Episode 1

We start out with very jazzy and mellow opening sung in English by someone who is Japanese.  The accent isn’t bad, but it’s not native, either.  Odd word choices also confirm that whoever wrote the lyrics is also Japanese. “If you won’t resist/I just might steal a kiss” doesn’t seem something like a native would say, and it is a very polite lyric considering we’re about to watch a show done by Monkey Punch.

The Lupin gang all crawl out of a manhole, helping each other out on to the street.  Zenigata comes up last, as they’re all still gathered around, and Lupin offers him a hand.  Zenigata is touched Lupin is that chivalrous.   Jigen also gives his hand to help.  Then all four of them turn him upside down and drop him back head first and laugh at him.  It’s great.

Next is a short of a wandering samurai and the title is annoying to translate.  Literally, it’s “(to be indebted to someone for a favor of) One night’s food and lodging”, which sounds stupid in English.  I’ve also seen it translated as “One Drunken Night” despite the fact that he’s not drunk.  I’m just going to call it Wandering Samurai Dude because that makes as much sense as anything.

It always starts out watching the Samurai walking along to somewhere.  I really like the music in this short, even though it’s very simple, and it makes me wish there was a CD of this anime.  Anyway, he’s walking along and an annoying crow comes along and he helpfully mentions that he’s a crow, and then he tricks into running into a tree and continues on his journey.  And then we move onto to the next short.

We now meet our first Mankatsu Monkey, who is a police officer.  He is staring at us while intense flashes of light appear every now and then from different sides and make him smoke, but he doesn’t notice it much.  The camera pans out to show us Lupin for some reason is reflecting light off a giant mirror, and then the monkey gets mad and yells at him, but is freaked out at his own reflection.
He chases after Lupin, but is unable to catch him.

Now it’s for time for the Mini Stage, “Bakumatsu Yankee”.  Bakumatsu is the word used for the end of the last days of the Edo period in Japanese history.  When Commodore Perry came and told Japan to open its ports to the U.S., it started what would be the eventual collapse of the Tokugawa government and the Emperor’s rise to power once again.  But between those two times were fighting in the streets and civil wars and the establishment of the Shinsengumi, which was a police force made up of samurai.  I only explain this much because the show expects you to know that already.
And yankee is slang for someone who is/looks/acts like an American.  And now that the title is explained, I can get to the story.

On a cliff, two samurai are watching the ocean. One is Hijikata , an ugly man who is Vice-Commander of the Shinsengumi.  The other is Souji Okita, who is captain of the first squad of the Shinsengumi and looks like Goemon with a ponytail and too much enthusiasm.
 
As they are watching the ocean, a blonde man in red shirt tied to a pole on a raft floats into the rocks below them.  He has a gun on his hip.

Okita is too excited about this and goes to check it out, ignoring Hijikata’s advice that strange men strapped to rafts have nothing to do with them.

Okita thinks it’ll be fun, and that they should at least see if he’s still alive.

Meanwhile, several shady men are watching Okita, including Patchy, the all-seeing pirate.

And also a guy with red-hair, who turns out to be another historical figure but I’ll skip that right now; it’s not important.

Okita asks if Yankee (he never gets a name, they all just call him the foreigner) is okay, to which Yankee yells at him (in perfect if badly acted) English that Okita fights dirty and he should be untied.  Okita has no idea what he’s saying except that he’s loud. 

Yankee tries to spit on Okita, who being a goofball cuts him loose instead of anything else a normal person would have done. 
Yankee then shoots Okita in the most awkward stance ever,but only in the shoulder because Okita is a samurai, yo.

Two of the mysterious people think it’d be awesome to have Yankee on their side, though Red-head isn’t too sure.

Okita thinks Yankee’s shooting skills are cool and then puts away his sword. 

Yankee (who is blonde Lupin with a scar)smirks and puts away his gun. 
Then Okita starts coughing (because the Japanese are afraid you might forget how Okita died of TB, even though they mention it in literally every story I’ve seen about the Shinsengumi) and Yankee jumps into the water and swims away.  Okita looks a little too thrilled about being shot.

Then the scene changes and we get some funky western music, which also makes me wish there was a CD.
Yankee waits under a bridge as a party boat floats closer and closer.  

He forces everyone off the boat so he can have access to what any man in a strange country could want: Women.

And also, food:


At Shinsengumi HQ, Okita is doing some manscaping while Kondo, the Shinsengumi Commander (AKA Zenigata with no-eyes), is asking him how his wound is and Okita is just talking about how cool it was to fight Yankee.To remind us that Hijikata is ugly and scary, we see him punishing a member of the unit with beheading.
 


Okita tells Kondo he wants to fight Yankee again and that he’d understand if he saw him.  Okita happily prances (really) off to go tell everyone in the city that if they see Yankee, they should come to HQ or tell him.


We then cut to Yankee, who is with a geisha and for some reason trying to learn how to play a shamisen (that thing that looks like a three-stringed guitar). He figures out how to play yet another tune that I want and he and the girl start dancing, interspliced with Okita fighting off some rebels who are trying to kill him. At the end of the song, Yankee is surrounded by spears and the girl runs away, but Yankee is happy because now he won’t be bored.

It then switches to how Yankee is going to keep himself from being bored, which involves going to the brothels and bedding every single woman in the place until they can’t move.

  I hope you weren’t expecting anything different.  It’s all still voiced in odd English, which makes it even funnier.  Except for the women, who sound annoying (especially the last girl). 

We then see the two shady guys who thought it’d be good to have Yankee on their side (they are rebels who want to bring back power to the emperor, so they would be enemies of Okita).  They apparently were the ones to take him to and pay for the geisha girls.

Yankee finds himself in a moonlit street, answering the call of nature when Okita appears.  They were both hoping to run into the other again.  Okita gives Yankee an over enthusiastic greeting and Yankee protects himself from the obvious cooties Okita has by trying to pee on him.  Okita jumps back, seemingly confused as to why Yankee would not want to be hugged by a crazy Japanese man, and then asks to fight him again.

But their fight is interrupted by an old man with glowing eyes named Izo, and Yankee’s gun is knocked away.  Then Red-Haired Guy appears again.  We find out that Red is named Ryoma Sakamoto, who actually doesn’t need that much explanation after all.  He was a leader in trying to overthrow the Tokugawa government, and he supposedly liked to wear Japanese clothes and western shoes.  He wouldn’t have liked Okita because he was part of the government, and he wouldn’t have liked Yankee because he wanted Japan to expel all the foreigners who were appearing at their ports.

Sakamoto says both Okita and Yankee have to die, since neither fit into his plans.  Okita replies (as the only one of the pair who understands what Sakamoto is saying), that they can’t die because they haven’t finished their battle and then he and Yankee smile at each other because it’s GAME TIME!

Okita throws a knife into the barrel of Sakamoto’s gun

while Yankee shoots down the edge of Izo’s sword and breaks through the hilt to hit him in the shoulder.

 

Okita laughs hysterically, Yankee smiles and then they shake hands.

  But also neither one can resist trying to kill the other, so they’re still not that normal.

 

The other two rebels watch in confusion from a tree, not understanding the awesome partnership they have just witnessed being born (Can you tell I like this story?).  Okita brings him back to Shinsengumi HQ (where it seems Yankee just likes to shoot random stuff) and  Kondo and Hijikata talk about it as if Okita brought home a lost dog.  And then that’s the end until episode 2.

Now we’re back to the Mankatsu Monkey, and this time it’s Jigen who has decided to annoy him by focusing a burning light via a magnifying glass onto the monkey’s foot.  The monkey tries to intimidate him to stop, but Jigen is above all that

and starts burning his face.  The monkey chases after him but he can’t catch Jigen.

Next we have a Reverse Aesop’s Fables (I think) which generally seem to be stories that don’t end up the way you’d think they normally go.  They don’t seem to actually be Aesop’s Fables inverted. 

There’s a bunny on a table hopping around and an old scientist holding a beaker of some kind of liquid.  He pours a single drop on the bunny and it grows giant after an explosion.  He stares in astonishment, and then leaves the room to use his magic potion to help him in the bedroom with his girlfriend.  He pours one drop on himself and ends up with a bunny attached to his nether regions.  The girl screams and runs away.  Cut to black.

Now it's Up Up Balloon, about a man in a cowboy hat who lives and travels in a balloon.
Balloon Man wakes up from a nap and accidentally relieves himself on a UFO, who gets angry.  It tries to shake it back onto him, but Balloon Man protects himself with an umbrella.  UFO gets even angrier and poops on the balloon and it falls.  There are easily identifiable reasons why Up Up Balloon might have never been animated before.

Next up is Riddle.  The riddles are usually awful puns that are sexual in nature and are explained by an “author” (Monkey Punch himself?) who laughs too hard at them.  Though it’s certainly not my style of humor, I will translate this first episode so you will all know the stupidity. A guy with a troll face is shown in various scenes (while fishing, while camping, in car) having sex with the "author" narrating that each resulted in a child.  His girlfriend is annoyed at him in each case while he laughs hysterically.

But, the author tells us, no one is born from having sex during a bicycling adventure (the man is upset for some reason and the woman laughs at his failure to produce heirs).
The author asks, “Why?”

Because “Cycling” (sai-ku-rin-gu) sounds the same as妻君リング(sai-ku-rin-gu), which translates to “My wife’s IUD”, I think.  Yeah.  The show moves on…

Now we have The Panic, which is about the same level of humor but is slightly funnier at times just because it’s more about stupid people doing stupid things.  It’s kind of like that 1000 Ways to Die show.  Anyway, there’s a couple hanging off a beam in a burning building waaaay up in the air.  It’s all the man can do to hold on, and he slips at one point.  The woman hanging on to him also slips, only staying on by clawing at his pants, which she somehow pulls down to his ankles.  The man gets two hands back on the beam and sees a helicopter.  The helicopter throws down a rope ladder and the two start to reach for it, but then money falls out of the helicopter as well and they grab for that instead.  We then see them in a funeral photo falling through the air, with a sudden look of realization that they are very stupid and are going to die.

 

The next segment could be called “Male/Female”, but I prefer to call it “He Said/She Said”.  What happens is that a male voice and female voice, both represented by the Mars and Venus symbols, talk to each other about some subject that sounds dirty until we see the actual scene, and it is revealed to be innocent.   
In this thrilling installment, the girl tells the guy that her mouth can make it bigger. See? And the guy tells her to make it even bigger.  And then even bigger.  And she says it won’t go bigger, but he says it will and to keep gooooooing…and it’s actually about blowing up a beach ball.

Back to Mankatsu Monkey!
Monkey Man is all flustered because Fujiko is walking by him and it makes him all a-flutter.  Fujiko takes out a cigarette and lights it with a gun lighter (which the monkey thought was a real gun) and the monkey falls over in relief and love.

Another Mankatsu Monkey short: he becomes so hot that he starts hallucinating and taking off his clothes.  It’s because Goemon is wheeling around a space heater, which makes the monkey so hot he takes off his skin.

Wandering Samurai Dude is back, wandering around to funky music.  He comes across a bridge and trips on a nail walking on to the bridge.  He gets mad at the nail and pulls it up and falls again, finding out that the nail was what was keeping the bridge planks lying flat.  We leave him wrapped in the bridge.

Back to Mankatsu Monkey!
Zenigata is staring hard at the monkey in disappointment, who is out of uniform (and his skin).
The monkey notices why Zenigata is mad and hurriedly puts on his clothes and hits his manhood in the process.  He tries to salute and with an effort is able to do so properly, because his pinky wants to stick up like he’s a prissy boy.  The poor sad little monkey.

We now finally move on to the Grand Stage.  This episode is called something like The Spy Elite (it’s a bit difficult to translate, but I think this is the name of the main character’s group).

We start off in downtown, in a bar where some people are frying meat for dinner.  Lupin with longish hair is trying to get his friends to agree take a certain job with him. His friends are One-Eyed Jigen, Homeless Hobo, Not-Fujiko, and someone we only see from the back (Backy).


While they’re all eating, Lupin-Man tells them all that the job is simple: The president of a company wants them to find his run-away girlfriend and bring her back to him.  Not-Fujiko says that they are a group of spies and she doesn’t want to do a P.I.’s work.  She leaves the restaurant.  Backy leaves with her.  In the end, the only ones who will take the job are Lupin and One-Eyed Jigen.

We cut to a high-rise, where the company president (a man with no pupils named Haffner)is telling the two boys that he loves “Maria” from the bottom of his heart—while surrounded by two other women.  To know what Maria looks like, he shows them how she was a nude model in his magazine, Blayboys. “Isn’t she the best?” 

This man has had 30 seconds of screen time and I already love him (and that's why I'm doing a video scene at the end of all this).

Haffner tells Lupin-lookalike that if he brings back Maria (I think she was kidnapped), he can have any amount of money he cares to ask for. Lupin guy is excited and says, “ANY amount?!”  Haffner pulls a rope and showers him with money and asks him to take care of his problem. 
I’ve always loved those kind of visual things, even if they’re so dumb. “I bet that guy will ask about money.  I know! I’ll put a whole ton of it in my ceiling! And then attach the opening mechanism to a rope! And I’ll do it because I’m rich! Checks are for losers!”
We also find out Lupin guy’s name is actually Hisha.

Hisha and One-Eyed Jigen are going down the highway discussing their plans, and we notice cars swerving out of their way, because they are driving down the wrong side of the road.  In the middle. Because they can.  They ignore all the drivers and continue their talks, which is mostly Hisha complaining where all the good spies have gone.   All you can know is they’re not on Burn Notice, Hisha.

   

We cut to an ivy covered mansion.  One-Eye asks why they are there, and Hisha says it was easy to find Maria when you hack into the CIA’s GPS satellite.  We cut to Maria taking a shower (of course), and in the outside room are a guard, an ugly man (probably the guy she ran off with) and a scientist.

The scientist is showing off a chamber that will allow someone to sleep and be preserved for ten million years.  The scientist’s name is Prof. Richard.  Ugly Guy (who’s name might be Handsome), comments that it is interesting, takes a sip of his drink and then collapses.  The Professor has drugged him so he can use him in his cryogenic experiment.  The guard (Soro) turns out to be working for the scientist, because he strips Ugly (he will have no need of clothes in the future!) and places him in the chamber.




The scientist also wants Maria to get in the chamber, but she doesn’t want to.  The professor tells her it’s for humanity (and also he wishes he could be with her).  Just as he’s about to stab her with a hypodermic needle, Hisha comes down the chimney in a cloud of soot.  Soro asks who he is and Hisha tells them “Santa Claus”.  Hisha tells them not to move because he has them covered (By Ol’ One-Eye, whose name is actually Kaku), and that he’s only here for the girl.

The scientist asks what’s he’s paying Soro for, and Soro grabs Maria and uses her as a shield between him and Kaku.  Hisha is at a loss of what to do (though not distressed) when suddenly a jeep crashes through the window.

  A SWAT team piles out of the car and starts shooting gas/smoke everywhere.  Then they start shooting at people.  Ugly guy is scared and running around naked, Professor guy is scared his machine and lab is going to get destroyed, and Hisha notices that the guns the SWAT team are using are wrong if they were just police.

  Hisha looks for Maria and finds Soro on the floor bleeding.  Soro tells Hisha to beware of Maria and dies.  Hisha wonders about the advice.

Maria meanwhile is out in the garage trying to hotwire the car with a wire.  Hisha finds her and tells her if you don’t have a man riding with you, it’s impossible to drive a car.  He starts the car with a set of keys and takes the time to buckle his seatbelt, a small detail I find funny given the situation.  Maria thinks he’s awesome and asks if he’s a car thief.  He says he doesn’t steal cars, he steals women.  Maria decides beggars can’t be choosers and laughs at the line.

Out on the open road, Hisha sees the jeep behind them in the rearview mirror.  He asks Maria if they are after her and she says yes.  He downshifts the car to fall behind the SWAT team.  We see that the jeep is really something with a flatbed(is there a jeep like that? I don’t know) and Hisha unbuckles himself to shift out of his seat to shoot at them.  And to drive with his feet. 
Maria can’t help because she’s a woman.   He shoots two of the tires and it veers off the road, down the cliff and explodes.

 

And I still wonder about this car:

Meanwhile, a samurai named Ichi is defending himself and being watched by Homeless Hobo (real name: Keima).  Keima asks for some information from him, since he’s also a spy.  The camera cuts away before Ichi gives his answer. 

It takes us to a theater in the middle of the woods, where it performs everything from western plays to kabuki. It seems Hisha wants to ask Ichi about what happened to him.  Ichi is uninterested in his story until Hisha starts telling him how stunning the girl he rescued was and how she was a Blayboy model.  Ichi asks if her name is Maria, and he tells Hisha that she is also a spy, and they figure that whoever is after her is probably government/military and won’t be easy to beat.  Hisha talks to Maria and they both know that the other is a spy. 


Scene change.

Kaku has been spying on Haffner all this time, listening in to his conversations.  Haffner is assuring the president of the country Maria worked for that they will take care of Maria.  Kaku calls Hisha to tells him that his hunch was right and that Haffner was also a spy.

  Going slightly off topic for one moment, one thing I like about the writing is how they try to update the show without going overboard.  Some shows seem to try to change everything to "modernize" a scenario written years ago, ranging from the location to the actual characters themselves (some of the stuff they did in the modern Sherlock remake comes to mind.  There they changed some guy's mistress who outsmarted Sherlock into a dominatrix who falls in love with him. The changes didn't add anything to the story).
Anyway, The Spy Elite was written before Monkey Punch even wrote Lupin, and I just like the way they keep it modern enough to keep it going smoothly along.  Monkey Punch's stories are very much up to date in the times when they were written and I like that they try to keep that alive.  Moving on:

Maria comes up to Hisha, and he asks why she ran away from her job.  She says she’s tired of being a spy and wants to go back to simpler times.  He agrees to help her out, and she thanks him, but tells him that for sure they’ll come after her again, right where they are now.  Hisha is not worried, because we all know it’s the time for gettin’ the gang together.


Not Fujiko (AKA Kyoko) is at a spa reading James Bond, and she gets a delivery from Hisha.  A DVD with a secret message, which seems like a very unencrypted way to send a secret message.  She plays it in a DVD player that I would like for myself, even though it looks like no DVD would actually play well in it.  She is interested in coming after he tells her that it’s a spying job.  Not even a try at talking in code.  But it’s still better than Boardy McPlankface.

Backy is at a bar, with his back still towards us.

  He’s listening to his DVD in front of the bartender.  Hisha explains that it’s a spy job protecting one lone woman, and Backy decides that he will do the job.  And show us his face.  He needs a new name now.  I’d call him Pretty Zenigata, but that’s too long. Instead I’ll call him Tease (because he hid his pretty face from us).

Just before Tease leaves, Hisha tells him that the DVD is going to self destruct.  Tease waits.
Hisha then tells him it’s a joke, and Tease almost falls over with a wacky noise.

A train pulls into the small town they are staying in, and the only people to get off is a granny, and a long line of Not Suspicious men who stole their looks from Mamou.

Back at the theater, Ichi tells Hisha that the CIA will be there soon to pick up Maria (they might have mentioned she worked for the CIA before, but I’m not sure).  Hisha mentions that Maria doesn’t want to be part of the CIA anymore.  Ichi thinks he’s crazy to try to help her.
The actors at the theater are having a party, unknowing they are going to be attacked.  Maria sits by the window, and then she hears the marching of the Mamou clones who are still coming from the train station.

Kaku thinks that all those M.I.B. will arrive in ten minutes, so Hisha tells him to hurry back.  Just as he is, someone steps on a twig behind him and he pulls out his gun to shoot him, but it’s only Keima.  We also see that there is a graveyard in the middle of the woods.

  Tease also appears, freaked out at the amount of enemies that are arriving.  Kaku gives him a pep talk and he regains his “cool” face (and voice).

We see that the evil people have surrounded the theater, and that Haffner is also there, wearing a suit of armor. 
He just keeps staying awesome.  Because that’s what awesome people do, they decide to wear full suits of armor no matter how many centuries ago they became obsolete.

We cut to Ichi telling all the actors that they are about to be attacked by spies and that they are going to fight back.  You’d think at least one of the actors wonders why they let a crazy bald samurai stay with them in the first place, but they all respond with enthusiasm so you know they don’t.

The CIA attacks and breaks into the theater where everyone fights back in different ways:


Kaku, Keima and Tease complain that there are too many of them until Kyoko comes and shoots/runs them over.  All they can do is complain that she’s too into James Bond.  Then she makes a ring of sleep gas around the area.

  While everyone else falls down, the gas proves to be ineffective against suits of armor.  Haffner jumps through a window and attacks Hisha with a sword from behind . Hisha shoots at him, but the armor turns out to be bullet proof.
He’s unable to pierce the armor and can only dodge.

He changes magazines twice, still trying to shoot through the armor but to no use.  He runs into the next room where he sees Ichi.  He calls out for help, and Ichi runs over towards him.  Hisha’s happiness is short-lived as Ichi knocks the gun out of his hand and tells him it’s stupid to fight the CIA.

  Suddenly there’s a spotlight to the side, and Hisha sees Maria has been captured.

  Ichi tells Hisha that he’s going to die now over a woman, but just then Kyoko rams through the side of the building and tosses Hisha a gun.  Man, that woman’s good.

  Hisha shoots Ichi in his shoulder, and then turns and shoots each guard that was around Maria.  Haffner charges at him once again, and Hisha shoots him again.  As the bullets bounce off, a hole in the armor is finally opened up.  Hisha has been shooting in the same place over and over and created a weak spot.  We get a slow motion visual of the bullet finally killing my awesome friend (At least I have fanfiction!!).

Hisha then walks back over to Ichi, aiming his gun at him.  Ichi tries to tell Hisha that he was wrong to betray him and whines for his life, while everybody else is just waiting by the car for Hisha to shoot him.  And then there’s a dramatic pause as if we care about the guy and like Hisha is thinking about not shooting him, but then there’s a gunshot and everything is right with the world.

We fade into a scene at the docks, where we see a big boat moored for boarding.  Maria is waiting by a speedboat about to take her on the big one, and she’s saying goodbye to the gang.  Tease is back to only showing his back to people. 
I want to see that in another character.  Having to go out of your way to show the back of a character is funny, and so is the idea that someone thinks they can stay unrecognizable just by facing away from everyone all the time.

It seems Hisha is boarding the boat with Maria and jumps into the seat next to her, only for them to find out that the driver is their old friend Prof. Richard.

  And that the whole back of the speedboat is the ten million year time capsule.

  Hisha is annoyed, since it must be that the other four knew what was going to happen.  Which they did, but Kaku thinks that Hisha shouldn’t be sad, since he gets to spend ten million years with Maria.  Hisha is a happy man.  Maria tells the professor that he forgot to get a goodnight kiss from her.  He opens the chamber.   She grabs his tie, pulls him into the chamber and closes him in with Hisha.  Hisha is no longer a happy man.

  No one makes a move to help him, though Kaku tells him to “Take Care”.  Keima just chants something for the dead.  Kaku turns and invites Maria out to eat with them like at the beginning of the episode, and she says she’d love to.  Hisha escapes with the power of rage and unfulfilled lust.  And the fact that he’d be in a chamber with an old man for ten million years.  We end on Hisha swimming away from his old man problems, confident that he will get away (eventually).



The End

And now: Back to the Mankatsu Monkey! He sees Zenigata chase off after Lupin, and the monkey follows with his hands in stupid shapes and kind of giggling to himself.  The monkey looks at his hands and wonders why they are like that.  He remembers back to when he was putting on his pants from the last short, and apparently he not only hit his manhood but broke it.  Thus, he turns into a woman.


 

We join the wandering samurai again and that piano music.  We see a man stand in nothing but underwear in front of a rock suspended by a rope.  He yells and punches his fist into it.  But then his hand gets stuck.  In an effort to pull himself out, he punches his other fist into the rock.  And then both feet. And then his head. The traveler comes along, and is surprised at the stupidity he sees.


  He has no pity for him and instead walks on by, probably saying something pithy but I don’t know what.

We now come to the last segment of the show, the second Lupin and gang short.  We see a well in the middle of the desert and the gang jumps into it.  Zenigata jumps in after them, and we hear a loooooong falling sound and then a crash.  Cut to the inside of the well, and we see the gang didn’t jump in, they wedged themselves up against the sides.

Then we get to watch the ending, which is a Japanese version of “Save the Last Dance for Me”. 
I kid you not:

That’s the end of the first episode.  There are good parts and bad parts, but for the most part it’s a fun show and you get to see other Monkey Punch stories.
There is no preview, you just have to wait in suspense for episode 2.