and
When it comes to animation, few names entail a level of respect and admiration like Hayao Miyazaki. In a market dominated by Disney and Dreamwork’s forever war, the work of Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli have been the outlier, one of the few to chip away at the saccharine stigma the U.S. has when it comes to animation, like his peers Don Bluth and Ralph Bakshi. Even more noteworthy, he is the only director of anime (or anime movies, to stop any naysayers) to hold any sort of regard in America. People who have never watched anime, maybe even shit talk it when asked, will often give a pass to Miyazaki’s films. That’s power my friends, more than any one of your Dragon Balls or Narutos.
While he is generally known for his original works, like Spirited Away and My Neighbor Totoro, Miyazaki’s first major work was actually an adaptation of the popular Japanese comic Lupin III, which in anime terms generally means using the characters in original stories rather than taking something from the comics. Created by mangaka Monkey Punch in 1967 for the magazine Weekly Manga Action, Lupin III detailed the adventures of the titular character, Arsene Lupin III, the cocky, perverted descendant of the master thief Arsene Lupin (the French equivalent of Sherlock Holmes, sort of a proto-pulp hero). Alongside his team of reprobates: eagle eyed marksman Jigen, master swordsman Goemon and femme fatale Fujiko Mine, Lupin frequently engages in acts of high risk, high reward and high profile theft and espionage, always one step ahead of his arch-nemesis, Interpol Officer Zenigata. Manga gave way to a popular anime series, which eventually transitioned into a full-blown franchise with several films and OVAs to its credit. What Lupin eventually became may not exactly resemble Monkey Punch’s original series, but he’s still pretty awesome, and he’s carved himself a nice place in pop culture to boot. Japan’s very own crazy James Bond.
The Castle of Cagliostro, though not an ‘original’ story, still carries that distinctive Miyazaki flair that we would come to know and love from his later films. While on a visit to the Duchy of Cagliostro, a tiny nation known in criminal circles as the counterfeiting capital of the world, Lupin and Jigen come to the aid of a runaway bride, on the run from shadowy goons. The bride, as it turns out, is Lady Clarice, the last surviving member of the royal family, and the goons are employed by the Count of Cagliostro, the current regent and huge asshole. Seems that there is a secret treasure connected to the royal rings, and by marrying Lady Clarice the Count gets to solidify his rule and get access to the treasure. It’s a job with little to gain and much to lose, considering the death traps, security systems and ninja guards, but the master thief just can’t sit idly by while there is a lady in need, can he? Add to that a chance to depose the ruler of a sovereign nation and create an international incident, and it’s like icing on the cake. Go big or go home, it’s the Lupin way.
I don’t know what it is with Miyazaki’s films, but they always fill me with a sense of nostalgia. It’s the same with Cagliostro. It’s not about the bittersweet process of growing up like Kiki’s Delivery Service or Totoro, and yet in a way it kind of is. By 1979 Lupin the Third, Jigen and the others had already existed for over 10 years, characters which to a lot of people embodied the fun and seemingly endless days of their childhood. By taking those characters and placing them in a classic archetypal framework, the hero rescuing a princess from an evil ruler, Miyazaki is telling the audience a modern day fable, substituting characters like Robin Hood or Lancelot with Lupin and Jigen. It gives the film a timeless quality, and it imbues the characters with this sense of magic, this wonder that so often seems to leave us as we grow older. Yet that magic, the unshakeable belief that Lupin will always get away, that Zenigata will always chase him, it’s...comforting, I guess is the way to describe it. Comforting to think that, like with Indiana Jones or the original Star Wars, the world was this amazing exciting place, and that heroes really did exist and adventure was always around the corner. That’s the world I want to live in, and that’s the world that has been taken from me over the years, to be replaced with this ugly cancerous cynicism about politics and the environment and life. I hate it, I honestly fucking hate it. But when I watch this movie, when I watch any Miyazaki movie, I get to remember what it was like, and live in that moment for a while.
Halloween is a holiday all about remembering that feeling, I think. Like the rest of these movies though, it’s just an excuse to watch something I haven’t seen, so decide for yourself whether it fits your criteria. Either way, it’s recommended.
No comments:
Post a Comment