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Fujiko Mine (峰 不二子, Mine Fujiko) is a professional criminal, burglar and confidence trickster. In The Castle of Cagliostro Fujiko states that she and Lupin had been lovers, but also that she ended the relationship.

She routinely makes deals with Koichi Zenigata or Lupin's current enemy in an attempt to gain freedom or loot, which causes Jigen and Goemon to distrust her, since they know that she will obviously double-cross them in a heist to claim what they're after for herself. While Lupin normally can outsmart Fujiko, she can make off with some or all of his loot on occasion.

Creation[]

Fujiko Mine was created to add more of a female presence to Lupin III. Her name was inspired by a picture of Mount Fuji, Monkey Punch added the -ko female suffix to create her first name, and chose "Mine" for her family name because of its meaning as "summit". Originally meant to fill a 'Bond girl' role, Fujiko quickly became a bigger part of the series. At the beginning of the series, many of the women Lupin encounters are all named Fujiko but are treated as different characters from chapter to chapter. This concept was later changed to make Fujiko a single character who changes style frequently. Monkey Punch believes the characters of Lupin and Fujiko are similar to the characters of D'Artagnan and Milady de Winter, and describes them as "Not necessarily lovers, not necessarily husband and wife, but more just having fun as man and woman with each other".

Appearance[]

Unlike the other characters where they wear the same clothes with only color changes between series, movies and TV Specials, Fujiko has a variety of outfits. In some of the TV Specials and Daisuke Jigen's Gravestone, she wears a cat suit that she zips up, inspired by the one Marianne Faithfull wore in Girl on a Motorcycle. Outside of the manga, Fujiko usually appears to be a brunette. In The Castle of Cagliostro, The Secret of Twilight Gemini, and Walther P38, she is a blonde as well as promotion materials and the second/third openings of Lupin the Third Part II despite being a brunette in the series. In Lupin the Third Part IV and Fujiko Mine's Lie, her hair has highlights where it is light at the top while being darker at the bottom. Some manga and soundtrack covers feature her as a blonde or as a brunette as Monkey Punch was inconsistent when it came to her hair color. Her most consistent physical feature is her brown eyes.

Fujiko is occasionally shown to wear glasses. It is unknown whether she wears it for a fashion accessory or has vision problems where she swaps between glasses and contact lenses.

Her most notable physical feature is her absurdly big breasts, which were reduced in size in the latter half of Part 1.

When Monkey Punch wrote her as one character in Shin Lupin III, she was distinguished by long fluffy mid-1970s hair.

Personality[]

Fuji betray

Fujiko's response when asked why she betrayed Lupin

While Fujiko is not part of Lupin's gang, she often works with them or tries to beat them to a heist. Her principal tactic is to stick with Lupin and company, and then double-cross them right as their goal is in sight. Frequently, she finds it necessary to betray Lupin to get close to the enemy, then after ingratiating herself into his trust will acquire the swag and escape (rarely, she will help to extricate Lupin, Goemon and Jigen for the trouble she put them into as if to atone). Although, Lupin easily forgives these betrayals. In the 1995 movie Farewell to Nostradamus, Lupin carefully treats the amnesiac Fujiko, hoping she gets better as he "looks forward to her betrayals".

Fujiko is an excellent shot, her favorite weapon being a Browning M1910, typically holstered in her garter. In recent years, she's revealed superb martial arts skills, capable of rendering an attacker twice her weight unconscious with a single blow. She is also a master of disguise and accents, being able to speak dozens of foreign languages in addition to her native Japanese. Like the other members of Lupin's team, she is able to pilot virtually any land, sea, and air vehicle, with her personal preference being a conventional Kawasaki motorcycle. She can be very promiscuous when necessary to complete a job and has kissed and even slept with different men for information or to escape a situation. The 2012 anime series implies heavily that Fujiko is bisexual. Whether this is simply another means to get what she wants or her actual orientation has not been made clear.

Jigen despises Fujiko and sees her showing up as a sign of rough times ahead, although despite this, in the original manga he was still one of her suitors. Goemon, who had a brief romance with her, has been known to work on capers with Fujiko independent of the other gang members, but can be equally distrustful of her when he thinks she is manipulating Lupin.

Ms. Mine usually dresses in the height of fashion, with formal gowns and fine jewelry her trademark; when informal, she typically wears outfits that accentuate her robust figure. Fujiko's favorite pastimes appear to be shopping, attending social functions, disco dancing, horseback riding, and dating wealthy gentlemen. She enjoys champagne, fine wine and has been seen more than once consuming a martini; she also smokes cigarettes and occasionally uses a kiseru.

Background & Continuity[]

In the original manga series, Fujiko originally arrives in the third chapter of the first volume, thus being the first of Lupin's three associates to arrive. She initially appears as a con-woman attempting to worm her way into the fortune of a rich family, whose heir has hired Lupin as security. Immediately upon arriving, she recognizes Lupin through his disguise, and by the end of the arc, Lupin has sided with her to rob the entire family.

Due to the episodic nature of the manga, many of Fujiko's appearances treat her and Lupin as meeting for the first time, even after the incident where Lupin kills her father. Many of the stories feature her trying to capture the same object as Lupin, usually being bested by Lupin, only occasionally being the one who gets the prize. It should also be noted that unlike his anime version, Lupin is a ladies-man in the manga, with he and Fujiko having slept together numerous times.

Manga Fujiko was not one but many women. As such, the women called Fujiko Mine were a doctor, an assassin, a cop, a henchwoman, a crime boss, one of a pair of sisters. She was Lupin's girlfriend, Goemon's girlfriend, & Zenigata's college friend or sweetheart. She reprised some of the roles many times. It's as if she were clones who operated independently. Fujiko the cop was a top recurring role where she would seduce Lupin until Zenigata showed up to arrest him, but one time she was a fake cop. At Taizo university, she was a law student that Lupin found to be a preachy & prudish killjoy who went out of her way to ruin his campus schemes, basically Girl Zenigata. Combined into one person, these make up the anime Fujiko who sometimes works with Lupin or against him, or teams up with Zenigata on occasion. The Fujiko of World's Most Wanted became more like her anime counterpart.

This is the opposite in the anime adaptations (excluding the fourth series), which often has Fujiko betraying Lupin and for the most part denying his flirting. In episode 9 of the first series, Fujiko states that maybe she loves Lupin. The two ride together in a car as if on a date, and conclude the episode dancing together at a club. However, in Part 1 Episode 11, Fujiko has betrayed Lupin and is hired to kill him.

Fujiko's professional background is connected with Japanese organized crime, as hinted in Part 1 Episode 9. During the episode, Lupin's sidekick Jigen recalls a story of the Golden Couple; a partnership formed between a mysterious female assassin and the notorious Killer Poon. The couple worked for an organization Jigen refers to only as "the syndicate." The couple was famous for carrying out contract killings without failure. However, the partnership ended abruptly when Poon's employer ordered the woman's execution for her supposed betrayal. Poon failed to kill the woman, due to emotional attachment, and she disappeared. Furthermore, Lupin and Jigen were led to believe that Fujiko suffers from amnesia. Fujiko claims not to remember anything prior to the three years she first met Lupin. The timing of her memory loss coincided with the disappearance of Poon's partner. Her connection with Poon was later confirmed in the episode. She was also part of a crime syndicate called the Union run by Mama and she was friends with Ginko Hoshikage, both are crime bosses with the latter working as a hostess in a bar.

As the entire franchise of Lupin the Third runs on Negative Continuity, the characters have had several background stories and explanations.

In Episode 0: First Contact, Brad was her boyfriend and after he was murdered, Lupin who was his rival met up with Fujiko. In The Woman Called Fujiko Mine, Lupin is hired by Count Luis Yu Almeida to first capture Fujiko and later kill her. Fujiko meets Lupin in the first episode when both are trying to steal the same treasure. She meets Goemon when she masquerades as a governess and he is hired to kill her charges' grandfather. She meets Jigen after losing a bet and being ordered to get close to him by a former lover of Jigen's. It is unrevealed in The Woman Called Fujiko Mine how she met Zenigata, but the two have a sexual relationship in which she helps him (and provides sexual favors) and he keeps her out of jail. In Lupin the Third Part I, Fujiko was stated to have had amnesia about what happened to her in the years before meeting Lupin. It is later revealed that she was an assassin with a partner named Killer Poon. The Woman Called Fujiko Mine somewhat uses that premise by having Fujiko as an amnesiac until the end of the series at which time we still don't know what her life was exactly before coming to the Almeida mansion, except that she was a thief, occasional killer, and a "loose woman." it is implied heavily in flashbacks that Fujiko's back story was a thief and a sex slave in multiple occasions. This is shown in the episode of 4, Fujiko immediately was concerned at the time of losing her past giving a flashback rather drug-influenced vision of a younger Fujiko.

Both Episode 0 and Part 1 had Zenigata pursuing Fujiko rather than Lupin as he traveled the world to arrest her. In Part 1 Episode 1 she worked with Zenigata to capture Lupin in exchange for her freedom and after tying up Jigen, her arrest warrant was destroyed as she kissed Lupin and ran off.

Her background in the Koikeverse, namely A Woman Called Fujiko Mine, was all falsely implanted memories that happened to the woman who brainwashed her, so her origins remain a tantalizing mystery.

Abilities[]

Fujiko is a skilled marksman and keeps a gun under her skirt. She also uses her beauty charms to deceive people and manipulate them. She is also skilled in martial arts sometimes taking down a lot of people with a single strike. In Part 2 Episode 149 , she was even able to beat Goemon in a sword fight. She is a multilingual person and a skilled pilot, motorcyclist and car driver, and a master of disguise and acting.

Etymology[]

  • The name Fujiko means "unique, peerless, unparalleled, matchless, unexampled, superlative, unequaled, unmatched, unsurpassed" (不二) (fuji) and "child" (子) (ko).
  • Fujiko's surname Mine means "peak, ridge" (峰).

Trivia[]

  • According to The Castle of Cagliostro Dictionary Book, Fujiko's birthday is on June 7. This is the only time when a date for her birthday was given.[1]
  • Her character design that appeared in the Pilot Film and the Masaaki Osumi episodes of Part 1 was based on Marianne Faithfull in The Girl on a Motorcycle.
  • Eva in "Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater" was modeled after Fujiko.[2]
  • Her hair and appearance always change throughout the series. For example, in The first half of Part 1 and throughout Part 2 Fujiko is sultry and fashionable with long auburn or brown hair. However, during later episodes of Part 1, she takes on a more dowdy and unassuming appearance. In The Castle of Cagliostro, she sports an almost tomboyish appearance with blonde hair and a camo jumpsuit.
  • Fujiko shares her current voice actress with Labra from Jewelpet.
  • Lupin & Fujiko marry in episode 13 of Part 1, but it's treated as being annulled just because Fujiko vanished for a few hours & Lupin backed out on a repeat ceremony at the end.
  • In Part 2, Fujiko has married several times. Sometimes it's an informed marriage & other times it's central to the episode plot. She has also had a few fiances who died before the wedding. All of her husbands end up dead, just like most of her boyfriends. Her husbands are nearly always rich elderly men.
  • She married the Prince of Beltenburg on her birthday, with Lupin as the minister. Her husband Claude was still alive at the end of the episode however he was no longer a prince due to the country no longer existing. It's unknown if they officially divorced.
  • According to Part 2 Episode 69 Fujiko has a fear of frogs.
  • According to Part 2 Episode 85 Fujiko's bra cup is D.
  • According to Part 2 Episode 102 Fujiko used to be called a ''natural talent'' when she was younger because she was a good student.
  • According to Part 2 Episode 110 series she has claustrophobia.
  • According to the Original Movie Program for Lupin VS the Clone, Fujiko's three measurements (Bust, Waist, Hips) are 99.9 cm, 55.5 cm, and 88.8 cm (‪39.33071‬ inches, ‪21.85039‬ inches, ‪34.96063‬ inches), respectively.
  • Chapter 81 of the second manga ends with her body getting swapped with that of a terminally ill old man. Given that Lupin destroyed the machine at the end of the chapter, it's not known if she temporarily died or got her body back in time.
  • The manga chapter Flowers for Fujiko mentions she had a brother, although this isn't brought up again because the Fujiko in the chapter was one of the many versions of her in the manga.
  • The manga chapter Lupin Tells All features her showing the reader around Lupin's secret hideout while being disguised as Lupin the whole time.
  • A lot of animations depict her as being a terrible cook, but in The Mystery of Mamo, the food she prepared, that she drugged to knock Lupin out, was edible.

References[]

  1. 1.0 1.1 Lupin World. lupin-3rd.net (in Japanese)
  2. Snake Eater Operation. TEN TEN PRODUCTIONS REEL
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