Since I never did an image journal for this and wrote this up before my idea of image journals came to me... Kind of late, but I forgot about it and found it in a random text file. xD
If I had to pick one word to describe the special From Russia With Love, it'd have to be "unfinished".
It started off with way too much background explanation, finally getting to the part with the missing gold. Or gifted gold, whatever it may be. Rasputin was mentioned in the background story, but it was mainly "He's there and then he's killed". And then to make his great grandson the main villain just seems weird.
Rasputin's finger thing wasn't explained. What was the point? Certainly, at least I hope, it wasn't done to make him seem all mystic and evil. Do you need to know about Rasputin to understand it? Was Rasputin even a real person? I have no idea. And I was lost on his whole finger thing.
Another was Rasputin's powers of mind reading. It wasn't used all that much except for at the end where he's dodging Jigen's bullets. Well, used in important ways, I guess I could say. All the other times it was just thrown in there. "I can read your mind!" when Judy acts like she wants to marry him. "I can read your mind!" whenever Goemon thought something Rasputin didn't like.
The two bad guys were only interesting in the end when it was shown that they had a long friendship with each other and how Lucky acted when Big was killed. Otherwise they were just the ones there to kill Lupin and steal the gold for their boss.
Not that I'm saying all bad guys should be given some sort of big part story in the specials. Just make them interesting enough for me to want to see them. Don't just throw them out there with the role of killing people who want what they want. Make them a little more two dimensional than that.
And Rasputin's finger thing. Seriously, what was with that?
I liked how Jigen and Lupin were together starting off the special. I kind of hate it when they waste time gathering everyone up for a job, since who cares. And they always have Goemon off doing his own stupid thing, so that didn't bother me. What did bother me was they took way too long to introduce him and when they did it was like they wrote his role at the last minute. It's like nobody knows what to do with him. Fujiko was written well and it all seemed to fit. Except towards the end after she was screwed out of the gold. I didn't like her from that point on as she was like a spoiled brat. Zenigata... oh god. I don't know why they even bothered having him in this special. And half the time it was like he wasn't even a part of it. Yeah, we get it, he's an idiot obsessed with arresting Lupin. At least try to humanize him just a little rather than having him be some robotic slave programmed to do anything to arrest him.
Too many things seemed to be left up to the viewer to interpret. Sometimes I like them to just come out and say what they mean, rather than it to be assumed. Even if it is very obvious, I still like it spelled out rather than be an unneeded mystery. Yeah, that can get annoying in an "I know, I'm not stupid!" kind of way, but at least it's there and you can move on to something else.
From Russia With Love wasn't the worst special, but it was pretty bad. When the first ten minutes crawl by and seem like an hour and the last ten minutes seem like two, you know something is wrong. Personal critiques, I hate the look of the early special styles the characters are drawn in. It just doesn't appeal to me. I liked that there was no love story or tragic past incident for Jigen, but I found it annoying how he seemed to know the two bad guys. It conflicted me, as I was happy for no past story, but then they threw that out and I was curious as to how they knew each other. It probably could have been a lot more interesting than the unneeded history lesson we got at the beginning.
Not gonna nit pick on realism, since it isn't supposed to be realistic. But the plane eating up the gold as it flew by was pretty dumb.
Rasputin's death was odd. Did he know magic or something? It seemed tossed in there as a way to get rid of him in a way that put the others lives at risk.
And also, how did Goemon come across Rasputin? Did he randomly stumble on his temple and need help in doing whatever and stay there? Or did he hear about it and go? And does he really need to go to temples for help in achieving something which he said could never be achieved?
For a special there seemed to be too much thrown in with not enough answers. Like the assuming part. Yeah, we get why, but spell it out. Cut out a few unnecessary scenes, like with President Bush meeting Rasputin. Why? So he can say that powerful people pay him money to help them with their problems? How does he help them? And then with Gorbachav. Why was that there? So they could show that he's meeting yet another powerful person and helping them with their problems? You already stated that he did that, so why state it even more? And if you are going to keep stating it, then why not show us how he ends up helping them. You did with the guy who owned the gold. Rasputin puts on his little act, says he needs to let the gold be stolen for the curse to be lifted and the guy believes him and lets the gold go. That was easy. Why complicate things by throwing leaders of other countries in there and not solving their problems just like that? I don't get it.
And for a Lupin special, one shouldn't have to think that much. One should be able to sit back, watch and then once it's over not have to wonder "Why was that in there? And what happened with this?" But, I guess we can all just assume the obvious instead of us being told and wrapping it all up nicely. Because you can say "Oh, this was there because of that." But then you'll always be left with the nagging question of "Why?"
I'd have to give it 2 out of 5 stars. Not the worst special I've seen, but not the greatest. It's in the "see it just to see it if you like Lupin III, but don't expect the greatest thing ever" category.
