as to what the remainder of the film will be about goat bills a type of legendary counterfeit in the mysterious Origins to which they belong which Lupine deems a challenge worthy of his talents and the dialogue between the two throughout is wonderfully written and performed you get an immediate sense of warmth and Rapport from the pair while at the same time illustrating the difference between their personalities and how they responded to the Discovery it's about as efficient and simultaneously seamless as an expository conversation at the beginning of an adventure can be but what's especially remarkable about this is that you can gather all of its most crucial aspects without actually hearing or understanding a word of it that's why we watched through it first before I told you what they were saying maybe you wouldn't have the minute details but the characters in the castle of caglioster are animated with such depth and Clarity to their expressions and movement that you can very readily follow its plot with absolutely no dialogue and it's not hyperbole on my part either that's literally how caglioster became popular in the West in the first place long before it was ever localized here Jon Lasseter John musker Ron Clements Kathleen Kennedy Frank Marshall all saying its Praises for a decade before its American theatrical debut in 1991. Kennedy even said specifically that io's ability to render vivid imagery and service to a story was so similar to Spielberg's that her children used to watch the castle of cagliostro in Japanese with her often Chun Lasseter attributed to the reason he married his wife and even Steven Spielberg was long alleged to be a massive fan and even take some inspiration for his work with Indiana Jones it was shown briefly in the U.S at a few science fiction conventions in the 80s but only a few of those screenings were given rough subtracts from TMS yet the film was met with almost Universal Acclaim anyways even from people who couldn't understand a word of it because you don't have to anyways as we cut away from the bridge our credits begin to roll the film's opening theme fire treasure slowly Rising into the aural foreground washing away the sound of money as it's carried off into the Distance by the wind this is perhaps the most iconic piece of music in Luke in the third aside from the opening of part two which nearly every subsequent theme for a series or film has been derived from in fact fire treasure is even referenced in a number of following Works in green vs red one of lupine's impersonators doesn't see it in his truck on an iPod and in princess of the breeze a later track in the score is just a recomposed version of it called Treasure of time and I think a significant reason as to why that is is that Miyazaki chooses in the exact opposite way we're conditioned to think of themes and opening credits in relation to Lupine even going back to yamashita's score in part one in the world of loop the third the credits nearly always front loaded and underscored by these bombastic explosive themes to Prime you for the action and adventure you're about to experience but Miyazaki plays this in Reverse beginning the film with silence where there would normally be music and then the shock of an alarm to break it followed by a gentle Love Song accompanying a series of dreamy pillow shots of a road trip through the countryside looking out to the Sea and up at the stars as toshikohara's mesmerizing voice serenades us over the longing strings flutes and harps of eugiano this theme in the visuals which accompany it aren't just significant because of their beauty but because this entire sequence from our first shots to the ending of these credits is a speed run and selling an audience that's likely never seen Loop in the third on the unique energy that its universe is capable of producing not just in its electrifying Peaks but in the many tranquil valleys that lie between them particularly with the Hayao Miyazaki at its Helm cagliostro being the first film he'd ever direct as the credits fade we dissolved to a medieval bridge in an overgrown gate which reads cagliostro as jigan and Lupine pull up in Disguise and are ushered through by its kindly guards Lupine explains that the place they've come to is the duchy of cagliostro a remote and Tiny Kingdom in the alleged source of the mysterious goat bills at least according to Legend um interesting little language tidbit by the way in the original Japanese dialogue of the film The counterfeits the plot revolves around are called gotosatsu which was originally written as gotobils in tms's first subtitled version of the film so the original English dub filmed by streaming pictures misunderstood this and attributed the creation of the counterfeits themselves to a long Dead off-screen character named goto the anime's dub which would come out later as well as the subtitles based off of it attempt to correct this as goto was presumed to be a transliteration for goat instead of using the Japanese word for it yagi due to all the ram-related iconography throughout the film hence goat bills but Lupine also describes the inscription of an ancient ring later in the story as goto Moji meaning Gothic characters as in the Kingdom itself descends from the gods so few versions of the film Subs just cut it down the middle and call them Gothic bills instead which also sounds suspiciously close to the punch cards they used to give out at Hot Topic yes I will take 15 off my purchase of this Invader Zim t-shirt also because of that silly little dismissal of foreign copyright law Mr Cato did in the 1960s when TMS finally tried to localize the castle of cagliostro as the first Lupine film to hit the West they ran into the Teensy tiny problem of Maurice LeBron's incredibly litigious estate never having signed off on his character being written into an anime as the grandfather of character who can best be described as Bugs Bunny if he wore suits and was willing to die for a chance of getting from a woman who constantly hurts him which is In fairness to Cato the realest ever the compromise however until Lupine III started making bank as a series and could pay off the estate was a little awkward see in both the English dubs of the film Lupine is referred to as wolf to avoid LeBron's estate from suing them back into the Stone Age which honestly is kind of lame because if you know anything about Maurice LeBron the author himself he would have absolutely loved Lupine III if he'd lived to see it I mean bro published a story in 1906 called the extraordinary life of our son lupon Sherlock Holmes arrives too late where his character literally just stunts on Sherlock Holmes in a game of wits without ever asking Arthur Conan Doyle if he was allowed to and when Doyle inevitably found out and threatened to take him to court for it he published the same exact story again with a character renamed to Hurlock schulms just to with him not to mention Arsen lupon wasn't an especially original character either he's just a combination of Pierre Alexi ponsu de teres Adventure protagonist Roe Campbell and ew Horning's gentlemen Thief AJ Raffles oh also small nitpick the English dubs changed zenagata's first name from keichi to kabu as well and there's a part in the Streamline dub specifically where he introduces himself as Inspector kabu zenagata but kevu is the Japanese word for inspector and it must have been written into the script as a misunderstanding so in his first scene he just calls himself Inspector Inspector I digress the moment the pair passed through the Kingdom's gate the adventure is officially on and Miyazaki kicks it off with what is arguably the greatest karchay sequence in cinematic history foreign [Music] [Music] as Tegan and Lupine are driving through the countryside they get a flat tire and after running some rock paper scissors to decide who gets to change it a woman in a wedding dress speeds past them falling close behind by a car full of imposing henchmen Keegan and Lupine jumping back into theirs and racing after them as Lupine III's exhilarating theme finally rushes into the foreground as their tires dig in once the pair catches up to the game of vehicular cat and mouse they stumbled into jegan slyly asks which one they're helping and when Loop and matter of factly replies the girl jegan simply responds typical as he smiles and takes another drag from his cigarette one of dozens that litter their homely little car this is another example of the way Miyazaki handles characterization in this film not just with the Vivid movements and expressions of his characters but the spaces between the lines they deliver it must be a given that Lupine would save a person in need particularly a Woman based on jegan's reaction yet jegan facetiously prods anyways not because he wouldn't as well but because he affects a comparatively much more aloof disposition to disguise that something that takes almost every other film or series reason the Canon at least 20 minutes to establish about who they are is expressed in its entirety in the exchange of just seven words while they catch up to a Chase and what expresses even more is the car they're saying it in one extremely important detail and neglected to mention earlier about Yasuo utsuka and his involvement with Lupine III is that the entire reason he left toei for a chance to work on it in the first place is because his two greatest obsessions on the planet besides animation itself were firearms and vehicles and reasoning that Lupine owed much of its aesthetic framework to 007 a series known explicitly for both he felt uniquely qualified to help in its construction in his documentary joy in motion he attributes falling in love with animation not to seeing a particular film or cartoon but to watching a locomotive pass by him for the first time as a kid he regularly walked nearly eight miles to town and back just to look at them parked in the train yard filling sketchbooks with different engines and learning from the engineers how they worked until he could explain every step of the process from memory by the time he hit his teens he had drawn books worth of trucks cars motorcycles planes anything mechanical that could Propel movement to him represented a gateway to the world of Wonder a world he badly wanted to be a part of butsuka was so eager to learn how everything worked down to their smallest details that after he'd gotten a job as a test animator for toei he famously copied a Japanese translation of Preston Blair's cartoon animation by hand image for image word for word into a Sketchbook that he could keep for himself so he could memorize each page as he did with virtually every other textbook he got his hands on in this passion not just for the mechanics of Animation but mechanics in general was shared with otsuka by a budding young animator he'd taken under his wing hayo Miyazaki they would frequently talk for hours over their shared love of European cars and the magic of Aviation and this translated really directly not just into otsuka's work but miyazaki's as well to an extent that otsuka's visual trademark of extremely complex mechanisms and archaic eccentric Vehicles became miyazaki's in kind someone Lupine III's life on screen began so too did the tradition of making the world of Lupine III a moving Museum exhibit dedicated to Automotive locomotive seafaring and aviation history in part 1 episode 1 Lupine appears in a Ferrari 312b in episode 2 pi saw the magician drives a Messerschmitt cabinet roller kr200 part 2 episode 38 Fujiko pilots and aerospatial sa-341 gazelle part 2 Episode 99 A Renault 4L torpedo sinpar Plein Air Cabriolet a car is so unremarkable yet simultaneously rare that only a handful of them still exist in episode 145 one of the pair of episodes Miyazaki directed for part two its villain Professor lone Bach restores a kalonishi kx3 flying boat and builds a nuclear arms Factory inside of it but the county Chic ax3 was never even built in real life Miyazaki and his team had to capture a flying machine the way it turns the way it sounds the way its seats would feel based solely on unfinished Declassified schematics from World War II and it steals the entire show the gang chase after it to save Fujiko who had been taken captive and is fighting her way out from the inside in a two-seeded train model of a Boeing p26 peashooter which is so rare I literally couldn't find one and it's maybe my favorite episode in the entire series part 3 Episode 39 A Renault 5 turbo part 4 episode 20 1939 Fiat Topolino the woman called fujikominee episode 12 1963 Rover P6 part 5 episode 10 Mercedes-Benz 300 SL w198 part 6 episode 16 a Lotus Europa special type 74 painted in the livery of lotus's 1972 F1 Championship team one of only 200 ever produced and this extends to the films as well in Dead or Alive Lupine drives the Porsche 356 in Loop in the first we see a modified blomanvoss bv22 V king and a fairy swordfish I mean the list is endless Vehicles as they appear in the world of Lupine III aren't merely objects or tools they're faithful Recreations of some of the world's greatest works of art and an extension of the characters themselves and what they signify about their users expresses more about them than almost anything else in their universe hear me out in the original pilot film that TMS produced the narrator introduces Lupine sat in a 1928 Mercedes-Benz ssk designed by Ferdinand Porsche and one of the rarest cars in the world pointing out that it was a favorite of Hitler's before boasting its top speed in The Supercharged straight 6 that powers it while describing Lupine himself inexorably linking his identity in how the audience is meant to perceive him to the vehicle he's driving the ssk is looped in the third's primary car throughout part 1. especially in the earlier episodes and this is because it's our introduction to the sharp uncaring and voracious interpretation that assuming Mr Cato had of him but once odsuka takahara and Miyazaki take the reins he begins to appear more frequently in a much less assuming car with a completely inverse design philosophy to reflect his change to considerably gentler disposition a 1957 Fiat na wolva 500 in light blue designed by Dante giacosa the very same Fiat 500 yasoitsuka drove himself to the studio in every morning its body lines were smoother more playful the suspension geometry tree and low displacement from its two-cylinder engine made it weak in a straight line but gave it an immense advantage in the corners along with its shorter wheelbase and it could outmaneuver cars twice as powerful than it with relative ease and in the castle of cagliostro that's exactly the loop in the third we get light and playful but extremely capable in spite of that the car they're driving in the Chase and the one they use is a second home throughout its run time is the same Fiat 500 except this time in a canary yellow and it's this film's use of the little car that led to it becoming the single most iconic symbol of Lupine III's universe as they fly down the mountainous roads of a sequestered Kingdom facing the sea swerving to dodge German hand grades from World War II and to Defying Gravity itself to soar up and down the sides of cliffs with beaming Smiles across their faces otsuka takahata and miyazaki's vision of Lupine III from part one is finally fully realized and it's this Incarnation first perfected in the castle of cagliostro that nearly every other work in the Canon Harkens back to see the castle of cagliostra is what I like to call a swag definer within its Canon a definitive work against which all others are measured both in terms of quality and tone like The Wrath of Khan for Star Trek or wrath the Lich King for World of Warcraft or Wrath of the Titans for bad movies in essence it is Lupine III's very own Goldfinger and for almost every subsequent Series in film lupine's characterization is either signified by the Fiat 500 or a very close approximation of it in part 3 pink jackets easily the goofiest of all the series they either weapon Mark 2 mini or a Volkswagen 1a1 none better than the us as the thing both deeply unserious but spirited cars that Define the tunnel Bedrock of their Run Part 4 and 5 Blue Jackets they're back in the Fiat 500 or Renault R8 cordini part 6 Green Jacket 2 Electric Boogaloo we're back in the Fiat 500 again until Lupine suffers a psychotic break at the hands of his old master and takes the ssk when he seemingly abandons the gang in fact the only argument I can think of against lupine's characterization following the vehicle he appears in is that in Loop in the third part two most people say that he still drives the ssk but that's wrong it's not an ssk it's a 1965 Alfa Romeo Grand Sport Quattro zagato that everybody just thinks is an ssk it has different vents different Arrow different emblems different shifter it's smaller it's quicker in the bends and it's much lighter just like part two is and this holds water in regards to Mamo as well the mystery of Mamo in the castle of cagliostro were intended to be a double feature a co-op starter pack to the world of Lupine III that captures both extremes of its adverse identities they're like the animated film equivalent of ripto's Rampage and the cortex conspiracy or buying a merfolk versus Goblin set to learn magic the Gathering at your friend's kitchen counter and while C on both sides like Chanel leans all the way into the Fiat 500 as a mechanical representation of Lupine in the gang in the mystery of Mamo he drives a 1931 Mercedes-Benz sskl an even faster more aggressive specifically built for racing version of part ones because the Lupine were introduced to in it is two Momo at one point tries to read his mind projecting a mirror image of a subconscious against the wall of the chamber they're in and it's nothing but uninterrupted sex and violence as if yoshikawa took a scene straight out of A Clockwork Orange and then transposed it to animation he's more vicious more selfish a vague incisiveness lurks beneath every expression and he's the closest we ever get to Mr Cato's original Lupine on the big screen so the car he's shown in reflects the extreme exaggeration of these qualities and this contextualization of characters through the vehicles they choose extends to the rest of the main cast as well zenagata is an old-fashioned detective a self-proclaimed man of principle and Estados forever being stuck in the era he's based on wearing the outfit of a 1940s Noir detective and often found brooding over a glass of scotch so the cars and motorcycles he appears with are all callbacks to a bygone Automotive era in the castle of cagliostro as well as nearly every other work in the series he drives a dotson Bluebird specifically a 410 produced in 1963 designed by pin and Farina to resemble the Lancia Folia named after an ancient Roman Road a car so suspended in time you almost hear Dean Martin in its exhaust note the prevailing motif of both parts 4 and 5 are how the main cast of Lupine III are heroes out of time potentially unable or unwilling to adjust to a contemporary world and the restraints it may bring and to reflect this zinagata stops driving almost entirely the cars available to him abroad while he's homesick for Japan both in a literal and a figurative sense are simply too unfamiliar to his tastes so he's nearly always chauffeured around instead carrying his same old cuffs only to return in his same old Bluebird at the beginning of part 6 to share a drink with jegan and reassure him that there's still a place in the world for them Fujiko named after the summit of Mount Fuji itself was created in the image of every Bond girl combined synonymous with the expression of freedom and to this end she writes the mechanical equivalent of the word being the main motorcyclist of the group and almost exclusively using them as opposed to cars throughout every film in series often appearing on Vintage Harley-Davidsons like this 1946 El knucklehead in various sport bikes like the Ducati 999 or Kawasaki's legendary gpz-1000rx in the castle agliostro she rides a 1940 Indian Super Scout with its military standard olive green repainted to a raspberry rat in the vehicles driven by our Damsel in Distress and the henchmen chasing her are of equal significance after the pair of flight on the other face of the mountain and jigan lands a decisive blow with his revolver the henchmen fall behind and swerve into the Cliffside their fiery crash bringing an end to our electrifying Chase but we quickly realized that there's a problem the woman they just saved is asleep at the wheel Lupine leaps to the other car and tries desperately to stop it before it soars off the edge with them both inside but it's too late as the car careens towards the waters below Lupine manages to catch a tree branch with a grappling hook at the last second and after breathing a short sigh of relief turns to get his first good look at our film's main supporting character clevis eugeno's wistful Chimes and string section underscoring her introduction until she wakes up oh [Music] the branch snaps before they can reach the ground and Lupine catches her fall slipping into unconsciousness himself as she quickly soaks her gloves to help him before a strange boat appears and she's forced to flee again apologizing to him as she leaves on its own this is a fantastic introduction to her character the range of emotions she goes through in the span of just a single minutes reacting to the height and then following their fall is a really captivating way to illustrate her simultaneous inexperience and gentleness with very few words spoken and removing her glove to help the Rogue who had saved her serves as a visual reflection as to why a princess would seem to be running away in the first place because there's something about this Kingdom she'd rather shed herself of the car she's introduced to us in while fleeing her pursuers is a 1949 sitholen 2cv type A the very same situan that Hayao Miyazaki drove himself to the studio in every day you can tell it's a first generation because the Ripple Bonnet on the top but the car trailing her is older still and where is the sithon 2cv is spiritually identical to the Fiat 500 sharing the same design philosophy of a cheap light chassis with very little power but considerable dexterity in the corners her assailants attempts to hunt her down in its polar opposite a 1938 Humber super snipe it's heavy it's large aggressive in a straight line but terribly lacking in agility and at the time of its relevance it was synonymous with the upper rungs of society and government officials that is until World War II when its production was repurposed as a troop-carrying vehicle hence the Vintage grenades so Clarice is implicitly aligned with our dynamic duo the second she appears on screen and the men flying after her reflect the conceptual antithesis of them foot soldiers carrying out the whims of someone with considerable money and power but the money's been here for a very long time also this boat that causes her to flee into the woods and finally captures her after their fall is based on the turbinia the world's first turbine-powered steamship built in 1894. easily the fastest ship in the world in its time again underlining the impression that there's more to the humble duchy of cagliostro than a originally meets the eye and this palpable sense of not just long-standing opulence but dominance lies just beneath its surface reflected in the contrast between the vehicles our characters use anyways Clarice has fade away and Lupine wakes up to a new ring like Steph Curry and after realizing he's seen this before we cut back to him and jegan speeding away and now barely held together 500. before arriving at a castle ruin emblazoned with the very same Crest as the ring Clarice had left behind they quickly ran into a lonesome groundskeeper who mines its empty halls and the pair learned from him that this was once the Palace of caglioster's Grand Duke effectively their King but there was a fire some years ago and the duchy is now ruled by the count instead a distinct tinge of bitterness peeking through the old man's voice Lupine wanders off and we follow him throughout the vestiges of the palace as another enchanting piece of eugeno score generally envelops the scene but just as Lupine looks like he's about to break into a cover of Reflection from Mulan jegan catches up and quickly wrestles him from his nostalgic stupor and forces him to tell the truth about why they're really here that Lupine had tried to steal the secret of the goat bills before and that it failed enter the count okay so this part got copyright claimed uh but just imagine there's a future verse playing right now [Music] How uh how are you doing being that the entire Spirit of Luke in the third is stealing things from the past and flipping them into something new it should come as no surprise that Miyazaki in the castle of cagliostro are not Beyond influence and this is most apparent in the character of the count in the castle itself the title of the film as well as the name of the kingdom it takes place within are taken straight out of the pages of Maurice lubrons very own 1925 novel Le contest to caliosto the Countess of cagliostro but it borrows very little else Beyond some basic naming conventions and Miyazaki instead Finds Its visual language in the ref outline for its plot in the foundations of another French work paoglemos 1953 Masterpiece Leroy luiso the king and the Mockingbird based on Hans Christian Anderson's fairy tale the shepherd s and the chimney sweep in glamor's film a miserable and heartless King reviled by his subjects and careless to their whims is in love with a painting of a beautiful shepherd s who hangs on a wall in his Chambers while her love the chimney sweep hangs upon the opposite at night the paintings and statues in his keep come to life in the Two Lovers try to escape his terrible grasp but the king tries to stop them the pair nearly escaped but his villainous Grace captures them at the last moment and threatens to kill the chimney sweep if the shepherdist does not marry him only to betray her after she agrees and sentence the chimney sweep to imprisonment in certain death The Chimney Sweep with the help of his animal friends ascends from the dark tunnels beneath the castle and interrupting their wedding saves the shepherdess and defeats the miserable King at the hands of his own Kingdom's works except instead of a clock tower taking him out in the king of the Mockingbird it's a weird French Mobile Suit regardless this is roughly how the story of the castle of cagliostra plays out Lubin is a chimney sweep and remembers Clarice from the first time he broke into the castle to try and unravel the secret of the goat bills Clarice is the shepherd asks and falls in love with him after he promises to help her escape the count acts as the king and wishes to marry Clarice to reveal an ancient treasure which requires both of their family's rings to unlock and jig and goemon zenagata and Fujiko are the chimney sweeps assorted friends who help him in the shepherdest to thrown the vile count I mean King but because this is Lupine III in Miyazaki is at its Helm all of these fundamental very basic classical roles within its story are given an exorbitant amount of depth managing to capture the many interweaving character Dynamics with a great deal of authenticity and warmth also and this is a little convoluted the version of the king that hunts them down in the king the Mockingbird is actually a painting as well he does away with the real king at pretty much the beginning of the story so it doesn't actually change much but it's important to note that the Duke of cagliostra's questionable end in the Count's present rule over the kingdom aren't new additions either the predominant change here is that both versions of the king in glamal's tale were basically the same guy and nobody liked either whereas our daily departed Duke as far as contacts can inform us was a genuinely decent man which elevates the count stature as the big bad even further good idea Miyazaki somebody should let this guy make another movie this first shot of the count of cagliostra's Castle a dolly backwards to reveal its striking Grandeur framing it as an imposing Monument towering over the surrounding landscape below is nearly one to one how glamal introduces the castle in the king the monkey bird into very similar effect its lower levels and shrouded in Shadow while its many spiers and upper Promenade are bathed in Lush rays of sunlight but Miyazaki does glamal one better and completes the visual metaphor by introducing the count flying overhead in the lights as the boat that had recaptured Clarisse his prisoner enters a hidden port at the base of the castle side in the dark and although Auto Gyros the contraption we see the count flying in on are very much real the one that count flies isn't the design is very Loosely based off in SN case SC 700 a French prototype from World War II but its proportions in cockpit have all been changed dramatically and its propulsion now comes from a push configuration instead of the tractor it was produced with in fact this is the only non-existent fictionalized vehicle in the entire film and it's piloted by our antagonist who's meant to embody the very word deceit the count lands on a Terrace outstretched from the Castle's Edge and is greeted by his faithful servant jodo as he explained how Clarisse escaped and apologizes profusely for his carelessness informing him that she's been returned to her prison and sedated the Count's obstinence yet icy expression remaining completely unchanged throughout the entire conversation even as jodo helps him out of his flight suit and into his Red Jacket before he's dismissed and the count takes the hidden path to clarice's chamber as he slowly approaches her bed he raises her limp hand to a ring nearly identical to hers and inversely colored before realizing its opposite has seemingly vanished quickly quelling his anger and gazing out the window at the Small Castle Town below where we cut to Lupine and jegan in a Tavern studying the bluish green Crest that Clarice had left behind over a small table at the back the count is in my opinion one of the most fascinating and memorable villains in the entirety of the loop in the third Canon and I think this first scene illustrates precisely why that is because the count behaves in a way then almost none of the other popular villains real do he's not outwardly murderous until basically the last Act of the film only raising his voice so we're sort into personal violence well after he's been repeatedly thwarted he's extremely calm and wears this vaguely amused unflinching expression for almost the entirety of his screen time we never learned anything about his past beyond our inference that he caused the fire which killed the Grand Duke clarice's father and burnt down the palace he has no special disdain for Lupine or his gang or zinagata and he never falters in a certainty that his plans will succeed right up until the moment they don't Mr X Mamo paisal kyosuke Gerald Enzo Headhunter Dr Zell Lubin villains both new and old are some of the richest and most diverse characters in animation but they all tend to fit into the same vague amalgamation of behaviors so they can more readily bounce off of the antics of Lupine in the game and these are as follows extreme temperaments of Vendetta against either Lupine jig and goemon fujigo or zenagata a penchant for inordinate violence in cruelty or unhinged to lose illusions of grandeur and the count doesn't really fit any of them following zenagata's arrival of the castle after hearing Lupine III had left a calling card exclaiming that he intends to steal something from kekliostro jodo is tricked by Lupine and falls through trap door that they had originally set for him and upon learning about it the count merely laughs it off and continues to explain what he'd like his henchmen to do next between Chuckles Airmen Von diut in the pursuit of harimau's treasure rips her closest subordinates tongue out with her teeth because they couldn't stop Lupine from stealing a statue and it's the same relatively cool demeanor that the count assumes that highlights and juxtaposes the extreme malevolence kept obscured by this act painted not with his words or Expressions but the colors Miyazaki presents them with across nearly every scene the count shares with Clarisse he continuously refers to this prophecy between their two families the intertwined lineages of cagliostro and how when the dark is reunited with the light the ancient Treasure of cagliostro will be revealed and this poetic symbolism of Duality can be found all over the film in fact the first establishing shot of cagliostro after the opening credits roll lays out the two sides of this conceptual conflict clear as day in the standards of the two houses flying over the ancient portcullis Lupine and jigan are about to enter Clarice and her royal house are represented by the colors of white and blue with the counts represented by black in red the reason Fujiko wears Crimson to disguise herself as a Castle's lady in waiting the reason the vehicles from the keep are a rich Chardonnay or Vermilion are all because in the world of the castle of cagliostro this range of Hues doesn't represent warmth or Comfort but fire and indignation and everything the Castle's Shadow touches becomes enshrouded within it the interior of the castle whenever we're given a peek inside feels like an incredibly ornate but foreboding Acropolis the constant presence of Reds in frame accentuating the acute sense of impending danger not unlike Kubrick's use of the same color in eyes wide shut but just goofier the only times cooler Hues are ever prominent within the castle are in the places kept secret within it like clarice's chamber the armory in the dungeon sewer in its depths all imbued with these deep purplish undertones as if the conflict between red and blue dark and light is Raging on in the environments themselves as the story plays out and our heroes and the duchy itself couldn't be further opposite the castle and the count clarice's white gown as one could presume is representative of innocence and gentleness but miyazaki's use of white throughout the film also embodies the tonal undercurrent of its tail hope a glint of optimism and the longing for a new day to Dawn amidst the darkness while Fujiko goemon jigan zenagata and Lupine all serve as a visual ballast to the Archer lurking behind the Castle's Walls by reflecting the world outside of them blues whites yellows Browns and greens and the Divergence between this gamut of Reds and the rest of the color spectrum presented in the film is never more apparent than in the scene where the count is about to be married to Clarisse a brief moment between them before they step into the church Clarisse a prisoner of her own sedation as the count finally reveals his true colors the algid magenta of his cloak pulled back to reveal an inferno kept hidden beneath speaking of fujigo here's Fujiko something Miyazaki has always done exceptionally well throughout the many stories he's told is create strong women to help push them forward and I think the castle of cagliostro is a perfect example of this both in regards to Fujiko and Clarisse although they each Express these qualities in very different ways how miyazaki's take on women and his work in general has always been founded in an especially deep admiration for tenacity and Independence balanced by extreme empathy and this is almost entirely informed by his own mother yoshiko Miyazaki when he was just six years old she was diagnosed with a form of spinal tuberculosis which left her bedridden and frail for the rest of her life often times two sick to even hug her children and this had an especially profound impact on Hayao who is the closest with her out of her four boys in spite of her poor health though she was extremely quick-witted and strong-willed and known in the house dared go against her but this was harmonized by her immense capacity for care and warmth and this presence can be found in every one of the films Hyo has made Doula and Castle in the Sky yasuko and Totoro Sophie and hell's Moving Castle osuno zaniba lady aboshi nausicaa Toki and Ponyo is easily the most literal projection of his mother in this childhood wish for her to be freeze of by some kind of magic in any of his films and Joe he see she's composition for the woman of sunflower house where she lives was co-written by hayo himself about her it's not my time to go just yet so please let me walk just for a while oh how I'd love to dance once again just like a gentle breeze it was so personal that the first time he heard Joe he see she's recording of it he broke into tears and decided to not even keep it in the film point is Hayao miyazaki's Canon isn't just filled with but is led by these poetic interpretations of his mother and what he dreamed she could do if she'd simply been given the chance and what usually appears as one character who possesses all of her traits in his latter Works appears as two who share them in cagliostro the strong-headedness and Moxie of Fujiko in the exuberant kindness of Clarice like I said the characters of Lupine III did not begin as we know them today and it doesn't exactly take a detective to infer that Fujiko was in Far and Away the greatest need of development from the gang's inceptive appearances and Hayao Miyazaki go figure is responsible for a ton of this growth as well in the manga Cato initially introduced Fujiko as a myriad of disconnected women who kept the same name and appearance because it was faster and cheaper than creating different Lupine girls for each chapter and although she always possessed a lethal Edge this greatly limited her chances for a nuanced portrayal and how she interacted with her world and the characters within it and Mr Cato eventually realized his flaw as well and folded her in as a regular member of the cast by the time Loop in the third part one rolls around we begin to catch glimpses of her in a more Dynamic light in episodes like a Hitman sings the blues where fujiko's old partner in love interest is killed by her own hand but only to save Lupine who just saved her and in part two this evolution is even more notable up many of the stories begin to center around individual members of the gang and her range of abilities and emotional depth grows considerably within a handful of these episodes like Tutankhamun's 3000 year old curse where Fujiko is firmly in the driver's seat the entire time but these instances were still few and far between and it isn't until the castle of cagliostro that we really see this new conception of who fujikamine is come to life fujigo first appears in the same sequence as the count posing as a court lady who serves Clarice standing watch outside of her chamber but we aren't given a proper introduction to her until a bit later after Lubin and geegener followed home from the tavern and attacked by the Count's assassins in one of the most intense and brilliantly animated fights in the entire series seriously check out the way it expressed in the way Lupine and geegan hold their weapons insane anyways Fiji goes is I think my favorite introduction out of all the characters in the film because it channels this extremely on the nose Scooby-Doo energy that permeates throughout the castle complete with hidden bookshelf passages and eye holes cut into the paintings and eugiona scores for the sequences where our character or sneak around it sound exactly like Ted Nichols compositions that play throughout Scooby-Doo where are you as well come to think of it there are a lot of similarities between Lupine III and Scooby-Doo Maybe too many who am I kidding it's not like they came out the same year well okay that's just a coincidence I mean they're nothing alike Scooby-Doo is about a Ragtime group of young people who the law thinks of as delinquents wandering into extremely complex and outlandish criminal conspiracies often veering into the Realms of fantasy science fiction in the occult and then overcoming the will be villains through their use of exceptional yet Niche and peculiar talents with a countless number of follow-up series and films that make little attempt to maintain continuity or cohesion including a CG animated soft reboot release to the US in 2020 and after its debut series its main character switch from a green shirt to red wait hi no it can't be all right I don't think I can handle another Scooby-Doo related existential crisis in my lifetime so for the sake of brevity let's just say the similarities in Formula are happy little accidents but a major contributing factor as to how the two series have managed to stay relevant throughout the ages and we can just blow right past this all I was trying to say was that um this sequence is really fun because our introduction to Fujiko gets to be a spooky romp through mysterious castle where she demonstrates herself to be an equally inquisitive Thief to Lupine while establishing that she knows exactly who Lupine is and who he is not because he is not Shaggy Rogers if he absorbed the abilities of the rest of Mystery Inc through some kind of evil spell like Maxim Horvath and The Sorcerer's Apprentice soon after all our characters compete on the castle including goemon who appears immediately after Fujiko eavesdrops on the count hi glamon we cut to the Castle's Armory in one of its lower Chambers opening with this again extremely Scooby-Doo multi-plane truck shot through a Thicket of armored suits which I won't read into at all fujiko's red disguise casts against the Shadows like a match in the darkness as she comes into frame Lubin sneaks up behind her at first teasing her before revealing that it's him and they briefly catch up Lupine being his playful Love Struck self in Fujiko ever the pragmatist agreeing to tell Lupine where Clarice is being held on the condition he doesn't get in the way of her plan stealing the exact same treasure that Lupine it's set out for in the first place the secret of the goat Bells Fujiko and Lupine have an extremely complicated relationship throughout the Canon being friends enemies lovers Partners Old Flames or a combination of all five depending on the series or film and the only two constants necessary for this Dynamic to work is that Fujiko always needs to play hard to get while Lupine always needs to pursue her in spite of it and in fact Cato cites the embryonic inspiration for this dynamic in datranion in Milady de winter from Alexandra Dumas The Three Musketeers basically they're capable of having feelings for other people at least briefly but their only true loves in this world are one another and the strength of that love is directly Tethered to the fact that their Chase can ever meaningfully end even if they sometimes wanted to having tried to be married I think five or six times across the past 50 years and running this delicate balance convincingly tenderly is in my opinion the most difficult aspect of creating a truly great work within the Lupine Canon to get right and because of this difficult D some of the less inspired interpretations of their dynamic in the earlier Works relied on scapegoating Fujiko as a mostly unlikable unkind narcissist whose lupine's obsession with could only ever be understood by himself and this scene this brief reunification between them about 35 minutes in absolutely blows the trites often leaned on characterizations of her out of the water expressing at once their lighthearted affection for one another fujiko's excitement that Lupine is still alive because he'd nearly died the last time he was here in the sense that these two have known each other for what seems like a lifetime and the following scene which Fujiko appears in after Lupine leaps across the Castle's rooftops to speak with Clarice and narrowly avoids his death at the hands of the count is an affirmation of every thread this conversation implicitly sows except in this one she isn't speaking with Lupine she's speaking about him to Clarisse foreign [Music] a little side note this is also one of the only times Fujiko ever appears as a natural blonde in animation besides the secret of Twilight Gemini and the island of Assassins but in the original promotional art for part two she sometimes appears blonde as well because Mr Cato never actually decided what hair color she was supposed to have since she was technically initially dozens of different women at once doesn't really have anything to do with the story I just think it's kind of cool anyways after realizing that for anyone else to escape the castle with their lives she'll have to blow her cover Fujiko steps into Clarissa's chamber and reveals her identity as well removing the dark Crimson dress she had been wearing and uncovering the green camouflage jumpsuit she'd kept concealed underneath exchanging potentially her only chance of the cagliostro fortune to save the life of the man she loves his remarkably strange partners he inspector they're chased by and a girl she barely even knows because in miyazaki's Lupine those are fujiko's true colors in the couple episodes of part 2 that Miyazaki would later write in direct under the pen name taruki sutomu he develops this depth of character even further and Fujiko acts as a linchpin and to both stories resolutions in wings of death Albatross fujika is given a stunning two minute long sequence where she breaks free from her own captivity and subsequently beats the brakes off an entire plane's worth of villainous soldiers before Lupine and the Gang can even get there and in farewell my beloved Lupine the part 2 series finale Fujiko carries a similar responsibility to the one she bears in cagliostro recording proof of the crimes the gang have discovered busting the real criminals and helping zenagata in the process and once again saving Lupine jigan goemon and an innocent red-haired girl with an abundance of kindness in her heart it's in this episode that Miyazaki circles back to the motif that he'd begun with Clarice evolving her into a young robotics expert named Maki oyamura the daughter of a slain scientist who would then develop even further into nausicaa herself piloting an early version of the robot Guardians he would later immortalize with Castle in the Sky the first Film Studio Ghibli ever produced and all three voiced by the same actress Sumi shimamoto what's it's more not only are these the first two episodes of Loop in the third to be released on VHS Japan these were also the first two episodes to be released in the US originally as tales of the wolf and a year later as a compilation tape called Lupine III's greatest Capers check it out I even own one miyazaki's characterization of Fujiko throughout Lupine III isn't just the way most of the world was introduced to the series it's also the standard against which every subsequent work within it is measured and the countless unique and Vivid portrayals of her we've been given since then are at least partially owed to this Resolute push against the flanderization of one of the series's richest and most complex characters and to balance fujiko's bravery as it appears in her boldness Miyazaki presents Clarisse with a bravery of Another Kind every interaction between Clarisse and a member of the gang is punctuated by a gesture of selflessness or graciousness whether it's her helping Lupine and apologizing to him after they fall to trying to keep Fujiko safe as they attempt to escape to making jig and in goemon promised they'll be careful during the climactic final battle of the film Clarice is constantly doubling back into danger or staying in it longer than she should explicitly to extend kindness to a group of miscreant thieves who undoubtedly seldom receive it Clarice even spends more time facing off against our antagonist than Lupine does and in keeping with miyazaki's more broadly expressed philosophy throughout his many Works her kindness and her earnestness is never once portrayed as a weakness in fact it's anything but after Lupine is trapped and sent to the depths of the castle by the count he assures Clarice that he's still alive taunting the count by revealing that the real ring is still with him and the one he had placed back on Clarissa's finger is a fake that he'd forged earlier just before the Assassins barged into his and jegan's room Lupine explores the makeshift catacombs lined with the bodies of those who had ventured to uncover the castle of caglioster's Secrets before him before running into zinagata who'd fallen in as well zenagata yells at him for a moment but then relents real realizing they'll need each other's help if they have any hope of escaping and after disguising themselves as a pair of the counts assassins who had been sent down after them they swim to the dark heart of the castle and finally discover the source of the immense Shadow it seems to cast a counterfeiting room piled high with notes from every nation you can imagine closer to perfect than even the real things through which the Count's family hidden within the quaint duchy of cagliostro had been pulling the strings of the world stage for centuries and in a master stroke of poetic irony Lupin and zenagata set it all Ablaze after our diametric Duo make their way to the top of the castle they still accounts very much not real autogyro and fly to Clarissa's chamber back to where we left her in Fujiko just a moment ago and the first dramatic Twist of glamales the king of the Mockingbird plays out right in front of us through miyazaki's lens [Music] thank you luminous shot while reaching for the wheel of the auto gyro to help Clarice and Fujiko Escape his body falling limp against the Castle's steep roof as Clarice clamors down to its Edge and stops him from falling lying over him as his blood begins to pour off the side and yelling to jodo in the count that they'll have to kill her to harm him further after testing her medal and realizing she's telling the truth the count offers her a deal take the ring back and marry him like he planned and lupines and Agata and the Gang will be free to go Clarice obviously accepts against lupine's weakened protests and Fujiko helps her by telling her his favorite hiding spot behind his collar but then just before Clarice can hand the ring to the count zinagata soars back in a frame in the now smoldering machine and crashes down the roof of the castle before flying away with Fujiko and Lupine hanging on to its side as the count orders jodo to fire again because of course his offer was nothing but a lie fujigo Glides away Allah Terry after making sure that Lupine can hold on and goemon and jigan catch him in the Fiat 500 below while zenagata crashes into the forest beside them yelling after the tiny car that Lupine can't die until he catches him an affectionate desperation underscoring the determination in his voice this this is my favorite sequence in the entire film and it's also the first moment all seven members of our main cast get to share the animation work here is genuinely nuts the way clarice's hair and clothes blow in the gusts of wind surging upwards from the lake below the individual Stones torn from the roof is then it gotta rips down its side fujiko's delicate hold on Lupine and her softened worried expression contrasting the sarcastic words she leaves him with the intensity in his expression as he tries to stay alive as they fly away into the explosion marking the climax of the scene followed by his almost tranquil fall into the hands of his companions is enough Dynamic expression to spread across the entire duration of a lesser film yet this is only three and a half minutes of cagliostro every second of which is absolutely magnetic and the message it delivers is maybe the boldest Miyazaki ever underlines his world view in any of his works that kindness doesn't make us weak but as instead the strongest form of Bravery a person can know after Lupine is taken away he spends some time healing from his nearly fatal wound in the care of his gang in the old groundskeeper and in another flashback it's revealed that Clarice is the one who had saved him the first time he fell in cagliostro as well and in this flashback his younger self drives the ssk one of my favorite aspects of Lupine III as a series in general is the care taken in the way it handles the Trope of found family essentially a group of one Sloan characters coalescing by chance to form a surrogate kinship of fiercely loyal often roguish companions like Inuyasha or The Sopranos if it stopped halfway through and Lupine III takes this to the next level by constantly introducing these transient companions most often young women who are mistreated by the worlds we find the men who are both inducted into the family and to become catalysts for growth within it without ever actually becoming permanent additions lifting the veil just enough for us to see beyond the pretense of this group of criminals who can never trust to reveal the eager to welcome eager to learn Hearts they keep hidden beneath because our tenderly temerarious quintet extend their trust and care to others years all the time Ami iska Becky Diana Leticia Rebecca Rosetta Oleander Oscar Nix Maki Misa Maria Utica lorenza the list of characters who occupy this narrative space relative to the gang in zenagata is functionally endless and this is the same place that Clarisse occupies within cagliostra someone who isn't just elevated from the dire circumstances we meet them in but who elevates the group in turn allowing them a chance to become Kinder and more gracious people than the ones they were before altruism and goodness are treated like an infectious disease within this universe and the potency with which it spreads is never expressed more clearly than in the contrast between the Lupine we see in his past in the Lupine we're introduced to after Clarice had saved him in it which now that I think about it is maybe the castle of cagliostro's most impressive feat of all at least from a storytelling perspective that Miyazaki manages to convey genuine mortal danger to lupine third okay bear with me Lupine the third like any other cannon on the planet has a specific set of chronicled Commandments that it must obey so decreed by the main monk himself and although they're a little nonsensical rules are still rules and every writer that's ever put their pen to the series has been sworn to obey them there too rule number one the universe of Lupine III is boundless only Loosely stitched together by what we'll call a negative continuity basically there's no Cosmic inertia to anything that happens on screen because it disappears The Moment the credits roll the castle of cagliostro ends everything in it stops existing this no longer happened part 5 rolls around 39 years later and Ichiro okuichi thinks it would be fun if the gang hit out and the catacombs of the castle at the end of an episode so Clarisse de cagliostro draws breath once more but when the season comes to an end so too does she back to The Ether it all returns every series every OVA every special every film is its own independence timeline and capable of being in influenced by the events of any other unless a writer explicitly thinks it would be cool to do so it's not supposed to make sense hence the references to cagliostro as a film inside of another story's world or fujiko's background being a part of a Duo of assassins in one series and an abused runaway clone in another goemon and the origin of zintetsukan changes basically every single time they're brought up is it a combination of three swords from the legendary swordsmith kotetsuyushikane and masamune or is it a meteorite from Africa depends depends on the world you ask him in essentially the only things that change or evolve about the universe are in the abstract the way that people write the characters themselves which brings us to rule number two Lumen and zinagata and by extension the rest of the gang are never allowed to die of the interdependence of these two tenants are probably pretty immediately obvious in an interview with the Tokyo foundation in 2005 Mr Cato said that the story of Luke III can never truly end even though he literally blew them all up on an island in the last chapter of his manga because in his words I just got tired of drawing them and if I had to really end it lupine's and Agata would be equal both would fall or both would win or maybe they both just get very old and therein lies the Crux because neither of them ever do just like Tom and Jerry who kiddo had modeled the cat and mouse nature of their relationship after this dance that they're both a part of is uncompromising and everlasting the chase can never end because for one of the gang to die everyone else has to die with them then I just have to be killed they have to stay dead as well and that's almost impossible so how do you make your audience fear the cold Hand of Death when your character is effectively a god you paint them as one and then you make that God bleed when luminous finally shot a brilliant light erupts from the impact different from every other bullet that misses him before or after it this is a visual Motif found in a small handful of Works throughout the Canon established in cagliostro and it distinguishes the main cast including the villains from the surrounding world of a given tale these characters are not normal and we're not supposed to feel like they are the henchmen who'd originally pursued Clarisse modeled after the castle guards in the king the Mockingbird throw grenades and shoot their submachine guns at Lupine and jigan to standard effect a brief flash of flame and smoke but when jigan returns a volley of his own it looks like something straight out of Dragon Ball Z my man has a literal gallic gun we see this again in films like dead or alive one of the only Lupine animations that kazuhikokedo ever directly worked on where a beam of light pours out from General Headhunters goal after the gang finally manages to put a single bullet between his eyes by throwing a knife at its firing pin and again in Dragon of Doom as goemon cuts through a plane forged from the same material as zintetsuken mere seconds before a heat-seeking missile it had launched would have killed everyone in the group much like the Greek epics of Homer Within These works there's a demonstrable separation between The Mortals who occupy most of the world and the few supernaturally capable borderline demigods we follow as they roam through it in fact Lupine himself has only a few whiskers short of straight up becoming another familiar trickster Sun Wu Kong the other implicit inspiration for his character hence the face in part 2 episode 67 lupine's Journey to the West the gang literally acts out a chapter from Journey to the West traveling to a remote Mountain Kingdom ruled by two giants by the names of kinkaku and ginkaku the goldhorned king and the silverhorned King straight from the pages of Wu shengen's 16th century epic so across the entire run of Loop in the third there's only really been a few times ever where Lupine or zenagata or the others in the gang are truly convincingly close to death all coinciding with this motif of explosive beams of light functioning as extensions of the character's energies in a corporeal tangible form and all relying on the relative normalcy of their surroundings to counterweigh these almost mythical portrayals with a sense of realism in miyazaki's own words it is bound to reality the more we draw the Ordinary People the more the unusualness of our Thief can stand out and shine if we wander off and draw a Preposterous world and people instead the novelty will disappear so when Lupine Falls he falls like Achilles and it feels real but of course this can't be the end and just as a series itself had done only a few years before our gentleman Thief survives what surely should have killed him and it's with his re-emergence from this deep Slumber and his reflection upon his life having been saved by the kindness of those around him yet again that the crescendo of the castle of cagliostro is finally ready to begin as Lupine is lying in bed to regain his strength a newspaper clipping marking Clarice on the counts and pending wedding drifts through a small crack in the window of the Grant's Keeper's home where he's been taken care of since the Escape signed with the Cerise pink lips of fujiko's Kiss an invitation to Danger her bike speeding off in the distance says the determined expression Lupine had worn at the beginning of the film now fully returns to his weathered face cut to the now deposed zenagata sulking at his desk hundreds of miles away after the U.N had forced him to withdraw from the duchy for fear of revealing its Secrets while he had zero evidence of them in Fujiko alerts him of the date as well tying the plot back together in a neat little bow so that every player knows their place transition to the following day and we opened back up on the road that our introductory Chase took place on now at a standstill and filled to the brim with curious attendance to the princess's wedding their cars and buses piled high as they excitedly wait beside the road to get through jigan tricks the priest man to fishy the wedding out of taking the main path lying to him and his guards about a secret route to the castle allowing Lupine to go in his place instead after which jegan and goemon sneak in from beneath to crash the ceremony with a dummy of him jeering the count into having his assassins attack them in front of his guests and the cameras which Fujiko snuck in with posing as a reporter right after the assassin stabbed the dummy it explodes written down counterfeit bills over the ceremony and onto the shoulders of virtually everyone in attendance as lupine's echoing voice plays from a recording and explains to the people that the goat bills aren't just real but at the Count's side of the family have been making them for centuries the side of the fake Lupine being stabbed shakes Clarice from her stupor and after reassuring her that the real one is just fine Lupine and his saintly disguise steals both of the Rings right out from under the Count's nose before setting off their final battle with a bang as they escape through a window and inspectors in Agata charges in with his police the word Crescendo originally comes from classical music Italian not used in English until the late 18th century and it meant the gradual increase in loudness of the instruments during an orchestra's performance although now it's used mostly as a synonym for climax particularly those found in stories and of the many countless artists who tell them through the world of film Hayao Miyazaki has always been to me one of the most musical I think this is why his works are always so much more deeply connected to the compositions used within them than many of his peers because the films themselves flown away much more characteristic of music than anything else throughout his entire filmography there's this intuitive sense of tension and release of Dynamics in the musical sense and rather than structuring his adventures around one or perhaps two significant dramatic Peaks as many screenplays in the genre do his works are instead comprised of a multitude of short bursts each greater than the last until their final movements are an almost deafening chorus of visual and sounds think Princess Mononoke the amount of brief glints of action buffered on either side by these stretches of relative quiets and with each subsequent sequence their intensity increases in the depth of the piece between them grows this is a structure he establishes in the castle of cagliostro calm followed by restlessness followed by calm followed by restlessness but in this progressively escalating Rhythm each rise in excitement reaching beyond the last like a pendulum picking up more momentum with each swing basically if the mystery of Mamo is Maurice ravel's Bolero then the castle of cagliostro is Hayden's Symphony number 94 and each of its characters represents a different section of the orchestra as it plays one of the many unique qualities of Lupine III as a series is that for the last half a century it's really only ever had one consistent composer across all of its media barring a few exceptions this is like if John Williams scored over 40 movies in a single narrative Universe in the amount of time that he scored nine and it's allowed eugiono the ability to not only develop a very complex musical language within the Canon but to iterate upon and nurture this language with every step it takes forward and even in the small amount of time between the beginning of part 2 and the premiere of our pair of films that TMS first produced we can already see a great deal of evolution in the way the music and the series interacts with the story being told basically since each member of the gang is a caricature based on a different set of tropes from Japanese and American culture throughout the early to mid 20th century each of their Essences is represented by a different group of instruments within Yuji Ono's compositions I literally mean they are different sections of an orchestra we already know Lupine is originally James Bond mixed with Arsen lupon but as he transitioned to the world of Animation Regis began to fold in characteristics of The Lovable Rogues from the swashbuckling and crime genres as well like Errol flynnis Captain Blood and David Nivens as the Phantom from The Pink Panther and as the enigmatic leader of the group it's only fair that he'd be represented by the lead instruments which most often carry The Melody of a given piece particularly Within These works so flutes saxophones trombones Keys vocals and violins all became lupine's musical domain Fujiko is a Bond girl with a mini iconic fim fatals of the past such as Elsa Bannister from the lady from Shanghai Phyllis dietrickson from double indentity and the Annie Laurie star from gun crazy but she's also lupine's opposite number so she's musically characterized by instruments which aren't just culturally hardwired represent women of mystery but often accompany or directly contrast his Harps cellos musical glasses clarinets pianos and glockenspiels always mean the same thing fujigominee is on the scene goymond is a descendant of the sengoku period folk hero Ishikawa goemon who is a Robin Hood like figure that got boiled alive for trying to assassinate a warlord and as such he takes on the characteristics of numerous different folk heroesque samurai from the chanbara cinema of Japan think zatoichi the blind swordsman sanjoro and Miyamoto Musashi because of this he's identified in the score by traditional Japanese instruments namely shakuhachis shinobus ryutekis and kotos jegan on the other hand represents the opposite extreme of the spectrum being the only American in the group but sharing a common foundation with goemon as jegan was specific based on James Coburn's character Brit from The Magnificent Seven who is himself based on seiji miyaguchi's character kuzo from Seventh Samurai basically he's the strong silent type and this marble smoking red-blooded son of the West has got the mannerisms of Clint Eastwood in the gunslingen of the Waco kid so he's represented by the most red dead ass instruments there are trumpets harmonica's acoustic guitars and some good old-fashioned whistling and finally we have zenagata the sweetest little bear of the bunch who is every bumbling yet gifted detective there ever was rolled into one we're talking inspector lestrade James jab Jacques Clouseau the list goes on and he's also based on an inspector who is the hero of numerous series and film set in the Edo period of Japan produced in the 30s through the 60s zinagada heiji a policeman who catches criminals by throwing coins at them with deadly speed hence the zeny part of their names meaning coin in Japanese then the jute zinagada occasionally carries with him the traditional weapon of Ido period police including in this final battle in cagliostro pair this Immaculate pedigree for comedy in action with a remarkable emotional depth found more commonly in the leading men of the noirs and melodramas in the early 40s which he's visually modeled after particularly Humphrey Bogart and the Maltese Falcon in Casablanca and were left with arguably the most crucial musical role of them all as the only real constant in the lives of our Vagabond thieves he's identified by the instruments that not only traditionally exclaimed Strokes of Comedy but those which keep the rest of the orchestra on Beat the drums the symbols in the double bass equal parts serious and completely facetious depending on the context of Any Given scene and throughout the castle of cagliostro we can see how the music sort of talks to itself using these different identities to communicate its shifting tonality in the appearances of its characters like here check out the way Yuji Ono introduces zenagata and Lupine to each other in the catacombs before either of them say a word [Music] foreign [Music] symbols and snares then accompanied by flutes and strings and when the game come back together at the point we left the mats and the wedding erupts into an all-out brawl with them in its Center all these individual musical identities coalesce into a variation on the main theme of the series complete with zenagata diegetically singing its chorus thank you man anyways with the Rings now in lupine's possession the gang splits off into their own duets with Lupine and Clarice fleeing the castle jig and goemon staying behind to fight the assassins and cover their escape and Fujiko and zinagata commandeering the News cameras to reveal the printing room they'd set fire to earlier putting the final nail in the coffin of the Count's legitimacy as the count himself chases Lupine and Clarice to the massive ancient Clock Tower which stands across the lake overlooking the castle and the lands that surround it Lupine puts the two rings together and with clarice's help deciphers the worn down inscription along their side revealing that the secret treasure of cagliostro that the count had been so cryptically referring to is unlocked at the peak of the very Tower there stood directly beneath and so our Final Duel between Lupine clarison himself takes place as they scale the treacherous Clockwork housed within although the rooftop rescue is my personal favorite sequence in the film I think this is its most visually striking and it's also the one for which I think it deserves the most praise the shifts in moment him as Clarice Lupine the counts and his men leap between gears constantly alternating directions as they scale the Maze of interlinked sprockets and water wheels narrowly avoiding being crushed at every turn is that once anxiety-inducing and remarkably soothing to watch on a mechanical level there's an almost fluid-like quality to the movements of the characters in contrast to the solidness with which the cogs continue to turn mirroring the poetic dichotomy of the series itself these Heroes perpetually stuck out of time and seemingly cosmically defined to its flow scaling a grand monuments erected in exaltation of its inevitable course If Ever I could summarize Lupine III with a shot it would be this one foreign further upwards Lupine decides to leave Clarice on a Ledge near the tower's Peak so that he can turn back and try to delay the approaching henchmen but just as he does the count finally catches up to them rising in a frame from the darkness below and thrusting towards Lupine as the hero and villain of our tenuously contorted fairy tale finally face off against one another exchanging glancing blows as they awkwardly struggle to stay atop the innumerous pieces of moving Clockwork which surround them and after dodging a swipe from the count sword it's Lupine who initially falters triggering a new set of gears and falling below the stage of their fight narrowly avoiding death as he struggles out from between the tremendous Machinery Clarice climbs out on the clock face to escape the count but the count quickly follows holding his swords to her neck as he explains that the cagliostro bloodline will end with him alone but just as he's about to kill her Lupine reappears and offers a final bargain of his own a direct reflection of our previous brush with death upon the the Castle's roof clarisse's life for The Secret Of The Treasure of cagliostro and the Rings which hold them and should the count fail to agree Lupine will have to kill him the perspective work in the scene is insane I don't think many people understand the sheer difficulty of making the medium and close shots we cut to throughout this appear natural but the fact that miyazaki's team was able to illustrate poses like these in motion without bringing any particular Focus to them when the characters quite literally could not be stood on a Slimmer margin for error is incredible I feel like every second of this film there's something different to gush about some other remarkable piece of what seems like magic that hadn't occurred to me in a first or second or even sixth watch like after the counter portrays their offer again because of course he would the way the camera Contours Around the Clock hand here and Lupine spins from his feet rather than his actual center of gravity accentuating the force of the reaction itself as if they're rotating the camera with the subject without actually rotating it and these applications of fundamentally simple movement syntax techniques executed with such Precision that they appear much more complicated than they are can be found all over the film also this finale and the other nighttime sequences dotted throughout its run time are absolutely gorgeous their colors managing to remain so vibrant and Lush in spite of how dark their settings are lends these moments an almost dreamlike quality and this is due to the fact that in the four short months the team had to make the film they produced all of it on oversized cells and then shot them in a modified format of this division that they nicknamed anime Vision so the film could be projected at a much higher level of brightness than usual and retain a significant amount more detail in its print a technique employed in both cagliostro and the Mystery of Mama further accentuating their already palpable Bond as mirrors to one another's worlds for every one detail or moment I've chosen a highlight there's countless dozens more I wish I could if not for trying to save at least a little bit of time Clarice once again stops the count from finishing Lupine off throwing the both of them off the side of the Tower process and as they hang from his sword embedded deep within its Stones The Count kicks her down and sends her plummeting toward the lake that the ancient Tower looms above as Lupine Sprints down its facade and leaps through the air to catch her culminating in what is perhaps the single most iconic shots of the entire film and leaving the count above to climb back onto the ledge alone and as he scales the clock Tower's face and places the two rings into their grooves carved centuries ago to house them the crescendo of the castle of cagliostro plays its final notes offering us one last Monumental refrain and following the symbol crash of Lupine and Clarice plunging headfirst into the water below the count finds his fate sealed just as the king in glamor's tale had found his at the hands of a monolith which represents the kingdom itself and the great clock marks the end to our villain with the ringing of its Bells as his hands strike midnight yet another ruler's flame extinguished by the unalterable passage of time and with our story nearly approaching its end the secret of the castle of cagliostro the real secret is finally revealed foreign the treasure that the count had so desperately been searching for the treasure he had tried to kill so many to reach never knowing what it was that he sought had been right beneath him the entire time proof that someone else was here long long ago as Lupine and Clarice stroll through the preserved Roman city the first time in the film the frame is dominated by clarice's color hope while they're dwarfed beside the Colossal works of marble surrounding them Lupine says that this is a treasure for all of mankind and not something that can be taken or kept to oneself not even by a master Thief and I think the same can be said for this film and the series that it's introduced to so many people too regardless of tone regardless of style of era or director or jacket color Lupine III is a universe built upon and continuously driven by the idea that preserving and celebrating the works from our past whether it be by reflection or incorporation or tribute is worth it and it's so infectious in this charge so gleaming in its joy and so singular in its execution of it that it feels impossible not to share it or to restrain it behind conventional rules of continuity or cohesion or copyright it's an ancient city crystallized at the bottom of a lake or the unwavering Summit of a mountain dotted with flags from the countless artists who once climbed it after all Nebuchadnezzar wasn't the only King who buried letters under Babylon Lupine III's impact shifted the tectonic plates of animation and helped change what people assumed were its limits and the medium has continued to transform in the numerous aftershocks that have followed Cowboy Bebop wouldn't exist without Lupine III Spike Spiegel jet black and Faye Valentine are Lupine jigan and fujiko's characterizations from part one vicious is goemon the Ageless antagonist from episode 6 Sympathy for the Devil is literally dressed up as Green Jacket Lupine and Spike's ship the swordfish 2 is modeled after the gyrocopter from this movie momora Oshi was originally supposed to write and direct the legend of the gold of Babylon but he was removed from the project because his screenplay was too outlandish exploring Concepts like discovering the fossil and angel in a mad architect who tries to build a Tower of Babel in the heart of Tokyo ideas Oshi would later put to use in the development of patlabor Angel's egg and Coast in the shell in the early 80s French Animation Studio DIC were supposed to co-produce a spin-off series with TMS set in the distant future called Loop in the eighth but because Maui leblanc's estate requested an insane amount of money to distribute it in the west they scrapped the project instead and DIC retold the assets into a series built around a design for zenagata's descendant to recoup the costs Inspector Gadget the clock tower fight in cagliostro is replicated almost bar for bar in The Great Mouse Detective the film that gave newly hired Michael Eisner and Jeffrey katzenberg the confidence to delay shutting down Walt Disney Animation altogether and jump started the Disney Renaissance which in turn saved the studio hideo Kojima based Solid Snake off of lupine's personality and David Hader would rise to fame dubbing both of them April O'Neil is modeled after Fujiko and cagliostro and farewell my beloved Lupine Professor lone bock in wings of death Albatross was the inspiration for Dr Eggman and Lupin III's characters have made appearances across every generation of the medium macros USA at sura fully JoJo's Bizarre Adventure Animaniacs DuckTales Lupe Fiasco's first untouched the sky if you translate the digi code on oryxmon's neck it spells it a quote from cagliostro chunk even plays a rare LaserDisc cabinet made from composite footage of cagliosto in the mystery of Mamo called Cliffhanger in The Goonies oh hey that sequence looks familiar and maybe it's just because I've spent the last eight months immersing myself in its world but I can't help but feel like Lupine III still isn't beloved enough still hasn't been given enough flowers for what it's accomplished for what it's inspired eight months uh as Lupine and Clarisse are stood Atop The Hill beside the ancient ruins the cagliostio had kept preserved watching the Interpol troops drift quietly through the air as they parachute in the small duchy Clarice begs Lupine to take her with him to which Lupine replies don't be ridiculous you finally made it out into the sunlight haven't you I've been I've been working on this video for half a year of my life now and I'm starting to think the only reason I haven't finished it yet is that maybe I'm afraid to back in May I told everybody that I was working on a new project one that a lot of people had requested and you'll never guess what it was about Lupine III the castle of cagliostro I tweeted about it I promised my patrons I hyped it up to friends everything YouTubers are supposed to do but then after I'd gotten started I got sick covet and I super thought I just brushed it off if I got it you know which I understand is just hubris on my part but I was double faxed chilling still staying inside a lot doing what a good gamer ought to I thought I definitely won't get it but if I do it'll probably suck for a couple days and I'll go back to feeling fine but that's not really what happened I legit felt like I was gonna die the first couple days like actually I had the highest temperature I've ever had in my adult life and my asthma was beating the absolute brakes off me so it took all my breath just to laugh or to talk so I sort of stopped doing a lot of either for a while but they went away pretty average window of time I I think my fever stopped after like a week and some change and after three I could sleep normally again I didn't feel all shivery all the time but some things didn't go back to normal like that uh I looked this up later and I guess it's called long covid which by the way nobody could have come up with a better name we couldn't call this like Fox die or the Scarlet rot or something anyways all the muscles in my chest still hurt for the next month like it hurt to pick things up or to take breaths or to sigh or to stretch or TL speaking of which my lung capacity was totally shot as well if you've ever fractured your ribs because a scooter kid cut you off of the skate park it sort of felt like that and worst of all I had this crazy like brain fog thing and no matter what I did I just couldn't shake it for like two and a half months after I got sick I couldn't stay focused I couldn't write I sucked at taking notes I would forget my point halfway through a paragraph and in my personal life I was mixing up people's flights forgetting if I paid bills I mean I've always been a little all over the place but this was different I feel like I was indefinitely mentally jet lagged and tired but in this nebulous intangible sort of a way that I couldn't pinpoint I never felt like that in my entire life and as stupid or or weak as it probably sounds in retrospect I was pretty scared the prevailing piece of advice I'd heard was as long as it doesn't get worse just sit tight and bear with it you're young you know the hospitals are packed it'll probably go away or whatever so I just sat around by myself watching Lupine III all day trying to write something down anything at all and hoping that tomorrow maybe I'll feel normal again and after what felt like forever I finally started to thankfully but my excitement that I didn't end up taking a lifetime debuff to breathing or that I hadn't sustained a minor brain injury or something quickly sunk into this immeasurable feeling of dread like a terrible impending doom had just washed over me because I realized I had nothing to show for it the last handful of months I'd been gone like like I owed people for me feeling sick which feels stupid but I did I I kind of did this is my job I love it and it's a privilege but I also need it to live and it felt like I was just watching it Wither in front of me as the Sands began to sweep over top like I was asleep at the wheel but I could still feel the car veering off the road I couldn't hold up my end of the bargain and that made me feel I don't know guilty I promised you something and I ended up not being able to deliver it at the time and my head was so full of snow that when it finally melted when whatever ideas I'd originally had for this had melted away with it so if you're wondering where I've been I've been trying to make it right deleted everything I had and started the project over again it's New Year's now this is probably the dozenth time I've written this at this point I don't know I lost track what sense does that make think about it the nature of a book is communicating something and we would think we would communicate it to some reader but this is not going to be published it's written to himself what makes a man read a book to himself 322 episodes 404 including the part 2 dub 27 specials nine ovas 14 movies a musical countless interviews documentaries two autobiographies in a nearly endless list of associated Works later I'm still worried that you're gonna figure out that I'm stupid an imposter that I don't know how to make stuff anymore or never could to begin with that everything before this was just a fluke but that reality can't exist until I finish it so I just haven't been it's just the expectations of whatever this was supposed to be became so insurmountable in my own ahead there's nothing I could make that would justify half a year of work or or anticipation but I swear I spent so much of it trying I've always assigned my value to whatever ability I have to entertain others or to make things that do because I've never felt like I have much myself it's just me the person so when I Retreat for making things I retreat in my personal life as well only coming around when I have something new to show because I'm worried if I don't people I really like will get tired of me I've spent months now ducking messages ignoring sponsors because I've just been chipping away at this never-ending video that is ever more likely gonna get stealed away in a vault somewhere like the Ark of the Covenant or the Noid after that guy took those Domino's employees hostage in the 80s so it's just keep throwing myself at it this wall you know and questioning if it's even worth it it would have like die hard Loop in the third fans don't like that I pronounced the name Lupine instead of lupon or rupon because I watched the FUNimation dubs when I was younger or think that I'm not a real fan because I didn't mention a live-action film from 1974 or assumed just because I cut a piece of information out of the script so it flows better that means I simply never learned it you know I know that hayo Miyazaki was only made director of cagliostro as a favorite of Yasuo utsuka for helping him on the Future Boy Conan I do it's just a cumbersome piece of information to stick somewhere I've put as much of myself into this as I can and I still feel like it isn't enough like I'm playing a trick on you or like I need to defend myself against this made-up person who's just a combination of every negative comments I've ever gotten when they probably would have found a reason to dislike it anyways I'm not very good at processing change or the prospect of it it's something I've always struggled with and I think that's why the more time I spent with Lupine III the more it became a source of comfort for me in spite of how stressed I felt about it this world that is at once in a constant state of flux and yet never has to change at all I find peace in things I can make knowable I've always coped with anxiety that way and making videos has given me an outlet for it finding subjects to sink into and then trying to learn everything there is to know about them and now I know every frame of cagliostro goemon is actually in the opening of the film before he's reintroduced in his entrance to the duchy his head pokes out in the back of the Fiat 500 in the shot the planes that fly overhead during the ending sequence or post World War II era twin Tales Fairchild c119s also known as flying box cars during the car chase at the beginning of the film Clarissa's license plate changes values between cuts f73 F14 then back to f73 luminum does a bolt by turning it clockwise instead of counterclockwise during the tower fight and Richard epcar was miscredited as goemon on the original anime stub when he was actually played by Michael Gregory but I have to finish this eventually [Music] right but then it'll be out of my hands and I have to just move on and if it sucks then people will think I spent all this time on nothing and then I'll feel like that too but I can't stay here any longer so I'm done this is my final draft and if it turns out that it's mid then I'm sorry I guess but I need you to know that I tried to make it back out into the sunlight I should have finished this a long time ago Lupine III is my favorite animated series of all time and not just because it gave me a lot of warmth when my world was feeling a little cold it's fantastic genuinely all of it I implore you if you take anything away from this at all please let it be that the castle of cagliostro isn't a solitary Masterpiece but a masterpiece among masterpieces the mystery of Mamo is breathtaking you should watch it part one is one of the primordial building blocks of what we think of as anime today and deserves a ton of respect and part two is genuinely infinitely re-watchable seriously it kind of is Japanese Scooby-Doo with guns I've probably watched it all the way through at least 10 times and that was before I had an insanely long video to write about it part three in the woman called fujigominee are some of the most tonally dissonant entries in a fictional Universe I've ever seen but they're both brilliant all the same part four and five are from my money one of the best runs of anime in the past decade every character is lovable every episode is electric island of Assassins is just cool Lupine the first is like the greatest greatest hits album ever constructed and princess of the breeze is the most Miyazaki non-miyazaki Lupine film ever made complete with pirates and cool airships prison of the past crisis in Tokyo jegan's gravestone and dead are alive are just genuinely wonderful action films irrespective of Their audience has any knowledge of the series and part 6 has a better written Sherlock Holmes story than the past five adaptations of the character I've tried to watch and he's not even the main character of it I love it and I'm genuinely thankful to Miyazaki and everyone else who worked on cagliostro for giving me a glimpse all those years ago in into this world that I've now spent so much time in even if I might have overstayed my welcome slightly Miyazaki once said there is no unchangeable or Untouchable image of Lupine III which we are bound to it can take anything we can throw anything at it it encompasses everything if there have been 100 people at its Helm 100 different lupins exist as well but I think that's why the castle of cagliostro is such a perfect movie to me not because I think it's been constructed without flaw or that it's the only true way to write Lupine or something stupid like that but because miyazaki's Lupine is a perfect introduction to the other 99 a story that began with paintings that had come to life made into a film in which every frame looks like one a gateway to the world of wonder unfettered by the passage of time and raised high with pieces from the many opuses that came before it I think that's why the sequence as it comes to its end has always felt so striking in the context of the body of work to which it belongs songs an ancient Treasure of venerable Stone a monument suspended in time preserved for the world to see by the many Keepers who had come to rule it but along with it a reminder that even our greatest works must someday be reclaimed by times inevitable passage a tremendous wave washing the past of the castle of cagliostro clean so that the next Steward to take up its charge May rebuild with whatever is Left Behind almost everyone involved with that original run of Lupine that would go on to give two of the greatest directors in living memory their start and light a fire within the medium of Animation that continues to bring Bright To This Day sadly aren't here anymore kazuhikokado yasuoitsuka Isa takahata atsushi yamatoya yaso Yamada kiyoshi Kobayashi chika otsuka goronaya and eventually as much as it pains me to admit it there's going to come a day where Hayao Miyazaki won't be either but a piece of him of all of them will continue to live on in the stories that they've inspired just as rokembol and AJ Raffles and are send lupon and the Phantom and James Bond have lived on within their own even if their names someday fade from memory even if their countless Creations have all Fallen back into the sea somewhere in the works that have yet to come and in the foundations Left Behind lies proof that they were here in one of the greatest animated canons the world has ever known Lupine III as goemon and jigan pull up behind him Lupine says his goodbyes and as they drive off into the distance Fujiko and zinagata aren't far behind and the castle of cagliostro reaches its end the same way that it began as a glimpse into a world of sound and light where anything and everything is possible a world where the past lives on in our character's excitement for what's still yet to come maybe the true meaning of Legacy was never a castle on the water or a great City in the desert beside it but an optimistic letter to the Future buried in the foundations beneath have a good night sorry it took me so long to write you back I had to pull some people out of a burning building this morning [Music] okay on with the show [Applause] [Applause] [Music] well I guess the batteries are finally running low huh no he's being lazy is what he's doing that's right he probably went to the store to get some more food for his demons who is the drizzle yeah who is me oh I wish he wanted you to have to eat special drizzle phones who the hell do you know in Japan he works through me no one touches any of my stuff what did you say to him awesome that's the sign of My Blood [Music] [Music] hey thanks for watching big big big shout outs to my patrons uh especially these guys and a very special thank you to Tobias egold miskaban Bob Saget Nicholas Esposito Aurora Fatalis Luis concado altrix Wrights Cypress husky Christian Carlos Patrick Nolan decadently decayed Stromboli bones Jorge miramontes Dylan doombun Omega LOL error infernal kalista Alice Charlemagne Clemens Jason Tierney caglioster video Ryan donoho Danny Franklin me dude blooded 108 Dunkle dubs Atif Zaman Maxfield Anderson falcus Evan Kimball Hari Patton Nini Eric Abrams Josh Haney Mitch mcarat Matthew rudridge edgy 1700 mini tantrum Ben Samuels DK combo King deadpoolio Alexander the barely average Lexi ninja Henrik Johann little lordling Alex Callan Dr mausin Walter Shepard blue Zhang his Royal nebs Fred Sakai best stressed red Alfred daltimus Prime Joseph fieldseth Mark Kent Daniel Cadwell Windex ex Anonymous Jeremy Wolfgang basugasu bakuhatsu bakumatsu Dennis Phoenix Lloyd weldy gamena Jonah Shetler Hunter Bernard yonderboy Gerhard Ackerman Jaden Gilmore if you're reading this you're cute Luke Blevins Josh Milburn Tyler Bloom Horace Hooper Daniel Richardson Ignacio Cowles Izzy Lido locks and LD Hugh Kennedy Garrett on LSD micro Symphony Carson wall Twilight researcher Joe Kenner for The Horde zarya Bushido boy Nick Baldi Jack Barber or Murad Nico hatch Felix Leonardo Schmidt Enrique Nieto JoJo Jason Scott Luke Jenkins patches artollian night night blade Lord yida Nicholas Bloom Kristoff Taylor ghostly Birds McKenna gadiant Solomon Bell Almighty dwarf Raphael Da Silva chance thrash disembodied Lego head Aidan sales William broulon Daniel D Jake pitch Fox Hunt fog Knights Peyton Williams that one french guy Nicholas Lewis no take candle ssgt snuggles solo gants scribe scribbles Albert Lee clunt gompy neon stalja Tyler Eaton Ethan Boyd Yuri voice Tyra Rogers Ram liko Grady Dante Cantone Luke had Ivan dulwich from jacket Alliance 2 butter Shield arcwing Kane King Louis alphyx Ryan Boonstra Muhammad al-zoffrey Avid kyber straffan Nathan Robin amini Trista Marino Joshua kotomole Blake Demby Hao Shen Mumble core Max and yolaine without your guys support I wouldn't be able to do this and I'm extremely extremely grateful for that thank you [Music] only