April O'Neil's character design

[Gyt Kaliba]

Thanks, it's my pleasure to try and help. It's not too often that my anime and TMNT fandoms get to work together as nicely as this, so I definitely wanted to see what I could find out.

Originally Posted by oldmanwinters

I've not yet figured out what episodes Wise must have watched to inspire April O'Neil's original look, but the closet thing I can identify is a late scene from the fantastic (seriously, I'm not even a Lupin fan and I love it) Castle of Cagliostro movie.

Oh wow, I completely FORGOT about that from Castle of Cagliostro. Hmm...that gives me some more questions and some thoughts, but before I get to that -

And... because I just happened to see this somewhere (can't remember the reference) and thought it might be more than just a coincidence:

Oh wow! That has to be from the second Lupin the 3rd TV series, due to the Adult Swim logo, as that's the only one that ever got released here (until recently), though we've had plenty of the specials/movies/etc. over the years.

I don't know much about the early broadcast history of Lupin III in America, but my guess would be that Wise wouldn't have had access to too many episodes. I don't even know that he saw Castle of Cagliostro before 1987. Maybe Fujiko wore a yellow jumpsuit in an early episode or maybe Wise just forgot the colors on the jumpsuit in Castle of Cagliostro?

I'm by no means a Lupin expert, even though I am a pretty big fan, but I want to say that the first things for the series we got here had to be the Cagliostro film and some episodes of the second TV series. Cagliostro would have come first I think. So, are we absolutely sure that it was episodes that Wise saw and not this movie? It just seems the most likely source, and like you said he either forgot that it was a pink jumpsuit, or he changed it to yellow for some reason or another.

This makes me wonder if someone in Japan is aware of how this went down though. If it is the pink jumpsuit and not another part where she had a yellow one, then them doing the jumpsuit look yet again in the new Fujiko series and making it YELLOW this time seems awfully coincidental doesn't it?

As a final info bit - it's no wonder you like Cagliostro even if you're not a Lupin fan. Don't know if you're into his stuff or not, but Cagliostro is kind of a special film for the Lupin franchise, in that it was done by Hayao Miyazaki, the same guy behind stuff like Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Ponyo, and so on. His stuff is pretty much considered good even outside of anime fans.