Lupin the Third PART4 12 Review
Lupin the Third (2015) episode 12
Lupin III / ルパン三世

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Lupin deciphers the book from Rebecca’s first love, only to find himself in a surreal Italy of the past. There, he sees a teenage Rebecca with her Japanese, bohemian, genius first love, UGARU Kou. Rebecca doesn’t see Lupin, but he’s able to observe them and is noticed by Kou, who sends Rebecca home for the night, but not before she gives him a kiss on the cheek. Kou introduces himself to Lupin and explains code in the book allows for his persona to appear in their mind. He meant for it to be for Rebecca, but he trusts Rebecca’s husband with this information and makes a request of Lupin to destroy his research in order to keep it out of MI6’s hands. With that, Lupin witnesses in a surreal way MI6 kill Kou and make it appear a suicide, after which the young Rebecca returns to the apartment to find Kou dead.

When Lupin awakes, he tells his companions that he’s taking his wife on a date. He and Rebecca head to an old house in San Marino where Kou hid his research. On the way, Lupin explains things, revealing he knows facts about Rebecca that prove he had contact with Kou. Meanwhile, Nyx (Nix) goes off to find Lupin as Lupin and Rebecca arrive. Rebecca saying Dream of Italy unlocks a secret room. Lupin pours gas in the room when Nyx arrives, so Lupin ignites it and escapes with Rebecca. Nyx appears to capture the info with his eyes before pursing Lupin. He catches them and causes them to have an accident. Lupin gets Rebecca to safety and is shot by Nyx. However, Nyx is shot by MI6, as is Lupin. Later, Zenigata arrives to demand Lupin be turned over to him. MI6 reluctantly agrees and injured Lupin is in custody, but happy ’cause he got love. Meanwhile, Rebecca burns Kou’s book and has her butler Rob buy a vineyard to make red wine in honor of Kou.

Thoughts/Review:

A rather touching tale that seems to all but wrap up the Dream of Italy plot, but leaves us with Lupin in custody.

However, before I get started, I have to rant a bit regarding the Crunchyroll subtitles. I’m going off on whomever did this. (Crunchyroll’s folks may not have done the subtitles, so this is targeted at whomever did them.) I haven’t really complained about the lack of Japanese honorifics in the subtitles, and I won’t here, other than to cite how force-translating Japanese honorifics always causes all over the place choices. (Sometimes “ojousama” was “Ms. Rebecca” and sometimes it was other things, even though “ojousama” was the term always being used, not shifting names/terms.)

What has set me off is the outrageous name usage here. The Bohemian-type genius guy that Rebecca loved as a high school girl is named URAGA Kou.  Everyone in the episode referred to him as “Kou,” which is his given name. So when Rebecca first speaks his name, what are we given as a translation?  Don’t bother guessing ’cause unless you’ve seen this episode, you’d never get it.  Kou’s name is translated as Rebecca saying, “Like this…”  What the…?!!!

Initially, I didn’t catch this because we’d not been given Kou’s name. But then when Lupin enters the surreal world of Kou’s personification, I heard Rebecca again say “Kou.” However, I didn’t see anything that would tell me what Kou meant.  So I let that pass too.

Then when Kou introduced himself as URAGA Kou, the subtitles said “Wataru Uraga.” I thought I was going insane from lack of sleep, so I played it back. The man clearly says “URAGA Kou.” No where in that sentence did the name “Wataru” even come up. So where in the blazes did this sorry excuse for a translator/adaptor come up with “Wataru?”

Throughout the rest of the episode, the subtitles continually say “Wataru” whenever Kou’s name is spoken. I was seriously going nuts here because this is just sheer incompetence of the highest level.

This episode also revealed that MI6 agent with the Matrix-like skills is actually called Nyx, not Nix. Yet the subtitles still have him as Nix.  Why? When I see such crappy subtitles, I start hearing Chef Gareth Blackstock (from the awesome 1st season of the British comedy series Chef!) aggressively snarking, “Are you deficient in basic intelligence? Has there been an end of season clear out in the cranial department?”

Now that I’ve gotten that out of my system, onto the story.  (With Star Wars reference. 😉 )

This episode was quite surreal with Kou having come up with a way to have his personification temporarily implanted in someone else’s mind. That being said, I now understand why MI6 would be interested in Kou’s research. They could potentially use it to take control over people. Since MI6 is for foreign intelligence, then using this research would allow British agents to infiltrate a foreign country via its own people.

In its odd way, this episode made it so that the Rebecca x Lupin pairing now makes even more sense. Lupin has a much greater understanding of Rebecca and for Rebecca, Lupin now becomes almost like Kou. It is a shame that the episode had Rebecca state she never submitted the marriage license, thus meaning they really aren’t married. Bummer. I like Rebecca and Lupin together.

I do like how Rebecca gets resolution with her feelings for Kou by buying that vineyard. I thought that was a really nice touch.

As to Nyx, we still don’t have an explanation for his Matrix like skills. Lupin made allusions to Nyx being like a rat in terms of why he can do things, but otherwise, there’s still no explanation. I doubt Nyx is dead, so we may get that answer later, assuming MI6 comes back into the story.

Finally, Lupin is now in the hands of Zenigata. Heh! I can think of at least a couple of previous times where Lupin is captured by Zenigata and thrown in jail. One time, Lupin was supposedly executed. I’m hoping that we get a good Zenigata episode coming up.

In the end, the Crunchyroll subtitles sucked, but the story of Lupin the Third PART4 12 was still really good. I’m really pleased with how the series has been to date.