Reviews

Sep 19, 2018
I’m glad that Lupin III still attracts enough of an audience to fund the steady output of shows and films. I wouldn’t give the label “masterpiece” to much in the Lupin III franchise—maybe to The Castle of Cagliostro and a few of the specials from the 90’s—but I can always count on enjoyment no matter how corny the writing. I grew up on the Miyazaki film and so was destined to become a certified Lupin III fanboy. I can say I enjoyed the hell out of this season.

I struggled with Lupin III Part 5 for the first few episodes. I believe the words I used to describe the pilot to friends were “horseshit” and “garbage writing.” The whole livestreaming plot that this season begins with is corny as hell, but I think I was primarily pissed off by the panty shot of the teenage girl and the subsequent “Do you want to have sex with me, Lupin?” It might not have been such a problem for me if teenage characters in anime didn’t look like they were ten years old. In any case, after getting over the initial flaws the season really gets its act together. At episode 5 they hit you with a throwback episode, creating a whole one-off Lupin heist plot in the style of the pink jacket series. It’s fucking awesome, and it worked as a sort of relieving message to the audience: “We’re fans too.” This concept continues throughout the season, doing fantastic one-off throwbacks to each of the old Lupin III seasons. These were the highlights of the season for me, as they cover pretty much exactly what I want out of any new addition to the franchise: classic heist episodes.

The actual over-arching plot to this one is a serious improvement over Part 4’s. It’s your basic utopian antagonist who couldn’t care less what gets in the way of his ideals of universal peace and safety… but he’s a smart phone app designer. Unfortunately, the writers ooze out their personal politics onto some of the plot, but these moments are brief and largely irrelevant. One episode features a corrupt “anti-immigration” politician who orders fake terrorist attacks to gain public support. This is a bizarre strawman of a complex issue going on in Europe now, and so the writers’ open-borders-policy bias is made obvious. Further on throughout the season, the writers make continual reference to the "evil" ways of American foreign policy. One subplot actually ends with the success of a theocratic monarch over an American-backed revolution. Fortunately, the writers keep their politics out of the dialogue of the main characters… that would piss me off. In any case, it never got as bad as the episode of The Woman Called Fujiko Mine that out-of-nowhere started spewing Fidel Castro propaganda.

Overall, this was a really good season. The animation was on point, the plot wasn’t complete nonsense (looking at you Part 4), and the famous characters were all perfectly designed and fully in-character. There was actually some awesome character writing with tension between Lupin and his cohorts, giving Goemon some great introspection that I’m pretty sure I’ve never seen in previous series. The final episode includes Lupin expressing the sentiment that he’ll keep on being the world-famous gentleman thief as long as the audience is interested. I hope the audience remains interested for decades to come, ‘cause Lupin III is one cool motherfucker.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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