Lupin the Third Part 6 – 20
Lupin III Part 6 20
ルパン三世 PART6

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Fujiko gets ready for a date with Lupin when an old thieving acquaintance, Amelia, shows up. As such, Fujiko stands Lupin up and heads out with her friend. Amelia cheerfully chats about the good old days, something Fujiko remembers differently. However, she agrees to help Amelia on a job dealing with some cult.

Fujiko calls Lupin, who is attempting to hack into a website on the dark web. Amelia and Fujiko dress up as nuns to pay the cult a visit. However, it is a trap so that Grayson, an old mark of Amelia and Fujiko’s, can finally have revenge. In exchange, Amelia gets a big payoff. However, Amelia double-crosses Grayson to get revenge for his involvement in an orphanage childhood slavery ring.

However, Amelia doesn’t pull the trigger on her gun. Grayson gets free and attempts to turn the tables on the girls. However, Lupin appears on a monitor. He has finally hacked into their system. As Lupin digitally steals the cult’s funds, Fujiko and Amelia escape. Grayson is apparently killed. Later, Amelia introduces Fujiko to her barely toddler son.

Thoughts/Review:

Once again, we get derailed from the plot to have a supposed character episode. This time, Fujiko is used to derail the plot in Lupin the Third Part 6 – 20.

New “Old” Friends

The story of Lupin the Third Part 6 – 20 is supposed to impart some character development for Fujiko. As such, we are introduced to Amelia, someone Fujiko supposedly did jobs with when she wasn’t doing jobs with Lupin. Or something. We apparently aren’t supposed to worry about the details. Fujiko had a female friend (and not that long ago), they did jobs, and that’s that.

However, I didn’t care one whit about Amelia. Had she been a character from a previous Lupin III series (including specials, movies, and OVAs), I would have been a tad more interested on a personal level. Otherwise, everything about Amelia’s and Fujiko’s friendship felt forced. I never for a moment believed Fujiko hung out with Amelia.

As to the episode’s story, it felt recycled as well. In the previous Lupin III Part 5 series, part of the main plot was child trafficking for whatever evil purposes. Had the writers brought Ami back, and had Ami and Fujiko do the cult job, it would have been interesting to me. But alas, we got what we got, and a boring lot of it as well.

Final Thoughts and Conclusion

Let me wrap up my review of Lupin the Third Part 6 – 20 with some final thoughts.

• Speaking of Ami, when Lupin was attempting to hack the dark website, a throw away line about getting Ami to hack it would have been lovely. Lupin could have done the hack himself, but he (or Fujiko) could have stated it for a bit of fanservice.
• I really hate the story structure of this series. Seriously, just when the production team introduce some level of interesting plot development, they then go off on an unrelated, boring tangent. I honestly don’t know how anyone thought this was a good idea.
• No Goemon or Zenigata in this episode.

In the end, Lupin the Third Part 6 – 20 was a forced attempt to make a character episode for Fujiko. To me, it fails on every front. Further, it just derails us from the actual series plot.