Lupin the 3rd

1971–72. TV series. (23 X 30 min.) Crime thriller/comedy. 1977–80. TV series. (155 X 30 min.)

1978–2005. Movies, OAVs, TV specials. Various lengths. org Monkey Punch (manga). dir Hayao Miyazaki, Isao Takahata, Noboru Ishiguro, Osamu Dezaki, Gisaburo Sugii, others. mus Yuji Ohno, others. des Yasao Otsuka. -bc

The adventures of a famous thief and his cohorts, based on the manga by Monkey Punch. With its slapstick comedy, fast action, jazzy score, global settings, and sexual innuendo, the series brought the cinematic language of the contemporary Euro/American action thriller to anime.

Lupin the 3rd (or Lupin III, as commonly written) is a master thief who is the half-Japanese grandson of famed French literary creation Arsene Lupin, himself a jewel thief. He is as interested in chasing girls and good times as he is in stealing. His Japanese crew consists of gunman sidekick Jigen and master swordsman Goemon, with occasional help from buxom redhead Fujiko, who is sometimes a curvaceous and seductive ally and sometimes a wily rival, always out for herself. Ever smitten with Fujiko’s voluptuous charms, Lupin is always willing to forgive her trespasses.

In the first TV series, Lupin’s penchant for intricate heists often took a back seat to disputes with other criminals, such as the Scorpion crime gang, which sees Lupin as unwanted independent competition. In the second TV series, Lupin & co. embark on a steady stream of capers taking them all over the world, such as the theft of gold bars from a Swiss bank, soccer game proceeds from a sta­dium in Rio de Janeiro, and King Tut’s mask from a pyramid in Egypt. Through it all, Lupin is doggedly pursued by Inspector Zenigata, a zealous Tokyo policeman-turned-Interpol agent who makes catching Lupin his life’s work. In one episode in the first series, Lupin is indeed caught and winds up on death row for a whole year under Zenigata’s watchful, concerned eye, but manages to escape just minutes before his planned
execution.

The Lupin movies and TV specials took a page from the James Bond series and featured more elaborate plots and stronger, more formidable villains. In the first movie, The Secret of Mamo (1978), Lupin goes up against a villain who has discovered the secret of eternal life and seeks to save a select few on Earth (including Fujiko) while dooming everyone else. Castle of Cagliostro (1979) finds Lupin in the Duchy of Cagliostro, seeking to bring down a count who runs Europe’s biggest counterfeiting operation and rescue a princess-in-distress. The Fuma Conspiracy (1987) presents a battle between two rival ninja clans in Japan, as one clan seeks the treasure belonging to that of Lupin’s partner, Goemon.

Later movies and TV specials of note include Dragon of Doom (1994), which finds Lupin going underwater to the wreck of the Titanic to find a dragon figurine with a powerful secret before a Hong Kong crime boss can get it. Farewell Nostradamus (1995) features a deadly crime army working for a bogus Nostradamus cult, with Lupin racing them to get a rare copy of Nostradamus’s book of predictions held by a billionaire tycoon in Atlanta. Island of Assassins (1997) has Lupin & co. trapped on an island run by the Tarantula assassin syndicate, where all who set foot are immediately poisoned and kept alive only by the island’s native sulfuric gas, the effects of which will wear off if they try to leave. It includes a revealing flashback to Lupin’s first caper.

The first series (1971) has a more serious style than the later entries, with less exaggerated character design for the two leads, Lupin and Fujiko. Lupin is clearly meant to look like more of a ladies’ man and a tough guy than the lanky, leering clown of the later series. Fujiko is dressed and coiffed like a French or Italian Eurocult screen bombshell of the 1960s. Overall, the series has a more hard-edged tone with darker imagery and far more violence. Despite the humor provided by Zenigata’s persistent efforts to snare Lupin and Lupin’s equally persistent efforts to bed Fujiko, there’s more of a crime-film feel to the series, with Lupin constantly battling other criminals and having to fight more often, whether by martial arts, guns, knives, explosives, or improvised weaponry. There is also greater attention to detail in the background design and vehicular animation. The cars are more intricately drawn and animated and we see a lot of race and chase action.

The second series (1977) is much more farcical in tone right from the start, with character design and animation more exaggerated and the action more wildly far-fetched. It’s meant to be funny and it frequently is. The colors are brighter, the imagery more filled with light, and the settings constitute a virtual world travelogue with episodes set all over the globe, from the pyramids of Egypt to the streets of Paris to the beaches of Rio to the American Midwest to the Chinese desert. The tone is frequently irreverent as well.

The movies and TV specials often have more intricate animation and design, as befitting the higher budgets and more complex plots. The vehicle chases and aerial battles are also longer, more fluid, and more action-packed, as good as anything of its type in non-science fiction anime. The character design in the movies is fairly consistent, although it has been known to vary on the whim of the director. While comedic action is an integral part of most of the movies and TV specials, Island of Assassins has more of a crime thriller feel to it, with a dead-serious tone and more explicitly violent action and bloody deaths.

Lupin is a Japanese comedy series that travels well, thanks to its broad farcical humor, violent and destructive slapstick, and use of the comely Fujiko as a perennial tease. The characters are a motley crew, but Lupin and Fujiko are attractive and appealing, and the other two main characters, Jigen and Goemon, offer dependable support while remaining largely two-dimensional throughout. Zenigata is a perfect comic foil, but he is never a cardboard antagonist. He’s an admirable and devoted public servant who clearly likes and respects Lupin and on more than one occasion sees fit to help him out of a tight spot. Lupin himself is wisecracking and perennially cheery (at least from the second series on), and quite resourceful and charming to friend and foe alike. He frequently takes good, victimized souls under his wing and rescues those who need rescuing, especially when they’re young and female.

The first Lupin series is more oriented to violence and action, with a greater amount of killing (much of it by Lupin and his cohorts) and sex play that relies chiefly on the fondling and groping of Fujiko—often after tying her up—by assorted villains, but also by Lupin on occasion. (Fujiko is much more proactive in the later series.) As such, it follows the lead of Monkey Punch’s original manga, which is, if anything, far raunchier than any of the anime series.

The second Lupin series is much more clearly set in the world of the caper comedy, a film genre that was quite popular internationally in the 1960s and ’70s, and relies on clever writing and imaginative setups to give Lupin ample opportunity for his various thefts. He steals a lot in this series, but rarely gets to keep the goods. There are a lot of pop culture references in the series as well, with Fujiko seen riding around Paris with French film star Alain Delon in one episode, and a Japanese thief debating the relative merits of James Bond actors Sean Connery and Roger Moore in another. Jigen even tells a hostile American agent who’s questioning him, “I used to be a fan of Monroe and Humphrey Bogart, but not anymore.”

While the “half-hour” episodes limited the scope of the adventures, with everything needing resolution in twenty-three minutes, the movies and TV specials gave the writers room to stretch and come up with some truly spectacular adventures for Lupin and his crew, which took them places the TV series couldn’t envision. The Secret of Mamo, the first Lupin movie, has Lupin & co. confronting a mad tycoon who has cloned a host of historical figures and re-created many of the world’s great art treasures. Farewell Nostradamus has Lupin & co. going from Brazil to Atlanta to an island prison to the Amazon jungle and back to Atlanta to keep one step ahead of the nefarious Church of Nostradamus, culminating in a race to locate the original book of Nostradamus’s predictions in the two-hundred-story skyscraper headquarters of a billionaire running for U.S. president before the building is rocked with explosives. The Fuma Conspiracy has the most Japanese flavor of any of the movies and focuses on the wedding of Goemon and a battle among rival clans in a remote mountainous region of Japan. Dragon of Doom features a suspenseful trip to the bottom of the Atlantic where Lupin himself, in full diving regalia, explores the remains of the Titanic to find a dragon figurine that his grandfather, the original Arsene Lupin, had tried to steal from the ill-fated ship.

Of course, for many fans, all the Lupin entries pale next to two second season TV episodes and one Lupin movie directed by Hayao Miyazaki, which all display the unmistakable roots of his distinct directorial style and the themes and design motifs that would turn up in his more famous features, most notably Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind and Castle in the Sky. TV episode 145, “Wings of Death—Albatross,” indulges Miyazaki’s passion for aviation history and deals with an air museum and a restored 1930s transatlantic airliner that’s actually being used by a corrupt tycoon to manufacture atomic bombs (shades of Porco Rosso!). Episode 155, “Farewell My Beloved Lupin,” features giant flying robots that are the models for the robots occupying Laputa in Castle in the Sky. The spunky heroine of this episode, motivated by antiwar concerns, clearly looks forward to Nausicaä. The Castle of Cagliostro, the second Lupin movie and the very first feature actually directed by Miyazaki, has a plot involving an ancient duchy, a victimized royal heiress, an evil count related to the heiress, and an heirloom that holds the secret to an ancient city, basically the same elements that figure in Castle in the Sky. Cagliostro is actually the softest and most sentimental entry in the entire Lupin series, with Zenigata and even Fujiko pitching in selflessly to help Lupin and the young Lady Clarisse.

TV Series:

Lupin the 3rd (1977–80, 155 eps.)

Lupin the 3rd (1984, 50 eps.)

Movies:

Lupin the 3rd: The Secret of Mamo (aka The Mystery of Mamo, 1978)

The Castle of Cagliostro (1979)

Lupin the 3rd: The Legend of the Gold of Babylon (1985)

Lupin the 3rd: The Fuma Conspiracy (1987)

Lupin the 3rd: Farewell to Nostradamus (1995)

Lupin the 3rd:Dead or Alive (1996)

TV Specials:

Lupin the 3rd: Bye Bye Liberty Crisis (1989)

Lupin the 3rd: Mystery of the Hemingway Papers (1990)

Lupin the 3rd: Steal Napoleon’s Dictionary (1991)

Lupin the 3rd: From Russia with Love (1992)

Lupin the 3rd: Dragon of Doom (aka Burning Zantetsuken, aka Zantetsu Sword is on Fire, 1994)

Lupin the 3rd: The Pursuit of Harimao’s Treasure (1995)

Lupin the 3rd: The Secret of Twilight Gemini (1996)

Lupin the 3rd: Island of Assassins (aka Walther P38, 1997)

Lupin the 3rd:Crisis in Tokyo (aka Tokyo Crisis, 1998)

Lupin the 3rd: The Columbus Files (1999)

Lupin the 3rd: Missed by a Dollar (aka $1 Money Wars, 2000)

Lupin the 3rd: Alcatraz Connection (2001)

Lupin the 3rd: Episode 0 ‘First Contact’ (2002)

Lupin the 3rd: Operation Return the Treasure (2003)

Lupin the 3rd: Stolen Lupin (2004)

Lupin the 3rd: Angel Tactics (2005)

Lupin the 3rd: Seven Days Rhapsody (2006)

OAVs:

Lupin the 3rd: Voyage to Danger (aka Orders to Assassinate Lupin, 1993)

Lupin the 3rd: Return of Pycal (2002)

There were three Lupin the 3rd TV series in total (1971, 1977, 1984), plus six movies, two OAVs, and seventeen feature-length TV specials as of 2006, with more certain to come.

In episode 4 of the first TV series, Lupin is caught (a rare instance) and sentenced to death. He languishes in prison for a year in the course of the episode, almost to the point of his execution, causing Zenigata to pace back and forth the entire time, ever anticipating (and hoping for) Lupin’s escape.

Fujiko’s parade of sexy, often provocative fashions is a highlight of the series for many fans.

Goemon’s sword can slice through just about anything. His usual move is to leap up, make the slicing motion, and land back on the ground, maintaining full samurai posture, and wait for the object of his sword’s attention to break cleanly among the slice lines. He does this to a building in Dragon of Doom and to an airplane in flight on more than one occasion (including in Dragon of Doom).

Miyazaki’s episodes, as described above, are definitely the highlights of the TV series.

Lupin is the half-Japanese grandson of “gentleman thief” Arsene Lupin, a French literary creation of Maurice LeBlanc and the subject of numerous live-action films made from 1909 right up through 2004, both in France and Hollywood. Famous actors who’ve played Lupin include Melvyn Douglas and John Barrymore (grandfather of Drew). The original Lupin is referenced explicitly in Dragon of Doom, where it’s revealed that he was a passenger on the Titanic and had tried to steal the sought-after dragon figurine that Lupin the 3rd is seeking. Presumably, he survived the sinking.

The use of the Lupin name in the original anime productions was never cleared with the Maurice LeBlanc estate, which at some point complained to the Japanese producers, who worked out an arrangement. However, when Lupin titles were licensed to U.S. distributors, the rights to use the name could not be granted, which is why some early releases cut the name Lupin out of the title, replacing it with “The Wolf” (Streamline Pictures) or “Rupan III” (AnimEigo), in the latter case at the request of Toho Pictures. Later Lupin releases in the U.S., including the second TV series and many of the movies and TV specials, use the Lupin name quite freely.

The second TV series (1977–80) ran on the Cartoon Network (as Lupin the 3rd) in the U.S. in 2003, although only twenty-six (1–2 and 4–27) of the 155 episodes were shown.

In keeping with its title, the 1995 movie, Farewell Nostradamus includes incidents that eerily foreshadow future real-life catastrophes: passengers on a plane beat up Arab hijackers; the world’s tallest building is rocked with explosions and parts of it collapse; and a tsunami.

A possible inspiration for the look of Fujiko may be the actress Marisa Mell, especially as seen as the partner and lover of the master thief in Danger: Diabolik!, an Italian comic book-inspired caper thriller from 1968. Other 1960s Eurocult actresses who could have been her model are Mylene Demongeot (Fantomas) and Virna Lisi (How to Murder Your Wife).

Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata codirected several episodes in the first Lupin TV series. Miyazaki went on to direct two celebrated second series episodes (145 and 155) and the second Lupin movie (Castle of Cagliostro). Among the additional notable directors who have worked on Lupin productions are Noboru Ishiguro (Macross), Masaharu Okuwaki (Mermaid Forest), Osamu Dezaki (Black Jack), and Gisaburo Sugii (Street Fighter II-V).

Yuji Ohno is chief composer for the Lupin series and has been since the second TV series. He created the jazzy, melodic theme associated with Lupin.

violence Standard crime thriller action, with gun battles, martial arts fights, and explosions. Island of Assassins is more violent than usual for the series and includes gun battles and several bloody deaths. nudity Fujiko disrobes quite often. She is com­pletely naked (but manages to cover up where necessary) in parts of one of Miyazaki’s TV episodes. Lupin has the hots for Fujiko, but his attempts to bed her usually fail.