ルパンゼロ

LUPIN ZERO

ONA

STATUS
COMPLETE
EPISODES
6
RELEASE
January 13, 2023
LENGTH
24 min

DESCRIPTION

Lupin III, a bored junior high schooler in Tokyo, takes an interest in a young Daisuke Jigen, a mysterious and impressive marksman. Lupin III strikes up a conversation with Jigen at a nightclub, however during their talk, Jigen concludes that Lupin III is simply a privileged and naïve boy from a well-to-do family and doesn’t want anything to do with him. However, while helping the nightclub singer Yoko, who is being pursued by the yakuza, Jigen learns that Lupin III is a descendant of the legendary thief…

(Source: HIDIVE)

CAST

Arsène Lupin III
Tasuku Hatanaka
Daisuke Jigen
Shunsuke Takeuchi
Albert Dandrezie
Yuu Kobayashi
Youko
Saori Hayami
Shinobu
Toa Yukinari
Lupin II
Toshio Furukawa
Lupin I
Yoshito Yasuhara

EPISODES

Dubbed

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Not available on crunchyroll

RELATED TO LUPIN ZERO

MANGA ActionLupin III

ANIME AdventureLupin III

REVIEWS

myvelouria
85/100
From zero to hero in no time flat.
This review is spoiler free.

“Lupin III” is a big franchise. Because it’s been around for so long and produced so many works people may find it inaccessible. I have seen people ask where exactly they’re supposed to start it and I’ll admit my answers haven’t always been the greatest. Depending on the person asking and what their preferences are determines my advice because there is no proper watch order for it. However, it appears that TMS has finally given me a solution. Enter “Lupin Zero” an ONA that began in December 2022 and ran for six episodes chronicling the teenage years of Arsene Lupin III and Daisuke Jigen. When I first read about this I was not excited because in the original manga I really disliked Monkey Punch’s chapters on young Lupin. I just wasn’t sure if revisiting that concept would be a good move because it seemed like TMS abandoned that material for a reason. I am so pleasantly surprised by what we ended up receiving though. Not only does it exist as a distinct and engaging entry in the Lupin saga, it also serves as a great way to introduce yourself to it.

I think it’s important to touch base on the manga for a moment and how this ONA improves upon it. There will come a day where I give the manga a thorough dissection, until then just know I have incredibly complex emotions towards it. This was where everything began and in the case of some ideas it was where some of them appeared to die off. Whether Monkey Punch lacked an interest in exploring some of his concepts further or his editor steered him in other directions the fact remains in his initial series he left some to fade away. Among them were Lupin and Jigen being childhood friends and seeing Lupin’s father and grandfather. He brought these in briefly just to do nothing with them and because of that I found them to be mistakes that TMS would rectify by omitting them completely. Until now. “Lupin Zero” not only establishes Lupin and Jigen meeting as teenagers, it also gives genuine spotlight to Lupin I and Lupin II. Both were aspects of the anime I was apprehensive about, however the anime manages to make them work. Lupin appears to be a carefree rich boy while Jigen is an emotionally withdrawn street kid, by having their relationship develop from a place of relative animosity to the deep friendship fans know and love the anime is able to flesh them out as people. They still behave in ways associated with their adult selves, but there is a youthfulness to it all that makes it feel fresh. In the manga it gets mentioned once that they were friends as children and that is it. The rest of your time is seeing them as adults and nowhere in the teen Lupin chapters is Jigen mentioned. And speaking of, the teen Lupin chapters simply weren’t good to my memory. They aren’t something he built up towards as an extensive flashback either. They just start happening and I was left wondering “wait, why do we need to see this” as it did nothing to offer further insight into Lupin as a character. Because this anime builds itself around the idea of exploring how Lupin and Jigen became friends it is able to accomplish more in these six episodes than Monkey Punch was able to in those chapters.

With the elders in Lupin’s family the manga has them rather suddenly appear when he’s an adult, making me very curious about how old Lupin I was supposed to be, and then the chapter just ends. It wasn’t even a conclusive chapter, it happens at a random moment and I was left wondering what the point was. Sometimes in various anime adaptations we see Lupin I and II through flashbacks, but they’re never treated as more than extensions of Lupin III’s persona right down to them having the same face. This was never a problem to me before, but now that we’ve been allowed to see them as their own characters it makes things feel larger. Lupin I is framed as an amoral man trying to force his grandson into furthering his own legacy while Lupin II is actively trying to keep his son away from this world of crime. This leaves Lupin III stuck in this tug of war where he wants neither of them telling him what to do and controlling his life. We as the audience know he will become a thief, but instead of our curiosity resting on what he’ll do it has us think about why he’ll go down this path. This arc is also linked back to his relationship with Jigen and it’s handled with flying colors. The anime was written by Ichiro Okouchi, the same man who handled “Lupin III: Part 5” and co-created “Code Geass”, and he does an amazing job at taking these abandoned ideas from the manga and turning them into something that feels welcome.

Now something important to bear in mind about “Lupin III” as a franchise it is has always been an episodic affair. Even the manga seldom did recurring arcs and when it did they were some of Monkey Punch’s worst efforts. Various writers and directors have come in with their own interpretations of the Lupin gang with all of them feeling equally valid though. And while there is a certain identity to the franchise in a broader sense, there really is no hard continuity or lore here save for key details like Goemon trying to kill Lupin before befriending him. Some elements will always be with the characters absolutely, but there appears to be a lot of freedom for people to toss in their own ideas. This is how Takeshi Koike was able to create his film trilogy without imposing on what the TV series at the time were doing. Due to this you will find other Lupin anime that contradict what “Lupin Zero” portrays. This isn’t something I consider bad, in fact the general looseness of the franchise is the reason this exists in the first place. And it does adhere to certain long-standing elements which is why Goemon, Fujiko, and Zenigata are absent. However, if someone was to begin here and expect the original green jacket anime to feel like a sequel I’m going to tell you it won’t. I know Anilist is cataloguing them that way, but my advice is to ignore that and bear in mind that the franchise doesn’t function like Universal Century “Gundam” with direct links tying Amuro, Kamille, and Judau’s stories together. You typically must take each entry as its own thing.

In many respects “Lupin Zero” also serves as a fantastic anniversary special. That isn’t what it is, Lupin’s 50th anniversary was in 2021 and honored through “Lupin III: Part 6”. And yet it feels so suitable for the position. Not only are there direct homages to the green jacket series and “The Castle of Cagliostro”, it also resurrects some of Takeo Yamashita’s music from the first anime. When I reviewed the green jacket anime I critiqued the music for not fitting Lupin’s character, I still believe that when it comes to certain tracks. But this anime manages to retool some of those songs in a way that works. The music was composed not by the series regular Yuji Ohno, but by a composer and multi-instrumentalist named Yoshihide Otomo. Having given his discography a brief glance he appears to be a very reputable figure in the world of Japanese music with decades in the industry. What he achieves here is fantastic. As I’ve said before I am not a musician, I don’t have the musical insight to discuss things like chord progression or phrasing, but I can recognize that what he was doing here has a refinement to it. He took these 50 year old pieces like “Afro Lupin 68” and the original series’ closer “Lupin the Third Theme Song II” and updated them while still exercising his own creative voice. Not only do the opening and closing honor the green jacket anime visually, but they enhance these songs with their new arrangements and vocal performances. For the closing they hired a singer named Tavito Nanao and he does an excellent job livening up a piece whose original vocals were very much of their time. With “Afro Lupin 68” instead of hearing Lupin narrate about himself and his friends on top of the song, which he did with the track’s original use, we get to hear it as a fine jazz instrumental. I’m very attached to Ohno’s music, but I feel like the musical choices being made here work to the ONA’s advantage. No you’re not going to hear “Zantetsuken” or “Love Theme”, but considering Goemon and Fujiko can’t be in this anime there’s no reason to bring them back. And because “Lupin Zero” wants to establish itself as a beginning of sorts I think it makes sense to use different music while also resurrecting the songs we haven’t heard since 1971. I would have liked to have heard “Nice Guy Lupin” make a comeback though.

I would also like to give some credit to the voice cast. Because of how much younger these versions of Lupin and Jigen are the reality is that they were never going to have Kanichi Kurita and Akio Otsuka reprise their roles. Enter Tasuku Hatanaka and Shunsuke Takeuchi. I was impressed by their ability to sound in keeping with these character’s established voices while still injecting some necessary youth to them. Hatanaka clearly did his homework in order to bend his voice in ways that is reminiscent of Yasuo Yamada and Kanichi Kurita’s takes on Lupin. This is a situation where this character needs to sound a specific way, you can’t just hire anyone to be Lupin. This was made very apparent in 1987’s “The Fuma Conspiracy”, which is great, but they recast everybody and it was a mountain I had to overcome when watching it because the differences were too distracting. With Takeuchi he manages to sound a lot like a young Kiyoshi Kobayashi and I’m very impressed. I haven’t seen a lot of anime with him in them, but I applaud his ability to capture the essence of a performer who was with this character longer than anybody else. This series introduces us to an ingénue named Yoko played by Saori Hayami who blends into this world perfectly. I feel like not every seiyuu can fit into this franchise due to it having such a long history and the conventions of Japanese voice acting have evolved considerably from the 70s. Hayami is one of the most well employed seiyuu of our time, she’s in a lot. So you’d think I’d be too distracted by her presence, yet I’m not. Perhaps it’s because I think she has a very pleasing voice, or maybe she’s a rare breed like Kenjiro Tsuda or Miyuki Sawashiro where she can suit different eras. For grandpa Lupin I we have veteran seiyuu Yoshito Yasuhara. I love him as Kadokura from “Golden Kamuy” and I think he succeeds here at playing this belligerent old man. He only gets so many appearances within the anime, but he definitely makes the most of it. And as Lupin II we get Toshio Furukawa, the same man who played Lupin III in “Fuma”. In that anime I do think his performance was great, Furukawa is great in all of his roles whether it’s Kai Shiden, Piccolo, Ataru Moroboshi, or Portgas D. Ace. The issue boiled down to “but its not the same” logic with me due to my strong attachment to Yamada’s voice. Still, considering that one moment he got to be our Lupin it’s very nice having him come back as that character’s father. Furukawa is in his 70s and the fact that he’s still in the game impresses me. Everybody plays their characters so well that it doesn’t actually matter to me that we aren’t hearing the regular cast. All I can think to add is bravo.

“Lupin Zero” is the best anime this franchise has seen since “Lupin III: the First”. It manages to work for old and new fans alike despite it lacking characters and elements the franchise usually maintains. Really think about this, we have a great addition to the franchise that by design removes Zenigata, Fujiko, Goemon, and Ohno’s music. On paper that sounds like it shouldn’t work, but it does thanks to the commitment to the bit. They took the forsaken concept of a younger Lupin who was friends with Jigen and expanded it into something that helps make their characters feel richer. Would a cameo from a younger Zenigata, possibly heating up some cup ramen, been a nice touch? Yes, but it also wasn’t necessary. Lupin and Jigen are strong enough to carry this ONA while still developing themselves as characters. The anime is a glorious blend of classic Lupin fun and good times with a coming of age story where two boys build a connection that’s more precious than any material object. I’m happy I was proven wrong in my assumptions this would be bad and I encourage seeking it out as your first taste of one of anime’s oldest and greatest franchises. It’s not so long that it becomes daunting to finish while still having enough time to follow through on what it sets out to do. And for the fans who have already dipped their toes and happened to overlook this, please do yourself a favor and give it a shot. If you think the franchise is monotonous its entries like this that prove there’s still more ways to play with the material. Abayo!
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Ionliosite2
70/100
Good for new and old fans alike
Lupin Zero is the latest series in the 50 years old Lupin III franchise, and it presents itself as a prequel set during Lupin’s childhood, explaining the story of how this young boy became the titular thief the series title refers to. This review is coming from someone with no prior experience with the Lupin III franchise, and who in fact decided to use this being a short prequel to introduce himself to it, so I may have missed some references and late arrival spoilers people familiar with the other series would know, but I have to say that this series has a lot of style I really dig.

The plot of Lupin Zero can be divided in two parts, the first 4 episodes being episodic adventures that mostly serve show the characters and their dynamic, and the last 2 episodes are about a criminal crisis breaking in Tokyo that forces Lupin to choose if he’ll become a thief like the rest of his legacy. While the latter is obviously a foregone conclusion, I’d say that the ride is what’s more important in this series, with the last episode change of Lupin dropping his blue school uniform in favor of a black suit with tie and a green jacket on top being the perfect representation of the theme that all these 6 episodes share: Lupin’s journey to adulthood.

Even if the plot isn’t much to talk about beyond its themes, the characters are the aspect that really made this series stand out. Lupin is a charming trickster overflowing with creativity, while his classmate Jigen is a serious and relatively down to earth boy who is still willing to get into troubles along with Lupin, so the relationship between these two bounces off really well. The other characters aren’t explored as much as those two, but they’re so bold in presentation you can see their personality shine, from Lupin I being a cartoony but clever villain, Lupin II being a master of disguise who sees his talent at this job like a curse, Albert and his great confidence on his training under the First that only gets shattered by Lupin himself, and even Youko, who spends much of the series as just a pretty face, has some surprising depth shown by the end. There’s good chemistry in all the interactions here and that helps with the tone this series is aiming for.

I’m normally not the kind who pays much attention to animation, as I think a good story can carry bad animation, but Lupin Zero’s art style just had me fascinated from the first episode, as it goes for a retro look clearly imitating the cel based animation seen in pre-2000s anime, so I found that a complete delight as someone who loves that style. Even if there’s some CGI help in some episodes, this series really looks like it could have come out in the 90s, and the dedication that would’ve needed to achieve earns my respect for the studio.

All in all, I think that Lupin Zero is a series worth checking out for both fans and non-fans of the Lupin III franchise, with its clever tricks and slapstick, good comedic timing, well done action choreography, and a simple episodic plot that still feels like it delivers a clear message on what it wants to be.

Thank you for reading.
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