Lupin the Third PART4 22 Review
Lupin the Third (2015) episode 22
Lupin III / ルパン三世

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

A bored Rebecca sends out announcements that she’s going to steal Lupin as Lupin begins a string of break-ins of bank vaults. Rob is opposed to Rebecca’s plans to go after Lupin alone, but she gasses him and makes her escape. As Lupin works through banks, he finds some have additional traps left by Rebecca. The two start exchanging notes at different banks. Rob comes to and get moving to help Rebecca from a distance. Rebecca is puzzled as to why Lupin keeps breaking into bank vaults but not stealing anything. Finally, Lupin reaches a vault and finds a €100 bill with scrawl in red. Taking the bill, Lupin is surprised when the vault door shuts and Rebecca is there with a gun on him.

Fujiko stops by Rob’s car to have a chat with him and give him perspective while Rebecca asks Lupin to become hers. She also wants to know about Lupin’s recent activity, so he explains that their hideout had become a mess. Jigen said that if Lupin found the marked euro, he’d clean the place for a year. Rebecca is amused by this as the cops come. Rebecca realizes that Lupin has arranged for their escape. Since Rebecca has amused Lupin, he promises her a night of thrills as they escape the heavily armed police. Rob helps their final escape with an RPG blast. Lupin parts company with Rebecca as Rob comes to grab her in the car. He pours her some of her wine to celebrate. Meanwhile, a contemplative Lupin looks at the euro, now with Rebecca’s lipstick on it, when Fujiko comes by and steals it to mess with him.

Thoughts/Review:

Well, this was a fun episode, provided you don’t look too closely at the details. 😉

Rebecca has been such an excellent addition to the Lupin III franchise. On one hand, she provides a love triangle for Lupin to be in. That makes her a rival of sorts with Fujiko. On the other, she’s also a thief as a hobby, and though not as good as Lupin, she’s good and keeps him amused and interested.

We got a little more information about Rebecca in this episode that helped clear up a lot of things. Her parents are both dead, which explains why she seemed to be running the family business on top of all of the other things she does. Further, it explains why her marriage to Lupin didn’t have opposition.

Although I said not to look too hard at the episode, I’m going to take a quick look at the things that I looked past in enjoying the episode.

For starters, while it was a lot of fun for Lupin and Rebecca to exchange notes at different bank vaults, there’s no way this could actually happen unless each knew where the other was going to be ahead of time. But, because it was amusing, the illogic of things gets a pass.

The leads to the second item, which were the actual break-ins. For Rebecca to leave traps and notes for Lupin, she had to break in first, set all of this up, then depart. Ditto for Lupin, who’d leave responses and even a fake body for Rebecca to think she’d caught him.

The third element is Lupin’s quest to find Jigen’s euro. Initially, I thought Lupin was looking for counterfeit money since he’d break into a vault, look at a few bundles of euros, then move on. However, when I found out Lupin’s purpose was to find a single, marked euro, I’m thinking, “OK, how do you check a few bundles of euros and know it isn’t in bank X? For that matter, if the euro has been put into circulation, how does Lupin even know it is in a bank?”

If Jigen deposited it at a bank, the episode doesn’t state this, and it should have. For the sake of discussion, we’ll presume that’s what happened. But even then, there’s no guarantee that when Jigen made a deposit, the note wasn’t immediately put back out into circulation from the next customer that came along. That made Lupin’s entire quest an eye roller, but again, because of the fun of the episode, I let it ride.

Rob and Fujiko were interesting support characters for this episode. Fujiko’s convention arrival at Rob’s car was a plot contrivance, but it did allow her to get Rob to acknowledge that even though he didn’t like Rebecca’s thieving as a hobby, he too found it thrilling.

I also found it interesting that Fujiko understood Rebecca’s thrill of the chase of Lupin. She also understands that should she catch Lupin, the thrill would be gone because she’d have him. That also explains Fujiko’s never letting herself be caught by Lupin and why Lupin never ultimately tries to catch Fujiko. Both love the thrill of the chase.

Lupin also understands this. It wasn’t overtly stated, but I think his understanding of the thrill of the chase is why he grabbed Rebecca and agreed to give her a thrill as they eluded the police.

In the end, this was a fun episode despite the plot holes. Rebecca is a really great addition to the Lupin III franchise.