Lupin March Madness: Parts 3, 4 and 5.

Let's get into the good, the bad, and the ugly of the bulk of the main series.

Alright! Now we're cooking with gas. It feels good to be back, baby. And buckle up the seatbelt in that yellow Fiat because we've got a long one. Let's kick things off right away with Part 3, perhaps the most divisive entry in the Lupin franchise.

On YouTube and Pluto TV, Part 3 is pure '80's baby. Lupin is here in all his Pink Jacket glory, speeding down the neon lit streets of Tokyo and aesthetically, it's glorious. I don't know why City Pop YouTubers haven't mined this series yet. It's great. Well, great looking. This is perhaps the most uneven Lupin entry yet but hey, it was the '80's. Everyone was on cocaine.

I can't say I loved Part 3 but I won't lie to you and say I watched all of it. I skipped around a lot and the animation fluctuates wildly, as does the writing. When the animation is good, it's very good. When it's off, it's… Cheap. I would recommend it for completists only.

Better than Part 3 for sure, I'm still unsure of I would recommend Part 4. I assume Lupin is like Doctor Who - Fans of that franchise say "You'll never forget your first Doctor" and I will always have a tender place in my heart for this blue jacketed baboon but a lot of the series strays from just what makes Lupin so beloved in my eyes. These characters are friends. The series, particularly Miyazaki's Lupin, has spent a long time building a world where Lupin, Goemon, Jigen and even sometimes Fujiko are friends. They might not say it often but they do care deeply for each other and would do anything for one another so it did take me aback to hear Lupin and Jigen say they have nothing to talk about with each other outside of work. Goemon is absent for much of the series. And Zenigata is used so frequently, the formula becomes tiresome very quickly. At one point the standard jazzy opening Lupin Theme is abandoned for a rap (redubbed as a pop song in English but still… Baffling.) Unfortunately, overall, the animation looks overly smooth and cheap. While I did enjoy what I saw of Part 4 enough to continue with Lupin as a franchise, I can see why long standing fans may have been disappointed. The show had been off the air some 20 years at this point and returned with cheap animation and out of character script writing.

I will say that it's still fun though. Featured girl Rebecca is a welcome change from the young, innocent girls in need of saving that bring out Lupin's heroic and tender side. (Not that there's anything wrong with that!) Even my least favorite episodes got me to laugh or smile a few times. Lupin and Zenigata had a lot of great moments together and there were a number of great Jigen episodes, including one that answered a silly and mundane question I've always had about the Lupin gang: What happens when they need dental work? I watched a few episodes on one day when I was incredibly sleep starved and one of those episodes featured the reveal of the secondary antagonist of the series: A resurrected, buff, nude Leonardo Divinci. On four hours of sleep, this revelation made me laugh until I cried. (Somehow, none of the Divinci episodes were ones I caught during the shows original airing on Adult Swim.) Shortly after the Divinci revelation, the closing credits showed me the Lupin crew working in an office for some reason which features Goemon in full samurai regalia loading paper in a printer. I thought I was going to throw up, I was laughing so hard.

I did enjoy the Leonardo Divinci bit, which was a nice wacky throwback to the ol' Lupin classic of fighting some classic historical character, a trope that dates all the way back to the original Arsene Lupin novels. There is also an episode where Lupin gets captured and imprisoned by Zenigata, which is a homage to an old Miyazaki directed Lupin episode from the '70's. (This Part 4 episode was not great but it actually was the first episode of Lupin the Third I ever saw so I have to admit I can't hate it.) The bumpers are a callback to the bumpers from Part 2. There were a lot of moments where I was the Leonardo DiCaprio Points At Screen meme when I finally connected the dots.

Still in the blue jacket, I think Part Five (found on Tubi) tends to be a little more controversial in the Lupin fanbase, or it might just be more well known, leading to more discussion. Lupin usually exists sort of out of time but in Part Five, from the very first episode, he's watching a flat screen tv, using a smartphone and surfing the dark web. Of course if the world's best thief did do the things Lupin did, he would use the dark web but it's jarring to see for sure. Because of the whole "dark web plot", the gang finds themselves with a teen girl, Ami, who is part Clarice from Cagliostro and part Rei Ayanami from Evangelion and choices were made with her characterization, or perhaps her existence at all. A child super genius who was a victim of human trafficking, Ami acts detached, unemotional and inhuman and begs Lupin to have sex with her. If your internal monologue is hearing Miyazaki say "Anime was a mistake" right now, you're not alone. I suppose that Ami is handled as best as Lupin the Third could handle CP and human trafficking but she's in so many episodes and, as an emotional crux, is hard to deal with. Early on in her storyline, Jigen and Goemon discuss that they did not sign up to be on babysitting duty and I can imagine a lot of viewers echoed that sentiment. Unfortunately, Ami was in like a dozen episodes after that. Clarice she was not, though she did try to be. Of course, this is all my opinion. It's very easy to read the opinions of people on Reddit or look up videos by people on YouTube who think Ami was a great addition and that Part 5 was the best Lupin series yet. Don't let my opinion deter you from looking into Part 5 yourself. 

Outside of Ami's storyline, there are a number of stand alone episodes, which to me are the best ones. A couple of them are even flashbacks to past jacket eras, which serves as a great introduction to those series to newer fans. If you like the episode in the pink jacket, I highly recommend you jump into Part 3. If you like the episode in the red jacket, you'll probably love Part 2. There is also a secondary antagonist, Albert. I've heard both good things and bad things about him from LupinTube so like the rest of Part 5, he seems to be fairly polarizing. What I will give his storyline credit for is that it showcases the bond between the characters greatly. Jigen is incredibly protective of Lupin in a way that was not shown in Part 4. He treats their friendship with great care and is concerned with Lupin's reckless behavior. When Goemon shows up, it's to take care of business and protect his friend. But when that storyline wraps up, the gang returns to Ami, who's love for Lupin and hate for the terrible temptress witch Fujiko has only increased ten fold since the last time we've seen her. 

After watching Parts 1 through 4, numerous movies and specials, and then revisiting Part 5, I had to wonder if the franchise hadn't outgrown the Little Girl Sidekick? As I said, I liked Rebecca but she was a woman. Part 4 is quite un-horny by Lupin standards but you have to assume Lupin and Rebecca fucked. I can't imagine Lupin as some chaste softboi who would marry this heiress without swan diving out of his suit and into her sheets at least a couple of times. And given the fact that Rebecca is written as Paris Hilton meets Batman, I don't exactly see her as chaste either. It was commendable to still show Lupin and Fujiko while rarely having Fujiko and Rebecca fall into a catty place. Sadly, Part Five did not follow suit. Ami's loathing for Fujiko for simply existing, assuming she is a sexually deviant harlot who broke poor Lupin's heart is consistently eye roll worthy, though given Ami's sexual trauma, it could have been explored in a meaningful way, showing how Ami ties any sexuality to her own trauma and finds it disgusting. Unfortunately, this show is simply not deep enough to do anything other than tread water with such content. We do get some nice hints at more of Fujiko's backstory with Lupin but this franchise can easily discard and rewrite whatever they see fit so canon is whatever you desire. Did Fujiko and Lupin get married? Sure, but that will probably be rewritten in the future. I've seen Lupin and Jigen's first meeting like three times at this point. With a franchise that spans over fifty years, hundreds of manga, coming up on three hundred tv episodes and fifty or so movies and OVAs, of course the continuity will be a little shaky. You just sort of got to pick and choose what you like and decide that's your Lupin canon and the rest is fanfic. For instance, the Lupin who is a rapist? While he may have been what Monkey Punch originally intended for his character, he is not what I want so I don't consume that Lupin media.

Which unfortunately brings us to A Woman Called Fujiko Mine, which we'll be covering next week, along with one of the most recent Lupin the Third films, the CGI 2021 theatrical release, Lupin the Third the First. A Woman Called Fujiko Mine is on Tubi and well. It's got great art. As for Lupin the Third the First, I cannot recommend it enough! Turn on Hulu right now and queue it up! It is a sheer joy!