Lupin - Ice, Robot Part 1

Some episodes of Lupin are better than others-- While most are light-hearted adventure/comedy stories, some tend to be more dramatic, and some are pure comedy. "Ice, Robot" is a particularly crazy comedy-oriented episode, from 1978. It has a very bizarre premise, and it brings in a whole bunch of one-shot characters without really introducing them. The plot twists and turns with no sense of logic. I love it.

But the best thing about the episode is the art. The posing and staging are really cool, and better than most episodes. I don't know the details of how Japanese shows are produced, other than that it's somewhat different from Western ones, but it seems like there was this one particular Lupin director or animator or layout artist or something, who had a really unique visual style. He seems to have been the one who did the designs for the 1978 "Secret of Mamo" Lupin movie, although the poses in the movie aren't consistently great like this episode, so I don't know if he actually did the keys for it. If anybody reading this knows who's responsible for the designs in Mamo, let me know! It may have been the director, or the animation director, layout artist... I don't know what exactly he did, but he's good.


Anyway, back to the episode at hand. This guy seems to have done this whole episode, as almost every shot is great...

Right away it starts with a neat visual idea-- the phone ringing with the establishing shot inside of it.





Something I find funny about this episode is the idea that Lupin, Jigen and Goemon all live in same house together.


I like this composition. The characters in the room frame the doorway, which is itself a frame for the guy coming in, which is what we're supposed to be looking at.


These are a couple of nice 'establishing shot' pan backgrounds. I guess they're really more for mood than exposition.



I'll post stills from the rest of the episode later today.