The Mike Toole Show

The Lupin Tapes

You've seen Lupin the 3rd, right? It's a pretty big deal in Japan, and most western anime fans have at least heard of it. I managed to miss out on seeing Robert Woodhead himself at AnimEast 1995, one of the first anime conventions on the east coast. I stood before AnimEigo's dealer table, eyeing his wares hopefully for something new (back then you could count the number of commercial anime videos I owned on one hand!), before my eyes rested on a sales flyer advertising brand new Rupan III releases at a convention special price of $20 each. I held up the flyer and indicated that I wanted these tapes, and asked Bob if he would take a check. He said yes, and explained that the tapes hadn't come back from the replicator yet, but if I gave him my address with the payment he could have them mailed to me. I signed up, and two weeks later, like magic, the tapes arrived. , gang: getting anime wasn't always as easy as clicking a link!



DATELINE: August 10, 1967. A young artist named Kazuhiko Kato, under the moniker Monkey Punch, publishes the first chapter of a new manga series entitled Lupin III. The title character, a supposed descendant of a famous literary French burglar, is a heartless killer and lecherous rapist who only has eyes for his next piece of loot. He's offset by his cohort-in-crime, gunman Daisuke Jigen, who frequently betrays his partner; swordsman Ishikawa Goemon, who starts off determined to kill Lupin before becoming an ally; damsel Fujiko Mine, who changes from chapter to chapter and is presented as both a victim and adversary for Lupin; and dogged detective Inspector Zenigata. Punch's plotlines are convoluted, but the art is zany and eye-catching, and the comic as a whole is persistently readable. The manga is a hit, and it isn't long before the character makes the jump to animation.

Some of you are nodding sagely, ing the pack of movies and TV specials YTV. But this pilot still got made, and it's a great piece of work. There's a booby-trapped phone box and a game of shogi between Lupin and Zenigata, there's the famous Mercedes Benz SSK, Lupin's ride of choice when he isn't barreling around in that ratty little yellow Fiat, and there's jaunty music and punchy, overly descriptive narration that makes it seem like one of those goofy old Walter Reade Films travelogues. Lupin has a chin of Bruce Campbell proportions, Jigen's eyes peek out from under his hat with astonishing regularity, and Fujiko is an assertive, gun-toting, go-go-dancing moll. It's raw, compelling stuff, and it's the very first piece of the Lupin the 3rd animation puzzle.

We all know that Lupin the 3rd would go on to become one of Japanese animation's great, enduring heroes; the iconic characters would star in more than 200 TV episodes and various other media, and are treated to a TV special every year to keep them fresh. The best-known part of the Yūki Meguro (you'll him as "Omi" in James Clavell's Shogun. Haha, Shogun?! God, that was terrible!) takes on the role of the famed thief. But the twists are a little different; Jigen soon appears, but he's intent on telling a rather aimless Lupin that his grandfather's crime empire needs a new leader, and Lupin must decide if he wants to follow his destiny, all while pursuing Fujiko and eluding capture from good old Inspector Zenigata. Goemon didn't make the cut for this one, don't ask me why. Despite the dated costumes, the movie holds up reasonably well-- there's plenty of goofy sight gags that would look appropriate in an episode of the old Adam West Batman TV series, some clever camera tricks, a musical number featuring kung-fu fighting nuns, and Meguro is sly and funny despite not looking all that much like the comic character.

Four years after the film Lupin the 3rd would really make its mark on the pop culture landscape, with the aforementioned movies and TV series hitting in rapid succession. Far moreso than the interesting, more action-oriented 1972 TV series, these new chapters established Lupin the 3rd as a major hit around the world, and it wasn't too long before TMS and Monkey Punch started thinking about the next chapter of the story. Help would come in the form of a guy named Shingo Araki was brought in to design the look of the characters. Given the budget and the caliber of the staff, the project really could not miss.

Unfortunately, back when Monkey Punch created Lupin the 3rd, he didn't bother securing permission to use the original Arsene Lupin name from the estate of writer Japan Airlines flights (such that some collectors still refer to it as "the JAL dub"), but it didn't really make it to street level in North America. What did make it to street level, literally, was an arcade game from Stern Electronics called Cliff Hanger. Here's the advertising flyer.

Look at that beauty. That's not Monkey Punch's artwork, but there's no mistaking who it is, is there? The Cliff Hanger arcade game was one of those funky Space Ace and Cobra Command. The deal with those was, you had a standard joystick and button setup, and you would watch an animated sequence. Successfully advancing to the next sequence hinged on hitting the right combo of joystick moves and button presses at the right time. Mess it up, and you'd get a death animation and lose a life. Cliff Hanger mainly used footage from Castle of Cagliostro, though a few sequences from Mystery of Mamo were also used. Technically the game was dubbed into English, though it sounds an awful lot like one actor was used to voice Lupin, Jigen, and the Count. He sounds kind of like Cookie Monster when he's voicing Jigen. Heh heh. This game wasn't just the first exposure to Lupin the 3rd for many people, it was their first exposure to Japanese animation. I still meet fans at almost every convention I attend who started seeking out anime after playing Cliff Hanger.

I've talked about Red Jacket Lupin and mentioned Green Jacket Lupin in ing. Of course, I'm referring to the color jacket that the character wears. Red Jacket Lupin is the most ubiquitous; lecherous and witty and occasionally ruthless, he's the Lupin that appears the most. Green Jacket Lupin is tougher and more action hero-y, but has a soft edge that Hayao Miyazaki provides in the film Castle of Cagliostro. Some fans even argue that Cagliostro isn't a proper Lupin the 3rd film, because Lupin isn't mean enough. I don't buy that, all the rest of the ingredients are there and Lupin doesn't have to constantly be chasing girls and plugging hoodlums to convince me he's the real deal. But the funny thing is, nobody ever talks about Pink Jacket Lupin. Pink Jacket Lupin the 3rd is actually kind of awesome, but also weird and ridiculous. That's because 100% of Pink Jacket Lupin animation is directed by a guy named Seijun Suzuki.

Man, I could write an entire column about Seijun Suzuki. He is (yep, he's still alive!) a filmmaking auteur, an iconoclast famous for helping bust up Japan's corrupt, crappy studio system in the 50s and 60s. His big moment came when Babylon.


Gold of Babylon is, interestingly, the only iteration of pink-jacket Lupin to be released in English in any form. AnimEigo presented it subtitled under the Rupan III moniker in the 90s, and Manga UK tried their own English-language approach (including a dub of the 1989 TV special Bye Bye Liberty Crisis, which didn't get released in the US at all!), the next move would be by Funimation, who pumped out no less than ten movies and TV specials over the past decade. The best ones are Dead or Alive and Farewell to Nostradamus. Geneon would then team up with Phuuz Entertainment to get Lupin the 3rd on Cartoon Network, but the project fizzled out after endless reruns of the first 26 episodes. Finally, with all of these efforts cooled off or burnt out, Discotek came up with DVD releases of the live-action film, a welcome re-issue of The Fuma Conspiracy, and Lupin the 3rd: Episode Zero.

Actually, Episode Zero just came out a few months ago! I think it bears a little study, because it attempts to tell the story of how the Lupin gang got together, and how the entire formula of Zenigata chasing Lupin, who chases Fujiko while Jigen and Goemon glumly tag along, was established. This TV special isn't actually all that recent-- it came out in Japan in 2002. In fact, there have been a whole fistful of Lupin the 3rd TV specials and OVAs since Funimation released the next most recent TV special, 2000's Missed by a Dollar, and most of them are pretty darn good. Hopefully this release paves the way for at least a few more, but I digress.

It's way back in the day, and Arsene Lupin III (red jacket version, if you're keeping score) is still building his rep as a master burglar. He's got designs on a mysterious treasure held by a mob boss named Galvez; Lupin's buddy and crime colleague Brad also wants the treasure, but he runs afoul of Daisuke Jigen, Galvez's top hired gun. Just when this goes down, Brad's girlfriend, a con artist named Fujiko Mine, drifts into town, shadowed by Tokyo police detective Koichi Zenigata, who hopes to collar her. And back in Japan, Ishikawa Goemon is searching relentlessly for a prized item that he needs to re-forge his family's sword, Zantetsuken. That's all the setup you need; right from those couple of sentences, Lupin and Jigen's weary, sometimes acrimonious friendship blossoms, Lupin's largely fruitless pursuit of Fujiko begins, Goemon is drawn into the gang by seemingly unrelated matters, and Zenigata lays his eyes on a crook whose outrageous contempt for law and order is so infuriating that it causes him to resign from the Tokyo bureau and put in an application for INTERPOL.

The setup isn't the only hook that Episode Zero has. We also see other Lupin the 3rd tricks, like the hero's penchant for odd gadgets and outrageous booby-traps; this time he saves the day repeatedly with what can only be described as a spring-loaded apartment. This special establishes Zenigata's unending bad luck streak, as he lands in New York and is assigned the first of an endless string of bumbling, seemingly useless temporary partners. Things are rounded out by a great gunfight between Lupin and Jigen, a sunglasses-wearing jerkbag henchman, and a completely, utterly uninteresting heavy in Galvez. They could've just called the guy Boss Hogg and I doubt anyone would've noticed.

Unfortunately, there's one bit of criticism I really need to level at Episode Zero. The franchise's biggest ongoing problem starts to rear its head here, and that's the aging of its voice cast. It is, I must it, kind of neat that, with little variation, the same actors have been voicing the Lupin gang for its entire four-decade history. It's pretty hard for me to imagine a Lupin the 3rd that doesn't feature Yasuo Yamada owned the role until his death in 1995. It's hard to say it, but the franchise might be due for a vocal 'changing of the guard,' so to speak; The Fuma Conspiracy actually featured a different cast from the regulars, but this changeover wasn't received that well despite the fact that the new cast did a great job. Maybe it's time to revisit that idea.

At the end of the day, Episode Zero necessarily sets itself up as is the prototypical Lupin the 3rd story. A day-zero origin story for such a broad franchise is a pretty good idea, considering that the characters' backgrounds are murky even in the first original comic stories. Episode Zero is pretty successful in creating this tale,but it's still a bit of a mixed bag, owing to Minoru Ōhara's fairly ordinary direction; there's very little visual panache to the proceedings, and even the sight gags are pretty low-key. But any way you look at it, if you like the Lupin the 3rd franchise, you'll probably be perfectly happy with Episode Zero.

That's the thing about Lupin the 3rd. It's been with us for so long that there's something comfortable, almost routine, about it. It's kind of like a crazy Japanese cartoon version of Law & Order, only with the same loveable bad guys every single episode, and a rumpled, grumbling old detective instead of Jerry Orbach-- hey, wait a minute...