Lupin the Third Part 6 Series Review
Lupin III Part 6 Review
ルパン三世 PART6

S P O I L E R S !

Ever since I watched Lupin III: Castle of Cagliostro in Japan, I have been a fan of the franchise. I’ve managed to watch all of the TV series, and most of the other OVAs, TV specials, and movies. (If at all possible, I do plan to watch the stuff I’ve missed.) So when Lupin the Third Part 6 was announced, I was pretty excited. Sadly, the series failed to live up to the heights that Part 4 and even Part 5 achieved.

The Story, in Brief

For the first half of Lupin the Third Part 6, Lupin and crew are in modern London. Some bombings, including one at Scotland Yard, get Sherlock Holmes involved. He’s displeased to see Lupin in town, so Lupin and company leave for a time. They return to advance the plot for a bit before going off and doing other stuff. Then Lupin and company end up teaming up with Sherlock Holmes to unmask the secret organization known as Raven.

In the second half of the series, Lupin’s plans a big caper to recover a gemstone that had stolen from his family mansion in Japan. However, the caper is thwarted when a gang of apparent red haired women attack. Their leader mentions the name Tomoe, whom Lupin states was his mother. After dealing with her, Lupin’s crew do some stuff, all centering on some woman or other. Lupin deals with a foreign politician, who is then assassinated.

Eventually, all of these elements cause Lupin to be triggered. He seeks out Tomoe, who planted this trigger in him. The rest of Lupin’s crew as well as Zenigata trail him to find out if Tomoe is his mother or not.

The Good: Farewell to KOBAYASHI Kiyoshi

The prequel episode of Lupin the Third Part 6 is a loving farewell to Jigen’s original seiyuu KOBAYASHI Kiyoshi. The writers do an amazing job of writing a form of (non-sexual) double entendre to refer to Jigen, but actually mean Kobayashi-san. And the writers make sure to give Jigen one-on-one time with Lupin, Goemon, Fujiko, and even Zenigata. All of it centered on Jigen’s desire to move on.

The moment that really got me was when Lupin brought out a bottle of good booze from 1971. Of course that’s when Lupin III Part 1 made its debut on TV. It was such a great moment in a story that was such a great farewell tribute to an elderly seiyuu.

The Bad: Poor Story Structure

With Lupin the Third Part 4, the Lupin franchise adopted a serial form of storytelling for the TV series. While Lupin the Third Part 6 attempts this, they do it in the crappiest way possible. It wasn’t that the series was divided into two different stories. It is just that within 12 episodes allocated to each half, maybe about six were allocated to each half’s plot.

Seriously, who thought that starting a story, then constantly interrupting it with pointless filler episodes that have nothing to do with the plot, was a good idea? Had the series been episodic from the start, then it wouldn’t have mattered. But when you are telling a serial story, these interruptions are irritating. Not only that, but many of these side episodes were done by others, such as episode 4’s OSHII Mamoru-sensei. But you have to like Oshii-sensei to like his style of episode, which I didn’t.

I will concede that of all the side stories, the one for episode 10 was probably the most interesting, and is also done by Oshii-sensei. In fact, fleshing it out a bit more, and removing a lot of tedious exposition, it could have made for an interesting OVA, TV special, or possibly even a movie. That’s because this episode dealt with the supernatural and the Archaeopteryx fossil.

In the second half, the writers attempt to make all of the side stories secretly have been part of the main plot. That was such a ridiculous joke. More in a bit. But here too, the side stories are a jarring distraction from the main plot. And the main plot in the second half was more interesting than the first half’s story. As such, it was even more frustrating to be interrupted by this.

The Bad: A Dumb, Predictable Story (First Half)

In the first story of Lupin the Third Part 6, the whole premise is that there’s this super secret organization named Raven who are really in charge of Great Britain. They’ve been around for ages. Okay, it is an interesting enough premise. Adding a modern day Sherlock Holmes to help investigate is fine. However, it didn’t take me long at all to figure out who the writers were going to push as the actual villain. I kept hoping I was wrong, but alas, no.

Then there’s the Raven organization. This organization is so secretive and compartmentalized, its entire leadership was dead for years and no one knew? Not only that, but its members kept doing things (without orders, mind you) ’cause “reasons”? Talk about something unbelievable, even in a Lupin III universe. The supernatural elements in the franchise are tons more believable that this whacked organization. Making the antagonists be brainless morons does not make for a good story.

The Bad: Lore Fake Out and Stupidity (Second Half)

As I mentioned before, there are a lot of incredible things we accept in the Lupin III franchise. For example, we accept that Goemon can cut down a rain of bullets and emerge unscathed. We accept that Lupin can do cartoonish things like make great leaps or drive his car on the side of a cliff.

That aside, for me, it was a bridge too far to accept that some woman spent DECADES training women to speak special code phrases to trigger a programmed response in Lupin. It wasn’t as if these women were sent Lupin’s way. Everything is happenstance as Lupin travels the globe. I mean, what are the odds that Fujiko’s retconned friend and former crime partner, apparently from before she was with Lupin, was programmed to speak part of the key to Lupin so as to unlock his programming? But that’s what the writers want us to accept.

Even in a franchise where fantastical things can happen, there still needs to be an element that helps you suspend your disbelief. But a bunch of random girls we’ve never heard of before were recruited and trained to each deliver part of a key to trigger Lupin? Nah. That said, had these girls been girls from Lupin’s previous adventures, especially Rebecca, I might have been more forgiving here.

Finally, I never once believed that Tomoe was Lupin’s mom. And yet I still hoped that maybe we would get some sort of addition to the lore. However, there was nothing to add. As such, it made this whole lore expansion, character building tease a complete waste of time.

Final Thoughts and Conclusion

In the end, Lupin the Third Part 6 is a poorly constructed series with one stupid tale and one slightly interesting tale that ultimately goes nowhere. Combine this with a lot of tedious, one-off episodes, many of which make zero sense. This makes the series mostly forgettable, which is a shame as the status quo trumps all.