 got some opening bid action. Okay, good. I'll let you you can just kick off after do the start. Do I? Do I? I guess I could talk about the rat in the wall, but he's gone. You got a rat in the wall. We had a rat in the wall the other day. Also, the mysterious gushing water inside of the other wall. They had to score on the attic and beacon. I remember that. Spackle house. It was hard to tell. Alright, I'll just start. You can do your opening bit. Okay. Did you push it? Yep. Alright. It's Wednesday, February 3rd, 2021. I'm rim. I'm Scott and this is Geek Nights. Tonight we are talking about Lupin, the third, the first. Whenever you're ready. Okay. Do you think? So two days ago ish, right? Sunday night through early yesterday, there was a blizzard in New York. It dumped a whole ton of snow, like top 10 snows of New York. It was big time snow. It was the kind of snow where if it wasn't COVID times, I literally would have taken days off work and like gotten myself upstate to stay at a ski place. If it wasn't COVID times, I would have stayed in like it was COVID time. Yeah, I also would have gotten a snow day. Oh, my outfit absolutely would have closed. Oh, yeah. It wouldn't have been like actually work from home like all day. It would have been the work from home as in, yeah, do what you can. But yes, no, it would have been closed. Closed. Yeah. Anyway, so when it snows like that in New York, right? You don't really want to order food delivery, even if you can, because that is such a jerk move, right? Right. Food delivery people shouldn't be risking their life to bring you a dinner when in the middle of a blizzard. Right. My policy has always been that if the weather's bad to a certain point, I'll just give a giant tip like 20 or 30 bucks. And if it's on that point, I won't order it. If it's raining or something like, and I really need the food, maybe I'll do it and pay a lot, you know, but there's a line. There is a line. And you can tell that most people agree with this policy because every time I looked out the window, you did not see any delivery people. So I think I saw one on like the morning after, right? I saw one and that was it. Right. So people, people are, you know, but then again, it's like, I wonder from the perspective of delivery person, like you must be in a tough spot. You're like, damn, I want money, right? I'm not making, I'm not making anything today, but also, damn, I don't want to go outside or get in an accident. Who knows what, right? So it's a tough, tough spot. I don't know, but I, you just feel guilty doing it. Right. So anyway, it comes this morning and you look outside and the road is clear, it's perfectly plowed and melted and it's not precipitating and the sun's out. And you're like, okay, it's still cold as hell. But now I'm in a situation where without guilt, I can order delivery with a big old tip on there. Yeah. But it already got warm enough. Snow's already like melted significantly. Since we've been inside for a few days and fresh direct canceled our delivery for good reason, right? We needed some food. So the day the blizzard happened, I put in a delivery slot for Thursday. Yeah. We ours is also Thursday, but we had what like a Monday. Oh, I luckily happened to have gotten a Saturday, so I was good. Anyway, point is needing food, roads clear, guilt gone, tip big. I'm okay ordering bagels for breakfast, right? That'll carry us for, you know, whenever. So we're to the bagels, you know, and I'm going, getting ready to bike inside like I've been doing in the morning. And the bagel, I realized is suspiciously late, right? It should have been here already, right? So I go and I check, you know, I'm looking at the thing, what time it said it was going to be here. It said it would be here, like, you know, 837. It's already like, you know, closer to nine or whatever. And I'm like, looking closely and I go, oh, shit. I forgot to click delivery. The default is pick up. I must be sitting at the bagel place. And the thing is, if I go to get bagels outside, there's close places that are not even at the subway. But if I get delivered, there's a better bagel place that's further away. Yeah. Like if I go out to get a breakfast sandwich, there's a place I'll go. But if I'm ordering a delivered breakfast sandwich, there is a very specific, different place I will go. That's right. So I had to suddenly not bike inside this morning, not do any normal morning stuff and instead put clothing on, which is why I'm wearing clothing. I was about to say, you're wearing like a real shirt. Like I got outside. I got all these Hawaiian shirts that I usually would wear, like just when I'm lounging around. So I'm doing like that because they kind of look like a dress is shirt because there's technically a collar. And I just got pajamas on otherwise. Yeah, I know, right? So I had to go outside this morning all the way down the road to get the bagels. They were just sitting there waiting for me. You know, it's almost a nice excuse to just be outside, though. Like I look forward to the excuses. I gave a huge tip, which I guess should have gone to me. Instead, I guess the bagel preparers have that money now, which is fine. But yeah, hopefully. I mean, hopefully it goes to them and not to like the owner of the place if there was no delivery. I'm sure they see it. Well, because Amazon just got hit with like stealing the tips from all their drivers. Like that was a big thing. The way the systems work usually at these places is, you know, you go into any restaurant in New York City, especially a takeout delivery type restaurant. They have a tablet and maybe even a printer if they're more old school, right? But usually just the tablet sitting there, like maybe one tablet per service or one tablet with all the services, some kind of setup. And they can see exactly the invoices of everyone putting in orders, right? And then they transfer that over to their internal system, right? Usually printing out a ticket for like, you know, the receipt for what to make and stuff, right? So it'll say on there, you know, I've seen it because you can it's right there. You can see it. It says such and such. You're going to tip, right? So if the owner was, you know, keeping all those monies because I guess all that money, you know, digitally goes to the owner's account, the people who are working, they still see how much all those tips are. So if at the end of the month, you know, the owner comes back and is like, here, $1 for everybody. They'd be like, I saw what people were tipping. Yeah. You know, you know, I didn't add it up on my own, but I know what people are doing on average. It just don't seem right. So anyway. So you got some, there's some big, there's a bunch of news actually. I was surprised. Usually Wednesdays we struggle unless we've watched something to geek by it. Yep. Yep. Yep. So I think the most important one to me personally is about who you're going to call. So when we were kids, right? There was Ghostbusters the movie, Ghostbusters 2 the movie. Yep. Right. There was the Ghostbusters cartoon that was not the one that we wanted to watch. Exactly. I didn't even know about that one until internet time. I used to watch it. It didn't air where I lived. It aired where I lived and it was like there were kids who watched it and knew about that and even the original live action show. Like, yeah. There was some other show called Ghostbusters that was cartoon that had nothing to do with the Ghostbusters movie. It's the one with the Jeep and the giant gorilla. Like that's how you know it's not the real Ghostbusters. It was basically a scoop you do knock off, right? As far as I remember. I had a bunch of toys for that Ghostbusters. Anyway, so, but then the real reason like kids were fans of Ghostbusters in, you know late 80s, early 90s times, right? Whenever those times were, I guess. I guess that was the time, right? Yeah. Was not because of that original movie. You know, although we did watch it and enjoy it. I love that movie as a little kid. Right. But Ghostbusters carried forward with greater fandom instead of just, you know there were a lot of like single movies that kids were a fan of, right? That didn't carry, you know? For example, like Robocop, right? No, Robocop had the cartoon that I watched. But Robocop cartoon was not a long lasting deal. Well, when the Robocop cartoon faded away so too did Robocop fandom among kids. There was kids knew the predator but there wasn't a predator cartoon for them to watch. Right. So thing, you know, you needed to keep, you know, in those days, there was no internet. You needed to keep some production up, right? To have kids carry on with your property like Ninja Turtles did, right? You're a part of a new Ninja Turtles stuff. All the time, it's still going, right? So Ghostbusters had to Ghostbusters keep going. There was a cartoon that, you know, called the real Ghostbusters. And there was also a toy line to go with the show. I had all those goddamn toys. Oh, my God. The best toy, the one I had was that, that like made old lady witch where you pulled her hat up and there was an eyeball under there and she pulled her whole head up. Like her whole body opened up like a mouth. So the thing about that, like those toys were basically based on the cartoon, not the movie. And the cartoon, unlike all the other cartoons we were watching in that era, even though I was actually starting to watch anime in that era, because my family got me into it. The Ghostbusters cartoon was good, dark, and fucked up, like way more fucked up than I think a lot of parents realized. Oh yeah. And that's kind of why it was so popular with kids. Cause kids are watching me like, wow, that was fucked up. And then we watch He-Man like, wow, what's this plebian boring cartoon compared to the Ghostbusters? And it actually, the Ghostbusters, the real Ghostbusters cartoon didn't stray too far from the movie, right? It's usually a lot of times, even as a kid, you can get angry at like, you know, poor adaptations, right? You know, the sort of thing like, hey, it took Tom Bombadil out, right? That sort of thing, right? You know, even as a kid, you'd get angry at that sort of stuff. I remember, you know, you read Jurassic Park and then you watch the movie and you'd be like, hey! Yeah. She changed all this bullshit. Yeah. But the real Ghostbusters cartoon, it wasn't exactly the same, right? Let's not get carried away. But it followed that like the canon of that movie's universe. It was not a friend of the Ghostbusters, he's not in the movie. He was a one time enemy that they did. But if you think about the Ghostbusters movie, what it implies that no one in the movie addresses is like this Cthulhu-esque existential terror world that humans inhabit briefly. And the cartoon just leaned into that. The real Ghostbusters was a great cartoon. I remember it being a great cartoon, right? And not being crappy like a lot of other ones that don't live up. But now the news, why is this news? We can now prove to ourselves whether our memory is correct. They are putting the real Ghostbusters cartoon on YouTube supposedly the whole thing eventually for free, maybe, who knows. But regardless, there's at least some episodes, at least one up there now on the Ghostbusters YouTube channel, I think, right? The last time I tried to verify if this was kid memory or if it was legit was in RIT, we pirated like one episode and we all watch it together. The one where at one point it was like, it was raining croutons. That's the scene I remember. OK. But yeah. So now, if you were not of our age or if you've never seen it, even if you are of our age, or I recommend you actually do go and attempt to watch some of this, at least to see what was up. It's a notable, noteworthy quality. You know, it was a solid show. Well, we'll find out if it was truly a solid show because you're all going to watch it and you might come back in the comments and be like, Ribbon, Scott, you're just old. Exactly. That could easily happen. So in some other news, a little bit of a geek bite. So I'm not super into the MCU. Like, I don't really enjoy a lot of those movies. But WandaVision, which I'm sure you've heard of. I'm not going to like try to explain it. But WandaVision is a show that you can just watch that is set in the plus. Yeah, it's on Disney Plus. You can't just watch it if you don't have Disney Plus. I mean, I have Disney Plus. So it's a show that appeared one episode by episode like three episodes came out and then a fourth one happened. So I've seen enough to see where it's going. And it's higher concept than I expected. I expected it to be good because of the concept, which I'll get into in a second when I watch episode one because I did because Scott, you had this idea. I didn't watch it at all. You should probably watch it. The problem is episode one is good at being a like very clever and deep homage to an era of television with a with a fun twist. Based on the still image I saw with the logo, that is exactly what I assumed the whole show would be. The second episode does that from like the next decade of television. And at that point, yeah, like it upgrades. Like imagine the first episode. I love Lucy next episode by which. Oh, OK, that's even more clever than I had given a credit for. I like and especially because the cleverest I'm sweetening the cleverest is deep as in every tiny little detail. If you're a kid who watch Nick at night or you're just old, you'll notice a lot of very subtle like bits and very subtle components. That would be a miss on people who weren't familiar with the tropes of 50, 60, 70, like in episode one, there's a moment like where some happens, they're laying in their separate beds and there are noise out the window. But they do some magic and pull the beds together. Anyway, so the second episode worried me because it was still just homage and as much as I like homage to like those areas of television, the second episode wasn't as funny as like an actual episode of Bewitched or I Love Lucy, which were both really funny shows. Right. I'm guessing here already, just as somebody who simply has knowledge of the characters, even though I don't watch Marvel movie is something going on. Is that clearly right? You know, there's the best and the only good Scarlet Witch. I don't know any comments personally that involve the vision that are any good. Even I know less about comics than you, but I can know enough to say that House of M is the only interesting storyline I've ever even heard of that involves the Scarlet Witch and Vision. I didn't know anything about. That's exactly right. Vision is an adventure who's a robot and should be awesome. Because in concept, I didn't even know he was a venture. I just knew he was a robot. I assumed he was from space. I knew he was like a robot from space and I didn't know anything else. But the point is I didn't Ultron make him or something. I don't know, something like that. But in concept, he should be really awesome. But in reality, I've never read a comic with the vision that where he was interesting or cool at all. He was lame and I keep saying lame. I'm trying not to. I know you're working on it. Working on it. And the Scarlet Witch is never. I've never read a comic book other than House of M where the Scarlet Witch was cool, other than I never cared about the Scarlet Witch other than in her relation to Magneto. It's Magneto's daughter, right? And that's that's what made her cool, not any of her powers or anything, except for House of M, which is an X-Men storyline in which she creates some alternate universe that all the mutants are trapped in. And it's kind of, you know, it's ridiculous, but still good. So as soon as you tell me that the second episode is decade later, it's like, oh, this whole WandaVision thing, she's created an alternate universe. They stole from the comic books again without giving credit to the people. Yeah, it's obvious that this is a like you watch it right away. If you know anything about the Scarlet Witch, that's the first thing I thought is, OK, clearly, the Scarlet Witch has created this universe. Now, how close will it be to House of M? Like, where? What's it? What's it going to do? Like, that's the only thing I didn't know. It seems to keep happening. And I guess I noticed it more because I've been following this Twitter account. There's a Twitter account called, I guess, the Claremont run, right? Because this guy, John Claremont, who wrote basically all the X-Men comics that are famous, you know, the Dark Phoenix ones, all those were all written by this Claremont, Claremont and Byrne, but Byrne left Claremont's like the guy, right? Yeah, he's still alive, too. But they mentioned like, and, you know, they do basically it posts like one thread a morning and the threads are always great. But they talk about like, hey, they made all these X-Men stuff right in Hollywood. And all of it is based on basically mostly John Claremont's work. It's not based on the other X-Men story lines, right? It's mostly based on the original stories that John Claremont wrote. And he they didn't hire him to write the X-Men movies. They don't credit him that much. Maybe he like, you know, was a cameo in one or something. I don't know if he's getting money or what. But it's like everything they make is based on his original work. Those are original stories, right? He wrote those from, you know, in the, in the, you know, back in the day on his own. And now people are just rewriting Dark Phoenix five times over. It's like he should be getting paid five times over and he's not. So if they're doing House of M here, right? As WandaVision, shouldn't they? I don't know who wrote House of M. It's probably a name I know, but I don't know that I can't pull the name out of my, you know, ass without Googling it. But that is that person get in the credit. Are they writing this show? Right? Yep. So if you have the person who wrote the original thing, you're adapting, right? You making Lord of the Rings, the movie, you know, token is not alive. So it's understandable, right? But if he was alive, why would you just not get him to write the movie? Yes. So the problem, the only. So like here's an example of the show goes. They're doing this homage, but then like one color object appears in the first episode and Wanda sees it and kind of like gets unnerved by it and like a character kind of glitches out a little bit in a weird way and like no one can deal like trying to figure out the second episode gets weirder, like there's a few more moments like that. And my worry was the show is just going to be it's the homage plus a couple of weird things and just go through all the decades. But it did not. The third episode, everything becomes color. Now it's the Partridge family slash the Brady bunch. And also the plot escalates rapidly. And I'm not going to like spoil much because it's just worth watching because not that long so far. The fourth episode goes to basically the outside of people trying to figure out what the fuck's going on. And like it turns into a proper superhero story. And I'm actually really enjoying it. The second episode, I got a little worried. Third episode, I was unworried. And now the fourth episode, it's fun. Like I see what they're doing. I like it says that. Yeah, they pitched it to, you know, them. They pitched it that it would be based on House of M and some other stories that was already in their thoughts. And House of M was written by Brian Michael Bendis and Olivier Coypel. I knew those names. I just didn't know they were the ones who wrote it. And yeah, they don't seem to be involved. Other people are writing it. I wish I could do that. Like, you know, it's like, you know, when you own intellectual property like that, I guess you can, you know, sort of plagiarize people without it being plagiarism, right? Yeah. So I'm going to keep watching it. I'm not bored with it. I'm enjoying it more than I've enjoyed most MCU things. Hmm. I'm going to continue to not watch MCU things. Yeah. You might you could probably stand to at least watch just the first episode, because you at least will appreciate the ridiculous level of detail they put into this. But I could just watch like I dream of Jeannie. Yeah. I'm sure it's on the internet somewhere. I think Big Witch was funnier. And honestly, I love Lucy is funnier than both of those. Because the guy was an astronaut, right? So there was that whole thing going on. Yeah, I can see that. But honestly, I love Lucy is the one that I love the most. Sometimes. Of course, I was weirdly into Andy Griffith as well. Like I earnestly enjoy that show. And as a kid, I was really into dragnet because I didn't know. So in some other brief news, the one piece manga, like you all like everyone's sort of one piece. Even people don't read comics. Like they know they hear of like, oh, that's the pirate thing. Right. I don't think people fully appreciate how widely read one piece is. All right. So I want to just put this into perspective for you. Right. So here's some numbers from Wikipedia. Right. So the numbers from Wikipedia say that if you consider all Batman comics ever, right, the floppy ones, right? Because the number of trade paperbacks of Batman that have been sold are not significant, right? So the number of Batman floppy comics sold, there have been about 17,000 issues of Batman comics of one type or another since 1939. So how many? So 40, so 70 years, we're going to say, right? From 1940 to 2021, 1939, 21, 70 years, right? Of Batman comics. All of those floppy issues added up, they sold 484 million floppy comics-ish, right? Right. Based on rough numbers, right? So you got to think, 484 million divided by 40 years, divided by 12 months, because those are monthly floppies, right? Is basically the number of people, you know, ish that read Batman, right? Turnstiles. The Uniques, not the Uniques and Turnstiles. I was about to say. OK, one piece sells by the volume, right? And as 98 volumes, there are 98 volumes of one piece. And those volumes have sold 480 million. So about the same number as floppies of Batman. But you're only dividing not by 17,000 issues, but by 98 volumes. So that's your dividing by 100. So what's 480 million divided by 100? 4.8 million. What's 480 million divided by 17,000 issues, right? And then you also got to consider the years, right? Batman, it took 400 to get 424 million sales of floppies. They had to go for 70 years. One piece came out in 1997. It's only 20, not even 25 years old, one piece. That just makes me feel old, because I remember like when one piece started and I was like, ah, that show looks like it's going to be like that. Comics existed until about four or five years after three, three to five years. I guess you I get I bet in 1997. I think I didn't know about it until like 1998 or 1999. When I think back about one piece until 2000, because I was super into anime and manga in high school, but I knew one guy, only one person who was way more into it than I was. But anyway, he was like, oh, this is pirate thing, you know, one piece anime, but I guess we're not counting VTAS either, right? Yeah. But yeah, and that only that's the volumes, right? If you count the actual Shonen jumps that one piece is in, right? We're talking billions, right? So people just are not like realizing, I think, you know, scope wise in America, there's this perception of like the big two. We talked about this before, right? There's the marketing machine of, oh, yeah, Marvel and DC sell all these comics. Industries, there are big X, right? There's like big, how many big book publishers? There's less and less every day. It's like record companies. There's the big this many, right? And, you know, in every industry, there's like a big X, you know, some very small number, like less than five handful of companies that are the big ones and everyone else is medium or small. In US comics, there's this perception of the big two DC and Marvel. And it's true that their intellectual properties of superheroes are big in the culture wise, right? But in terms of comics, they are not actually big, right? In terms of all comics sold, not even in the US, but indefinitely in the world, they are not big. It's like Batman comics are, you know, more popular than other superhero comics. But it's like in terms of all comics in the world, they are not that popular. One is the king of comics throughout all history. And you've got an even starting at one piece. You've got to go far down the list before you find that man. It's like Garfield crushes, you know, that man easily. Like Archie comics are widely read. Oh, yeah. I mean, you know, if it's the North Star crushes it, right? You know, it's like asterisks and obelisk and crush it. I assume that like probably Donald Duck comics crush it, depending on how many you include in your in your tally, right? Tin Tin probably crushes all superhero comics ever, right? So, you know, this you need this perspective correction, I think, if you're, you know, thinking about comics and how popular they are, relatively speaking. And it's such a big reality distortion. That's why I feel the need to bring it up repeatedly, right? Maybe the Scarlet Witch is involved. It takes that much repetition to sort of break the spell, right? Of false perception. Well, like, you know, what we always just talk about with conventions and the turnstile accounts and all these conventions say, oh, 200,000 people showed up at our convention. Like, nah, that's that's that's not the number everyone thinks it is. There are not 200,000 people in that building. That's what Angle Comic Con was, you know, so like 10 times bigger than Otacon. And it was really just kind of bigger than it, you know. Well, that much break. Of course, it'll be infinitely bigger than Otacon if things don't pan out for Otacon this year, which we talked about on the last show. That's true. Do we have another news or is that it? Well, skip. We'll just skip the other because the other news was just the broader convention thing. But I think we already covered that enough. Let me hit. Mark, there we go. But things of the day. So what do you got? So we both saw the same thing in a tweet today, even though the thing itself is a year old. But I snatched this thing of the day first. So deal with it. So this. Yeah, I had it queued up for the show and then Scott was like, oh, yeah, here's my thing of the day. And he sent it to me and our rule is if you send the other person your thing of the day, it's theirs. That's dibs. That's a good dibs. So there's an animation studio in London that I didn't know about. But apparently this animation studio, I looked. I did some quick research on them. They really remind me of the early days of Studio Gonzo's making commercial animations of high quality. Right. Gonzo used to do like video game intros and those sorts of things. Right. So for example, if the animated Wargroove, you know, little short Wargroove promo animation, they made that. So the thing that they made a year ago is this 90 second. Right. It's a minute and a half long. It's got it's a song and it looks like a trailer or an opener to an animation that doesn't exist. And all I want is to see the show that this was pretending to be. You might. So the show that this is made a year ago, they uploaded it, but they still it might, you know, there's been a lot of hints. It might be coming for real. It's called the mighty grand piton. And what it is, basically, you watch this in 90 seconds. You get the whole concept. There is a black girl from London and her family goes on vacation to the Caribbean to like Saint Lucia. I think one of those islands. I don't know the names. There's too many islands. Sorry, I don't know all the Caribbean. That's my bad. And on that island, it's pretty much an iron giant, you know, situation. She finds a giant robot, right? Anime style and fights, you know, what seems to be like giant, you know, monsters of some kind as a giant ant in the animation that you can see it fighting and adventures. And such and such. So this is awesome because, A, there's tons of anime like this. But, you know, little kid, giant robot, right? But it almost always involves a young Japanese boy, like 99% of the time and young white boy, like 1% of the time. It almost never involves a young girl who's got a robot to themselves and definitely not a black girl and definitely not an Caribbean island. So that's just like A plus on, not even A plus, it's S plus. This just looks great and it gives me that. Animation is great and the song is great. Yeah. It goes to, I was about to say, gave me that same feel of that two mix video, white reflection, everyone saw where everyone said, Oh, I want to see the anime of that. Like it gave me that same feeling. It's just a music video. It's like, what do you mean anime? Yeah. But here, no, I really hope that, you know, you know, we've seen some good animation coming from Ireland. Why not from the big island? Albion. Yeah. People from the Albion Island make animation about, you know, the Caribbean island that would be terrific. I hope, you know, the best thing about this, the hints about this becoming an actual show slash movie are true. But yeah, well, this is more than worth 90 seconds of your time. Watch it two times. The top comment on the YouTube video from a year ago is the whole world needs to see this. Sure. Yes. So why not? You like played the clarinet and know some music. So you know about time signatures, right? Three fourths, three, four, four, four. Like, you know what that means? Like four, four means there are your work speaking in quarter notes and there are four quarter notes in a measure, like one, two, three, four, one, two, three. Like that's pretty straightforward. But the thing that wasn't straightforward is like you got four, four, right? Yeah, which means you got four per measure, right? You got four quarter notes per measure. That's the same as one, one, one whole note per measure. It is the same. So if you made eight, eight, it wouldn't be any different. It wouldn't actually be any different. Usually it just means like you'll draw all the eighth notes out like it's it's sort of like how you'll draw all the music like two, four and four, four can be written. So there's a lot of sure. So but they're equivalent. That's why people don't bother doing. There's only certain ones people actually use unless they're ridiculous. And then there's the ones like six, eight, where it's we're talking about eighth notes, but there'll be groups of them like dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, like groups of triplets. But that still makes sense. Yeah, yeah. So what about the weird ones? Like every every kid knows that there's that weird song in the in the time signature of five for Mars, Bringer of War, the classic song. It's at five four. There's five quarter notes per measure, and it makes it unwieldy and like difficult to listen to, and it's a whole thing. What I told you that 1516 is a commonly used and amazing time signature that you probably never thought ever heard of, probably heard songs in it and just not thought about that they were 1516. You probably haven't actually heard that many because usually the way you get the feeling of 1516 is like a funk groove, which isn't often written in 1516. So this video is Adam Neely. This is a backup thing of the day because I had to scramble because I got the good thing. I had this queued up as like a backup since Christmas. This is Christmas songs like a bunch of Christmas songs you've heard rewritten into the time signature of 1516. Oh, I think I saw this. You posted it and they're all I think I posted it like in our group or maybe even in the forum, but they're all amazing. Like they're really fun to listen to. I particularly like God rest you, Mary gentlemen in 1516. In the middle of a moment, I'm edging toward reading books because I can't go anywhere. I'm just stuck inside and at some point I got to just not play Hades and do a non Hades thing. If I'm just sitting around. Yeah, I'm reading a game that is very book like Morty like on my second play and then I'm reading comics. But I haven't read the book club quite yet. Get there though, because the problem is overwatch has been good again. There's been a lot more catch of the flag action in the arcade, which is a problem because I'll just sit in there forever. But yeah, don't stay tuned. We'll probably be reading the book at some point in the nearing future. Otherwise, stay tuned for whatever online cons we do. The online convention scene has dried up a little bit. I think people have realized, yeah, they don't really make money. Yep. And especially for cons that are struggling to survive covid until a post covid world, there's a online cons just cost them a lot of money and resources, but don't actually get them anything. And especially online cons don't really give that same feeling that people expect. So a lot of kinds are struggling to make like a useful and good online con experience. Con is not the content provider. A con is a logistics provider. And if you don't have any need of those logistics, if you're not going to a place, so they have nothing to offer unless their brand is stronger than the brands that they can put on their platform. And it's hard because it's not like the old days where cons had content that literally did not exist anywhere else. Like anime cons in the early days were yo, kid, you want to see some anime? This is the only goddamn place you can see it at all. So most cons, even the biggest cons, right? San Diego Comic Con, the biggest con, right? The online platform of San Diego Comic Con is weaker than like the online platform of like a single like artist alley person. Yep. They're like a glass cannon whose sole purpose is to make people be able to buy badges, see the schedule show up. Right. So like one person, you just pick a random, you know, weave in the anime artist alley table selling, you know, I don't know, crocheted cutie stuff, right? Like you see it, you know, a typical artist alley table you would see, you go find them at San Diego Comic Con. They probably don't have as maybe as many Twitter followers as San Diego Comic Con does, but I guarantee you, like their online, you know, community engagement that they have with their customers is probably better than how people have with San Diego Comic Con itself. People aren't looking at, you know, Comic Con Twitter for stuff, right? So there's not that much that Comic Con can even offer them other than the, that's not the actual con. And most of what I've enjoyed from online cons have just been panels. And that's what we do at online cons. But we could just do those on our own. Like we don't actually even need an excuse. YouTube channels with Pete that have a talking head style are just someone doing panels on their own constantly. Yeah. That's all they have. We just do a lot less panels if we only do them live. Yep, because it's more fun to do them live. And I think we said this before, you know why we haven't made a whole bunch of videos during COVID? Because it's not fun to make videos when Scott's in Astoria and I'm in LIC. It's way more fun when we do them together in front of one camera. Anyway, so let's just get right into it. Lupin the third, the first is not only the latest like iteration of Lupin movies. And I'm saying quotes because if you look at the history of Lupin, you basically got the manga. You've got the TV series is and then you've got the specials, some of which were theatrical movies and some of which were basically O.A.V.s. Some of which are O.A.V.s. I think there were some TV direct to TV movies possibly. Yep. Basically any format of video that exists, right, any distribution mechanism for video that like Lupin has been there, right? They just keep making more Lupin stuff, right, at a steady stream for as long as Lupin has existed, you know, make a little short series here, make a movie there. And they just got coming and coming and coming. It doesn't stop with a one forever. We'll say that there's like there's a median Lupin and the these specials. Let's not talk about the TV series. Just these specials, these like movie like things, these one-offs, they vary to a surprising degree, both in tone and quality, because much like James Bond, it's like a different director takes like I'm going to do a Lupin and they'll like take these, this palette of characters and this palette of tropes and they'll construct their own Lupin. So in the same universe that has Lupin, the Castle of Cagliostro, you've got Legend of Babylon Gold. Yeah. And you've all it was the one that was mostly about Zinogada and he was the fuma conspiracy. No, no, no, no, no. That's the one about going on. He's just the normal, really good one. What's the one where like Zinogada is like fired and he's like, you know, he's like sad in Japan. Yeah, I want to watch that one again. I just forget which one it was. They're all the thing is I like them all. Even the stupid ones. Like oh, yeah, I just like Lupin like Babylon Gold. We make fun of because it's got a lot of flaws, but I would watch it again. It's worse things to watch. The one with hair, Maffordite is probably the worst one. That's a real bad one. That one just suck. But isn't that like desert something? Yeah, desert. So I think we even showed it the anime club. The median Lupin is the assassin island one. Yeah. That is the default. It's good. It's not amazing. It's not bad. It's just like, this is Lupin. He has to go to this island, you know, you know, assassins and deal with them and such and such. But there's there's actually, and this is what I want to get into before we do this review. It's a two dimensional chart because there's median Lupin in terms of quality and there's median Lupin in terms of how close to like the standard tropes is it? Because I think the thing is, you know, people, a lot of Lupin fans always talking about like the jacket color, which is always a complete case in point. This is this is closer to a green jacket Lupin, even though he's wearing red. Exactly. That's what you can't fully rely on the jacket color. But there is sort of a, you know, up to a certain point, a correlation between Lupin's jacket color, whether it's green or red, like green Lupin, it just regardless of what he's actually wearing is like the cagliostro, like good guy at heart, like always does the right thing, mischievous, but not outright evil. Right. If you watch like Lupin TV series, like the one we watched most of, which murders so many people in the first fucking episode. Right. Or if you watch, if you read the Lupin manga, the old actual monkey punch one, it's like he is lewd, crude, murderous, actually crude rude, dude, actually a criminal, actually a bad, you know, kind of person. Like, you know, like green jacket Lupin will like knock someone out and get away. That manga Lupin will machine gun down an entire room of unrelated and innocent dinner party guests. Yep. To steal stuff, right? He's actually a thief, right? But the movies, you know, especially the theatrical ones, they tend to really tone it down, right? And make Lupin more of a sympathetic character. Like, yes, he's a thief, right? But, you know, this time he's he's stealing things. He's using his thief like skills, but he cares about people. So he's not going to, you know, compromise, you know, goodness, right? To do thieving, right? But now the greed to overcome his other desires. But there's also this like, I don't want to say high concept, low concept, but like some of these Lupins are just like a by the book. Like, here is every Lupin trope in the correct order beginning to end. Like, go on and again, we'll show up at this point. Fujiko Mine will show up at the first part. Get fuck Lupin over, get away, reappear later to help him. But then fucking over again. Chase Lupin, you know, and not catch him and then maybe catch him. But then he gets away. He's disguised, but then like you break away from those tropes and you get the ones were like, Lupin and Zenegada openly team up like for real or the ones where Zenegada tries to kill Lupin like. So there are also some of them go into more supernatural territories like the Mamo one, right? Yeah, into like weird stuff. Like what the heck is going on? Well, like Legend of Babylon, gold spoilers, aliens are coming back for their fucking gold. Exactly. So there's all sorts of some of them go into the supernatural territory and some of them stick to this more realistic territory, realistic in that Kagliostro is very realistic, except for the acrobatics of Lupin and that car chase, right? But there isn't like actual magic or actual wizards or actual any supernatural ghosts, right? They'll either be a hint of them, but then a Scooby-Doo reveal that they were actually some science or mechanism or they won't be there at all. So the last context before we dive straight into this movie is that there was a long period of time where the Lupin specials and shows and everything were just like kind of super bad to the point that a lot of them weren't worth watching. And then starting around the time of the Fujiko Mine anime TV series, the quality like suddenly returned. What was it like was a Jeegon's grave? What was that one? That's the next. So Fujiko Mine was like the one that like really did something interesting and different. I think we reviewed it a while ago. That show is amazing. Then after that, in a similar style is the grave of Jeegon Daisuke. Oh, that came after that? Yes. Okay. I can't remember what the order was. I trust you. I would say that that cluster of Lupin set off a Lupin renaissance and Lupin the third, the first is a top tier Lupin. It's pretty up there. It's not number one, but it's like top five, top 10 at worst. This this is what they done is the first 3D CG Lupin, right? Every Lupin before now may have used computers to help animate, obviously, but they were all 2D. You know, there may be like 3D behind the scenes. They didn't look 3D. This is like Toy Story 3D, right? Yep. Obviously looking much better than the original Toy Story because it's 2021. Yeah, we'll get into that, but it looks great. Yeah, it's like you might get hesitant. And whenever anything makes a switch to 3D like that, but this is definitely a Mario 64 situation where it works out. They manage even in 3D to maintain all of the characteristics of, you know, the characters, signature movements and looks and facial expressions and everything somehow has completely made the transition. Gigan's face is a little weird, I think. I like it, though, because it made him extra hot. Not bad. But I do think like it made it more. It made him more human and hotter. Yeah. But Lupin's face is just Lupin's face. Like there is no. So the thing that stands out the most about those the character designs in the transition to 3D that no still image is going to catch for you. They are emotive to a surprising degree, like to the point that I think this was the most acting a Lupin character has ever done on the screen. And maybe, you know, you know, that could be. But yeah, they basically I don't really see a downside to the switch to the CG thing at all, really, for this movie. I mean, it's not like it's like, as you might see, the the Ghibli 3D air wig does not look great. Yeah. In comparison, the only real disappointment is just that, like, hey, you know, I'm a fan of 2D animation, I'd like to see it carry on and not fade away. But in this particular instance, it's like the I don't think any harm was done other than the general harm to, oh, no, there's less 2D animation in the world, but this isn't a bad 3D animation. But like, no matter how hesitant someone is, like, are there complicated feelings about 3D? 30 seconds into this, you don't even remember that is 3D. You're just like gaping at the spectacle. It's just it's a movie. The movie is great and it's dives right in. There are those weird moments where the CG is like awkward or, you know, sort of, you know, breaks your fourth wall into remembering and none of those uncanny valley moments where it's too real. It's always it's still cartoony, but still right. It's great. Yep. In terms of the voice acting is top notch. Do I only watch the sub? I can't speak to the. Sadly, that some, you know, for the longest time, Lupin, all the characters had like the same voice actors. And it was only relatively recently, like in the past so some number of years that some of those original voice actors sadly passed away. Whoever they got, it sounds like Lupin. It sounds like everybody, right? There is no there was no problem basically. Whoever they got the new voice actors are sound like the old voice actors, sort of like how when there's Muppets, right? It's like, you know, it's like, yeah, it's not. Jim Henson doesn't do Kermit anymore. But if you watch a new Muppet thing, it sounds like Kermit the Frog, right? It's right. Whatever they got do, whatever they got doing it is doing it fine. It's the same situation here. Clearly, there are voice actors who can do the voices of these characters. They're just perfect. If you did a blind test and played them talking from this and them talking from older Lupins, I would really struggle to tell the difference. It's possible that even, you know, it is twenty twenty one. I don't know that they did this. I have no evidence. I don't think they did this. It's possible that they use computers to help out or to make it sound even more like the original. But whether they did or didn't, you can't tell. So what does it matter? So along those lines, the music, because it's this is set in like the mid to late sixties, like specifically, like it's a show era, like the movie is set in that time setting. And the music is the Lupin music from all out of the old Lupins. And they got to Yuji Ono. The soundtrack has like the score has 61 songs in it. And a bunch of the compositions are like that show a post war jazz stuff from old Lupins to the point that they even evoke the themes like from the songs in Cagliostro specifically to make sure it feels like a Lupin movie right to the point at the very end, you know, that song that creeps in when the movie is starting to end before the the the scene that ends every Lupin movie begins where everyone's escaping. I for a second, I thought it was actually the song from one of those other Lupins. I had to go check. Yeah, it did the same thing that every good soundtrack does when it's a soundtrack for like something that's a series, right? Star Wars, Indiana Jones, James Bond, right? Is they they have those core musical motifs, right? You know, and then they just remix and rearrange into something new and you could do a bad job of it. But you can also do a great job of it. And I don't think even bad Lupin movies don't really mess up those, you know, musical motifs ever. It's not a play that play the ending theme to just play it for fun. Yeah, but like play the ending theme to any Lupin that's ever been made, except they're really bad ones that fuck this up and anyone who's watched a bunch of Lupin just be like, that's the end to a Lupin. They're all running away now. And Zanagata is trying to chase them and the credits are about to roll. It's new good music, but if you are a Lupin person, you identify it immediately as Lupin music. There is no question. Yep. Right. So in terms of the movie plot itself, like it's a it's a by the book Lupin, except for a couple of minor pieces, piece number one, this isn't a break from the trope because Lupin Lupin's enemies being Nazis is not uncommon. But in this case, it is like, no, Lupin versus the Nazis. Yes, it's great up. It's it's so Indiana Jones, right? It's like there are a lot of the Lupin movies where he's not outright evil, end up being very Indiana Jonesy or more National Treasure E kind of thing. Yeah, it's like it's almost, you know, a sort of that sort of archaeological historical. This one is like a full on Raiders of the Lost Ark. The only difference between this and Indiana Jones, right, is that Indiana Jones just sort of like goes somewhere and doesn't really do anything. He's just sort of like there getting beat up until the bad guys lose. Yep. Like who who beat the Nazis in Raiders of the Lost Ark? It wasn't Indiana Jones. It was the Nazis, God. But in it where Lupin actually uses him and his allies, right, use their skills and abilities and such to directly, you know, conquer or overcome many conflicts and challenges. Yep. So the only break from the tropes of Lupin because this movie is literally like Fujiko shows up at the moment you're thinking, I bet Fujiko is about to show up to do her thing. She betrayed like it's just by the book, except it brings the lore of Lupin himself, like Lupin the third, the ancestor of Arsene Lupin. It actually brings that first. Yes, Lupin the first ancestor of Lupin the third. Yes, his grandpa. That's right. So it brings that in directly in a way that I have never really seen in a Lupin before. In every other Lupin thing I've ever seen, they basically make no mention of Lupin the second or Lupin the first or Lupin's mom or anything, right? It's like it's just here's Lupin the third. Yeah, you know, he's the grandson of Arsene Lupin because that's why where his name comes from. But we're not going to mention that at all. We got nothing to do with it. Nothing. This one, it's like, like you get this flashback to a bunch of Nazi shit and like families and people separated in like a treasure that Arsene never got and how Lupin like was almost destined to meet the person he meets and do the thing in this movie. That's a trope or a beat, not a trope. It's a beat that I don't think we've ever seen in a Lupin work. A Lupin movie has never been that I know of has never been about Lupin's history in any way, shape or form. And not to spoil anything. But the moment where you see it's in the title, the title of the movie is the moment when you see that hat sitting at the end of that tunnel. And that was a plus moment right there. Well, that's who's the first when they come into that whole area and the Nazi guy walks forward. All I could think was about a pious man kneeling down. Exactly. It's very, very indigent. Yeah, I can't. It's like, you know, anyway. So the only downside I can see, right? Plot wise was that while all the characters were on point, right? I think that the three typical allies, right? I think Xenogadda got the right amount of screen time that Xenogadda usually gets. Yep, because he got the extra beat of, all right. Like there's like he works in the beginning scenes, too. Yeah. Add. But Gigan, Goemon and Fujiko. Fujiko could have had maybe like one or two more things going on. But Gigan and Goemon, especially, I think, barely appear in this movie. But that's kind of by the book. A lot of the Lupons, those two show up in that fucking car and like save Lupon once or twice and otherwise don't matter. They don't appear much. But I think they're appearing in this. I don't know. I have to time it to figure out exactly. But it feels like they even have less than the usual amount of screen. I think you're right. But I think that's partly because it acts to give them one or two more scenes to bring them up to their average. I would say that the movie backed off on them a little bit because it actually took Lupon and the, you know, the new character. There's always the new character in a Lupon who's only there. The plot character is movie only. You never hear from them again every single time. It makes it gives both of them more development than they would either get in any other Lupon. Like that's the trade off. Yeah, I think that is. Well, I did particularly enjoy the villains because there's two villains like even on the movie poster, you can look at it and be like, OK, those are the two villains. I like how it was more of like a just just a Nazi. But the other one, the more main villain that gets more focus like the is actually somewhat interesting and complicated. Like also a Nazi, but like one's the Nazi fanatic, like Hitler's still alive in Brazil type of Nazi. And the second one is like complicated relationship with granddaughter and the world. Actually cares about a person. Yeah. And as a as a villain duo, they work better than the villains tend to in a lot of Lupons. Yeah, especially since it's not always clear, right? And a lot of Lupons, it's clear that like there's a boss and there's a square boss. That's the real boss. Oh my God. The one where the boss keeps murdering the with the fly swatter with the poison one by one like that. But in this Lupon, it's not always clear which of them is like the bigger boss. There's almost like this sort of up and down between. There's a power struggle between the two of them that was never resolved until the end of the movie. At some points in the movie, like one of them is like sort of like threatening the other, like, you know, I'm in charge here. And then at other points is like, no, I'm in charge here. Right. Yeah. And it's not the usual Megatron Starscream thing where like one of them is just a jerk. And Megatron is actually in charge. It's more of a, you know, I guess I can't use Transformers again. It doesn't really fit. It's like, you know, it's like, yeah, it'd be like if there were two Megatrons and they were there at the same time. There's an active power struggle between two people who are equally powerful and equally weak just in different ways. Yes. And it's kind of interesting. Like that's more nuanced than I think any Lupon villain has ever been ever. It's true. It's true. I think and considering that the rest of the plot of the movie is so, I guess, cookie cutter, you sort of need that that like spice things up and keep some interest. I will say I'm good with how cookie cutter the rest of it was mostly because it was such it was as such visual. It was a visual treat. Like the acting was perfect. Everything was so good that it was like the best possible completely plain sugar cookie. Yeah, it's like, hey, let's make a chocolate chip cookie. It's just a chocolate chip cookie. We didn't spice it up with like, you know, some sriracha chocolate chip cookie or peanut butter chocolate chip cookie or fancy expensive chocolate. Right. It's just a fucking damn good chocolate chip cookie. Look at that. It's a perfect circle. Exactly the right consistency and texture perfectly baked. Yeah. Don't come here expecting, you know, your sriracha peanut butter cookie. Right. But guess what? The absolute perfect chocolate chip cookie. What can't you would tell me you wouldn't eat that? You'd be like, no, I'm not going to eat that. The other thing I would put along those lines. The other thing I would say is I'm going to I would add this to my list of if someone had never seen or heard of Lupin at all, this would not be a bad one for them to see first. If they, yeah, I mean, you might see this first. I think it would be great. Yeah, seeing this first is perfectly because every Lupin whenever anyone sees Lupin first, if they become such a big Lupin fan that they're going deep in watching the ones who Lupin is evil, this starting one might make causes. I would I don't think that's a problem because most people get started on Cagliostro. Yeah, people already start on Cagliostro. And then they watch like, I don't know, Mama, when they're like, what the fuck is wrong with Lupin? Yeah, this is a perfectly fine first Lupin movie. Yeah, partly just because every Lupin movie anyone, the first Lupin movie you see, you got like, you're going to learn the deal with these characters just by jumping right in. Like there's no like the origin story movie to watch. Even the first cartoon, the first episode of the first show just assumes you know who the fuck these people are and dives right in because it kind of doesn't matter. You'll figure it out along the way. And also, it may be, you know, the fact that the some of the side characters barely appear might intrigue someone who maybe, you know, thinks if you think going on is cool or something, you think Gigan is cool and you're like, oh, I want to see more Gigan. Well, guess what? There's a whole there's plenty of other things you can watch to have a lot more Gigan action in them. Well, in case in point, the show, the Fujiko Mene anime series, that one almost does like an origin story of all the characters, but like a twisted one. But that one is the one I would not show to someone first because all that nonsense. Good for you. That nonsense is completely uninteresting to you unless you already care about and are interested in these characters. And then you see like those versions of those characters and that evolution of the like the characters together and you're intrigued by it and like you want to go deep. Someone can watch this and like, oh, I wonder what the deal is with Gigan and then watch Fujiko Mene and Grave of Gigan dice game be like, oh. So I try to think of something anything negative to say, because it wasn't like a perfect movie at all. I kind of would have liked it to be a little longer and have like one more beat. I think they already cut a lot out. I think the movie was actually edited pretty much perfectly because much like Indiana Jones and the and the the Ark of the Covenant, like that whole story, it it skips over a bunch of stuff. Like when he just rides the submarine to the destination, this movie like Lupin and the girl are about to go break into a thing. It just cuts to them having already broken into the thing. It cuts to the good part. It does do that. But at the same time, when it starts getting towards the end and you think like, oh, is the climactic thing, it felt like I was starting to feel a little bit like, ah, this is the final and it's like, that wasn't the final. There's another and then another and then it was over. And I was, I don't know. The Hitler know Fukatsu was a beat that I both didn't expect and appreciated greatly. I mean, it wasn't bad, but I just it felt like, you know, I looked at my watch at least one time, right? Not 10 times, like one time. I think part of the reason I didn't was that if I had to describe the animation, like the end result of watching everything, like kind of like we talked about in the very beginning about the animation style, it's so rich and like thick and detailed and textured and stylized, like all the little details on the screen were just such a pleasure to the eye that I kind of just wanted to keep seeing more of it longer. But to your point, the movie was edited well enough to like not make it drag on. And if they added more scenes, I might have started to feel that drag. The other thing is that some of the action scenes, right, were excellent, especially like the laser, you know, it's typical laser tunnel, right? Oh, the laser tunnel was so good. Such a cliche, right? It's like, oh, you got to get it. But the twist with the cane and the hat. The cane, the hat, but like the way it was animated. And right when it slows down for the one moment, that may be the best laser tunnel I ever seen. Fuck you, mission impossible tunnel. You saw compared to this one, but on other parts, right? The action scenes were kind of, OK. Good, you know, nothing to write home about, right? But if you think of like other lupins, like Castle of Cagliostro, you've got like the iconic clock scene, right? Yeah. Or the swimming through the canal scene. Right. It's like this didn't have maybe laser tunnel scene is the one. But other than that, it didn't really have the X scene, right? Or it had a few like the two action scenes, the three action scenes that actually stood out the most that were actually none of them were iconic. But they were all like above average because I was trying to list them like there's the fist fight he has, which was just like cowboy bebop levels. There was the the plane fight when Fujiko comes in, like that was actually really fun. The bit where he grabs onto the front of the wing and then the girl grabs on and kind of knocks him off and they like go back and forth a little bit. Like that was started with the scene where they're falling out of the sky. We know exactly. But then you've got the car chase in the very beginning. Yeah, which was a car start of a lupin movie. Exactly. Come on. But yeah, you're right. Every all that there were many great action scenes, but there was no like the action scene. Yeah, there's nothing like, you know, some iconic thing to well, like a Babylon gold. All right, they're on motorcycles on that clown face. That's iconic. Very memorable. But yeah, I would like without reservation, recommend watching this movie to anyone who would listen to Geek Nights. If you if you're an anime person, if you like animation, you like animated movies at all. If you like Indiana Jones, if you like a lupin, if you know any, you should be it. Most people would be well served watching this movie. Yep. Like I would recommend this to like my dad, like I or my mom. Just like, hey, how long is it? Two hours, not even it's 93 minutes. All right, you want 93 minutes of fun. It's got got a better 93 minutes of fun. I don't know. Yeah. Right. This. Why don't you move you this pick this one? All right, I think that was a solid show. I'm also getting desperately hungry. So it was good timing.