I thought I’d talked about this before but apparently not.
Lupin III Part 3 was the third Lupin series, that aired 1984-85. The gap twixt this series and the previous was filled with legal wrangles with the estate of Maurice Leblanc and the aborted Lupin VIII series.
Lupin III Part 3 seems the most overlooked segment of the animated wing of Monkey Punch’s creation, so it’s good to see it’s getting the fansub treatment. With the financial viability of releasing Lupin III TV episodes on DVD seemingly hard to grasp, it seems unlikely that this or the original series will ever see the light of day in an official English release.
The first thing you notice with the show is how Eighties it is. Lupin has traded in the red or green jacket for a Miami Vice-style pink neon number. Indeed the starting credits are awash with neon and pastel to the extent you are not going to mistake the decade it came from.
Episode 1
This episode is one of those Lupin III episodes that extrapolates from history. This time the gang are hunting down Al Capone’s vault and run afoul of a stereotypical Chinese gangster, who I think has appeared in other Lupin animation. If not him then certainly a character very similar. A good start, but oddly the deneoument is after the next episode preview and I missed it the first time round.
Episode 2
This episode hinges around the gang committing a ridiculously fantastical heist, that causes Zenigata all sorts of trouble. It’s Zenigata-heavy so it’s my favourite so far.
Episode 3
This is a bit of an odd one, and my least favourite of the bunch so far. It’s a strange rehash of The Castle Of Cagliostro, except the 15 year old girl Lupin rescues here keeps throwing herself at him. Lupin of course resists her advances, but you can’t help think it was still an excuse to draw a topless underage girl… Admittedly some of the early Lupin III strips seem creepy at times with their attitude to sex, but this seems especially sleazy. Oh and it has a horrid sickly sentimental ending too. Did Cagliostro also introduce Lupin to sentimentality? As good as film as that is, it’s really not a good use of the Lupin character.
Episode 4
The gang battle an all female gang of pirates. That’s pretty much all you need to know. There’s a good example in this episode of the inconsistent animation the series has. It veers from bad to good a lot, but there’s some scenes here that definitely suggest at least two teams were working on this episode.
As clear from my description of episode 3, this show seems to have been free to have a certain degree of nudity. However there are scenes in this episode where one shot will have nipples that are handily obscured, ala the current vogue for fog that disappears on the DVD release, then the next shot in the same scene will not bother hiding anything at all.
Anyway, inconsistent nipples aside, this a fun episode, very Lupin-y and very cartoon-y too in places.
Episode 5
Lupin vs. Nazis. There’s a bunch of nazis in this episode (and a HUGE condor), but there’s two I particularly want to talk about. They are a brother and sister, the children of a murdered war criminal, and they reminded me to two different sets of characters from roughly the same era.
Firstly Fenris, the brother and sister children of Baron Strucker in the X-Men comics. They first appeared a year after this episode. Secondly, they reminded me of Zarana and Zandar from GI Joe/Action Force. They appeared in 1986. I’m wondering if there’s some common origin for all three sets of siblings.
The episode itself is so-so, the main appeal being some fun death traps and Goemon meditating on a beach.