Lupin III Part 5 - A review of the series and analysis of the franchise's revival

Last time I've talked about the beginning of Lupin The Third, so this time I'm going to focus on recent history. In this article I'm going to review Lupin III Part 5, the latest installment in the franchise, and I'm going to talk about how this series was the perfect conclusion of a revival operation in which Lupin has been going through over the last few years.

Since 1969 (year of the Pilot Film) there have been endless anime adaptation of Lupin III. They were all handled by the same production company, TMS Entertainment, but always with different artists (some of them were or were going to be big names in animation like Masaaki Osumi, Hayao Miyazaki, Isao Takahata, Osamu Dezaki and so on..) that created different interpretations of the character, making Lupin III a constant surprise. Especially starting from 1987, when the success of the OAV "The Fuma Conspiracy" pushed TMS into producing new movies for the television, creating the formula of the annual TV Special that became a can't miss appointment for the japanese viewers. This strategy proved to be successful and went on without interruption until 2013, but also started in his latest years to give birth to a series of uninspired movies incapable of getting out of their comfort zone the characters and the artists behind them. What once was an anarchist and unpredictable franchise, now started to feel a lot more like a conservative and reassuring one, only good for pleasing diehard fans. What Lupin III needed was a new direction, a revival capable of going back to its origins and updating him for a modern audience at the same time.

The seed of this revival can be found in Green vs Red, an OAV made in 2008 to celebrate the character turning 40 years old which was different from all of its predecessors for a feature: self awareness. For the first time an anime adaption of Lupin III was fully aware of its past, of what he had been and what he had become. By making every animated Lupin a different and autonomous character and telling a story about the passage of time, Green vs Red elevated Lupin III into an ideal of freedom which is not subject to aging or death. For the first time, Lupin is made, not born. After that, we'll have to wait another 4 years before the sprouts of those seeds. The Woman Called Fujiko Mine was made, again, for an anniversary (45 years since the manga, 40 years since Part 1) and marks a breakup with the recent past of the franchise. Takeshi Koike's art direction brought to life, in a more modern and elaborate version, Monkey Punch's original vision while Sayo Yamamoto's direction brought the series back to Masaaki Osumi's love for noir movies. The result was a prequel to Part 1 which was not just a celebration of the past but also the creation of a new way of making Lupin The Third's anime. The cherry on the top was once again the self awareness that allowed the writers to redefine Fujiko Mine's character, praising her freedom, and to make a meta commentary on the different expectations the audience has for male characters and female characters.

2012 is the year of The Woman Called Fujiko Mine and 2013 is the year that marks the end of the tradition of the annual Special TV. In 2014 a new animated movie by Takeshi Koike pops out in the theaters, Jigen Daisuke's Gravestone, as a "continuation spin-off" of The Woman Called Fujiko Mine. The trend will continue in 2017 with another Takeshi Koike's animated movie: The Blood Spray of Goemon Ishikawa. What stands out in this movie, aside of course their astonishing quality, is the presence of a blue jacket never seen before (except for some Monkey Punch's illustrations¹) that will become the symbol of the new direction of the franchise. In 2015 Lupin III Part IV - The Italian Adventure comes out, it's the first Lupin The Third regular series since Part 3 (ended in 1985). This series proposed some interesting innovation like the introduction of new characters in the regular cast and the use of a story-arc along with the classic standalone episodes. What the series was trying to achieve was to combine the new direction of the franchise with the more family-friendly Lupin III everybody used to know. Through his ups and downs, the series can be considered a succesful experiment, even though it had some weak scripts. In 2016 something unpredictable happens: a new Special TV. Lupin III - The Italian Game was the first Special TV without Lupin wearing a Red Jacket and was also the first movie to connect with the storyline of the TV Series. The plot of this movie takes place in the middle of Part IV's storyline and even involves some of the characters from the series².

This long introduction may look unnecessary in a review about Lupin III Part 5, but it's necessary to understand the subtext of a series that represents the finish line of this operation that changed the whole franchise. Once again there's a "return to the roots" kind of thing involved, this time it's the setting: French was the land of his grandfather, the original Arséne Lupin from Maurice Leblanc's novels. In Part 5, as opposed to Part IV approach, the setting is not central to the plot, despite being masterfully represent in the beautiful backgrounds and in the attention for details, but represents a new beginning for the character. This dialectic between "origins" and "innovation" affects even the structure of the series which puts in comparison the Lupin of 2018 with the Lupin of the past.

Lupin III Part 5 is composed by 24 episodes, 17 are used to develop a single plot and 7 as stand-alone episodes each written by a guest-star writer invited to tell his version of Lupin. Indeed, each of these stand-alone episodes is an homage to a previous series where the writer and the animators try to emulate both its narrative style and its look. We an homage to Part 3 (Pink Jacket), with his bright colors, the less elaborate drawings, the sillines and comedy, and then we have an homage to Part 1 (Green Jacket), with an european setting inspired by Miyazaki's approach and a plot that doesn't involve any thievery just like in many Masaaki Osumi's episodes. Without forgetting, of course, Part II, the most famous series, whose innovations were a greater emphasis on the other members of Lupin's gang and their cosmopolitan nature, always traveling around the world. Three were the homages to Part II in Part 5 and all of them focus on these two features. These five episodes trace a map of Lupin the Third's evolution which ends with two blue jacket episodes, almost as if they wanted to summarize the feature of the new blue jacket Lupin. The two episodes are complete opposites and each one represents one of the two souls of Blue Jacket Lupin that Part 5 combined in its plot. The first is one of the best bottle episode I've ever seen on television while the other is a small thriller which recalls Koike's movies. So, on one hand we have the comedy nature and the emphasis on the relationships between the members of the gang, while on the other hand we have an interest on more serious action-driven plots, with an emphasis on the extraordinary nature of these characters and their adventures without forgetting their humanity.

The plot of Part 5 is developed through 4 story-arcs that the show calls "Episode" both connected and at the same time independent between them. Just like in Part IV, we see the introduction of new recurring characters: Ami, a young and skillful hacker; Albert Andresy, a shady figure connected to Lupin's youth; and Yuta, Inspector Znigata's new assistant. These characters, especially Ami, are used to explore the main characters while the show asks himself if in the hyperconnected and technological present we're currently living there still is space for a legendary figure such as Lupin the Third.

In Episode I the gang is catapulted in 2018 and we see them dealing with things like deep web and hacking, while Lupin flashes a new hi-tech monocle (referencing his grandfather). The plot revolves around the Lupin Game, a sort of social network open to everyone created to hunt Lupin with smartphones. Quoting Lupin himself, "Everybody is a cop now". Here we see the introduction of Ami, the new damsel in distress which starts her personal path to growth that will be heavily affected by Lupin and Fujiko. Moving forward with the series, it becomes clear that Ami represents the point of view of the spectator which discovers for the first time Lupin The Third. These first episodes give to the audience a portrait of a Lupin that has chosen to embrace freedom as a way of life and all the dangers that come with it because it is exciting. He does not only embrace freedom, but he embrace an ideal of freedom that has a certain aesthetic. Lupin III is a "freedom dandy".

After building the legend of Lupin The Third in Episode I, the following story-arcs start deconstructing the man behind it. The introduction of Albert in Episode II puts Lupin's methods in comparison with another way of thinking the job of a thief and also shed lights on what's behind Lupin's mythology, with even showing us in a flashback a Lupin "that is not yet Lupin"³. Episode III brings our favorite quintet in the middle of an international intrigue much bigger than them, creating a different and modern take on the "Lupin goes to a fictional country in the middle of a crisis" kind of plot. Episode IV, in the end, brings to the extreme consequences the theme of modernity by asking what happens to legends like these characters in a present where no one is allowed to have secrets.
Part 5 brings Lupin on a path that gives him a new humanity and resize his invincibility. During these episodes we'll see Lupin winning and losing equally, we'll often see the situation getting out of control and seeing Lupin wounded will become very common as a costant remainder of Lupin's mortality.

The awareness of the franchise's past is fundamental even on this side of Part 5 and the series is characterised by a brilliant writing capable of creating interesting plots while also embracing all the sides of Lupin's character we've seen over the years. In the same episode we'll be able to see both the playful Lupin of Part II and the more serious one from works like Walther P38, while the four members of the gang are back to their nature of anti-heroes and outlaws like in Osumi's episodes of Part 1. It's also impossible to not recognize in this Lupin influences from both the diabolic Lupin from Takeshi Koike's works and the chivalrous one from Hayao Miyazaki's works. There are influences from the manga too. In Episode I you can find the over-the-top and humorous action from Shin Lupin III (the second series of the manga), especially in the third episode⁴, while in the first episodes of Episode II it's impossible not to notice the noir and hard-boiled atmosphere of the spy-stories from the first series of the manga. References from other Lupin's products are everywhere in this series, and some of them are really sensational (especially the one about Castle of Cagliostro), but the most interesting aspect of the writing is the work done on the characters.

Moving between normal narrative and metanarrative, the series systematically updates and deals with many of the key points of most Lupin The Third's stories. Part 5 deepens delves deeply into the relationship between Lupin and Zenigata (which we rarely see so resolute); the importance of Jigen and Goemon as Lupin's partner; the complicated relationship between Lupin and Goemon (which is different from the one with Jigen); and the on-again, off-again relationship between Lupin and Fujiko. The last one is especially dealt with intelligence by updating the relationship to a more serious degree and by making Fujiko a more independent and real character, while also remarking the similiarity between her and Lupin.
Part V accomplishes the task of creating the definitive version of these 5 characters for a modern audience.

Before getting to the end of this review, it's important to talk about how this series looks. Part 5 keeps most of the staff that already worked on Part IV. Yuichiro Yano and Kazuhide Tomonaga are again in charge of the series, but the result is different. The thick and old-fashioned line that was meant to emulate a brush stroke is here replaced by a more thin and modern line, while the colors are now less lively. I'm more fond of this style than Part IV's one because I find it more polished and modern (I've used this word quite a lot in this essay..). Even if it does not stand out like the recent Takeshi Koike's works, Part 5 defends itself quite well with nice animations and, especially, a great care in portraying real life objects and enviroments. Speaking of enviroments, the series has some of the best beatiful looking and watercolored backgrounds.
Yuji Ohno and his music are back again for the soundtrack of this series and it still is amazing to listen to. We have rearrenged classics aside with some new songs and they always manage to add something to every scene they're in.

Lupin III Part 5 isn't perfect. Episode II, while having some of my favorite moments ever in the first half, suffers of a too abrupt change of direction in the second half that nearly contradicts the first half, and Albert's potential⁷ as a character is barely scratched. The time dedicated to Zenigata (and, of course, Yata) is too much short, even though it's used for some of the best scenes ever regarding Zenigata, and the only stand-alone episode dedicated to him is the most mediocre and uninspired. The writers have also played too much with some character's morality, I'm especially referring to the main scene of the 23th episode which was as much entertaining and cool as it was wrong and out of character(s). It still remains a great series that succeded in both telling some new and compelling stories with these characters and in redefining them with some new interesting insights. However, the main reason why we'll remember forever this series is its ending and what it taught us about Lupin The 3rd.

Without doing any spoiler, I think that the meaning of the climatic scene of the 24th episode for the relationship between Lupin and Fujiko is clear to anyone⁵. What I want to underline is instead the meaning of that scene as the last argument of the main theme of the series about Lupin and modernity. From talking about this series as the "definitive" one it could come out the illusion that there's nothing less to know about Lupin, that we have decrypted the character and now we know everything about him. This is the illusion that Ami chases for the whole series and this also is the illusion in which the villain falls. An illusion in which even the audience could be caught up by thinking that after 50 years of stories there's nothing less to say or tell about Lupin and, then, why keep following his adventures?

And that's when, with some of the most amazing metanarrative scenes I've ever seen, Lupin surprises everyone by reminding us that, in the end, we know nothing about him. We spend our time desiring to know more about him, but we never get close to really know him. We can't, because he keeps reinventing himself. We don't want to, because then we would lose interest in him. Lupin's charm lies in his inscrutability, his unpredictability. We never know what he's thinking nor what he's planning to do next and that's why we keep following his adventures: because we can't do nothing else beside keep watching (or reading) and find out.

That's where I think really lies the true meaning of that scene that kept the fandom discussing about canon for days⁶. We can try and try to figure out Lupin, but he will always have a new trick up his sleeve which he will use to flip the situation in its favor. Lupin will never die as long as he's able to surprise us just like he's been doing for over than 50 years. Until then, he'll always be our favorite and unpredictable gentleman thief, unpredictable just like this franchise that in these last few years managed to amaze us with some of the finest and most interesting ways.

I'd like to hear your thoughts on Lupin III Part 5 and my article in the comment section, so feel free to leave one! I'm also open to any suggestion to improve the translation of this article, which I originally wrote in italian. At this link you can find my Facebook Page about Lupin III, follow me if you want to be updated with my new articles!

Notes

1.

2. There's the exception of "The Return of Pycal"

3. Quite literally

4. From TMS' Twitter account:

From Tad Hoshiya's blog:

5. What Lupin is trying to say to Fujiko is that she is so important to him that she can be the only person in the world to know his real self

6. I don't think that Lupin's true identity and real face is something really worth discussing, the main purpose of the scene was to prove a metaforical point. Howevere, here some insights from the manga.

In the 123th chapter of the first series of the manga, Zenigata captures Lupin and says "Finally I will be able to see your real appearance", Lupin says "What do you mean?" and Zenigata "All these years that I've been chasing you I came to understand that this is not your real face, this is not your real voice and this is not your real you. I don't know if you really are a man or if you're a woman, if you're a demon or an angel, or even if you're a monster". So Zenigata start scratching Lupin's face that reveals to be a mask and Lupin says "Stop it, this time you've gone too far" and then there's a gag with Lupin's escape, so we don't really discover his true face.

In the 76th chapter of Shin Lupin III, Lupin wants access to a treasure of his family and the other man is a servant of the Lupin family. Lupin must convince this servant that he really is a descendant of Arsene Lupin, so when he asks the Lupin family's motto, Lupin says that the motto is "Never show your real face". After that he starts laughing and he says "That's why even Jigen, Goemon, Zenigata and Fujiko don't know my real face". In the end of the chapter we discover that that was a false Lupin, however the servant still accepted as true the motto.

In the 94th chapter of Shin Lupin III there's Zenigata launching some acid upon Lupin's face to destroy his mask in a flashback, but he doesn't get to see his true face because of the smoke (there is a fire in the scene)

7. I'm hoping to see again Albert in a next Special TV which extends its plot (but we already know that this isn't going to happen in the 2019 Special TV that is coming out this winter)