Glad you liked Seven Days Rhapsody, too. : ) Visually, I thought it was really impressive.
Last special I watched...Elusiveness of the Fog with subtitles. I really love this one and find it re-watchable--I think I've seen it four times now. : ) That said I finally understand how the different parts of the story connect, and now it's clearer than the first three times I watched it. ^^ Still, I'm glad that Jigen brings up the plot hole in the end:
How could the time machine be the treasure in the present before they had gone back in time?
Maybe it's a cop-out that Lupin asks, in futility, for Mamo, who's back in the future, to explain it, but then that also prevented it from getting too heady--Noein, anyone? o____O
The other thing I'm confused with is how the rock disappeared if Lupin and co. hadn't yet gone back in time, and Lupin hadn't yet provoked Mamo Kyosuke so that he shot his rocket launcher, and blew up the rock.
Unless, once Mamo Kyosuke sent Lupin and co. back in time, that created a split in time so that Mamo was travelling the same trajectory along which everything happened with Lupin and co. and he was just moving back and forth along that same timeline--so Mamo Kyosuke just moves to a point slightly in the future where the rock disappears, a little after the story. Then that makes perfect sense.
But then, before that moment where Lupin and co. get sent back in time, if Jigen is right,
then the treasure is something else, and as Lupin said in just to Mamo, that they failed in finding the real treasure. And then after Mamo went back in time and sent Lupin and co. back in time, then only then the time machine became the treasure.
It looks like Goemon, and then Lupin changed history by saving Iseka's life, but I don't know how they showed that in the present, if they did.
Anyway, what I like about the special is that Lupin and co. get tangled in the middle of something big, an inter-village war, and you get to see a range of emotion---sympathy with the other side, ruthless ambition on the part of the chancellor
that got his position through shedding blood, by turning the former chancellor's own men against him. And then the Shine chancellor is just as bad, holding Iseka at knife-point so that Goemon will surrender his sword. Interesting that the heads of state aren't corrupt (as they usually are in Lupin) but the right-hand men are, and the leaders want peace but they have never met to negotiate--and then Goemon becomes that crucial liason between the Shine and Norse.
When Iseka is pleading for peace, Obitaki tells his man to fire, almost under his breath. And then Goemon blocks the bullet with Zantetsuken just in time.
What else appealed to me was the tough, survivalist personality of Fujiko's ancestor, that makes you wonder if under different circumstances, Fujiko would be a much more outwardly hardened woman than she is now.
Jigen's initial fixation on his lost gun, preventing him from being chivalrous towards Iseka--plot-wise, it lets Goemon have a chance to be a hero. But then Jigen regains his softer edge when he befriends Takaya.
It reminded me of his relationship with Conan in Lvs.C.
I also liked the intensity--
When Takaya is about to stab Obitaki and avenge his father's murder, then Ofumi shields him and they show blood.
I don't ever remember them showing a kid bleeding before.
Something funny I liked in the special was
Lupin's double purpose in recommending Goemon to be Iseka's bodyguard: for inside information on the Shine Castle and he chuckles without saying anything--
Maybe Lupin also wants to hook Goemon up?
And something else I found notable about the special was
Zenigata's unusual concern for civilians. Normally, in his zeal to catch Lupin, he'll leave someone that Lupin tied up bound, or he'll miss a kidnapping right in front of him, but in this special, he defends the Shine villagers.
I loved
Lupin's attempts to lure Mamo out of the time machine, and the one that works is when he approaches the treasure, then leaves, then tricks Mamo to go back into the past to find the treasure, and he goes back to the exact spot in time where Lupin is about to grab the stone, and then Lupin steals the time machine.
oO I mean, that takes skill. XD
Finally, the brief but sexy arrangement of Zantetsuken, with the trumpets. oO I mean, it wasn't actually sexy, like steamy sexy, but you get my point. x_0
