Lupin's getting married? Granted it’s been 30 years since he last had a show to himself, so maybe it makes sense for him to settle down and tie the knot. But this is Lupin III, international thief who has never known true defeat once he sets his mark. We couldn’t do without him any more than his stalwart pursuer Detective Zenigata could. And so though part four of the legendary Lupin III begins with his marriage, in the blink of an eye we are right where we should be: amidst the familiar series of heists and crazy capers that have made the series a classic for so many decades. Better yet, the franchise seems to keep getting better and better, as the tongue-and-cheek gravity-defying flippant The Castle of Cagliostro-style Lupin is in full swing, and more gorgeous than ever.
His new bride, the daredevil millionaire Rebecca with a streak of crime herself, becomes a new addition to the usual Lupin III cast, popping in and out to push her own agenda onto the usual Lupin gang. I do wish she was a better character, as her strong personality crumbles when danger comes and Lupin is forced to save her in his typical effortless fashion. But still, she adds a nice extra source of the femme fatale character we usually only get from Lupin’s one true love, the seductive and scheming Mine Fujiko. Perhaps the success of Yamamoto Sayo's recent Lupin III installment The Woman Called Mine Fujiko sent a signal to the producers this time around, about how popular their free-spirited women can be.
For the most part, things follow their typical course, with episodic heists interweaving history, individual characters, money, careful planning and execution, and as always a feel-good moral takeaway that makes us feel good about the fact that our titular hero is a criminal worthy of life imprisonment. And in typical Lupin III fashion, the themes get pretty crazy at times. Barrels of love-potion wine, a Great Teacher Onizuka-style episode with delinquent students and the school of hard knocks, a clever trap set in beautiful rural Japan laid by Edogawa Rampo’s classic detective gang, and not one, not two, but three authentic Mona Lisas all being swapped for one another in a ridiculous game of spot the nonexistent forgery. This season also features perhaps the greatest caper of Lupin’s career: breaking out of a steel box on a tiny island under the vigilant watch of Zenigata. No shortage of thrills this time around.
The more bizarre side of this season is the existence of a plot, revolving around Rebecca’s dead lover, a particularly ruthless incarnation of MI6, and the resurrection of Leonardo Da Vinci in the modern era. This story shows itself subtly throughout the first half of the show before receiving a rushed couple of episodes of Lupin inside a sketch, transitioning into the Da Vinci-centric conflict of the second half. The story in the second half is even more rushed, poking its head out briefly a few times at the beginning before disappearing until the final two episodes of the entire show. It felt like an unnecessary clutter designed to work Rebecca into a central position in the show, along with a crazed rogue MI6 operative who serves as both victim and victimizer in the show’s attempt to paint the British intelligence agency as a more secretive version of a bloodthirsty Satanic cult. All of the named characters we are introduced to this season would have worked better as reoccurring forces in the usual Lupin III capers rather than being shoehorned into a fantastical plot that would have worked better as a Lupin III movie trilogy, or perhaps as a different series entirely.
Still, there’s no reason to miss the whole season because of a single overly convoluted element. We still get plenty of time with the whole gang; Fujiko does her usual work of infiltrating and double-crossing every group at the same time, while Jigen and Goemon shoot and slash their way through every wall, bullet, and person that stands in their way. And Lupin of course goes about his business with a flair for dramatics, waxing about all the beautiful women of the world, all the while slipping treasure after priceless treasure into his pockets as if they were his precious women themselves. Their hectic lifestyle, living caper to caper while accompanied with a jazzy beat and the Italian countryside, hasn’t lost its charm yet.