Lupin the 3rd: The Fuma Conspiracy

This review is spoiler free.

The 80s were an interesting decade for “Lupin III”. An interesting, complicated, flamboyant, decade. The defining moment for the franchise in this era would be the pink jacket series. While flawed, I do find myself appreciating it and its companion film, 1985’s “The Legend of the Gold of Babylon”, even more these days. I’ve already discussed that show at length in its own review, but it isn’t all that happened to Lupin in the 80s. Another big event came with the airing of the first TV special, a decision TMS would use to keep the franchise afloat for decades. And then there was “The Fuma Conspiracy”, sometimes translated as “The Plot of the Fuma Clan”. It released in 1987, depending on what source you’re reading it is either credited as a movie or an OVA, and it stands out among the other Lupin media from this decade in many respects. The most obvious would be the art direction as the 80s generally leaned in the direction of the lanky, exaggerated aesthetics of Yuzo Aoki and Shingo Araki. But oh is there a lot more to this than just a change in visual design. “The Fuma Conspiracy” is an interesting piece to Lupin’s catalogue because in several ways it captures some of the best aspects of the franchise, while also lacking some of its most precious elements. There are people who’ve gone as far as to consider it superior to “The Castle of Cagliostro” and others who seem indifferent to it. What’s my opinion? You’re about to find out.

Our story begins at the wedding of Goemon Ishikawa XIII and his young fiancé Murasaki. All appears well until members of the eponymous Fuma clan strike, kidnapping Murasaki in order to seek her family’s treasure. Meanwhile, Inspector Zenigata has become a monk after witnessing what he believed to be the death of Arsene Lupin III. Naturally, it wouldn’t be a Lupin anime without him faking his own death and once they cross paths again Zenigata is hot on his trail with a new lease on life. I’ve seen this anime three times now and upon this recent viewing I was surprised by how simple the story manages to be. I don’t consider this a bad thing, when TMS gets too complicated with the franchise its harder to digest. A straightforward adventure and our main characters has always been enough. I was completely engaged from start to end and many of my favorite moments are in this anime. I love Jigen trying to fire his gun in the beginning only to discover he isn’t holding it, him wearing the samurai helmet is a great detail reminiscent of him wearing the crown in “Cagliostro”, Lupin cycling through his different facial designs is a clever homage, and Zenigata seeing Lupin again is a classic. This is also an anime that utilizes Fujiko very well. Yes, she gets kidnapped at one point, but she uses the situation to her advantage and successfully escapes. It highlights her cunning nature and ability to twist things in her favor without making her reliant on Lupin. This anime is a fairly rare moment in which Goemon is allowed to be the primary focus. Too often in feature length projects he is pushed to the sidelines just to do one thing near the end of the story, but not this time. I am aware this is partly because once he gets to be the lead the rest of the story has to change into a game of swords instead of guns, but the franchise honestly pulls that off with more ease than people expect. Lupin and Jigen are as great as ever, this iteration of Lupin really packs on the charm and when Jigen is allowed a moment to shine he has my full attention. Really my biggest issues with “The Fuma Conspiracy” on a story level is that Jigen feels underused, they’ve distributed the screen time far better in other works, and that Murasaki and Goemon’s age gap gives me pause. I understand wanting her to have a youthful energy to counter his reserved nature, but that could have been accomplished without making her this young. The anime doesn’t draw too much attention to this, but it is a change I wish they’d made.

If there is one thing that will always stir up discussions about “Fuma” it’s that it is absolutely beautiful. Yasuo Otsuka was still working at Telecom at the time and served as supervisor on the production. And my God does it show. The character designs are drawing inspiration from his work on the green jacket series, except this time there’s an exceptionally refined animation style to elevate it. Kazuhide Tomonaga served as the animation director and the late, great, Shichirou Kobayashi did art direction. Kobayashi throughout his career worked on a vast array of anime from Osamu Dezaki classics like “Ie Naki Ko” to “The Castle of Cagliostro” to Mamoru Oshii’s “Angel’s Egg” to “Revolutionary Girl Utena”. I love his work. Some of the most visually stunning anime are ones he was involved in, and he really brought the heat with this. Tomonaga meanwhile is an animator who’s deeply connected to “Lupin III” having worked on anime as old as the red jacket series and continuing into the modern age. Notably, he directed “Lupin III: Part IV” in 2015. Other key players in the production are animator Atsuko Tanaka, one of the best animators of the 80s, and Hiroyuki Aoyama who’s animation credits include “Akira” and “Space Dandy”. In many respects this was a production led by the animation, the focus was to evoke a cinematic and fully expressive animation style and they certainly achieved it. It is jaw droppingly good. Sakuga fans are sure to be drooling when they get a look at this, if they haven’t already. The car chases are legendary at this stage and rank among some of the best the franchise has done. What we have here isn’t just some of the best animation of the 1980s, but some of the best animation I’ve seen in any anime. As I’ve said before, image can be substance in certain situations. The style and flare that defines Lupin as a character and franchise is elevated with such poise in this project. In many respects the production values feel like a means of affirming Lupin’s status as one of the greatest franchises ever. You simply don’t do this for something that’s become swallowed by the times. When you do this much it’s because you believe it’s a work of importance. I just wish it didn’t come with the baggage that it does.

I don’t want to go too deep into this situation, there is plenty written about it elsewhere, but I’m going to try and summarize what led us here. TMS was in a rough spot in the 80s, part of this is the highly volatile production of “Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland”, which eventually became a movie I sincerely love but I digress. All of the financial problems happening at the studio placed them in the position where they needed to cut costs on “Fuma” and given all of the attention going into the animation it had to be somewhere else. They sacrificed the seiyuu cast and Yuji Ohno’s music in favor of less expensive alternatives. Lupin would be played by Toshio Furukawa, Jigen by Banjou Ginga, Fujiko by Mami Koyama, Goemon by Kaneto Shiozawa, and Zenigata by Seizo Kato. The music was created by Kiyoshi Miyaura. There’s a lot of highly unfortunate personal trouble that arose between Yasuo Yamada and Monkey Punch over this. Yamada hated Furukawa’s performance and lashed out at Monkey Punch believing this meant he was being replaced. Things were never the same between them again and reportedly Monkey Punch cried at Yamada’s funeral because their issues would remain unresolved. He would also become very jaded by the anime industry, especially when he never learned who was behind this decision. My suspicions tell me it was someone bigger than Otsuka as he was cautious about revealing their name. When the first TV special, “Bye-Bye Liberty”, released Ohno’s music and our regular cast all returned because of an intense fan backlash over what “Fuma” did. It was so bad that it led to what is ultimately a solid entry underperforming, that’s how much Lupin fans care about this.

So, what do I have to say about this? Reading about everything that happened and how Yamada felt makes me just sad. I have a bit of a tough time moving past the fact that the cast and the music aren’t the same. And this isn’t just because of all the behind-the-scenes drama, it’s rather distracting without that context. Toshio Furukawa is an excellent seiyuu, I’ve enjoyed many of his characters, but he wasn’t suitable for Lupin. He is over a decade younger than Yamada and that does show in his voice. I think he did the best he could, it just wasn’t the right fit for him. Kaneto Shiozawa makes for a good Goemon honestly, I like the sound of his voice and think it compliments how he’s written. He doesn’t have the same dignity as Makio Inoue, nor could I see him successfully playing one of the more comedic incarnations of the character, but it is a good performance. Mami Koyama as Fujiko doesn’t do much for me, despite being one of the big seiyuu of the 80s I find her voice rather generic on Fujiko. Banjou Ginga is honestly a great Jigen replacement, his voice reminds me of how Akio Otsuka voices him. Too bad he wasn’t given more to do or say. Seizo Kato I think sounds too old as Zenigata, it’s an odd complaint to make about a character who’s implied to be in middle age. But I couldn’t help but feel like his voice belonged on an older character. And I want to emphasize this again, I don’t consider these people untalented or delivering bad performances, but watching it in Japanese I’m just sitting there thinking “this isn’t the same”. There is a solution to this issue though, the English dub is very good. Yes, those voices aren’t the same either and thanks to copyright issues with Maurice Leblanc’s estate they keep calling him Rupan. But it’s still better than the dubs that called him Wolf. They did a good job and I’d really recommend trying it out. I loved the way Lupin sounded when Zenigata places him under arrest and he just yells “but I haven’t DONE anything”. This doesn’t fix the music though. The music has always been one of the key parts of “Lupin III” and removing it for an OST that I find very bland is disappointing. I’ve said before that when the anime doesn’t use Ohno’s music it feels like something’s lost, this is what I was talking about. You see these amazing chase scenes and they’re held back by the fact that they don’t have these songs or pieces comparable to them. My mind expects the main theme song or “Dangerous Zone”, instead we get an OST that could fit in any other 80s production and blends into the background. It doesn’t even have the charm of green jacket’s OST or the new arrangements those pieces got recently in “Lupin Zero”. The least it could have done was give me a track on par with “Nice Guy Lupin” or “Afro Lupin 68”, but it wasn’t meant to be. I wish there was some compromise that could have been made to avoid this change. I would have been okay with recycling archival recordings from past iterations. They’ve done that before with the theme song in “Mystery of Mamo” being lifted from the second red jacket opening, but that would have still meant paying Ohno’s salary. I’m sure some people are rolling their eyes at me thinking this isn’t such a big deal, but the music and the voice acting are essential to “Lupin III”. Losing that, even if it involves seiyuu I still respect, is just a hard pill to swallow and this OST is vastly inferior to the jazz orchestrations we are used to.

For how much I have to say on the production and losing the seiyuu and music, I still believe “Fuma” is a strong entry in the franchise. Because of what it lacks it will never surpass some other Lupin anime in my eyes, but it is still a worthy installment. Japanese fans didn’t appreciate it very well, but I do see a lot of love for it. It’s a very good story with excellent animation that I would encourage even non fans to check out. Despite its shorter length it never leaves me feeling like it was half baked or rushed. And I think our main five characters are all written in such a likable and charming way. This still feels like a classic Lupin tale with all the energy, style, and wit I know it for. I really enjoy watching it and I’m happy that it’s developed a special place within the fandom. This shouldn’t be just a deep cut for loyal Lupin fans though, I think people outside that ecosystem can have a good time with it. Thankfully there is evidence that people beyond the anime community are appreciating “Fuma”. Last year Dreamworks paid homage to it in their film “The Bad Guys”, which is heavily influenced by “Lupin III” throughout. I was surprised to see something like this appear in an American production and it deserves that recognition.

“The Fuma Conspiracy” is something that sticks out in the context of the franchise for many reasons. Some great, some not. Despite my critiques I still have a blast with it anyway and encourage seeing it for yourself. My views on the production aside, I do think it’s something worth recommending to anybody. If you are ever looking for an adventure comedy or even a place to begin with the franchise this is definitely one to consider.