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Aramis no Bouken
The 'feature length sequel' to "Sous le Signe des Mousquetaires" turns out to be extremely short (the end credits plus initial recap of preceding events occupy between them a not insignificant chunk of the nominal running time, so it's probably less than a couple of episodes' worth) and fairly undistinguished, much as one expects of a Disney straight-to-video sequel :-p It does, however, prove to be the source of all the 'extra' footage, obviously a boon to Aramis-shippers; I am slightly disturbed to discover that I was able to identify what I had and hadn't seen with such accuracy! (Though I probably wouldn't have noticed the difference in art styles if the two sets of footage hadn't been directly intercut for fanvid purposes; I wasn't conscious of it when watching the sequel as a whole.)
The plot doesn't make an awful lot of sense. http://www.planete-jeunesse.com/fiche-3392-anime-sanjushi-aramis-no-boken-syncomplet.html
Aramis goes back to François' grave after the death of Manson, dressed as a woman (which makes sense, I suppose, since neither he nor anybody she might encounter in their old neighbourhood ever knew her as anything else) and encounters a fellow-mourner, who turns out to be François' father -- apparently a Protestant noble, although that doesn't seem to be plot-significant. He knew of her existence, but they had never actually met; a potentially interesting development, but the relationship between Aramis and the man who would gladly have been her father-in-law gets virtually no screen time and exists basically as a 'clue' to get her to rush off to Switzerland (the whole Switzerland thing completely confused me).
The story proper then takes up a year and a half after the events of Belle-Île, with d'Artagnan back in Paris (and apparently more than a little hen-pecked, even though he and Constance are not actually married yet). There is a general bar fight sparked off by Jussac attempting to molest a young woman who has come rushing in for shelter (lazy plotting, but again it was footage that figured largely in the fan-vids) and then an interesting twist when d'Artagnan rushes to save her, as he assumes, from throwing herself into the Seine, and it turns out that she was instead attempting to climb down the bridge and retrieve a hidden treasure all along. But when she eludes the over-helpful d'Artagnan and manages to make it back to the bridge, she is attacked and killed by an unknown in an elaborate metal mask... it is a gold mask this time, at least, I suppose?
We are not quite sure whether she is 'good' or 'bad', but the death comes as quite a shock, because very few people actually get killed in this show. And the next morning, while the musketeers are receiving a bawling-out from Treville for their involvement in the tavern disturbance (eventually terminated by Athos attempting to take all the blame onto himself; Treville isn't swallowing that), d'Artagnan finds himself suddenly arrested for murder by Rochefort thanks to his involvement with the dead woman -- after all, he was responsible for tipping her into the river and was then seen carrying her off. An outraged Porthos charges Rochefort with having forgotten that they fought side by side at Belle-Île, a nice nod back to series continuity, but Rochefort retorts that he is just doing his job... although he does seem to be a little too smug about it as he lounges against Treville's desk and produces his warrant.
So d'Artagnan surrenders himself obediently and goes off to jail, while back in Constance's house the unknown woman turns out to have left behind a letter promising a reward if news of her is brought to the former Queen-Regent, Marie de Medici. But unfortunately, after this intriguing set-up is established, everything seems to get confusing and a bit silly :-(
Aramis supposedly recognises the torn diagram found clutched in the victim's hand immediately as being a fragment of the floor-plan of François' old house in Noisy-le-Sec (a nod to "Twenty Years After" canon, in which that is the location of Aramis' Jesuit convent!) This would have been much more believable if the page had actually contained some identifying text or any distinctive features at all :-p
Then, without telling any of the others, she pulls out a dress from among the clothes in her room and goes off disguised as a woman to see the Queen Mother (there doesn't seem to be any reason for her to do this, particularly as she then gets into a fight while inconveniently dressed in women's clothing!) Again, convenient visuals for Aramis-shipping, though...
Marie de Medici confesses that years ago she had rashly signed a treaty ceding Gascony and the South to the Spanish in return for military aid against her son. When she changed her mind and tried to take back the treaty, the compromising document went missing, and the dead woman, Carina, was one of the agents she had sent out to try to locate it. (The old Queen appears to be visually exactly the same generation as Anne of Austria and the Duchesse de Chevreuse, presumably because this is anime, although male characters are allowed to age :-p) The sole clue remaining as to the document's location is the cryptic message "I gave it to Henri IV".
Aramis proceeds to deduce from the existence of Carina's half-map of Noisy-le-Sec that the document is in Switzerland(!) (The subtitles appear to imply that Henri IV himself took the map there, which has to be a mistranslation, since the King couldn't possibly have been alive at that date.) Nor do I understand why the King of France (or, for that matter, the Marquis Daniel, who seems to be the actual owner) would have a chateau in Switzerland in the first place - the whole thing seemed to make so little sense that, since we are shown an eavesdropper and Aramis casts a suspicious glance in the direction of the spyhole, I had assumed that she was simply making up a story to put the spies on the wrong scent. But no, apparently everyone really is now setting off for "the Chateau de Joule" on the far side of the border...
We then get another flashback to François' grave (was that supposed to be in Switzerland? We had previously assumed it to be close to the scene of his death) with Daniel driving Aramis back to the chateau, telling her that he had planned to make it over to the young couple before fate took his son from him :-( Here he shows her the "Henri Quatre Room" full of furniture from the era of the late king, which also happens to contain the chair from Noisy-le-Sec to which our attention was carefully drawn in the flashback -- the explanation being given that it was present in Prince Philippe's boyhood home in memory of his father, despite the fact that he never even knew who his father was, and was presumably shipped here after Philippe's abduction in order to add to the Marquis' collection(?!)
Spoiler alert: the treaty is of course hidden in the chair, although not only does Aramis have absolutely no reason to suppose this from the knowledge in her possession, but she apparently doesn't even suspect its specific presence there -- she just jumped to the conclusion that "Henri IV" refers somehow to the Marquis Daniel and his collection. (Of which that particular chair cannot have been a part until later; why was the treaty initially hidden in the house of Prince Philippe, whose existence and relationship to the Queen was supposed to be a secret? And why would you draw a treasure map pointing -- assuming that 'X marks the spot' was present on the missing half -- to a *chair* in a house, when the item of furniture could very easy have been moved to another room in the intervening years, and had in fact been sold out of the house altogether... presumably along with everything else in it, after the death/kidnapping of everyone who lived there? The map makes no sense, and Aramis' deductions make no sense.)
Aramis then jumps to the conclusion that Daniel is in danger and she needs to go to rescue him, and goes to Treville to resign from the Musketeers (why not just ask for leave?) Hence a confrontation with Porthos in which Athos has to restrain him physically: very much a retread of "The betrayal of Aramis", and I think that (along with entirely inadequate running time) is the main problem with this 'special' episode, namely the idea that if something was effective previously you can just do it again and get the same success.
If she genuinely has reason to believe that Daniel is desperately in need of her help, then it's fair enough for her to decide that she needs to leave right away, despite the need to for them to clear d'Artagnan's name. But this time round, her scheme doesn't pivot around being seen to alienate her friends in the process, so why wouldn't she just tell them where she is going, and why? (Nor does there seem to be any explanation for why she whispers "Forget about me" as she gallops madly off into the night). Treville tells the others that Aramis has "made a bargain" for d'Artagnan's sake, but the next thing we see is d'Artagnan escaping quite easily by his own devices -- probably the shortest time that any of them ever spend in prison. And immediately afterwards the Queen Mother sends Athos and Porthos off to rescue Aramis anyway (and the escaped d'Artagnan, along with Jean -- who doesn't appear to have aged at all in a year and a half either -- and Constance, chases after *them*... if we are generous we can assume that 'the bargain' was with Marie de Medici and that she assured the others that d'Artagnan would be all right before sending them out of Paris, because after blaming Aramis for abandoning him they seem quite happy to do exactly the same thing!)
Basically this entire very compressed plot sequence is both contrived (to split up the characters and create fake angst) and confusing :-(
Aramis gains admission to the Henri Quatre Chamber, and while the visuals clearly attract our attention to the green chair, she herself walks straight past it to search elsewhere (despite the fact that this is the only item in the room with any connection to Noisy-le-Sec or Carina, who according to Porthos apparently was born there -- explaining, presumably, why she might have fled back there and stashed the dangerous document away in the local manor, although we are never given any indication that she did anything of the sort...) So whatever train of thought led Aramis to connect a map of François' home with his father's veneration for the late King, it clearly doesn't include any deduction as to *how* "I gave it to Henri IV" could have transferred a copy of a treaty from the outskirts of Paris to Switzerland. (Again, I wonder if the fan-translation may have been a trifle too literal there, in that the original Japanese could possibly have had the sense of "I hid it in the Henri IV [chair]" -- which would have made a lot more sense as a clue being left for the Queen in the Noisy context, where there was only *one* Henri IV item, than it does as a pointer to the Chateau de Joule.)
But before her search of the Henri Quatre Chamber can yield up any sign of the treaty, a group of armed men burst in and demand that she hand it over - it is the bodyguard of Marie de Medici, who have clearly been double-crossing the former Queen (or, as Aramis puts it, "Spanish spies!") After a long fight and escape, Aramis is about to make a getaway over the roofs when she is suddenly attacked and disarmed by... a black panther. Which we did, to be fair, see accompanying the villain earlier on.
Save that the masked villain, who now makes an appearance, turns out to be --Milady. Not again!
With absolutely zero explanation as to how she comes to be alive: couldn't we have had some actual Spanish spies in their own right, or a good motive for Marie de Medici's bodyguard to hold a grudge against their mistress, or absolutely anything more original than Milady as the villain of the week? (I suppose the merit for the writers is that they don't even have to bother providing plot or motive but just trot out the ongoing antagonist and take evil as read...) Obviously this completely undermines her partial redemption at the end of the previous series, which in turn had tied back to her partial redemption at the end of the first series, thus basically unravelling the whole lot :-(
Aramis is now tied up and flogged to get her to reveal the location of the treaty, which of course she doesn't actually know and certainly wouldn't tell them if she did know (as she jerks out between blows of the whip). And then Porthos and Athos show up at the castle gate, and find themselves promptly dropped into the dungeons when a trapdoor opens beneath their feet as part of the castle defences... where they immediately run into the Marquis Daniel and his household, who have also been imprisoned down there since the invasion of their home.
Aramis, still hanging suspended by her hands (ouch), is left to think over her situation overnight, since she is proving obdurate and for the moment appears to have fainted. Except that they apparently very kindly cut her down for the purpose, because the next time we see her she is lying face-down on the floor and sawing through her bonds using the shards of some crockery that was smashed in the course of the earlier search -- this would be less surprising if any such order had actually been given, but at the point when Milady walks out, so far as we know Aramis is still up there :-p Also, they had apparently taken her back to the Henri IV room to question her (or at least that is where she wakes up on the floor), which wasn't the impression I'd had earlier.
But waking up on the floor does give Aramis a completely new perspective on the furniture, and she spots a stitched slit on the underneath of the chair's seat, which proves to conceal the much-sought-after treaty. I'm guessing that they were watching her (and presumably did deliberately cut her down and allow her to escape in the hopes that she might reveal the hiding-place?), becuse the moment she lays hands on the document the doors open and her captors move in on her...
Meanwhile Porthos has ripped a barred gate out of the dungeons, allowing everyone else to escape too, and they turn up behind Aramis' assailants to reverse the odds in the nick of time. Milady (of course) escapes with the treaty in one hand, and Aramis pelts after her; the leader of the bodyguards attempts to shoot Aramis down, but Athos strikes the gun from his hand and there follows an actual swordplay sequence, which stands out because I think it's pretty much the only real duel depicted in this series, where fights tend to be indicated in freeze-frame shorthand and/or in extreme cartoonish form. I'm guessing the 'feature-length episode' format paid for a little extra live animation time, and the back-and-forth flicker of thrust and riposte ;-)
Also one of the few cases where we see one of the protagonists kill anybody, and if not in cold blood then with very definite intent. (And shown from an odd angle which highlights a fact that hadn't ever really registered with me before, that Athos is the only protagonist in the series who actually wears shoes and stockings (and authentically high-heeled nobleman's shoes) as opposed to boots :-p)
Aramis has to duel the panther, which she succeeds in doing rather gruesomely by dropping a spiked portcullis on it in mid-leap. (Presumably having her be seen to stick her sword through *an animal* would have been a step too far for the audience!)
And Milady escapes in a glider off the roof. Again. (more recycled plot from earlier in the series)
But fortunately d'Artagnan, who set off behind the others (and has Constance and Jean hanging on his tail), hasn't yet reached the castle, so he now veers off on horseback in pursuit. Kopi the parrot flies up and sabotages the fabric of the glider wings so that it tips out of control and crashes into a nearby glacier(?) and d'Artagnan and Milady face off against one another, sword against pistol. "You only have one shot" -- but she clearly doesn't intend to miss.
Except that Aramis then turns up (and just how did she get down from the roof and across the mountainside so quickly?) and transfixes Milady's forearm with a thrown dagger at extreme distance. An avalanche starts at the sound of the shot, and sweeps away both d'Artagnan and Milady, while very conveniently tossing the rolled treaty up into the air to land at Aramis' feet. D'Artagnan is fine, but cold; Milady is presumed dead (again) and probably isn't (again). Given that she managed by some unexplained means to survive an explosion that shattered an entire island and destroyed a submarine underwater, it seems highly unlikely that an avalanche which barely touched d'Artagnan would have had much effect on her...
On their way home, Jean runs off to play with some other children, and a woman who is sadly watching them play (and whom we glimpsed earlier when Aramis asked her for news of Daniel, thus allowing the script to assure us concisely that Daniel is now fine :-) turns out to be Jean's many-years-lost mother, who recognises him. I don't know what the chances of that are :-p
(As someone in the YouTube comments pointed out, it would have made more sense if she had caught sight of the childhood burn scar mentioned in one of the first-series episodes!)
Back in Paris, the infamous treaty is consigned to the flames, and the remainder of the running time turns out to be occupied by a lengthy credits montage illustrated with stills of the various characters together, now including Jean's mother.
There are some good things in this extended episode (feature film it isn't). The Marquis Daniel is a potentially inspired choice of character as someone whom she meets for the first time in the course of this episode, yet whose welfare she has a motive to care about deeply but for reasons that she cannot disclose to her friends -- and without a forced romantic relationship being involved. The script-writers resisted the temptation to do a fan-fic-style 'Aramis special' revolving around revelations of her identity or difficulties in keeping her secret, but gave her instead an action adventure in her own right that has nothing to do with her sex (in fact, the scene where she disguises herself as a woman -- because that is what it amounts to: this isn't her 'real' identity coming out, as it arguably is with Daniel -- is pretty pointless in terms of the plot).
There is a nice running gag for d'Artagnan, where people keep saying things to him to which he retorts "Here, that was supposed to be my line!", up to and including Milady's incredulous "What, are you still alive?" The three Musketeers all get some nice fight/chase sequences and individual character moments, and if Aramis gets captured then it is only because she is outnumbered twenty to one *and* unexpectedly facing a man-sized panther ;-)
There are also some nods back to past continuity while acknowledging that we are now post-series.
Unfortunately the main problem is really the plot; not necessarily, I think, even so much the plot itself as the way that it lazily leans on clichés and recycling of material, which all ties into the other fundamental issue, which is sheer lack of time. There is basically too much material here to be polished off in the equivalent of only a couple of episodes' length; this is the sort of story that would normally develop over the course of three or four or even more (in the original series, it takes *five* episodes of adventure for d'Artagnan to reach the coast in pursuit of the diamond studs, from Episode 14, Départ Pour l'Angleterre, to Episode 19, l'Embarquement à Calais). The result is that everything is severely telescoped, with elements like d'Artagnan's accusation and arrest being skimmed over almost in passing (this would definitely merit at least an individual episode of its own under normal circumstances, like the occasions on which Athos and Aramis respectively found themselves incarcerated).
The whole Switzerland business I simply do not understand (was that all in the name of being able to invoke an avalanche, perhaps?)
And the whole Milady business feels like a mistake; I can think of various bad reasons for bringing her in, but no good ones. So far as I can gather, this was originally hoped to be the first of a set of mini-features, each highlighting an individual character, and the assumption is presumably that Milady was planned to feature as a recurring opponent between all the films -- possibly with the explanation for her survival being scheduled to make an appearance later on, and this appearance just being a teaser. But I really don't like it, and don't see any reason why the villain here couldn't have been any other character with a pet panther.
The actual action sequences work well enough, but the set-up is truncated and confusing. Given a little more space to play with, I suspect the script could have been considerably more developed; it currently feels like something that has been abridged almost to the point where it would have been better to simplify out chunks of it altogether :-(
One gathers that this feature (perhaps unsurprisingly) was not a sufficient success to have financed any more along the same lines. Still, it would have been intriguing to see an episode focusing on Porthos in danger and/or saving the day, or exploring his backstory...
The plot doesn't make an awful lot of sense. http://www.planete-jeunesse.com/fiche-3392-anime-sanjushi-aramis-no-boken-syncomplet.html
Aramis goes back to François' grave after the death of Manson, dressed as a woman (which makes sense, I suppose, since neither he nor anybody she might encounter in their old neighbourhood ever knew her as anything else) and encounters a fellow-mourner, who turns out to be François' father -- apparently a Protestant noble, although that doesn't seem to be plot-significant. He knew of her existence, but they had never actually met; a potentially interesting development, but the relationship between Aramis and the man who would gladly have been her father-in-law gets virtually no screen time and exists basically as a 'clue' to get her to rush off to Switzerland (the whole Switzerland thing completely confused me).
The story proper then takes up a year and a half after the events of Belle-Île, with d'Artagnan back in Paris (and apparently more than a little hen-pecked, even though he and Constance are not actually married yet). There is a general bar fight sparked off by Jussac attempting to molest a young woman who has come rushing in for shelter (lazy plotting, but again it was footage that figured largely in the fan-vids) and then an interesting twist when d'Artagnan rushes to save her, as he assumes, from throwing herself into the Seine, and it turns out that she was instead attempting to climb down the bridge and retrieve a hidden treasure all along. But when she eludes the over-helpful d'Artagnan and manages to make it back to the bridge, she is attacked and killed by an unknown in an elaborate metal mask... it is a gold mask this time, at least, I suppose?
We are not quite sure whether she is 'good' or 'bad', but the death comes as quite a shock, because very few people actually get killed in this show. And the next morning, while the musketeers are receiving a bawling-out from Treville for their involvement in the tavern disturbance (eventually terminated by Athos attempting to take all the blame onto himself; Treville isn't swallowing that), d'Artagnan finds himself suddenly arrested for murder by Rochefort thanks to his involvement with the dead woman -- after all, he was responsible for tipping her into the river and was then seen carrying her off. An outraged Porthos charges Rochefort with having forgotten that they fought side by side at Belle-Île, a nice nod back to series continuity, but Rochefort retorts that he is just doing his job... although he does seem to be a little too smug about it as he lounges against Treville's desk and produces his warrant.
So d'Artagnan surrenders himself obediently and goes off to jail, while back in Constance's house the unknown woman turns out to have left behind a letter promising a reward if news of her is brought to the former Queen-Regent, Marie de Medici. But unfortunately, after this intriguing set-up is established, everything seems to get confusing and a bit silly :-(
Aramis supposedly recognises the torn diagram found clutched in the victim's hand immediately as being a fragment of the floor-plan of François' old house in Noisy-le-Sec (a nod to "Twenty Years After" canon, in which that is the location of Aramis' Jesuit convent!) This would have been much more believable if the page had actually contained some identifying text or any distinctive features at all :-p
Then, without telling any of the others, she pulls out a dress from among the clothes in her room and goes off disguised as a woman to see the Queen Mother (there doesn't seem to be any reason for her to do this, particularly as she then gets into a fight while inconveniently dressed in women's clothing!) Again, convenient visuals for Aramis-shipping, though...
Marie de Medici confesses that years ago she had rashly signed a treaty ceding Gascony and the South to the Spanish in return for military aid against her son. When she changed her mind and tried to take back the treaty, the compromising document went missing, and the dead woman, Carina, was one of the agents she had sent out to try to locate it. (The old Queen appears to be visually exactly the same generation as Anne of Austria and the Duchesse de Chevreuse, presumably because this is anime, although male characters are allowed to age :-p) The sole clue remaining as to the document's location is the cryptic message "I gave it to Henri IV".
Aramis proceeds to deduce from the existence of Carina's half-map of Noisy-le-Sec that the document is in Switzerland(!) (The subtitles appear to imply that Henri IV himself took the map there, which has to be a mistranslation, since the King couldn't possibly have been alive at that date.) Nor do I understand why the King of France (or, for that matter, the Marquis Daniel, who seems to be the actual owner) would have a chateau in Switzerland in the first place - the whole thing seemed to make so little sense that, since we are shown an eavesdropper and Aramis casts a suspicious glance in the direction of the spyhole, I had assumed that she was simply making up a story to put the spies on the wrong scent. But no, apparently everyone really is now setting off for "the Chateau de Joule" on the far side of the border...
We then get another flashback to François' grave (was that supposed to be in Switzerland? We had previously assumed it to be close to the scene of his death) with Daniel driving Aramis back to the chateau, telling her that he had planned to make it over to the young couple before fate took his son from him :-( Here he shows her the "Henri Quatre Room" full of furniture from the era of the late king, which also happens to contain the chair from Noisy-le-Sec to which our attention was carefully drawn in the flashback -- the explanation being given that it was present in Prince Philippe's boyhood home in memory of his father, despite the fact that he never even knew who his father was, and was presumably shipped here after Philippe's abduction in order to add to the Marquis' collection(?!)
Spoiler alert: the treaty is of course hidden in the chair, although not only does Aramis have absolutely no reason to suppose this from the knowledge in her possession, but she apparently doesn't even suspect its specific presence there -- she just jumped to the conclusion that "Henri IV" refers somehow to the Marquis Daniel and his collection. (Of which that particular chair cannot have been a part until later; why was the treaty initially hidden in the house of Prince Philippe, whose existence and relationship to the Queen was supposed to be a secret? And why would you draw a treasure map pointing -- assuming that 'X marks the spot' was present on the missing half -- to a *chair* in a house, when the item of furniture could very easy have been moved to another room in the intervening years, and had in fact been sold out of the house altogether... presumably along with everything else in it, after the death/kidnapping of everyone who lived there? The map makes no sense, and Aramis' deductions make no sense.)
Aramis then jumps to the conclusion that Daniel is in danger and she needs to go to rescue him, and goes to Treville to resign from the Musketeers (why not just ask for leave?) Hence a confrontation with Porthos in which Athos has to restrain him physically: very much a retread of "The betrayal of Aramis", and I think that (along with entirely inadequate running time) is the main problem with this 'special' episode, namely the idea that if something was effective previously you can just do it again and get the same success.
If she genuinely has reason to believe that Daniel is desperately in need of her help, then it's fair enough for her to decide that she needs to leave right away, despite the need to for them to clear d'Artagnan's name. But this time round, her scheme doesn't pivot around being seen to alienate her friends in the process, so why wouldn't she just tell them where she is going, and why? (Nor does there seem to be any explanation for why she whispers "Forget about me" as she gallops madly off into the night). Treville tells the others that Aramis has "made a bargain" for d'Artagnan's sake, but the next thing we see is d'Artagnan escaping quite easily by his own devices -- probably the shortest time that any of them ever spend in prison. And immediately afterwards the Queen Mother sends Athos and Porthos off to rescue Aramis anyway (and the escaped d'Artagnan, along with Jean -- who doesn't appear to have aged at all in a year and a half either -- and Constance, chases after *them*... if we are generous we can assume that 'the bargain' was with Marie de Medici and that she assured the others that d'Artagnan would be all right before sending them out of Paris, because after blaming Aramis for abandoning him they seem quite happy to do exactly the same thing!)
Basically this entire very compressed plot sequence is both contrived (to split up the characters and create fake angst) and confusing :-(
Aramis gains admission to the Henri Quatre Chamber, and while the visuals clearly attract our attention to the green chair, she herself walks straight past it to search elsewhere (despite the fact that this is the only item in the room with any connection to Noisy-le-Sec or Carina, who according to Porthos apparently was born there -- explaining, presumably, why she might have fled back there and stashed the dangerous document away in the local manor, although we are never given any indication that she did anything of the sort...) So whatever train of thought led Aramis to connect a map of François' home with his father's veneration for the late King, it clearly doesn't include any deduction as to *how* "I gave it to Henri IV" could have transferred a copy of a treaty from the outskirts of Paris to Switzerland. (Again, I wonder if the fan-translation may have been a trifle too literal there, in that the original Japanese could possibly have had the sense of "I hid it in the Henri IV [chair]" -- which would have made a lot more sense as a clue being left for the Queen in the Noisy context, where there was only *one* Henri IV item, than it does as a pointer to the Chateau de Joule.)
But before her search of the Henri Quatre Chamber can yield up any sign of the treaty, a group of armed men burst in and demand that she hand it over - it is the bodyguard of Marie de Medici, who have clearly been double-crossing the former Queen (or, as Aramis puts it, "Spanish spies!") After a long fight and escape, Aramis is about to make a getaway over the roofs when she is suddenly attacked and disarmed by... a black panther. Which we did, to be fair, see accompanying the villain earlier on.
Save that the masked villain, who now makes an appearance, turns out to be --Milady. Not again!
With absolutely zero explanation as to how she comes to be alive: couldn't we have had some actual Spanish spies in their own right, or a good motive for Marie de Medici's bodyguard to hold a grudge against their mistress, or absolutely anything more original than Milady as the villain of the week? (I suppose the merit for the writers is that they don't even have to bother providing plot or motive but just trot out the ongoing antagonist and take evil as read...) Obviously this completely undermines her partial redemption at the end of the previous series, which in turn had tied back to her partial redemption at the end of the first series, thus basically unravelling the whole lot :-(
Aramis is now tied up and flogged to get her to reveal the location of the treaty, which of course she doesn't actually know and certainly wouldn't tell them if she did know (as she jerks out between blows of the whip). And then Porthos and Athos show up at the castle gate, and find themselves promptly dropped into the dungeons when a trapdoor opens beneath their feet as part of the castle defences... where they immediately run into the Marquis Daniel and his household, who have also been imprisoned down there since the invasion of their home.
Aramis, still hanging suspended by her hands (ouch), is left to think over her situation overnight, since she is proving obdurate and for the moment appears to have fainted. Except that they apparently very kindly cut her down for the purpose, because the next time we see her she is lying face-down on the floor and sawing through her bonds using the shards of some crockery that was smashed in the course of the earlier search -- this would be less surprising if any such order had actually been given, but at the point when Milady walks out, so far as we know Aramis is still up there :-p Also, they had apparently taken her back to the Henri IV room to question her (or at least that is where she wakes up on the floor), which wasn't the impression I'd had earlier.
But waking up on the floor does give Aramis a completely new perspective on the furniture, and she spots a stitched slit on the underneath of the chair's seat, which proves to conceal the much-sought-after treaty. I'm guessing that they were watching her (and presumably did deliberately cut her down and allow her to escape in the hopes that she might reveal the hiding-place?), becuse the moment she lays hands on the document the doors open and her captors move in on her...
Meanwhile Porthos has ripped a barred gate out of the dungeons, allowing everyone else to escape too, and they turn up behind Aramis' assailants to reverse the odds in the nick of time. Milady (of course) escapes with the treaty in one hand, and Aramis pelts after her; the leader of the bodyguards attempts to shoot Aramis down, but Athos strikes the gun from his hand and there follows an actual swordplay sequence, which stands out because I think it's pretty much the only real duel depicted in this series, where fights tend to be indicated in freeze-frame shorthand and/or in extreme cartoonish form. I'm guessing the 'feature-length episode' format paid for a little extra live animation time, and the back-and-forth flicker of thrust and riposte ;-)
Also one of the few cases where we see one of the protagonists kill anybody, and if not in cold blood then with very definite intent. (And shown from an odd angle which highlights a fact that hadn't ever really registered with me before, that Athos is the only protagonist in the series who actually wears shoes and stockings (and authentically high-heeled nobleman's shoes) as opposed to boots :-p)
Aramis has to duel the panther, which she succeeds in doing rather gruesomely by dropping a spiked portcullis on it in mid-leap. (Presumably having her be seen to stick her sword through *an animal* would have been a step too far for the audience!)
And Milady escapes in a glider off the roof. Again. (more recycled plot from earlier in the series)
But fortunately d'Artagnan, who set off behind the others (and has Constance and Jean hanging on his tail), hasn't yet reached the castle, so he now veers off on horseback in pursuit. Kopi the parrot flies up and sabotages the fabric of the glider wings so that it tips out of control and crashes into a nearby glacier(?) and d'Artagnan and Milady face off against one another, sword against pistol. "You only have one shot" -- but she clearly doesn't intend to miss.
Except that Aramis then turns up (and just how did she get down from the roof and across the mountainside so quickly?) and transfixes Milady's forearm with a thrown dagger at extreme distance. An avalanche starts at the sound of the shot, and sweeps away both d'Artagnan and Milady, while very conveniently tossing the rolled treaty up into the air to land at Aramis' feet. D'Artagnan is fine, but cold; Milady is presumed dead (again) and probably isn't (again). Given that she managed by some unexplained means to survive an explosion that shattered an entire island and destroyed a submarine underwater, it seems highly unlikely that an avalanche which barely touched d'Artagnan would have had much effect on her...
On their way home, Jean runs off to play with some other children, and a woman who is sadly watching them play (and whom we glimpsed earlier when Aramis asked her for news of Daniel, thus allowing the script to assure us concisely that Daniel is now fine :-) turns out to be Jean's many-years-lost mother, who recognises him. I don't know what the chances of that are :-p
(As someone in the YouTube comments pointed out, it would have made more sense if she had caught sight of the childhood burn scar mentioned in one of the first-series episodes!)
Back in Paris, the infamous treaty is consigned to the flames, and the remainder of the running time turns out to be occupied by a lengthy credits montage illustrated with stills of the various characters together, now including Jean's mother.
There are some good things in this extended episode (feature film it isn't). The Marquis Daniel is a potentially inspired choice of character as someone whom she meets for the first time in the course of this episode, yet whose welfare she has a motive to care about deeply but for reasons that she cannot disclose to her friends -- and without a forced romantic relationship being involved. The script-writers resisted the temptation to do a fan-fic-style 'Aramis special' revolving around revelations of her identity or difficulties in keeping her secret, but gave her instead an action adventure in her own right that has nothing to do with her sex (in fact, the scene where she disguises herself as a woman -- because that is what it amounts to: this isn't her 'real' identity coming out, as it arguably is with Daniel -- is pretty pointless in terms of the plot).
There is a nice running gag for d'Artagnan, where people keep saying things to him to which he retorts "Here, that was supposed to be my line!", up to and including Milady's incredulous "What, are you still alive?" The three Musketeers all get some nice fight/chase sequences and individual character moments, and if Aramis gets captured then it is only because she is outnumbered twenty to one *and* unexpectedly facing a man-sized panther ;-)
There are also some nods back to past continuity while acknowledging that we are now post-series.
Unfortunately the main problem is really the plot; not necessarily, I think, even so much the plot itself as the way that it lazily leans on clichés and recycling of material, which all ties into the other fundamental issue, which is sheer lack of time. There is basically too much material here to be polished off in the equivalent of only a couple of episodes' length; this is the sort of story that would normally develop over the course of three or four or even more (in the original series, it takes *five* episodes of adventure for d'Artagnan to reach the coast in pursuit of the diamond studs, from Episode 14, Départ Pour l'Angleterre, to Episode 19, l'Embarquement à Calais). The result is that everything is severely telescoped, with elements like d'Artagnan's accusation and arrest being skimmed over almost in passing (this would definitely merit at least an individual episode of its own under normal circumstances, like the occasions on which Athos and Aramis respectively found themselves incarcerated).
The whole Switzerland business I simply do not understand (was that all in the name of being able to invoke an avalanche, perhaps?)
And the whole Milady business feels like a mistake; I can think of various bad reasons for bringing her in, but no good ones. So far as I can gather, this was originally hoped to be the first of a set of mini-features, each highlighting an individual character, and the assumption is presumably that Milady was planned to feature as a recurring opponent between all the films -- possibly with the explanation for her survival being scheduled to make an appearance later on, and this appearance just being a teaser. But I really don't like it, and don't see any reason why the villain here couldn't have been any other character with a pet panther.
The actual action sequences work well enough, but the set-up is truncated and confusing. Given a little more space to play with, I suspect the script could have been considerably more developed; it currently feels like something that has been abridged almost to the point where it would have been better to simplify out chunks of it altogether :-(
One gathers that this feature (perhaps unsurprisingly) was not a sufficient success to have financed any more along the same lines. Still, it would have been intriguing to see an episode focusing on Porthos in danger and/or saving the day, or exploring his backstory...