LUPIN III: PART III

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CAST

ANIME ActionLupin III: Part II
ANIME ActionLupin III: PART IV
MANGA ActionSEXY Lupin III
MANGA ActionShin Lupin III

REVIEWS

• 

  myvelouria

  65/100
  Its the time to take a chance.

  This review is spoiler free.

  

  The 80s was a very interesting decade for “Lupin III”. Just before the start of the decade you had its first two theatrical films, “The Mystery of Mamo” in 1978 and “The Castle of Cagliostro” in 1979. In 1980 audiences said their goodbyes to the red jacket era, which also turned out to be a farewell to Hayao Miyazaki’s involvement in the franchise. He felt at that stage he ran out of ideas for the character and his ambitions were more focused on the big screen than anything else. In 1985 TMS decided to make a third film which was originally going to be directed by Mamoru Oshii with design work by Yoshitaka Amano until creative differences led to them leaving the project and fans receiving “Legend of the Gold of Babylon” instead. And by the time the decade came to a close fans would receive the first TV special, Osamu Dezaki’s “Bye-Bye Liberty” in 1989. This would lead to a semi yearly tradition of TV specials that goes as recently as 2019’s “Prison of the Past”. More than all of that the event that would define “Lupin III” in the 80s would be “Lupin III: Part III”, nicknamed “the pink jacket series” by fans. It ran from 1984 to 1985 with a total of 50 episodes making it the second longest series to date in the franchise. Out of all of the TV series for Lupin this is the one that is the most polarizing, especially in the west. Some people truly despise it and encourage skipping it completely while others are willing to defend it as a worthwhile entry. To put it in “Gundam” terms, this is our “ZZ”. Except while I found “ZZ” so difficult to sit through that I’ve left it incomplete in my dropped list, I did complete pink jacket. Where I stand on it is actually quite complicated. Like with the red jacket series I had dropped it once and then returned to it. My experience when picking it back up was very different from the one I had with its predecessor. I came away happy I finished it, but not feeling like my expectations had been exceeded. This isn’t to say the anime has no value, but I would be lying if I said it’s as good as the other installments. But why isn’t it as good as those are? That’s the question I’m here to answer.

  

  The first and most obvious thing to discuss when it comes to pink jacket is how it looks. The color palette is rather garish. I know it was the 80s and these loud colors were all the rage, but I can’t shake how much the colors in Lupin’s outfit clash. I think a dark colored shirt would have gone a long way. Or they could have done what “Lupin III: Part V” did in its tribute episode to pink and desaturate the colors so there’s less competition between his shirt, tie, and jacket. The color palettes for the other characters I like, it’s just the issue of having so many different colors going on in the same scene. More than the color palette the main thing people will notice and discuss are the aesthetics. Yes, “aesthetics” as in plural. The director for the anime was a man named Yuzo Aoki and the designer was Shingo Araki, who did designs for popular anime like “Saint Seiya”, “Rose of Versailles”, and “Galaxy Express 999”. Aoki had a very interesting vision for this anime. He didn’t want to feel derivative of the styles that were done before so his initial inspiration was Monkey Punch’s manga. This is why in earlier episodes Lupin and Goemon have cleft chins, why Jigen’s face is longer, and why Fujiko looks daintier. I wouldn’t say it’s as loyal to Monkey Punch’s art as it could have been, after all in the manga Goemon has the same face as Fujiko just with bushy eyebrows and Zenigata sometimes looked indistinguishable from Lupin. Now at some point in developing the anime Aoki got the idea to not be tied down by one visual style. This is why we also have episodes where the characters are more stretched out and cartoonish. And then he decided to take that aesthetic and make it even more exaggerated creating a third style. The end result is an anime with three different looks, sometimes depending on the scene you’ll get one design and switch to the next in another. And it was all intentional as Aoki felt it would achieve “a simple yet satisfying result” and encourage creativity among the team.

  

  Now I can appreciate the intentions behind all of this. I can give credit to the fact that it does make for a very unique visual experience. Considering how often the Lupin franchise is criticized for not taking enough chances, it does feel good seeing TMS allow this in the first place. My issue is that I found it all too distracting. I do think there are ways for an anime to change its art though. One of my favorite anime of all time, “Space Dandy”, did this constantly. The difference there, however, is “Dandy” would change its look for an episode and stick to it for the deration. Because pink jacket is changing styles within the same episode it can just feel random and inconsistent. Perhaps if they used certain styles for episodes following a certain tone or to enhance the emotional impact of a scene it could have worked. I could see that stretchy cartoonish look suiting moments of high comedy in contrast with perhaps an edgier manga influenced style for action heavy scenes. This isn’t what they did though, the visual changes aren’t connected to a specific mood. Perhaps my idea would have undermined the creative freedom these choices represent, either way I don’t think it came together. Lupin looks strange in many scenes and when he does look good it feels fleeting, same for Goemon, I actually like how Jigen looks but I suspect that’s because his general design is so brilliant that it’s hard to mess up, Zenigata I think also comes away looking good but still not his best design, Fujiko is just painful. I like how she looks in the earlier episodes that attempted to be more like the manga art, this wasn’t the best she’s looked but it was appealing. There was a cuteness in her face that I wish was maintained, but in the most cartoonish style it’s genuinely one of the worst designs she’s had. Worse than that hideous blonde hair she had in “Walther P-38”, worse than the eerie porcelain face she had in “The Pilot Film”, the only one that’s worse is her design in that weird pilot to a show that never happened where Lupin was a space detective. To do this to one of the most beautiful women in anime history is just inexcusable.

  

  This was also the style that was used for “Babylon” and it was just as flawed in execution there as it was on TV. The characters move well, but the way they’re drawn is certainly an acquired taste.

  

  In terms of story, like all other Lupin anime, this is an episodic series that doesn’t try to connect itself to the previous shows. That is how the franchise has always been and will most likely always remain to be. That said the content of this anime is a mixed bag. One common complaint that I see lobbied towards the pink era is that it’s too ridiculous. Honestly while I can see where these complains are coming from I also don’t completely agree. Lupin has always been ridiculous, we surpassed that way before the 80s rolled around. Remember when he became a vampire in the manga? Remember when red jacket built a popcorn fueled rocket ship? What about the episode with the penguins? Do I need to talk about “Mystery of Mamo”? Pink jacket is a pretty absurd anime, but absurdity has always been part of Lupin’s brand. This is probably the most cartoonish seinen anime series you’ll find. I’m not entirely sure why some fans seem hesitant to acknowledge this, western cartoons inspired Monkey Punch and they continued to show their influence on it regularly. However, if this anime’s take on the bizarre just isn’t your thing like it was in other installments I do understand you. I know I found the other shows to be more consistent and enjoyable. I felt like most of the episodes were merely okay, some were great like “We’re No Angels” and “The Name of the Cocktail is Revenge”, but generally speaking I found a lot of this anime to be simply alright. I have a high opinion of the franchise at large so I want it to be more than passable. This anime also had some fanservice scenes that felt a bit much. The 80s especially was an era where fanservice ran rampant and while Lupin has always been a sexual franchise it doesn’t mean I enjoy every attempt it makes at being sexy. As early as the first episode we have a nude scene with Fujiko I found to be in poor taste and some restraint would have been nice. Not all of the fanservice was bad, and it isn’t the franchise’s worst offender in this category, but it goes back to the anime being hit and miss. And given the anime is 50 episodes long I would have hoped for more hits than what I got. Sometimes I wondered if a different direction for this anime could have helped. I’ve pondered the idea of it going for a more “City Hunter” tone where it’s got an edge, but still goofy when it wants to be. I’ve even wondered what it would have been like if TMS embraced the hardboiled grit the manga had. However I also think that could have felt too jarring considering what the franchise was throughout the 70s and even could have risked feeling like trend chasing given the amount of dark seinen anime being produced at the time. Eventually we did get those extreme Lupin anime, but if we had those in the 80s I don’t think it would have gone as well as it did in the 2010s because the expectation back then was to have Lupin be lighthearted. So the conclusion I’ve come to is this upbeat, silly tone is what made the most sense for pink jacket. That aspect of the anime is not the problem, it’s the stories within the anime that needed work.

  

  An area where this anime shakes things up is through the music. This is still Yuji Ohno at work, but the OST leans in the direction of 80s new wave and pop. We don’t even have the classic theme, instead we have a new song Ohno wrote called “Sexy Adventure”. And I love it. I do enjoy 80s music a lot, perhaps that has something to do with my fondness towards the song, but “Sexy Adventure” is great. I don’t think anything can surpass the main series’ theme, but this song has such a wonderful energy to it and suits the tone of the anime perfectly. And this show could have easily brought back the main theme, it was established as Lupin’s song by this point as it appeared in “Mamo” and “Cagliostro”. So deciding to go with something new was unexpected, but a welcome choice because what replaced it is delightful. We had two different openings for this show using “Sexy Adventure” and I enjoy both enough to consider them among my favorite Lupin intros. Even with the visual styles of this anime I think they succeed in making me excited and interested in what I’m about to watch while displaying that creativity Aoki advocated for. And the singer for this track, Yosuke Nakamura, just sells it.

  Our ending for this series is a song called “Fairy Night”, which is also a wonderful addition to Lupin’s musical catalogue and quite underrated. There’s a lightness and elegance to the track that I feel puts it up there with other endings like “Love Theme” and “Love is Everything”. I know that people’s musical tastes aren’t going to be the same as mine, I have seen people criticize the music, but this is one element of the anime I thoroughly loved.

  

  Ultimately I don’t hate this anime, far from it. While I don’t think it’s the best the franchise can be, I also think there was enough to keep me going the second time around. The music and seiyuu cast are great and while I am not a fan of the art styles, I do think this anime is animated quite well. This is one of those situations where the animation is not done justice in still images, it needs to be seen in motion to fully appreciate what Aoki and his team were doing. It isn’t the best animation Lupin would receive, but this is definitely not badly animated. And there are some very noteworthy episodes that I’d be willing to rewatch when the mood strikes. This isn’t a worthless anime like some western fans make it out to be. Contrary to popular belief this series was a big hit in Japan. It was supposed to only be 26 episodes, but was so well received that we ended up with 50. I know TMS doesn’t pay homage to pink jacket nearly as much as they do towards green and red, but that doesn’t mean this was a flop that killed Lupin until he was revived in the 2010s. I don’t think any single anime could sink Lupin. For all of pink jacket’s flaws I am happy it exists. Even if it was mostly okay I still felt like I gained something from it. I got to see the franchise take a chance and try out new art and music, whether all of those decisions appealed to me in the end doesn’t change the fact that I liked seeing them try something new. I can say with total sincerity that Aoki accomplished his goal of making something distinct from green and red. The 80s felt like a specific era in Lupin’s history thanks in part to what this anime did. As far as if I’d recommend it to other people I would say give it a shot if you’re curious. I would recommend other entries before this one to a newcomer, but if you are someone who wanted to try it and wasn’t sure I’d still say go ahead. By returning to pink jacket I was able to make peace with it and realize that even when Lupin isn’t perfect I still want to keep engaging with the franchise. It’s rough around the edges, but even if for a short while I still get to see the Lupin I love.

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