Lupin the Third PART4 18 Review
Lupin the Third (2015) episode 18
Lupin III / ルパン三世

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

A series of mural paintings go up in various places, depicting portraits of Lupin, Jigen, Fujiko, Goemon, Zenigata, Rebecca, Rob, Nyx, and MI6 head, Percival Gibbons. Lupin and Jigen change their normal clothing and head to a fashion show were Rebecca and Fujiko are working as models to discuss this with them. While there, Lupin sees Nyx, who wants a word. Outside, they are joined by Goemon and then Zenigata to discuss the situation. Zenigata’s appraiser believes the Zenigata portrait is the work of Leonardo Da Vinci. the Goemon detects they have people observing them, whom Zenigata determines belong to MI6. Since eight of them have gathered in Milan because of these paintings, and there’s a Da Vinci connection, Lupin determines their next move should be to go to the Santa Maria delle Grazie Basilica. where Da Vinci’s “The Last Supper” mural is painted.

When Lupin and the other guys arrive, they see that a long table has been set in front of “The Last Supper” mural. Fujiko, Rebecca, and Rob join them, though Rebecca is not pleased to see Nyx and pulls a gun on him until Lupin calms her down. To everyone’s surprise, Percival shows up, revealing he had a portrait too. Lupin calls this the First Supper and everyone sits at their assigned seats. As “Leonardo” eats elsewhere alone, the group gets served food from covered plates that rise from the table. They discuss Nyx leaving MI6 in exchange for Kou’s research. As the courses are served, the conversation is lead by Lupin, who talks about the Dream of Italy and how researchers got data of a famous person from people dreaming and implanted that into a clone. Lupin explains that this figure from the past escaped MI6 and has adapted to modern life, having realized he was in the future.

As the meal finishes, Lupin reveals that the cloned figure is Leonardo Da Vinci. Percival activates the emergency signal on his phone and MI6 rushes in to contain the problem. As Lupin finishes explaining how he came up with this, accusing MI6, Percival tries to excuse himself, but Lupin stops him. By the time the agents reach the banquet area, only Percival is there. Nyx and Zenigata provide some cover fire from the MI6 gunmen as the others escape. Lupin races to another part of the church, where Leonardo Da Vinci is waiting. After thanking Lupin, Da Vinci causes his chair to become a hovercraft. When it gets out of the church, it becomes an aircraft as designed by Da Vinci. Lupin clings to it for a bit, but after some words with Da Vinci, where the artist announces his plans to remake the world, Lupin loses his grip and falls, stopping his fall via his watch string gadget as Da Vinci flies away.

Thoughts/Review:

Wow. Italian words were left untranslated in this episode. How “lazy” of the translator. 😉

After not even a hint of plot for the last few episode, it was nice to have an episode dedicated to the plot. It made me realize that one of the elements from the first half of the series that made it tighter was a stronger sense of continuity than the second half has had. I hope we have more continuity with future episodes.

It was great having Rebecca back. I really like her as a character. It was fun having her still be a rival of sorts with Fujiko. It was also fun seeing her seem happy to see Lupin.

I liked that Nyx returned and we found out what MI6 did with him after they shot him when he went out of control.

I loved the moment that Rebecca saw Nyx and pulled a gun on him. The moment was completely believable and in terms of continuity, it needed to be there. It would have been easy for the production team to have let that slide (this is a Lupin III title, where Lupin can fall from great height and save himself with a string on a watch that raps around a continent construction crane), so kudos to them for acknowledging what had previously happened between Rebecca and Nyx.

I also like that the Dream of Italy plot from the first half of the anime is again playing a role here, even though things had seemed to be resolved. That too injects a feeling of realism into the series as not everything gets resolved all nice and neatly after 12 episodes.

Because of the bizarre way that the Dream of Italy could retain the consciousness of someone, the writers had perfectly established how there could be a clone of Leonardo Da Vinci in modern times WITH his memories and skills from the past intact. Again, kudos to the writers for really taking the time to plan this out. It may be wacky, but within the rules of this world that they’ve set, it works.

The reason for MI6 cloning Da Vinci is more of a mystery though. My feeling from watching the episode three times was that MI6 may be planning to implant knowledge and experience of agents into other agents, thus making them better. However, they started with Leonardo. I don’t know why they’d use him specifically (as opposed to any other historical figure, especially since one would think MI6 would try to clone a British historical figure first), other than maybe they expect him to become an inventor of some type. Or maybe Leonardo’s notes and such were how they were able to get his consciousness into the clone body via the Dream of Italy.

With MI6 failing to kill anyone after Lupin revealed he knew they’d cloned Leonardo Da Vinci, realistically, they still need to kill everyone at the First Supper, save their boss (and possibly Nyx). Hopefully, this will be addressed in the next episode.

Also, it is so weird that Leonardo Da Vinci is apparently being set up as the villain here. 😆 We’ll see how that goes.

In the end, Lupin the Third PART4 18 was quite an enjoyable episode. I’m really looking forward to seeing how everything plays out.