Lupin the 3rd: Part II 10
Lupin III Part 2 10
ルパン三世 – 新シリーズ Ep. 10
Lupin Sansei Shin Series
Lupin III New Series

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis

Lupin gets invited to a high class party in Paris and takes Fujiko as his date. Fujiko takes a shine to the party’s host, Marcel Dulan, who’s a fan of Lupin’s grandfather. During the party, a suit of armor falls, killing an invited reporter who’d been digging into Marcel’s life. After the body gets removed and the party resumes, Fujiko convinces Lupin to look for info on Marcel to sell to a magazine.

As they look, they are trapped and gassed. When they come to, Marcel has a job for Lupin. He wants him to go to Scotland Yard to steal a file. Marcel keeps Fujiko as a hostage. To further motivate Lupin, Marcel has put an explosive belt on the thief. After Marcel releases Lupin, he seeks help from Goemon and Jigen, who turn him down.

Lupin heads to London. Disguised as Zenigata, confusion erupts when the real Zenigata arrive, shortly followed by Goemon and Jigen, also disguised as Zenigata. Jigen and Goemon confess, but act like the real Zenigata is Lupin. The police take them to jail, leaving Lupin to steal the file. Lupin springs Goemon and Jigen. However, before they can leave London, Zenigata gets free and is on them.

After eluding Zenigata in a stolen Cessna, Lupin flies the plane until it runs out of gas. He steals a sports car and while eluding the police, crashes through the Marcel estate before the bomb blows. Lupin quietly ditches the belt in the confusion and escapes. Marcel blows the bomb, destroying his mansion. His real face emerges, revealing he was the man in the file.

Thoughts/Review

It is hard to describe how I feel after watching Lupin the 3rd: Part II 10. While I won’t say the episode was bad, I can’t say it was good either. The premise to get Lupin to do a job for Marcel worked though. I can believe Marcel easily captured Lupin simply because despite the earlier murder, Lupin doesn’t suspect a trap. And why would he?

However, things become somewhat muddled after that. First the writers have Lupin rejected by Jigen and Goemon. Then out of the blue, they show up as Zenigata without knowing Lupin’s plans. I will say that I appreciated that the seiyuu used their actual character voices when portraying Zenigata.

Unfortunately, the moment Lupin looked at the file he was tasked to obtain, I immediately knew what was what. That took a bit out of me. Still, there was the issue of the bomb Lupin wore. To that end, I was curious to see how Lupin would resolve it. The writers basically relied on some Lupin physics with the plane landing on the truck, and the sports car crashing through the gate and into the mansion unscratched.

As such, the story felt like it was just going through the motions with no real sense of tension. It seemed as if the writers wanted to say something about the power of friendship, but it got lost in a muddy puddle of dumb jokes. But hey, at least the official subtitles retained ALL the French honorifics and spoken words! Can’t say the same for the Japanese honorifics.

Final Thoughts and Conclusion

In the end, Lupin the 3rd: Part II 10 is just a mid episode that goes through the motions. It has just enough hooks to prevent it from being a snoozefest.