Lupin the 3rd

This review is spoiler free.

How do we define luck? Where do we draw the line between somebody earning their success through skill or effort and those who appear to have it handed to them? In many respects all great successes involve luck in some capacity. Many people have called Yoshiyuki Tomino a man who got lucky, but that sentiment requires ignoring the many jobs he performed prior to the creation of “Mobile Suit Gundam”. Back when I reviewed the original green jacket anime for “Lupin III” I described Monkey Punch as one of the luckiest people to ever grace the industry. After all, when he began writing “Lupin III” in 1967 it was expected to run for three months only for it to be so well received it garnered the attention of TMS Entertainment and ran until 1972, finishing at around the same time the first anime was cancelled. It didn’t end there, “Lupin III” would become one of the oldest and greatest franchises in anime and manga history. And Monkey Punch would continue to write for these characters after the serialization of the first manga. Through the success of this project he would become a professor of manga and animation at Otemae University and perform various lectures in his older age. His manga outside of “Lupin III” don’t appear to have made much of an impact, and the ones I’ve read didn’t impress me particularly, but it doesn’t matter does it? He made “Lupin III”. How lucky can one man be? Especially when the manga is such a complicated matter.

The first time I read “Lupin III” I didn’t enjoy it. I even went as far as to discourage people from reading it and sprinkled some choice words about it in a few of my anime reviews. With the passage of time, and me devoting so much time to reviewing Lupin media, it felt as though the effects had worn off and I was due to read it again. Finally, I decided I was ready to confront the manga again and provide whatever insight I can offer. So, how did that go? To my surprise, very well. Upon revisiting the manga I was able to really get a stronger sense for Monkey Punch’s talents. There are issues within it, and I can’t stress that enough. However, amidst all of that I can peel back the layers and see what TMS surely saw back in the late 60s. Some of the most popular and beloved Lupin stories and gags were adapted directly from the manga. TMS would expand these ideas further by converting them into full episodes, and they would tidy up some of the less savory elements present, but regardless Monkey Punch was the first to offer these ideas. Was he a man who earned his success, or was he just fortunate enough to have an anime studio scoop his project up and eventually see it be a success? I honestly am willing to make the case that he deserves credit for what he did, just as the criticism of said work is justified.

Much like in the anime, the manga adopts a primarily episodic format. Some stories spawn multiple chapters, but that’s only so many. I’ve said it before, I like Lupin the best when he’s featured in this sort of structure. It allows so much freedom and space for creativity. The first Lupin chapter is honestly not a favorite of mine, it’s important, but it doesn’t really leave the strongest impression. The second chapter however is what would become one of the best episodes in the franchise’s history, green jacket’s “One Chance for a Prison Break”. I wouldn’t be surprised if this chapter boosted people’s excitement for the series. And whenever a classic story comes up you can see that same spark. You can see why material like this would be retooled for a full episode. Within the manga you get popular stories like my favorite, green jacket’s “Beware the Time Machine!”, and you even get acclaimed red jacket stories such as the one with the doppelganger or the basis for Kyoransky’s episode. To try and remove Monkey Punch’s work from the greater context of the Lupin franchise would mean discrediting all of these episodes in the process. TMS did their part to elevate the material, but that doesn’t mean the original attempts at them were bad. And there were many great stories within the manga that have never been adapted, such as the one with the house that splits your good and evil sides in two or the one with the crosses that cause delusions. I hope there will come a day where TMS decides to adapt from the manga again because there’s a lot of major potential left within.

Something very significant about the manga is Monkey Punch’s art and compositional work. His greatest influence in the manga sphere was Osamu Tezuka, but unlike some other mangaka of the time he didn’t aim to replicate his aesthetic. It was Mad magazine that informed Monkey Punch’s drawing style the most and it helped him stand out. At the earliest period in his career he worked in a doujinshi group as an illustrator and was advised to pursue manga further due to how unique his work was. Even by today’s standards he still stands tall as having one of the most distinct styles of any mangaka. During the beginning of “Lupin III” his art showed room for improvement, sometimes Lupin and Zenigata looked too similar and the lines were on the sloppy side. As he continued working on it he was able to hone his skills and I won’t deny that he developed something special. It was even falsely rumored that Monkey Punch was a duo containing himself and his brother, except it was always a solo endeavor.

In terms of paneling this is where I can see the Tezuka inspiration on display. It’s difficult to communicate how much of an impact Tezuka had on such things without showing what manga looked like in the beginning of his career, but the early Tezuka manga were very uniform and simple. As his career advanced he began to experiment with paneling and presentation and the industry would eventually adopt this en masse. With Monkey Punch you can see some real creativity in this department. Sometimes pages would go by without dialogue, trusting the panels and drawings to convey what was necessary. Paneling is one of those things with manga that people bring up, but they seldom explain why they matter. They’re important because they’re what frames the art and help communicate the story. Back when people like Tezuka had to draw everything in nothing but a series of wide rectangles it made the work come across very dry. By playing around with shape and size it enhances the mood and makes for a more exciting reading experience. This is why some manga have a “flow” to them despite being static images and “Lupin III” is no exception to this.

For all the aspects that work within the manga, unfortunately, there are still flaws. Some are honestly minor flaws that just begin to build up overtime, like character designs being a bit homogenous in the minor characters or Lupin having moments that feel out of character for the ruthless man he was portrayed as. Or that the college Lupin chapters are abysmal. Those are all valid criticisms to make, but that isn’t the primary source of the manga’s problems. This is something I believe many fans don’t like to address, but the manga has a notorious issue with women and sexual violence. Fujiko Mine for a long time within the manga wasn’t really her own character. Instead, the name Fujiko Mine was assigned to whatever beautiful woman was being used in the story at hand. A lot of women drawn by Monkey Punch already look alike, so couple that with the recycled name, despite them all being separate individuals Lupin was meeting for the first time, and it makes for a very awkward experience. Once he started to make Fujiko a recurring character in her own right she honestly just felt more like an outline of a character than anything else. The general traits associated with her are present, she’s sly and beautiful and will betray Lupin for her own means, but that’s really it. The anime had to do the heavy lifting by making her more defined and to their credit she would become an entertaining and fascinating character to follow. I would argue as early as green jacket she was already a woman ahead of her time who would continue to icon status. But in the manga she’s incredibly hollow. A lot of the manga is focused on Lupin operating alone with Zenigata after him, this leads to Jigen and Goemon feeling a bit weaker than their anime counterparts too, except they’re still granted more presence than Fujiko. And other women throughout the manga aren’t done any favors either thanks to the biggest issue.

The manga’s biggest sin lies in its employment of sexual assault and rape as sources of comedy. Anime Lupin has always had a fondness for the ladies that veers into perversion depending on the version we’re watching, but this is different. The manga never seemed concerned with the idea of women consenting to sexual behavior, even the scenes that are objectively consensual treat it like it’s irrelevant, this results in some very uncomfortable moments. And while I couldn’t think of a more seamless way to address this, I do want to point out how he sometimes would remove or obscure male figures in sexual scenes in order to not distract from the female form. So you will see a nude woman writhing around with the implication a man is performing sexual acts without having to see him or what he’s doing, it’s a bizarre kind of sexism. Now usually scenes of Lupin ripping women’s clothes off or forcing sexual contact result in him getting bashed on the head or incapable of taking matters further, but that doesn’t provide me much comfort in seeing this. Something like the iconic red jacket gag with the punching bag worked because it’s lighthearted and Lupin doesn’t appear dangerous as he does in this. I believe that the only anime that ever come close to how Lupin behaves in the manga are the Pilot Film and “Mystery of Mamo”, and in the latter’s case it was only one scene and I criticized that when I reviewed it. There were scenes in “Jigen’s Gravestone” that left a similar bad taste in my mouth as well, but Lupin’s character isn’t part of them. Things aren’t helped by the fact that I’ve tried other Monkey Punch manga and watched the awful OVA “Monkey Punch no Sekai: Alice”, which I strongly discourage people from seeking out. These don’t necessarily affect “Lupin III” as they’re independent works, but what they do is draw attention to the fact that Monkey Punch had recurring issues in certain areas. There is also a story that floats around claiming he said his Lupin would have never helped Clarisse like he did in “The Castle of Cagliostro” and would instead try to rape her. This is a story people have disputed as there appears to be no definitive proof for it, I have not found anything substantial to verify it. Unfortunately, with many older works like this there will be inaccurate or even fake stories drifting around. Regardless, I’ve been asked how I can continue to support and engage with “Lupin III” after seeing all the rape in “Alice” or having experienced these jokes. My answer is that none of this truly defines Lupin III as a character or franchise. The anime did so much with the characters and material and that includes changing or omitting content that would have been unfit for TV broadcast, such as this. Due to the combined efforts of all the people who’ve been tasked to work on “Lupin III” this franchise isn’t tied down by any one person’s vision. These issues within the manga are specifically about the manga, not the TV anime or the films. It’s been argued to me that because this is how it all began it means it will never truly leave the character or the material, but considering you can watch most of the anime and never see this behavior I don’t think that’s accurate or fair. Lupin III and his friends have all transcended the manga and become bigger than Monkey Punch originally made them. I would make the argument this has been scrubbed away thoroughly. But it’s still a problem for the manga I’m discussing and in a way it correlates to another massive issue.

We as non-Japanese audiences have to place a lot of faith in the idea that what we’re seeing is an honest and accurate translation of a work. On that we don’t have a lot of choice unless you are fluent enough in Japanese to follow a manga or anime raw. This is why some editions of an anime or manga become infamous within the community, like Netflix’s “Neon Genesis Evangelion” subtitles. People want to know they’re experiencing something as correctly as they can and once something feels wrong it can be destabilizing. So, how does this connect back to “Lupin III”? The original is the only manga in the franchise to be fully licensed and localized into English thanks to Tokyopop. They attempted to cover “Shin Lupin III”, but left it unfinished. This edition has been out of print for a long time and Tokyopop’s translation is notoriously problematic. I don’t know Japanese so I can only say so much about what is and isn’t accurate, but many who do have remarked that this translation feels more like an attempt to cater to teenage “South Park” fans than it does represent “Lupin III”. Thanks to the “Lupin III Greatest Heists” anthology published by Darkhorse we do have some of these stories in a new translation and the differences are apparent.

Based on this I feel that many of the most infamous lines are possibly an invention of Tokyopop, it certainly makes me skeptical of what I read. “Greatest Heists” gives me hope we’ll someday see the entire manga redone correctly because the Tokyopop edition shouldn’t be the only option. There are lines that were most likely invented by Tokyopop that I appreciated, there were also scenes that I doubt were radically different in Japanese. Monkey Punch’s tendencies are still on display through the drawings. And yes, the English dub for the red jacket anime plays itself so loose that it borders on self-parody. That dub has a charm to itself that makes it so loved within the fandom and I think it comes from how lighthearted both it and the anime were. It still felt like red jacket Lupin even if they were going off script. Also you can still watch the red jacket anime in Japanese with accurate subtitles, it isn’t our only means of seeing it. Because the manga is already grittier by comparison it just doesn’t quite come together the same and ultimately it makes an already sexist manga even more extreme. And this is all we have, if you can get access to it. Considering how flawed this version is I’m almost unsure of how to rate or judge the material. What I’ve got here is an imperfect translation of an already flawed work, one that may be impacting my enjoyment of it more than I know.

After taking all of this into account, let’s revisit the original question. How do we define luck? Considering the unflattering aspects of Monkey Punch’s manga and how numerous people polished the material up to be what we see today, you could in good faith call him a lucky man. Personally, I don’t think it’s as simple as that. If he was a lesser mangaka I don’t think a studio would have picked his work up and devoted this many resources towards it. Something had to be there in the beginning to encourage this to happen. I think success stories like this are a combination of many things, luck included, but talent and effort are also key players. The manga, much like its history, is complex in many ways. I think Monkey Punch earned a place as one of the pivotal mangaka of his era thanks to his sharp style and how he inspired future generations of seinen manga and anime. We can discuss and praise many elements of the material and see that glimmer that developed into something more. But that doesn’t mean ignoring the controversial parts that take up more than a fair amount of its time. This isn’t how I like to see the characters treated or behave. While I can see that twinkle, that shine that Lupin’s character is known for amidst all of this, I still have to comb through unpleasant moments to see it. However, I have no regrets about revisiting it and have still managed to find respect for the manga despite all that. I bought “Greatest Heists” and preordered the next volume of it, I even plan to buy the full manga should a complete rerelease occur. Nuance is important, things aren’t necessarily going to be stark black and white. I can take pleasure in what the manga does excellently while still acknowledging the ways in which it is incompatible with our time. In terms of recommending it to other people, I believe a mature individual can process the manga in this way. It’s a younger reader that gives me pause. Tokyopop and Darkhorse have it marked for a teenage audience, and I don’t find that wise. This is an adult manga that asks of you to consume very difficult subject matter. If you are interested in reading I believe it’s best to do so after already watching at least some of the anime in order to get a greater understanding of what “Lupin III” evolved into and why it’s still cherished. Don’t let this be your first impression of the franchise, but don’t fully dismiss it either. Keep your mind open, yet aware.