Screw tragic backstories!
A/N: Spoilers for the entire series are in this post.
Overall,
The Woman Called Fujiko Mine was disappointing to me, mostly because of how it ended. It has a really cool animation style and
Lupin III characters are always fun, but the plot emphasis on unraveling the traumatic backstory involving owl people and human experimentation that ultimately lead to nothing nearly breaks the show. A ton of time is spent on this topic, so when Fujiko is having her "F*** you" moment at the expense of the person who really did go through these horrible things, it feels like it's directed at the viewer as well. The entire show is based on a red herring, so it doesn't feel good when a show that billed itself as "the real story of Fujiko Mine" turns out to be a lie.
And yet... I can't completely hate what it's done here. The sob story background was a huge cliche, so I wasn't really fond of it even when I believed it was true. What is interesting is the idea that Fujiko is Fujiko, regardless of her past. (I realize that statement is another anime cliche as well as obvious, but just roll with me here.) She was a thief long before she was brainwashed into believing that she was tortured in her past, so there's no reason to think that she would've behaved differently if she'd never encountered the owls. In way, this is pretty awesome; giving her a horrible childhood as an excuse for what she does with her life is taking the easy way out. Fujiko is a thief because she feels like it! No more, no less.
That's the brilliance and the problem with
The Woman Named Fujiko Mine. The show was supposed to explore her backstory, only to conclude that it doesn't matter because it doesn't inform who she is. It's a cool statement, but it makes you wonder why they even made the show in the first place.
Images from Hulu.com.
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