Lupin the Third PART4 17 Review
Lupin the Third (2015) episode 17
Lupin III / ルパン三世

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

A religious figure named Greco announces that the next criminal figure he’s going after is Lupin and his gang. Lupin, Jigen, Goemon, and Fujiko are at his hideout when they see this announcement. Fujiko explains that whenever Greco announces a criminal target, they end up dead in 24 hours. Lupin isn’t interested, but when Greco ups the stakes, combined with folks massively betting against Lupin, Lupin decides to take the bait and heads to the church to steal the gold goblet offered as a prize. As they walk down the aisle of the empty church, the floor opens beneath them. The group falls a long way where Greco is waiting, turning one into his marionette by hypnotic suggestion. When Lupin and company wake up and gather, a bomb goes off, closing the entrance.

Greco’s voice comes on over the loudspeaker, telling them that one of them is under his control. As Greco and a priest watch Lupin and company in the catacombs via monitors, the group becomes distrustful and breaks up. Greco activates his marionette and Fujiko is stabbed, then placed in a coffin. Lupin, Jigen, and Goemon discover her earrings and again split up. Goemon and Jigen encounter each other again after finding Lupin’s jacket. They battle for a while until Goemon gets a slash attack on Jigen, but Jigen has managed to shoot Goemon. The two fall and an enthralled Lupin emerges from a hidden door in the wall. Greco tells Lupin to shoot himself, but Lupin doesn’t do that. Suddenly, everyone is alive again as Lupin explains that Greco and the priest are under his control, where via the camera, he makes them think they are apes. Having bet on himself, Lupin hauls away a massive ton of cash and steals the gold goblet as well.

Thoughts/Review:

With Lupin the Third PART4 17, we continue a pattern in the second half of this series where things are just not quite as good as they were in the first half.

Even though this episode had all of Lupin’s comrades together at Lupin’s hideout for the first time (at least, I think this is the first time they’ve all been at Lupin’s place), my initial excitement at the thoughts of a big team event were sunk as soon as Greco said, “Oh yeah, one of you is a traitor.” After that, there were only two paths that the episode could follow. First was Greco was lying and just sewing mistrust. The second was that Greco thought he’d hypnotized one of the group, but they were shamming Greco. It went down that second road.

After that, the episode played it pretty much by the numbers for those who’ve watched a lot of Lupin III titles. I felt fairly sure that Lupin was the “marionette” since he’s the head of the gang. I figured they had some kind of plan to handle the situation. In that regard, I didn’t find the episode to be too interesting.

The duel between Goemon and Jigen is nothing we haven’t seen before. It could be a nod to some of their duels in other Lupin III titles. Here too, I knew what was going to happen, which unfortunately made the fight less interesting to me.

At the end of the episode, when I saw Lupin on the stash of cash, I suddenly could hear the O’Jays song, “For the Love of Money” playing in my head. 😆 That was pretty much the highlight of this episode for me.

In the end, not a lot to say about this episode. It wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t good either. It just was.