Anipages

Don't watch this episode with grandma.

Episode 5 was an anomaly in this show - a straightforward but cleverly written caper unfolding through dynamic action, in the spirit of the old Lupin III. That's not what this show is really about. Episode 6 is what this show is really about. To my eyes, this episode is the most dense expression yet of the show's purpose.

It's doing the show a disservice to simply view it as a prequel. It's something different from that. It seems to me a deeply revisionist outing that aims to undermine the male-centric sensibility of the old franchise.

The name of the show was the first provocation. For the 40th anniversary of Lupin III, they scored the sly coup of dethroning the protagonist right in his glory moment in the guise of a side-story about one of the sub-characters, in the process reversing the dynamics of the old show and making the erstwhile protagonists an afterthought, as Fujiko was often treated.

Fujiko, despite being depicted as a cunning foe in the old show, was basically the product of a male gaze in terms of her visual rendering and sexual meaning. The remarkable thing about the new show is that, despite Fujiko being naked much of the time, she isn't erotic. I'm almost reminded of the anti-eroticism of the nude scene in Godard's Contempt. The nudity doesn't come across as titillating. Fujiko seems to feel contempt for anyone who would lust after her. Despite the prevalence of mammaries, the show will be of little 'practical use' to fans of Seikon no Quaser. The nude drawings are pleasing for not being fan-servicey in the traditional sense, not the lust-filled products of male fantasy. The drawings (and spirit of the show) remind me of Kazuko Nakamura's curvy, feminime, de-eroticized Cleopatra.

They have chutzpah, and I have to hand it to them for that, at least. It almost seems to be missing the point to complain that the characters are too different, there isn't enough action, the animation isn't good enough, though I can't deny that those are the first things that spring to my mind while watching this show, since it's the early Lupin III that made me a fan of this show, and this is essentially a different beast altogether. It seems like a different audience.

As for this episode, it's basically Lupin III via Brother, Dear Brother, with its bizarre girls' school in which apparently every girl has a lesbian crush on their teacher - which in turn reminded me why I couldn't get past episode 1 of that show. Instead of a male fantasy, now it's a female fantasy, and I'm not sure it's much of an improvement. I just didn't find the episode particularly interesting or entertaining. All of the characters were ridiculous to me, especially Oscar (a nod to Rose of Versailles?).

The episode was written by Mari Okada and storyboarded/directed by Shoko Nakamura, so it's a thoroughly female gaze episode. You know it's girly when they call in Tadashi Hiramatsu, who presumably did the scene near the end that refreshingly had some sprightly drawings/movement for once.

We've been seeing flashbacks to Fujiko's childhood for a while now, usually drawn in a bizarro byzantine style, and there was a particularly bizarro one this time around, with Fujiko eating mice while owl men experiment on her, interspersed with borderline illegibly florid Gothic type-on-steroids doggerel and avant garde background noise. The flashbacks seem to be building towards a revelation of some new sexual, druggy, disturbing vision of Fujiko's childhood.

There was a curious moment where they reference the famous line near the end of Cagliostro where Zenigata says to Clarissa that Lupin has stolen the worst thing of all... your heart. The suggestion is treated as nothing so much as a joke. Aside from being a playful reference to one of the movies that established the franchise, it seems to poke fun at the naive romanticism of Miyazaki's Lupin to underline how much more rooted in frank sexuality and psychology this series is.

They gleefully revel in the prurient stuff in this episode, with Fujiko deep-tonguing schoolgirls and being doused with wine while strapped naked to a bench, which bothered me less than the pretentiousness and literary affectations of the script. Kemonozume had a much more sexually frank shower love scene that I found quite beautiful, so the sexual material is not what bothers me. If anything, what bothers me is that all of the characters seem sadistic for no good reason, and the script is weirdly eager to devise cruel turns of phrase, i.e. calling Fujiko a "spitpot". A spitpot? Huh? The writing is way overbaked. Belladonna is one of my favorite films, and Borowczyk one of my favorite directors. I wanted to see more adult material in Lupin III, so I find it ironic that I'm disappointed by what I'm seeing. I also found the episode needlessly confusing in terms of the directing. Confusing directing isn't artistic, it's just confusing.

At least the squirrels were funny.

I've been meaning to post something other than about this show, but I've been a little too busy... At least this show forces me to write something once a week.

Now this is more like it! This episode had pretty much everything I've been wanting to see in this show the whole time: a story with adult themes and wit, packaged in stylish drawings and fun, engaging directing. None of the previous episodes were up to this level. Either the episode had a good story but weak animation or something else felt missing. This one hit every note just right. Extremely fun to watch from start to finish, with a witty script and adventure story pitting the main characters against one another, while still managing to do a lot of great visual storytelling. The good (and surprising) staffing of this episode makes me more optimistic about the future episodes.

Shin Itagaki was the storyboarder, director as well as one of the animation directors and even top spot in the key animation credits, so he's the big man behind this episode. He's done by far the work with the strongest personality on the show so far. He has done a lot of work on action style shows in a TV context over the last few years, so he has obviously gained a lot of experience in how to make an exciting episode on a short schedule/budget. This episode is a prime example proving the idea that even on a short budget with no schedule, it's possible to do good work; it's just about the staff. The old Lupin III animators were really good, but technically speaking I think the really good staff today are even better than those guys were back then in terms of raw power and in terms of knowing little techniques to make every shot they draw feel good, and Itagaki is a prime example of such an animator. (though he didn't draw this whole episode; there were 15 other key animators) He knows how to maintain interest through the directing, for example sliding the background slowly in still shots to maintain momentum (something he probably learned from Imaishi).

I liked how the episode had that good old Indiana Jones adventure story action, all of it done with satisfyingly exciting animation. Itagaki worked alongside Imaishi in the past, and you can sense the Kanada influence in his work here. He brought on other Kanada-influenced animators like Anime R animator Fumiaki Kouta and Futoshi Higashide. The part with the fire pictured above felt like Kouta with its heavily stylized Kanada-school effects. Higashide I first became aware of from his crazy work on Dead Leaves. He also drew a nice solo episode of Dokkoida. He's done a lot of work since then, but I haven't followed him closely. He's not a pure Kanada-school animator. He's something more unique. There were some really wacky and fun drawings around where the scorpions show up, so I wonder if he didn't do that part.

Either way, these two animators no doubt helped Itagaki bring alive the action scenes. There were lots of shots that felt really nice as animation around the part where Jigen and Lupin are facing off against one another and Jigen is running around evading the traps. This was the first episode that delivered the kind of action rush I expect of Lupin III. Appropriately enough, Itagaki started out at Telecom, which is perhaps why he snuck a cameo of Yasuo Otsuka riding a jeep into the episode. That was nice to see. He has often mentioned Otsuka from his days at Telecom in one of his columns. He worked at Telecom for almost 7 years before going freelance, so he's an honest to goodness Telecom animator. You can see a few drawings he drew of himself grinning happily while he's learning from Otsuka here.

Shin Itagaki also has a good sense of humor. It's the sort of visual humor you associate with Imaishi. He knows how to time and stage shots in a way that is playful and fun. The shot where Jigen can't quite get his zippo to spark up was a great gag lead-in to the fire booby trap, for example. I liked the live-action Jigen-Lupin face-off shot at midway. I wonder whose face that was. Itagaki also has a good sense for getting the important little details we associate with the show right, like the accurate drawings of the guns - you can see the writing on the bullets when Jigen loads his Magnum. There were also plenty of cool and stylish shots. I particularly liked the angled layouts and long shadows in the closing scene.

The Kanada school was in full swing with all sorts of followers by the time of the third Lupin III show in the mid-80s, so there were inevitably moments of Kanada-school animation in that show, though for the most part the show felt more A Pro than Kanada thanks to supervisor Yuzo Aoki. Many years later, Itagaki is an interesting hybrid - Telecom yet Kanada, he has exactly the sort of touch it would take to make Lupin III episodes as fun and free as the old episodes. He's not alone; there are plenty of other animators who could do work up to his level. Perhaps they should have focused on going in that direction. If they had managed to get the right animators, the shortage of staff wouldn't have been such an issue. That's one of the nice things about how so many animators today are freelance. I would assume it facilitates getting someone onboard if you're a producer looking for good staff and you want them on your show. I'd love to see a show where an animator like Itagaki is forced to draw a whole episode or half episode in a fairly short schedule, the way the animators of the old shows undoubtedly were. I like the idea of a talented animator forced to whip out the shots in a more quick and spontaneous style rather than laboring over the shots. Even rough-around-the-edges animation from a great animator is preferable to mediocre animation that's detailed but without spark.

Story-wise, we're in Egypt again. Lupin got possessed by the mask of Tutankhamun in red jacket episode 7 and visited Egypt again in Mamo, while he made excursions to nearby Algeria in red jacket episode 30 and then Iraq in Gold of Babylon. In a desert connection, there was good desert action in Bye Bye Liberty in Death Valley.

Finally, we're past the introductory episodes and we've got several of the main characters together. Only Zenigata and Goemon are missing. I have to admit it's nice not having Zenigata predictably showing up every episode shouting "Taiho da~~~!" I felt they adhered way too strictly to that convention in the old show and the stories would have benefited from a little variety.

There was nice tension between Lupin and Jigen as they tested one another while dodging the various death traps, with Fujiko the cunning trickster manipulating the both of them towards her own ends all the while. That dynamic was just right. All of the character had something of a harder and more serious edge than they did before. The clash of these three personalities is honestly more interesting than the bland camaraderie of much previous Lupin. Lupin, Jigen and Goemon are the same old characters we knew, but a little more hard-edged, while Zenigata has a new personality, and Fujiko is the same character, but far more layered and complex than before. And now she's a nudist.

There was one instance of staff continuity in this episode: Hideyuki Motohashi. He is one of the former Z5 animators I wrote about in my post on the pink jacket series. He first came to prominence in the late 1970s as an animator equally at home drawing mecha action and bikei characters on the TMS robot action show Tetsujin 28. It's nice to see this veteran still working on the front lines as an animator after all these years. It's fascinating that an old school animator like this can even adapt himself to drawing more modern cute characters with the recent Kamisama Dolls.

With this episode the quality has picked itself back up after the tumble of episode 3. The animation is obviously at the intended level, the directing is assured, and the story is well enough put together, with the twists and turns you expect of a Lupin III caper.

The story is a permutation of the phantom of the opera myth. While hardly novel, it's well enough put together, and the characters come alive well. The plot advances through the varying viewpoints of Fujiko, Lupin and Zenigata in a satisfying way, although the writing seems to deliberately keep Lupin in the shadows in an active attempt to downplay his spotlight-stealing character.

I was expecting the series to proceed to bring the team together by this point, but not yet. I didn't quite realize it while watching, but this episode was probably intended to to be the Zenigata episode to the preceding Jigen and Goemon episodes. Zenigata got only a token appearance in episode 1. Indeed, Zenigata has more screentime than Lupin in this episode.

This episode lays out Zenigata's character quite clearly: This is not the Zenigata of old. Jigen and Goemon seem essentially the same characters, but Zenigata is an altogether different character from any previous anime version. I'm not familiar enough with the manga to say whether he was like this in the manga. Here, he almost appears to be a corrupt cop driven by a twisted obsession with killing Lupin. He tries to - not arrest - but shoot Lupin.

But that's nothing compared to the opening scene, which is by far the most shocking scene in the series so far - and it shocks without even needing to show any nudity. Don't read the rest of this paragraph unless you've watched the ep or intend to. I couldn't believe what I'd seen, partly because they didn't actually show anything and only implied it verbally in the aftermath, but Fujiko appears to have had sex with Zenigata to buy her freedom from the slammer. It's a scene that appears specifically calculated to shock viewers accustomed to the old image of Zenigata, who before was a sexless, naive, even goofy borderline Inspector Clouseau caricature of the by-the-book, rules-following Good Cop. It makes it clear that they've thrown out the old Zenigata and rewritten him from scratch. I got a sense that this was the case from the snippets in episode 1, but this is even more of a change than I expected.

Whatever my personal reservations, the first episode did a good job of conveying the fact that Fujiko was a different character in this series, more 'liberated', and the series was not taking the coy approach to sexuality of the old Lupin III, which hinted and suggested more than ever doing anything sexual. This episode did the same for Zenigata. The show's more open sexuality brings it closer to Monkey Punch in a sense, but it seems to me a more real and pragmatic approach to sexuality than the jokey cartoonified way it was treated by Monkey Punch (at least from what little I've seen of his original manga). On the other hand, they use the whole Mars symbol/Venus symbol schtick that Monkey Punch always used in sex scenes, as they did in Mankatsu, and that's something we never saw before in the anime version of Lupin III.

The writing of the story was fairly intricate and the dialogue was full of witty, ironic barbs thanks to writer and series structure supervisor Mari Okada. Her style of humor seems a good match with Sayo Yamamoto's sensibility. My only complaint is that the big reveal at the end was a little predictable as well as lame and implausible.

The episode's structure is provided by storyboarder Atsushi Takahashi, who directed two of the more visually compelling episodes of Masaaki Yuasa's Kemonozume (episodes #3 & #12). He seems a candidate ideally suited to bringing to life the decadent, erotic, sumptuous visual atmosphere this series is aiming for, and indeed the episode is filled with shadowy, cavernous interiors, though unfortunately he doesn't go nearly as far with the creative presentation as he did in Kemonozume. The enigmatic flashback, pictured above, was drawn in a more stylized and extravagantly detailed, almost storybook, style. Along with the opening, this scene seems to capture the atmosphere of wanton eroticism that sets the show apart. Unfortunately, this vision seems watered down too much of the time and never comes through forcefully enough for my taste. The opening seems like it's trying to evoke Belladonna, but they never go nearly as far as that movie did.

The episode takes place in Paris, but aside from a few opening shots, this potentially interesting setting was not exploited at all, as the entire episode takes place in the bowels of an opera house. There were a few shots of the streets of Paris early on where I noticed they actually drew a Citroen accurately, which was nice to see, because on the car front the show has been a little lacking so far.

Incidentally, several French animators have been heavily involved in the show so far - Eddie Mehong, Cédric Hérole, and Christophe Ferreira - and all three worked as key animators in this episode. Christophe Ferreira was once working at Telecom on Buta. Eddie Mehong has put up a reel of his work on Japanese productions on his blog. Cédric Hérole made a beautiful short film entitled Mimi Carina: Emilie au pays des Morts in 2005.

The animation director was Hiroshi Shimizu, who was also involved in Kemonozume and of course was the character designer of Sayo Yamamoto's breakout series Michiko & Hatchin. Shimizu Hiroshi is an ex-Oh Pro animator - he worked on episode 49 of Part 3, which is the Oh Pro episode I recommended in my post on Part 3. He is a great animator/sakkan in his own right and his involvement no doubt goes a long way to accounting for the quality of the episode.

I can't help but find it ironic how the second Lupin III series managed to produce so many episodes packed with interesting movement using minuscule regular rotation teams of as few as one or two animators, whereas here they require almost 20 animators and virtually none of the movement is particularly interesting. I doubt they had any less schedule than the second series animators did. That's not an observation unique to this show particularly. Back then animators just seemed better about being able to draw volume as well as quality. It's not just the second Lupin III series that had tiny rotation teams of between 1 and 4 people. Most anime was made that way back then. Usually it's for the best that we have more people working on an average anime episode today, because those small teams usually did crappy work - not surprising considering the pressure they were under. But the good animators, under the same pressure to produce way more shots of animation, developed in a way that made them hone their shots down to the essence, all while having more fun with the work and drawing freer and more playful drawings. While the animation back then viewed today seems less detailed and cruder, in the hands of the good animators it was often more successful and pleasing as animation. Obviously, that's not to say that there aren't plenty of animators doing great work on TV schedules today, but sadly they haven't been able to get many of them for this show.

The next candidate for introduction after the previous episode was obvious: Goemon. And so it turned out. Now all the players have been introduced. How will they converge?

This episode was super weak. I may have been dissatisfied with the first episode for whatever reason, but at least it was technically well made. This one had the weakest animation so far, and even the directing and story weren't very compelling. The first episode was filled with Sayo Yamamoto touches, the second had great tension and atmosphere, but this one is just kind of bland and safe. It sadly seems to suggest the project didn't have as long a schedule as I was hoping. They were clearly struggling with the drawings on this one. Five sakkans, and they even outsourced 2nd key animation. Some of the drawings in there were painful to see. I don't mean to pick on them, because I'm sure they wanted to do better, but I wish they'd have spent less time putting hatch marks on the characters and more time animating them.

I wouldn't have minded so much that the animation wasn't great - episode 2's animation wasn't that great - but the story and directing didn't make up for that shortfall. I was surprised to find the story to be somewhat tame because I'd heard Sato Dai was writing it and expected something with the irreverent humor and unpredictability of his Samurai Champloo episodes, or at least something to distinguish it as a Sato Dai episode, but there wasn't much. The team of Sato Dai and Sayo Yamamoto did amazing work on that show. It's their episodes I liked best in the show, and it's seeing those episodes that I knew Sayo Yamamoto was a name to watch.

The story isn't bad per se, but it just didn't have many surprises. There was a good train episode early on in the 2nd Lupin III series with some great animation from Kazuhide Tomonaga, so I couldn't help but compare the two and find this one lacking. This episode felt basically like a standard episode from the second series - okay, but nothing remarkable. As a way of introducing Goemon it didn't really tell us anything we didn't know already. The good thing about the episode is that Goemon's character was pretty well captured. He really felt like Goemon. I also liked how Fujiko was never called by name until the very end of the episode. It took me a few minutes into the episode to figure out that she was the tutor and hence was up to something. (partly because her face wasn't recognizable from the poor drawings) The episode felt true to the spirit of Goemon and the old Lupin III - hard-boiled in that Goemon is a hired killer, but not cold-blooded, because he has a personal sense of justice and won't cross a certain line. And of course, we got to hear the first historical instance of his trademark line - "mata tsumaranai mono wo kitta".

For Goemon's introduction I was hoping they would do something special to fill it with good samurai action, dare I hope even perhaps invite Kazuto Nakazawa to sakkan the episode? You know, a reunion tour from the Samurai Champloo team - Sato Dai, Sayo Yamamoto, Nakazawa. But it was not to be. There was one short scene where Goemon does his bullet-cutting trick where suddenly - bizarrely, even - the animation gets extremely fluid. It's decent (albeit short), but honestly the movement isn't particularly interesting. It's nice that they tried, but it only goes to show how amazing the old animators were. With just a few drawings Yasuo Otsuka could have Goemon whip his sword around in a way that felt infinitely better and more convincing. There are tons of contemporary animators who I'm sure could have done some good samurai action. It's sad that they didn't have the budget/schedule to get them.

The weird thing to me about this show so far is... Where's Takeshi Koike? I was expecting the show to be rife with his touch, but for the most part in this episode I couldn't even tell he was the character designer. It seems odd to call him in and then create a show that had nothing whatsoever of his style. I know he's just the character designer, but I guess I was hoping that he would be involved on the same level that Kazuto Nakazawa was involved in Samurai Champloo. Nakazawa made that show his by his amazing and voluminous work as a sakkan/animator on the show. Different directors have different styles and priorities, I guess. Perhaps that will happen in future episodes, but it's a pretty short show, so I hope it happens soon if it's going to happen.

The joke with the European city names was weird - Poris, Dinajon, etc. I didn't quite see the point in doing that.

It was a rocky start for me, but this episode converted me to a believer. No nitpicking from me this time. I loved this episode. They did just about everything right in this episode, both as a standalone episode and as an episode true to the spirit of Lupin III. Simply put, this was pure awesomeness.

Episode 1 showed the first meeting between Lupin and Fujiko. This time it's the first meeting between Jigen Daisuke and Fujiko. Jigen has always been my favorite character. I love his gruff stoicism, the way he always has a witty one-liner ready for every situation, the way he seems cold and uncaring but has the biggest heart of the bunch. He's the ultimate badass lone-wolf. He doesn't reveal much, but his depth comes through slowly. He's defined by simple, classically manly things - the magnum, the beard, the suit, the fedora. When Jigen got an occasional solo episode in the old TV shows, it was always a special treat. Suddenly we were plunged into a world of dark and deep-felt drama like an old Hollywood film noir starring Bogie, full of fog, intrigue and betrayal.

The story here was very reminiscent of a past story in either the second or third series, I can't remember which. It was a great story exactly in the vein of the classic Lupin III, except far more visually stylish. Best of all, they nailed Jigen's character here better than even most previous Lupin III outings have, as the directing in the TV outings tended to be a little vague due to the short schedule and low budget. Here every shot was carefully groomed, and we could follow Jigen's subtly expressed emotions and reactions in detail at every juncture.

Jigen taking the fall for the girl after she kills her mob boss boyfriend was classic Jigen, and Jigen putting his cigarette into the tea cup offered by the would-be seductress is exactly the sort of subtle wit I expect from this character. We even got to hear him say his classic line - "Ore wa onna girai de na". The only thing missing to make it the perfect Jigen episode was Jigen drinking a glass of bourbon. I'm happy to see that the person who wrote the episode did their homework.

Visually, I think they did a good job with his design. His hat covers his eyes, but you can actually see them peeking through a bit in certain shots. He hasn't had such a deliciously lean head and pointy chin since the pilot. It's amusing how his beard aaaalmost touches the brim of his hat in certain shots.

All of the original voice actors are now gone. Except one. Jigen alone is still played by the same voice-actor, Kiyoshi Kobayashi. He is now 79 years old. He could have retired like the rest of them, and I have no idea why he didn't, but good god I'm so glad he didn't. It just wouldn't be the same with all of the old voices gone, especially Jigen. I was strangely moved watching this episode to see the same old Jigen I've loved all these years still alive and well, if sounding a little wizened now. It was like seeing an old friend again. I'm so happy he's still there. He provides such a vital element of continuity with the old Lupin III.

Incidentally, Jigen is the only character who has been voiced by the same voice-actor in every single Lupin III outing (except Fuma Clan, when they changed all the voice-actors). Even Lupin was voiced by a different person in the pilot, and of course Lupin was the first of the old voices to disappear with the passing of Yasuo Yamada.

The thing I liked about this episode was that it wasn't about the animation or the directing. Both the animation and directing were functional, but not so exceptional as to eclipse the story. No, what made this episode so entertaining was the story and the characters, as it's supposed to be but far too seldom is. It shouldn't be about obsessively chasing directors or animators. It should just be about enjoying a nice story with well-fleshed-out characters. But anime fails to deliver in that arena more often than not, so I usually wind up ignoring the story and focusing on the animation and directing in a last-ditch effort to salvage what enjoyment I can.

This episode was great to watch because the characters were sensitively portrayed at every juncture and it was a great simple story grounded in the basic dramatic elements. They didn't use Macguffins like bad guys or action sequences or gags to distract from the lack of good writing. They kept it squarely focused on telling a story through compelling character drama. The episode had the atmosphere of a good old Hollywood movie from the 50s like the old solo Jigen episodes usually did.

I never mentioned the music, but the music is quite remarkable. It's a tall order to top Yuji Ono in the same mold, but they've found someone who is up to the task in the person of Naruyoshi Kikuchi. Cool and breezy but with just the right touch of free jazz weirdness. The opening in particular is an amazing piece of music like no other anime opening song I've heard.

The ending changed. The ending in the first episode felt incomplete to me, like they just quickly threw those drawings up because they hadn't finished the ending yet, and this seems to confirm that. It would answer why they didn't credit the ending in the first episode.

I already wrote about the first Lupin III TV special, Bye Bye Liberty Crisis, which was better than I'd remembered the TV specials being thanks to Osamu Dezaki's sharp directing. Dezaki directed the next few on and off, so I was curious if they were as good. I checked them out, and as expected, it's a mixed bag.

Special #2 1990 Hemingway's Papers

Lupin finds himself up against an army as he tries to find Ernest Hemingway's buried treasure.

The second special retains the Dezaki touch in terms of the presentation of the material, with layouts that feel distinctly Dezaki, but the visuals aren't as highly worked and pleasing. The drawings feel looser and lighter. It's like they didn't have as much time to do this one as the first one. It still holds together well enough thanks to the pleasing directing by Dezaki and the good script by Hiroshi Kashiwabara, but it's not quite as strong as the first TV special.

This time, it feels like a TV special. You can sense that the quality is starting to slip a bit. The drawings of the characters hold up throughout thanks to Noboru Furuse's nice lanky and well-balanced designs. The guest protagonist Maria is designed in a pleasantly cute way that's not obnoxious. This was his second and, alas, last Lupin III TV special.

There are bits of nice animation here and there. The part where Maria runs away from the two soldiers on the hillside has some splendid movement - some of my favorite in any Lupin III, in fact. I like every drawing and every little movement in this sequence. It's very different from the movement in any past Lupin III. It's a style of movement that's distinctly the product of this period in its sense of timing and the style of the drawings. I thought maybe it might be Seiji Muta, since he worked on Akira a few years earlier and the movement seems influenced by that whole Nakamura/Utsunomiya post-Akira style with the doll-like treatment of limbs and sharp sense of form, but it seems more likely to just be the obvious first guess, Masahiro Ando, since he's known for action animation.

Special #3 1991 Napoleon's Dictionary

Lupin is hunted down by the G7, who hope his grandfather's treasure will pay for their recent Gulf War misadventure.

Despite a witty story skewering recent global events, the third special is rendered nigh unwatchable by its unprecedentedly bad production values. It is hands down the worst animated Lupin III I've seen. It's remarkable how consistently badly drawn it is. Many of the shots look like bad fan art. It's the Yashigani of Lupin III. Not even the throwaway episodes of the second series, which had some substantial ups and downs in quality, were ever this badly drawn.

The film is a shambles. I don't know what happened, but it feels like TMS forgot they had to do another TV special and only remembered a month before airing. Shots feel wrong in every way: the drawings, the layout, the coloring. The drawings ruin what might otherwise have been a fairly fun treasure race story that feels like an updated and more sociopolitical version of It's a Mad Mad Mad Mad World. Hiroshi Kashiwabara writes again. Kashiwabara is good at creating plots that are international in scale, placing the characters within a grander scheme that gives the proceedings more weight than a mere caper. His competing factions are often based on obvious real-life analogues, giving his work a satirical edge.

Surprisingly, there is a brief movement when it looks like good animation is trying to peek through. It's the bit where Lupin looks up the word impossible in Napoleon's dictionary and splits the car in half. I think the same animator might have done the next scene, but it's a fascinating mess. Occasionally there will be one shot that has a little bit of nicely timed movement, but the next shot will revert back to horrid drawings. The chaos of the animation in this scene seems to hint at chaos on the production floor. The timing of the animation of Jigen's hand in this scene for some reason reminds me of the timing of the movement in the scene in special #3 I mentioned above, so I wonder if it might not be the same animator.

It's sad that this TV special is such a disaster, because it's one of the few that featured Yasuo Otsuka in any capacity. He was the 'Mecha Design Supervisor'. Obviously he was brought in because of his love of cars. There are a huge variety of classic cars in the film, but sadly although they are drawn accurately to the makes, they are not particularly well drawn, and there isn't anything remotely resembling a good action scene. It would have been nice to have one special allowing Yasuo Otsuka to really revel in his love of classic cars.

Interestingly, this special doesn't have a director. Only a supervisor (Dezaki). There are five storyboarders and two enshutsu or technical directors. I'm sure there's an interesting story behind why this special turned out the way it did.

Incidentally, by way of contrast, Dezaki storyboarded the first two specials himself, as he usually does when he directs something. There is no enshutsu credit on these films (only assistant enshutsu), so presumably Dezkai did his own processing.

It's surprising how bad the animation of this special is when you see names like Takashi Hashimoto, Masahiro Kase and Tadashi Hiramatsu at the top of the key animation credits. Studio Curtain receives a credit at the end of the key animation credits. Plus, Ryutaro Nakamura was one of the storyboarders.

Special #4 1992 From Russia With Love

Lupin finds himself pitted against Rasputin's grandson, a mystic with a magic finger he has a habit of putting into strange places, in a contest to uncover the hidden treasure of the Romanovs.

This time Dezaki returns to directing and storyboarding, though there are now two enshutsu. The film is one more step down from special #2 - vaguer directing and weaker drawings. There are still lots of Dezaki touches, but they feel a little more sloppy and less convincing. There are a few too many triple-takes and harmony shots. The film doesn't really come together as a film. The characters aren't particularly compelling or interesting. It doesn't leave much of an impression. Putting aside the disaster of special #3, it feels like the quality declined steadily until by this point we're getting close to the forgettable feeling that seems to characterize most of the specials.

The drawings of this special aren't bad per se, but they're not particularly impressive. There are four sakkans, and the drawings feel very half-hearted, without any conviction. It's as if, lacking someone with a distinct design sensibility like Noboru Furuse to lead them anymore, they fell back to doing a pale imitation of his template.

The name Hidekazu Kamemoto 亀本秀一 at the end of the key animation credits is probably a hybrid of Hajime Kamegaki 亀垣一 and Hideyuki Motohashi 本橋秀之, the Studio Z5 animators who worked on Part 3. Hajime Kamegaki would go on to be the mecha sakkan of the next special. Hisashi Eguchi (NOT the manga artist) did his first Lupin III work here as an animator. Thus the team behind the animation of the next special came together here.

Special #5 1993 Order to Assassinate Lupin

Lupin steals a nuclear sub in an attempt to bring down an arms smuggler.

This special shook up the pattern of the first four specials. This one feels nothing like the specials up until this point. The director is different, the designs are different, and the tone of the film is different. Despite that, it's a pretty successful little film. In fact, this film is responsible for keeping the TV specials going. The specials were going to be canceled due to declining ratings, but the success of this special ensured their survival.

The director is Masaaki Osumi, who directed the seminal first Lupin III TV series in 1971 before regrettably being replaced by Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata due to low ratings. Here TMS pays him the long overdue respect of bringing him back to direct Lupin III again, and allowing him to do it the way he wanted.

The previous TV specials kept the atmosphere and characterizations pretty well close to the feeling of the TV series that had came before - serious but silly, never getting too heavy. Osumi here takes things back to the feeling of the early episodes he directed, when the characters were more ambiguous, not just lovable rogues, and the atmosphere was more serious and less goofy. Osumi's Lupin III stories were erratic like the original and not smoothed over and adapted to conventional anime storytelling rhythms. For this special, Osumi ordered Yasuo Yamada not to ham it up, to play Lupin more straight. Yamada's playful improvisations were a big part of what made the show so much fun, but they were out of place in Osumi's more hard-edged vision of Lupin III. No lecherous googly-eyed Lupin here.

The film has the feeling of a classic James Bond film. The protagonists must play a game of wits to defeat a formidable and cunning opponent with dastardly geopolitical aims. We slowly learn the truth behind this history between Jigen and the beautiful nuclear scientist kidnapped to drive Lupin's sub. And all the while, a ruthless hired killer tracks down the Lupin gang. All of the characters have well-defined and believably played personalities.

The directing is detail-oriented. When Karen tries Jigen's magnum, Jigen advises Karen not to shoot single action, but to cock it first, because otherwise the aim may stray. When Karen takes the magnum, it's so heavy she has a hard time holding it.

Studio Z5 animator Hajime Kamegaki is the mecha designer, and under his guidance, the weapons and vehicles are meticulously drawn and animated, giving the film a realistic feeling. He was involved in four episodes of Part 3. Episode 15 in particular was storyboarded, directed and sakkan'd by Kamegaki.

After floundering for a few years, they decided to be decisive and try a completely new designer. Hisashi Eguchi's character designs abandon the elongated Lupin face of the previous specials and return to the more rounded Lupin of Cagliostro and Fuma. The guest character designs are a bit strange, with the mouth placed close to the nose, and not particularly appealing or well animated, but the character acting feels stronger, probably because of Masaaki Osumi's unique style of directing. Like Takahata, he doesn't draw, but provides instructions to a storyboarder/director. The characters are more grounded and their emotional palette is more subtle. Osumi's roots outside of the anime industry help him create characters who behave in a more self-consistent way free from anime conventions.

The screenplay is again by Hiroshi Kashiwabara. It's obviously a re-working of the story he wrote for episode 50 of Part III, which also involved Lupin stealing a nuclear sub. He has added characters and otherwise reworked the story for feature length. The story was originally conceived for a feature film, so perhaps this is closer to his original idea. The sub is not as central a component this time. Rather than spy agencies competing over the Russian sub Ivanov, Lupin competes against smuggling ring Shot Shell.

Say hello to the new face of Lupin III.

It's been 27 years since the last Lupin III TV series, during which time the various productions seem to have gotten further and further away from what originally made Lupin III anime entertaining. I was hoping that a new TV series would be made rebooting all the mediocre intervening years and bring the show back to something more Monkey Punch-esque.

That has happened. In a way. The first episodes of the new TV series directed by Sayo Yamamoto certainly does reboot things, just not in the way I was hoping. The biggest change is that it's about Fujiko, not Lupin. It's certainly more 'adult' if your understanding of the term 'adult' means lots and lots of boobs. It certainly takes the characters back to a more lanky and aggressively stylized look that is somewhat, kinda sorta, reminiscent of Monkey Punch. But something about it doesn't gel for me. I was really looking forward to this, but I'm not convinced by what I've seen so far.

Technically, it's a well made episode. The visuals are lush and highly worked. They obviously put a lot of effort into the drawings and animation. The directing is strong and detail-oriented. The show has a stylish verve and edgy atmosphere. The script is witty and fleshes out Fujiko's and Lupin's personalities more sensitively than usual all while keeping the action moving forward. The episode feels cinematic in a way that's rare for a TV episode due to the clever presentation of the action through artful cutting and framing. The episode isn't boring for a moment, and has good suspense and tension, especially in terms of the battle of wits between Fujiko and Lupin.

The show starts off with a bang with a nice caper story that pits Lupin and Fujiko against one another in an interesting way that serves to introduce the new spin on their personalities while also showing off their skills. The plot is reminiscent of at least one previous Lupin III story - Lupin stealing a treasure from a cult leader, Fujiko already being in on the action - but that didn't bother me. At least the story keeps things on familiar ground, because everything else is a different beast altogether from any previous Lupin III.

On the downside, I think the show strives a little too hard for an adult atmosphere. There's a kind of affected artsy sensibility that rubs me the wrong way, and strikes me as out of place in Lupin III. I've long wanted to see a more adult Lupin III with the violence and sexuality of Monkey Punch's manga. And they do revel in the nudity in this episode. Fujiko is naked or nearly so pretty much the whole episode, and she shows her breasts constantly. But it's so overdone that it feels tacky. Gratuitous nudity does not equal adult. The entire opening has her naked, with her huge nipples shoved in your face. Fujiko was a little more circumspect in the old days. There is a long, meticulously animated French kiss at the beginning that is kind of nasty and unpleasant to watch. As much as I love French kisses, I don't think I want to see them in such detail in a cartoon.

In general they've made the characters more hard-boiled and toned down the light-heartedness, in the process sapping the show of a lot of what made it so fun. I'd like the show to be adult, but that doesn't mean it has to be humorless and dour. Zenigata seems to have a completely different personality. That would be fine, except that he's just kind of boring now. He was such an entertaining and endearing character before. Now he's static and stone-faced. Instead they seem to hint at some kind of homoerotic subtext with his bizarrely designed aide straight out of a yaoi manga that felt really tasteless and out of place.

Takeshi Koike is great, but I'm not really impressed by the animation or drawings here. I much prefer the simpler drawings of almost every previous Lupin III outing I've ever seen. Fujiko's design seems pretty bland to me considering she's the main character. As meticulously and realistically as Fujiko's flesh is elaborated here, I found the more cartoony Fujiko of previous outings more sexy because it left more to the imagination, and the drawings felt good as a design. It's not just about drawing flesh in the most lascivious way possible. The simplicity of the older drawings made the animators strengthen their overall form. Here the drawings don't feel particularly compelling as drawings, just more detailed and realistically drawn.

Lupin is a little more successful. They play around with his expressions a little. But there's not nearly enough fun character animation. They waste too much time filling in details rather than coming up with fun ways of posing and moving the characters. It's weird, because even when Lupin is doing all these crazy poses, it still feels like they're over-drawing him. Takeshi Koike is a genius, no doubt about that, but he's got his own style, and I'm not convinced it mixes well with Lupin III. There are several action scenes that are nicely animated, but for some reason none of them felt exhilarating.

The voices are all different now. I had a problem with Kanichi Kurita as Lupin in everything I've seen so far, but here he didn't bother me as much because the whole show didn't really feel like Lupin III. I'd have a hard time accepting new voices for all the characters if the show didn't already feel so different.

I look forward to watching the rest of the show to see how it changes when the rest of the cast is introduced. It's not exactly what I wanted to see in a reboot, but it's not badly done. You just have to accept that the show is not about Lupin, it's about Sayo Yamamoto.

A new Lupin III series is starting soon, which I'm looking forward to seeing. This is presumably part of the 40th anniversary celebrations of TMS's anime version of Lupin III. They're releasing a number of items looking back at the show's long history, including a special DVD and two books, which I just received: Yasuo Otsuka's Illustration Works "Lupin III" and All the Animation Histories "LUPIN The Third" (sic).

The Yasuo Otsuka book I was very excited about, but I was pretty stunned upon receiving it to find that it doesn't contain a single key animation drawing. No layouts, no character sheets - none of his actual production drawings. All the book contains is illustrations he has drawn for CD covers and the like, plus a parody manga he drew featuring the Lupin gang. I now feel stupid for assuming that it would, since the book is, after all, called Yasuo Otsuka's Illustrated Works. But it seemed to me like a no-brainer.

Yasuo Otsuka is one of the central figures responsible for making Lupin III such a classic. He has been kind of the guiding spirit of the show, its patron saint. He is incredibly insightful and informed about the behind-the-scenes history of the period. It could have been amazingly interesting to have him be our guide through the history of the show, since he was, after all, the one who originally shopped the anime version around, and his home studio Telecom has been involved in the show on and off ever since.

The 40th anniversary of the show was the perfect opportunity to release a book looking back in depth on his involvement in the show at various junctures. They could have had a long interview with him delving into the many juicy stories I'm sure he could tell about the behind-the-scenes aspects of the production of the first series, Cagliostro, Fuma Clan, etc. Not to mention it would have been nice to hear what he thinks of the other outings. They could have included any number of different kinds of production drawings. He's one of the great animators of all time in Japan. His animation deserves to be better known and researched. With all of the genga collections there are out there nowadays, it's sad that we don't have a single collections of the genga of this master.

Nothing. None of this. This book is a huge wasted opportunity. Nice as it is to get a book full of Yasuo Otsuka drawings.

Looking through Otsuka's drawings makes me realize we didn't get nearly enough Lupin III drawn by Otsuka. He should have done way more. His Lupin III is too delicious. The characters' expressions and posing are fun and lively in a way they aren't in anybody else's hands, even if not in a way that's necessarily true to Monkey Punch's original drawing style. Simply put, he's so friggin good. Yasuo Otsuka was just the best. He retired too soon.

I'm almost as dissatisfied with the other book, which is just a collection of the basic info on each of the Lupin III anime productions - staff listing, episode listings, synopses, descriptions of characters. There isn't a single interview with any of the many people who have been involved in the show over the years. No key animation drawings. The only production material included is one or two character design drawings for each episode, which is nice as far as it goes. It's stupid, because they devote hundreds of pages to the various TV episodes, but they don't even provide the key animation credits anywhere. And the only text is a lengthy synopsis, which is an utter and complete waste of paper, not to mention being even more of a wasted opportunity than the Otsuka book, considering how much material they're covering here. Instead they have a bunch of stupid sections like one listing the things Lupin has stolen at various times in the show, and one listing the various disguises Lupin has assumed. The people who put these books together have their head up their ass. They should have hired someone who actually cares about the show and then maybe we would have gotten something more substantial and insightful. It's kind of fitting that the book's official publication date was yesterday. I wish it were all an April fools joke and they are actually going to release some good books to mark the 40th anniversary of one of anime's most iconic series.

It's such a waste, because there was so much good animation produced in the various Lupin III outings over the years, but nobody has ever released any production materials for any of these, and these books do nothing to remedy this. It would have been interesting to explore how each TV series, TV special and movie took a different approach in terms of the characters, situations and drawings. It's almost as if there was so much interesting material to mine that they just threw up their hands in despair and said, "Screw it."

One of the few nice things about the book is the section where they do a side-by-side comparison between certain episodes that were based on the manga. It's also nice having line drawings of each character from each of the outings to see how different the characters' faces looked in each one. It was great seeing Tsutomu Shibayama's character drawings for the pilot. It's ironic that the guy who became known for Doraemon drew the most Monkey Punch-esque drawings for the show in its history.

Way back when I first started writing this blog in 2004 I wrote about Mankatsu, an omnibus of Monkey Punch shorts with an interesting format. It took 8 years but I finally got to see some of the show, and it's pretty fun and pleasant to watch, if not phenomenal.

Shown on late-night TV on satellite station WOWOW, it's got an unusual format: 12 hour-long episodes, each one a mix of 1-minute standalone gags and two longer-format narrative stories: a 15-minute "mini stage" and a 30-minute "grand stage". The head writer of the show is gag anime writer Yoshio Urasawa, whose debut in Lupin III series 2 I wrote about before. Another writer is Hiroshi Kashiwabara, whose work in Part III I mentioned before. Kashiwabara became a staple writer of the TV specials. Both of them were ideal choices to put together this interesting show. While the humor is often more groan-inspiring and bemusing than funny, it's a densely packed grab-bag that encompasses the wild creativity of Monkey Punch better than any anime before or after.

I like this omnibus format and wish there would be more programs like it, perhaps because I'm tired of the long-running narrative form, which most anime don't do well enough to engage me. It's got a good variety of style and is adult in its humor, though not very sophisticated. Most of the gags are overtly sexual, often with a healthy streak of black humor. One of the running jokes is about people dying embarrassing deaths while engaged in bizarre sex acts. The longer format stories involve a lot of cultural crossovers - a samurai meets the three musketeers, a gunslinger joins the Shinsengumi - as well as caper stories involving variations on the Lupin gang. This show is a big, fun smorgasbord of Monkey Punch, with all of the irreverent sex, violence and silliness that entails.

The closest analogy is to Alice, which was one of the first anime adaptations of a manga other than Lupin III by the prolific Monkey Punch. The other stories are usually just as crazy and unpredictably weird. Monkey Punch's stories are a refreshing change from the usual anime stories, dark and adult but broad and silly, with a bizarre narrative sensibility entirely his own. The only thing predictable about his stories is death and sex. Otherwise, the plots are always some new, twisted mixture of sci-fi, occult, espionage and chambara. In his hands, brutal violence and sex are two faces of the same coin, and everything is a treated as a grim joke. The pace is brisk and the lines are witty and snappy. The gag shorts reveal a side of Monkey Punch I wasn't familiar with, less Mort Drucker but equally MAD.

The animation has variety because a lot of different animators handled each section. Strictly from an animation standpoint, it's pleasing to watch but not amazing. They did a good job bringing alive Monkey Punch's drawing style, but it feels a little too clean. The staging, storyboarding and timing of the animation is all staid and uninspired. There's no spark or excitement or surprise in every shot the way there is in the hands of a talented animator like Masaaki Yuasa or Hiroyuki Imaishi. It would have been nice if they had gotten animators with a little more flair. But the refreshing designs are amply sufficient to make the show watchable, and the quality is impressively even, even if the animation itself is not particularly remarkable. It's always more than functional, and there are never wince-worthy moments with bad drawings.

Incidentally, Mankatsu re-adapted Alice, and the stylistic contrast between the earlier OVA and the new version throws into relief how clean but tame and uninspired the animation of Mankatsu is in comparison with the earlier Lupin III work. While cleaner, brighter and more pleasingly drawn to current audiences, Mankatsu doesn't have the edge of the drawings of the old Lupin III adaptations of Monkey Punch. It's hard to tell whether the designs of Mankatsu, which are technically closer to Monkey Punch, feel less authentic because I'm used to seeing Monkey Punch through the lens of Lupin III anime, or because the animators of Lupin III were more talented and playful and hence their animation has more impact.

There are a few moments where the animation perks up. Windy Tales mastermind Masatsugu Arakawa animated the "Traveller" and "Reverse Aesop's Fables" segments in episode 2, and his style is incredibly interesting. I wish he had done more. Ajia-Do founders Osamu Kobayashi and Tsutomu Shibayama storyboarded the "Reverse Aesop's Fables" and "Traveller" segments, respectively, and it's great to see more work from these two, as they are the grand masters of short-form gag anime like this, having started out in the early 1970s doing stuff like Tensai Bakabon and Dokonjo Gaeru.

Group ZEN star animator Masao Okubo animated the segment called "The Panic" in every episode. He has perhaps the most personal and identifiable style in the show. His work is identifiable from project to project in the way the work of an idiosyncratic animator like Shinya Ohira or Yoshinori Kanada is. In fact, he seems like a distant relative of the Kanada school. His work is worth exploring. His drawings are identifiable because he varies the thickness of the line in a way nobody else does, and he has a great animator's instinct for coming up with fun layouts and exaggerated movements. Some of his most characteristic work can be found in Onegai My Melody and School Rumble.

Telecom animator Toshihiko Masuda was the character designer of the show, and he animated the "Lupin Gang" segment in every episode. His drawings are free enough and the posing quite pliable, although the movement lacks zip and excitement. He's a craftsman capable of adapting to different projects and styles, rather than an animator who's very talented but only has one style. They're two completely different types of animators, but there's a time and place for both.

Lupin III series 2 & 3 episode director Kenji Kodama, better known for City Hunter and Detective Conan, here storyboards a lot of the longer-format segments.

The short gag segments aren't labelled, but they're always in the same basic format from episode to episode:

"The Lupin Gang": The Lupin gang being chased by Zenigata in various locales
"The Traveller": A traveler in medieval Japan runs across dead people
"Reverse Aesop's Fables": Nonsensical modern twists on the fable
"Riddles": Cheesy wordplay, always with an 'author' explaining the joke at the end
"Male-Female": A man and woman make sexual sounds that turn out to be something else entirely
"Mankatsu Monkey": A monkey engages in antics with the Lupin gang
"UPUP Balloon": Gags involving a guy in a hot air balloon
"The Panic": People die in the middle of sex acts

The series director is Shunji Oga, who trained under the late Osamu Dezaki. He has primarily worked at TMS. Most recently he directed the Golgo 13 TV series (he was assistant director of Dezaki's 1983 movie), although the bulk of his career has been devoted to directing slightly different material: the Anpan Man movie series. One of his more memorable pieces is the OVA adaptation of Ken Ishikawa's bloody Maju Sensen. He puts what he learned directing the comical Anpan Man to good use in Mankatsu, with its variety show format and focus on visual gags. In 2008 he directed an omnibus of stories by illustrator Takashi Yanase - Mankatsu for the author of Anpan Man.

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Monkey Punch Manga Katsudo Daishashin モンキーパンチ漫画活動大写真
AKA Mankatsu
(TMS, TV series, 2004, 12x50 minutes, d. Shunji Oga)

Director: Shunji Oga
Supervisor: Junichi Ioka
Character Design: Toshihiko Masuda
Art Director: Toshiharu Mizutani
Brains: Yoshio Urasawa, Hiroshi Kashiwabara, Junichi Miyashita, Nobuo Ogisawa
Program Organizers: Yoshio Urasawa, Nobuo Ogisawa

GRAND STAGE

	Script	Storyboard	Director	Animation Director
1	Yasuyuki Suzuki	Fumio Maezono		Shinichi Suzuki
2	Yasuyuki Suzuki	Fumio Maezono		Shinichi Suzuki
3	Atsushi Muroga	Kenji Kodama	Kiyoshi Fukumoto	Shinichi Yoshikawa, Yuuki Kinoshita
4	Hiroshi Kashiwabara	Hiroshi Ishiodori		Katsuji Matsumoto
5	Nobuo Ogisawa	Kenji Kodama	Daisuke Tsuji	Taido Hanafusa
6	Hirohisa Soda	Yoshio Takeuchi		Kazuhisa Takeda
7	Atsushi Muroyoshi	Kenji Kodama	Kiyoshi Fukumoto	Shinichi Yoshikawa, Yuuki Kinoshita
8	Takeo Ono	Masaharu Okuwaki	Katsuyoshi Yatabe	Kenji Yazaki
9	Nobuo Ogisawa	Hiroshi Ishiodori		Katsuji Matsumoto
10	Takeo Ono	Masayuki Sakoi	Masayuki Sakoi, Hiromi Yokoyama	Kimiko Tamai
11	Toshimichi Okawa	Noriaki Saito	Kiyoshi Fukumoto	Shinichi Yoshikawa, Yuuki Kinoshita
12	Hiroshi Kashiwabara	Hirofumi Ogura		Toshihiko Masuda

MINI STAGE

	Script	Storyboard	Director	Animation Director
1		Kenji Kodama	Daisuke Tsuji	Shinichi Yoshikawa
2	Takeo Ono	Yoshio Takeuchi	Shunji Oga, Takeyuki Satohara	Ichiro Ogawa
3	Yasuyuki Suzuki	Fumio Maezono		Shinichi Suzuki
4	Haruhisa Soda	Yoshio Takehisa		Kazuhisa Takeda
5	Haruhisa Soda	Yoshio Takeuchi		Tenshi Yamamoto, Kazuhisa Takeda
6	Toshimichi Okawa	Masaharu Okuwaki	Shunji Oga	Ichiro Ogawa
7	Junichi Miyashita	Kenji Kodama	Toshiharu Sato	Kimiko Tamai
8	Junichi Miyashita	Kenji Kodama	Mitsutoshi Sato	Kimiko Tamai
9	Junichi Miyashita	Kenji Kodama	Mitsutoshi Sato	Kimiko Tamai
10	Junichi Miyashita	Kenji Kodama	Daisuke Tsuji	Kazuhisa Takeda
11	Junichi Miyashita	Kenji Kodama	Takanori Jinbo	Kazuhisa Takeda
12	Junichi Miyashita	Kenji Kodama	Daisuke Tsuji	Kazuhisa Takeda

SHORTS

1. The Lupin Gang
	Ep 1: Storyboard/Director/Animation Director: Satoshi Hirayama
	Ep 2-12: Storyboard/Director/Animation Director: Toshihiko Masuda
2. The Traveler
	Storyboard: Tsutomu Shibayama (Ep 2: Director: Atsushi Yano, Animation: Masatsugu Arakawa)
3. Reverse Aesop's Fables
	Ep 1: Storyboard/Director: Osamu Kobayashi
	Ep 2-12: Storyboard: Osamu Kobayashi, Director: Atsushi Yano, Animation Director: Masatsugu Arakawa (2), Tomoyuki Matsumoto (3-6), Yasuhiro Endo (7, 10-12), Yoshihiko Takakura (8), Masaya Fujimori (9)
4. Riddles
	Ep 1: Storyboard/Director/Animation Director: Yoshinori Kanemori
	Ep 2, 3, 8, 9: Storyboard/Director/Animation: Shuhei Tamura
	Ep 4, 6, 11: Storyboard/Director/Animation: Toshiharu Sato
	Ep 5: Storyboard/Director: Jun Shishido, Animation: Toshiharu Sato
	Ep 7: Storyboard/Director/Animation: Fumio Takahashi
	Ep 10: Storyboard/Director/Animation: Jun Shishido
	Ep 12: Storyboard/Director/Animation: Shinya Matsui
5. Male-Female
	Ep 1: Storyboard/Director: Akio Sakai, Animation Director: Kazuo Watanabe
	Ep 2: Storyboard/Director/Animation: Akio Sakai, Key Animation: Midori Otsuka
	Storyboard/Director/Animation: Shuhei Tamura (4-7, 10-12), Masayuki Sakoi (3, 8), Takeo Takahashi (9)
6. Mankatsu Monkey
	Storyboard/Director: Shunji Oga, Animation: Minoru Maeda (1-7, 10), Shinichi Suzuki (8, 9), Yoshio Chaya (11)
7. UPUP Balloon
	Storyboard/Director/Animation: Akio Hosoya
8. The Panic
	Storyboard/Director/Animation: Masao Okubo

After finishing the second Lupin III series a while back, I dived right into the third TV series aired March 3, 1984 to November 6, 1985. Whereas the second series felt like a bit of a slog, the 50-episode third series ended way too soon and left me wanting to see much more.

I think it's probably the most unjustly overlooked and underappreciated outing in the Lupin III franchise. It was underappreciated both at the time of its airing - constantly delayed by baseball broadcasts, because of which people probably forgot it was even airing and it wound up not being nearly as long-lived as the second series - as well as in the aftermath, when fans shied away from the most visually uninhibited and playfully designed and animated outing in the franchise, and the clean and ruly look and more conventional atmosphere and storytelling of the first series became unofficial canon.

But the third and last Lupin III TV series is in fact an entertaining show with some of the most interesting animation in the entire franchise. Yuzo Aoki, the great animator who had been a central figure behind every Lupin III outing prior to then, acted as the animation supervisor, designing the characters in a way that brought them closer than they'd ever been to Monkey Punch's manga, through the lens of his own unique sensibility.

The drawings of the second series were different from the first, simpler and more cartoonish. But the drawings in the third series are so different from the second that they're a shock to the system at first. It's like the characters are made of rubber bands. Everything is wobbly. Their limbs bend in all sorts of weird configurations. The clothing is full of curves and ruffles. The face is elongated in that patent Monkey Punch style much more prominently, and the expressions on the faces are more exaggerated and playful than ever.

The best place to get a quick feeling for just how different the character animation is from every other Lupin III outing is the second opening.

The series had two openings, both set to the same song. (Apparently they couldn't get the rights to the classic Lupin III theme song, so they had to use a new song.) The first opening was decent, but it's the second opening that captures the essence of Aoki's drawings in the show. It starts with "Lupin" spelled out using actual Lupins (pictured above), and ends with Goemon slicing up a rocket. From the rubbery-limbed Zenigata running through the door at the beginning to the lanky, banana-headed Lupin in the last shot as the chassis of his car roars off without him... this is an opening that immediately tells the viewer: this a different beast.

The second series had its share of crazy drawings and stories, but nothing this extreme. This series is the high point in experimentation with the drawings in the Lupin III franchise. Once you get used to the style, though, it's hard to go back. The cleaner drawings of the rest of the franchise look boring to me now. In every episode, you can sense how much fun the animators are having drawing the characters, and that's a large part of why the show is fun to watch, as the stories can often be pretty repetitive and predictable.

Apart from the character animation, the tone of the show is rather unique, too. It strikes a kind of middle ground between the first series and the second series - still playful and silly, but not as over-the-top as the second series, grounded by a more adult sensibility and heist/intrigue stories that aren't merely excuses for 25 minutes of cartoonish antics. The quality is far more even than the second series, which had many episodes that could easily be skipped. The directing is consistent and the animation is... albeit not consistent, consistently interesting.

Which leads to another interesting facet of this series: The characters look drastically different from one episode to the next. Characters look different from episode to episode in all anime, of course, but on the continuum of the scale of drawing variation, Lupin III Part 3 lies at one extreme.

Apart from having laid down a basic framework in the form of a set of character designs, Yuzo Aoki appears to have given the various subcontracting studios who handled many of the show's episodes almost complete freedom when it comes to drawing the characters. Even within a single episode, the characters will often look different from shot to shot due to the different styles of the animators.

Of course, what this show is best known for is the pink jacket. This is the Pink Jacket series. The pink jacket seems to capture the ambivalence people feel towards this show, without even having given it a chance - it evokes vague terrors of cheesy 80s coloring and J-pop hijinx that are really quite unwarranted. The pink was supposedly a compromise suggested by Yuzo Aoki. He originally wanted white, but they thought that was too radical, so he suggested pink as a compromise between the white jacket and the red jacket. Lupin sometimes has an afro that feels a little embarrassing, but at other times is drawn in a totally different style. For the most part, the series doesn't feel dated. Its playful animation feels as fresh as when it was made. For good or ill, there were no precedents and no followers, so there's nothing else quite like this series out there, and it's still quite interesting to re-visit today.

Besides the unusual jacket color, most of the main characters look quite different, in a way that took me some getting used to. Jigen's eyes aren't covered by his hat most of the time, and his beard is long and scruffy. They play it fast and loose with the conventions of the show. It's telling that none of the later TV specials or movies ever used the pink jacket - always the red jacket or green jacket. The third series is the crazy uncle who you've heard rumors used to be in the Hell's Angels and snort cocaine and has illegitimate children he's never met in Algeria. He's the bad boy of the family.

If I had any disappointment with this series, it would be with the stories, which fall into a predictable pattern. It's always about stealing some kind of treasure that, when stolen, turns out to be a fake. Zenigata always turns up, only to turn out to have been Lupin in disguise. Fujiko always winds up betraying Lupin. If a guest character is introduced as a good guy, he always turns out to be the bad guy.

I don't mind some patterns in Lupin. It wouldn't be Lupin if Goemon didn't split things clean in half with Zantetsuken, if Fujiko wasn't a backstabbing cocktease, and if Zenigata didn't show up every episode shouting, "I'll get you this time!" Those aren't what bother me. What was disappointing is the writing of the stories. There was never a moment where the drama felt sophisticated or surprising, or where there was any complexity to a character or to an emotion. This series was clearly aiming for a more adult feeling, while still retaining the playfulness of the second series, but it feels like they missed both marks as a result. It's a terrible shame; it feels like they never really explored the potential inherent in Lupin III for more sophisticated and adult storytelling. If this remains a gripe, not a fatal flaw, it's thanks to the quality of the animation.

Finally, it's fascinating to note that this series did not have a director. At least, none is credited. This occurred before: Tokyo Movie's own Gyators did not have a director; only episode directors. And yet it maintains a uniform tone admirably. It holds together as a series just fine. Ironically, it has an animation supervisor, yet he did not use role to make the animation of the series more uniform, as is expected of a chief animation director - just the opposite.

The subcontracting studios that produced Lupin III Part 3

Studio Iruka's private sub

As I noted in my post on the second series, several subcontractors were actually involved in the production of the show, even though they are not credited. In Part 3, subcontractors played an even bigger role. I'd say that the majority of the episodes were produced by subcontractors. And the number of subcontractors is greater. It's easier to figure out who did what this time because the studios are actually credited.

Here is a breakdown of the studios that worked on Part 3. (See the bottom of this post for full episode credits.)

► Araki Production: 1, 7
	Shingo Araki, Michi Himeno, Kenichi Araki, Satoshi Sasaki, Makoto Takahoko, Yuji Yamada
► Animation 501: 2, 9, 23 (14)
	Hiroshi Ogawa, Isamu Utsugi, Joji Suzuki, Ikuko Ito, Taku Nakaya, Yoshiko Arai, Hiroshi Suzuki
► Ari Production: 3 (13, 17)
	Heihachiro Tanaka, Yukiko Michishita, Sayuri Matsumoto, Mariko Saito
► Studio Iruka: 6, 10, 16, 19
	Sachiko Kamimura, Jun Kawagoe, Junko Abe, Hinako Komatsu, Takahiko Ayame
► AIC: 8 (5, 13, 17)
	Hiromitsu Ohta, Eiji Yamanaka, Nobuyuki Kanejima
► Kusama Art: 40 (5, 11, 18, 22, 26, 27, 30, 32, 33, 36, 47, 48, 50)
	Tatsuo Ryuno, Shoji Furuta, Yukihiro Makino, Michitaka Kikuchi
► Studio Unicorn: 29 (35, 48)
	Masaharu Morinaka, Yuji Hamano
► Oh Production: 31, 34, 39, 43 (11, 14, 18, 21, 41, 49, 50)
	Hidetoshi Owashi, Tadashi Fukuda, Don Abe, Tsutomu Iida, Hirotsugu Kawasaki, Kitaro Kosaka, Hiroshi Shimizu
► Studio Gallop: 42, 46
	Hatsuki Tsuji, Toshio Yamauchi, Taku Nakaya, Hideaki Matsuoka, Jiro Tanaka, Takaya Ono, Yoshitaka Nishijima, Yoko Konishi, Miyuki Umetsu

Numbers in parenthesis indicate uncredited episodes. In a lot of cases, the episodes are actually a mix of studios - you have one or two animators from one studio working alongside one or two animators from another studio. In these episodes, they didn't bother to credit the animators by their respective studio.

Uncredited studios

There was one studio or family of studios that played a big role in the series, but that didn't get any credit for some reason: Studio Z5 and Studio Number 1. They are part of a long, complicated continuity of studios founded by people who at one time worked under or were otherwise affiliated with Yoshinori Kanada in the late 70s/early 80s at his Studio Z. Other studios affiliated with this group include Studio Oz, One Pattern, Studio Tome, and Studio Nonmaruto. It's hard to determine exactly who was at which studio when in the case of this group, as membership was very fluid, but here is a rough breakdown of their involvement in Lupin III Part 3. For some reason or other, they are not credited as a studio.

► Studio No. 1: (4, 12, 15, 20, 24, 28, 32, 33, 38, 44, 45, 48)
	Osamu Nabeshima (storyboard/director), Kyoko Matsubara (sakkan), Shigenobu Nagasaki, Yasuchika Nagaoka, Masakatsu Iijima, Kazuhiro Ochi
► Studio Z5: (15, 20, 24, 44)
	Hajime Kamegaki (storyboard/director), Hideyuki Motohashi (sakkan), Fujiko Ito, Seiji Muta

The Studio Number 1/Z5 episodes are one of the few places in Part 3 where you can find Kanada school animation. I'm really not fond of this style in the Lupin III context, so although the episodes aren't badly done, they're not the ones I like. But it's true that they did a lot to support the quality of the show.

The remainder of the animators not listed above were presumably working from TMS's home studio, Tokyo Movie, which is never credited explicitly since doing so would be redundant. This presumably includes Yuzo Aoki, Toshiyuki Omori, Yumi Machida, Hitoshi Hasegawa, etc.

Oh Pro is obviously the one studio from the 2nd series that came back in the 3rd series, and perhaps unsurprisingly, they do some of the best work on the show. The Oh Pro animators are totally different, however.

People who returned from the second show

Considering the six year gap between part 2 and 3, it would be interesting to have seen more people who worked on the second show working on part 3, to see how they evolved over the intervening years. But there aren't many. It's mostly new faces. Yuzo Aoki is the biggest element of staff continuity. Aoki himself sadly didn't wind up drawing much on the show, except for a few stints as animation director, but the few spots he did are very reminiscent of his work on the second show in terms of the timing of the animation. Even amidst the crazy work done by a handful of the other animators, his work feels distinct. Of course, his template can be seen in the second opening, which he presumably animated by himself. The interesting thing is that not many animators drew the characters quite the way he did. It's like he allowed them to come up with their own interpretation of his designs, rather than forcing them to draw the characters the way he did. Which is smart, because that is probably largely why so much of the animation feels so good.

Sachiko Kamimura worked on the second series as a key animator under the name Sachiko Kodama because she had just married director Kenji Kodama. By the time of the third series, the two had started their own subcontracting studio, Studio Iruka, and Sachiko had reverted to using her maiden name when working under her husband. Studio Iruka's work is quite lively and pleasant to watch, although the drawings are somewhat sleeker and more conventional.

Seijun Suzuki, who supervised the latter half of the second series, wrote a single episode in Part 3: episode 13. There aren't many episodes that stand out in terms of the story in Part 3, but episode 13 is a true oddity, perhaps even the strangest Lupin III episode ever made thanks to Seijun Suzuki's script, with its erratic shifts in tone, non-sequitur of a plot, surreal scenes, and baffling ending. It seems like the closest he ever came to making an anime version of his cult classic Branded to Kill.

It's actually difficult to grasp what the title of this episode means, or how it relates to the episode in any way. 悪のり変装曲 Warunori Hensokyoku loosely translates as 'Variations on Getting Carried Away'. Warunori means getting caught up in whatever you're saying or doing and going too far with it without realizing it. The episode strikes me as a bizarre, dreamlike remembrance of all things Lupin III, a hallucinogenic vision in the vein of Branded to Kill. My theory/interpretation is that Seijun Suzuki was slyly poking fun at the Lupin III anime and its conventions, by creating a story that did not make any sense or adhere to any of those conventions.

Episode 13 was directed by Shigetsugu Yoshida, who directed several of the best episodes of the second series. Yoshida only directed one other episode in Part 3: episode 7. Right after doing episode 13, Shigetsugu Yoshida and Seijun Suzuki together set to the task of directing the Gold of Babylon movie that served as the cinematic companion piece to Part 3.

Hatsuki Tsuji, one of the most prolific animators in the second series, returned as the animation director of one episode, this time from the studio where he new found himself, Studio Gallop. It was nice to see Hatsuki again, as he was one of the best animators in the second show, but his animation wasn't particularly exciting this time around.

Yoshio Urasawa, who wrote several of the most entertaining episodes in the second series, here returned to write two episodes - 26 and 49 - but these unfortunately had almost none of the wit and loony unpredictability that made his earlier work so fun.

Tateo Kitahara, the character designer and main animation director of the second series, paid an honorary visit in episode 36 under the name Takumi Kitahara. I rarely enjoy the work of a sakkan, because I find the job to be fundamentally problematic (I want to see a good animator's work as close to the raw as possible), but there is no denying that a good sakkan is indispensable, especially if you are not blessed with good animators or schedule, and I know that a lot of the nice drawings in the second series (except the Telecom episodes) were of the hand of the hard-working Kitahara.

The animator I most would have liked to see come back in Part 3 is Junzaburo Takahata, but it was not to be. Kazuhide Tomonaga, too, was obviously quite busy by this time working for Telecom. Most of the animators had moved on to very different places in the intervening 6 years.

Which studios/animators are worth seeking out?

The second series is long enough and uneven enough in quality that it's not worth watching the whole thing unless you REALLY like Lupin III. The third series, however, is worth watching from beginning to end. It's short enough and consistent enough that doing so isn't a chore, and there's good work here and there in every episode.

There aren't really any episodes in the third series that stand out as much as the Telecom episodes do in the second series, but there are a few animators and studios whose work is more worth checking out if your time is at a premium and you just want to sample the Pink Jacket series at its best.

Yuzo Aoki of course is the guiding spirit of Part 3, but ironically Part 3 doesn't seem to contain as much pure Aoki animation as the second series. It's other animators who wind up bathing in the spotlight.

Tatsuo Ryuno and Oh Production in my mind encapsulate the opposite ends of the stylistic spectrum of Lupin III Part 3: the one with more playful animation and heavily stylized drawings in the spirit of the Yuzo Aoki animation in the 2nd series, the other with more of a focus on exciting action animation in the spirit of the Telecom episodes of the 2nd series.

Tatsuo Ryuno

My favorite animator in the series is Tatsuo Ryuno, a person I'd never even heard of before watching the show. Ryuno is credited once alongside Shoji Furuta under a studio called Kusama Art, a mysterious studio about which I haven't been able to find any other information. He occupies the spot Yuzo Aoki occupied in the second series: He's the animator with the most deliciously idiosyncratic style in the show.

He has a very peculiar drawing style that can't be mistaken for anybody else. His style doesn't even resemble Yuzo Aoki's drawing style that much, but it's a perfect fit within the template Aoki laid down. I think he's the animator who best grasped and brought to life the direction Aoki was trying to go with this series.

He draws Lupin's face as a long curved arc in a way that reminds me of Monkey Punch's original. None of the other animators go nearly as far in drawing Lupin or the characters in this way, but that's exactly what I want to see in an anime adaptation of a Monkey Punch manga. Even Yuzo Aoki, who brought the drawings closer to Monkey Punch's original style, didn't go quite as far as Ryuno does.

Ryuno's drawings are full of creative poses. His animation is playful, sometimes excessively so. His characters become extremely deformed and exaggerated. He uses a lot of drawings. The animation is very active, and all of the poses in a movement are fun and interesting. Here are some examples of Tatsuo Ryuno sequences packed with lots of funny poses.

He often animates characters in distant shots like this, where the whole character's body is in the shot, so that there's less of a focus on the details of the features, allowing him to focus his energy on coming up with fun poses. There are lots of sequences like these where the characters react to things in a way that is so much more fun and full of playful drawings. He's a genius at packing a reaction shot with lots of comical poses - where most animators would probably have stopped at a single drawing, he puts in 10.

Ryuno's drawings feel effortless. I don't like animation that feels laborious. Despite moving so much, it feels like Ryuno is just pumping out the drawings without much pre-planning or agonizing. Sometimes they can be a little too rough around the edges and spontaneous, to the point that it feels out of control, but that's the kind of animator Ryuno is. His animation is controlled chaos.

Despite feeling very off-hand, the drawings are usually well stylized and laid out on the screen. He angles the limbs and bends the features just so in a way that feels great as a drawing. It's in that sense that he's the same kind of animator as Yuzo Aoki, and I can see why Ryuno was such an important figure under Aoki during this period.

I don't know of many other animators in the spirit of Yuzo Aoki, but Ryuno is one for sure. I wish there were more. There are lots of Kanada school animators who can draw characters in crazy poses, but what I like about Aoki and Ryuno is that they've got their own style totally uninfluenced by Yoshinori Kanada and his school. There are even animators who draw interesting drawings, but there aren't many like these two who seem to have an effortless command of body drawings. They draw the body in all these crazy poses so effortlessly. It's quintessentially Japanese in its focus on speed over cleanness and its disregard for model.

Oh Production

Oh Pro was one of the major studios behind the second series, and they return in the third to play an equally big part. Only this time, they occupy the space left empty by Telecom.

Oh Pro's episodes are the perfect contrast with Ryuno's episodes, just as Yuzo Aoki's episodes were with the Telecom episodes in the second series. Where Ryuno is all about wild drawings, the Oh Pro episodes are all about sleek, exciting action in the vein of Cagliostro. The weird thing is, Oh Pro is clearly emulating Telecom. The Telecom episodes in the second series are their model in terms of the drawings, the action, everything. They even have Lupin riding in a Fiat. The Oh Pro episodes are the only episodes in the third series that consistently depict Lupin riding in a Fiat. It sticks out that Oh Pro goes out of their way to draw Lupin in a Fiat when most of the other episodes don't care about the cars and draw him in whatever.

It's very peculiar, but the results are great. Oh Pro doesn't quite measure up to their model, but the amount of animation they pack into their episodes, and the glee with which they move their characters, is a delight to behold. And it's impressive that a completely different studio was able to create such a good simulacrum when even Telecom's recent Lupin III specials pale in comparison to the Oh Pro episodes.

The Oh Pro episodes are always storyboarded (using the pen name Kogaden) and sakkan'd by Hidetoshi Owashi and directed by Tsutomu Iida, with animation by four people: Tadashi Fukuda, Don Abe, Tsutomu Iida and Hirotsugu Kawasaki. People today may not realize who Tsutomu Iida is: It's the late Umanosuke Iida. Umanosuke Iida started out at Oh Pro concurrently animating and directing.

Hop onto the Oh! Pro express

I don't know who was responsible for the good action in the Oh Pro episodes, or even if it was just a single individual, but I suspect Hirotsugu Kawasaki to have been the main action animator in the Oh Pro episodes, because very soon after Part 3 he was involved in Laputa as the animator of the action scene on the raised railway, one of the best action scenes in the film, followed by the baby room scene in Akira. And of course, he went on to become the director of the action film Spriggan and the just-released Onigamiden. It's amazing how much talent the Oh Pro Express has sent out into the world.

My only disappointment with the Oh Pro episodes is that the story and storyboarding aren't up to the level of the animation. You sense that these animators have the potential to explode if they just had a talented storyboarder and director on the level of Miyazaki to guide them. As it stands, due to the somewhat lackluster directing and stories, the animation is fun to watch, but never quite gels into the cathartic action of the Telecom episodes.

The last two episodes

If you only watch two episodes, you could do worse than just watching the last two episodes, episodes 49 and 50. There is no continuing storyline, and the last two episodes don't tie anything up or ruin anything. They're standalone episode just like any of the others, with the added bonus of being the culmination of all of the experience of their respective animators on part 3.

Episode 49 is by Oh Pro and episode 50 features work by Tatsuo Ryuno and Yuzo Aoki. Episode 49 is definitely Oh Pro's best episode. You sense that they pulled out all the stops on this one. The directing and story are still underwhelming, but it's downright moving how much effort the animators are putting into the animation. The regular team of four this time is supplemented by no less than Kitaro Kosaka and Hiroshi Shimizu, which no doubt helps push this episode to the next level. You have in this episode animation where a story is depicted as unfolding by means of actions performed by the characters, not by a script, as was the case in the Miyazaki Lupin III episodes.

Episode 50 is actually a fairly interesting story as far as Part 3 goes. The Lupin gang steals a nuclear submarine from the Soviets, and a scramble ensues with various spy agencies from around the world trying to out-compete and out-bid one another in purchasing the sub from Lupin et al on the sly. It's got the sort of geopolitical sting and topicality and serious edge to the story that I wish more of the stories in this series had. The stories are too often ludicrous and silly. On top of this, the animation is tremendously fun, the ultimate (literally) example of what Yuzo Aoki set out to achieve with his radical but ultimately doomed re-visioning of the visuals of Lupin III. Ryuno animated the entire first half of the episode, so it's obvious in what regard Aoki held Ryuno. This episode is a good place to start to get a sense of his style. Aoki himself did some animation in the second half.

Odds and ends

In addition to all the regulars, a few unexpected names pop up once in a while. Masahito Yamashita, best known as one of the earliest Yoshinori Kanada followers to make a name for himself in the early 80s for his strange and exciting animation full of odd, improbable posing and lushly animated angular effects, makes an appearance in two episodes: 20 and 27. In both episodes, there's no missing his work, which is in exactly the style for which he is known, with no concessions made to the show whatsoever. It's saying a lot when your work sticks out on a show as permissive of animator freedom as Lupin III Part 3.

Masahito Yamashita's unmistakable drawings

Satoru Utsunomiya made an early appearance in episode 48, many years before he became known for his own unique brand of animation. The work here isn't as identifiable as his later work, but it's still distinguishable from its very different sense of timing, and even some of the drawings that have a more rounded and solid feeling to them than the others in the show.

Studio Iruka stopped working on the show rather quickly, appearing only in the first half, but one Iruka animator remained on through the rest of the show: Shobu Takahiko. I'm not positive, but I suspect that many of the parts I most enjoyed in the show were drawn by this animator. After considerable effort to figure out who did the parts I enjoyed, I've been unable to conclusively narrow it down to him, but he's my best guess going by the circumstantial evidence of his having been such a recurring face. He was even brought on in the last episode, with its small but strong cast of animators. The scene I'm most wondering about is the chase that starts in the park near the end of episode 44. The drawings and timing of the movement there are so good and unlike that of any other animator in the show. The part where Zenigata drives his car vertically through a two-foot-wide alleyway is totally insane and awesome.

Looking at the inbetween credits, you will find latter-day director Akitoshi Yokoyama in episode 46. Yokoyama started out as an animator, and this must have been one of his earliest gigs. Norimoto Tokura is an inbetweener in episode 4.

One of my favorite writers in the series is Hiroshi Kashiwabara, who wrote episodes 32, 34, 44 and 50. His scripts were more witty and believable than many of the others. I can't think of many other writers on the show who stood out to me as being particularly good. His script for episode 50 was supposedly based on a story idea that had originally been submitted as a replacement idea for the Lupin III movie that Mamoru Oshii had dropped out on. Perhaps that's what makes that episode feel a cut above the rest with its clever satirical tone.

Gold of Babylon

A movie version was in planning around the time the third series began airing. It would have been the third movie. Hayao Miyazaki had recommended Mamoru Oshii for the role of director, but Oshii submitted a story idea that was so outlandish and bizarre that it scared off the producers and got him fired. The shards of ideas I've heard include a strange figure reminiscent of the girl in Angel's Egg holed up in a tower, and Lupin having lost his purpose in life because there is nothing left in the world to steal, which brings to mind the strange vision of a depopulated world in Beautiful Dreamer.

Shigetsugu Yoshida was quickly hired as a replacement, assisted by Seijun Suzuki, and Yoshio Urasawa was hired to write the script. This happened while Part 3 was airing, and many of the staff who were working on Part 3 had to leave to work on the film. This is why there seems to be something of a dip in quality around the middle of Part 3, where it feels like they are scrabbling to find the people to make the episodes. Yuzo Aoki is conspicuously absent around the middle of the show.

Released on July 13, 1985, near the end of the unusually extended broadcast run of Part 3, the Gold of Babylon movie is the craziest and most unpredictable and unhinged of the Lupin III movies, both in terms of its animation and its story. Yuzo Aoki is the head of animation, and the animation is close in spirit to Part 3, with Lupin wearing a pink jacket, although all of the main characters other than Lupin are designed in a way that is more of a throwback to the second series. The film had to be produced in a short schedule due to the debacle with Oshii dropping out, and consequently it's rough around the edges in terms of the animation, and the story is half baked, but it's still a memorable film and a great companion piece to Part 3. It's one of the few places where you can find more animation in the spirit of Part 3.

Alice

Despite having technically nothing to do with Lupin III, this obscure OVA released in 1991 adapting an old one-shot manga by Monkey Punch is very close in spirit to Part 3 due to the fact that it was directed by Yuzo Aoki and features Tatsuo Ryuno as the animator/animation director. Although much ill has been said about this bizarre, disjointed and in some ways deliberately ugly piece of animation, it has an abrasive power like no other anime. It's the only anime I've ever seen that felt like a faithful adaptation of Monkey Punch in all of his psychosexual, violent, anarchic glory.

The story is so crazy that it's worth describing. A mad scientist was in love with a girl named Alice, but Alice runs off with another guy, so the mad scientist shoots the both of them up with a machine gun as they're trying to drive off together. To take revenge on Alice for not being faithful to him (since killing her was not enough), the mad scientist proceeds to create a cyborg version of Alice who will be his faithful sexual slave. But as fate has it, the lovemaking kills him. When his son, a mafioso boss, hears news that his pop has been killed by a girl named Alice who was great in the sack, he sends out a call to all the Alices he can find and holds an audition to find the one who's best in the sack so he can kill her and exact his revenge. After nearly wearing off his implement auditioning every conceivable species of Alice including a Martian Alice, a lesbian Alice, and a giant Alice, he finally finds his sex goddess, but right when he attempts to blow her brains out with his dad's gun, the cyborg Alice steps in and saves the girl. After his various attempts to off Alice fail because of her superhuman strength, he clones himself and modifies his clone into an ultra-powerful cyborg capable of taking on Alice. Just as the cyborg is about to defeat Alice and rape her, the Don steps in and saves Alice, realizing he has fallen in love with her. Unable to accept his conflicting emotions, he departs, vowing one day to exact his revenge on his love, Alice.

Don't try to understand it. It's not meant to be understood. It's meant to be experienced.

The combo of Aoki and Ryuno proved that they were the team who understood Monkey Punch best of all the people who have worked on the franchise over the years first in Part 3 and then in Alice. Alice is as a far-removed encore to Part 3 and an upping of the ante. This time it is no holds barred: the OVA format allows them to draw imagery that does justice to the story's nonstop parade of crazy but hilarious sex and violence. The animation is rough around the edges but very lively and fun, the drawings full of wild poses and expressions. The real Monkey Punch in his full glory was too much for the air waves, much less the silver screen. Only in the OVA format was it possible to go as far as was necessary in depicting sex to be faithful to Monkey Punch.

The sexual aspect that played such a large part in the Lupin III manga in defining Lupin's character, with Lupin screwing and/or shooting broads in his patented insanely over-the-top drawings, was completely played down in the anime - to say nothing of the Miyazaki version. Alice, for all the ill you can say about it, is one of the few anime adaptations that did not dumb down the crazed sexuality that was the essence of Monkey Punch. I for one found the story quite entertaining in its wildness. It's a little too episodic, and the story a little too crazy to be able to take seriously, but it wouldn't be Monkey Punch if that weren't the case. It's a rare glimpse into the darkness of what could have been if Lupin III had been made for a more adult audience.

Lupin III Part 3 full episode credits

Storyboard		Director	Sakkan	Key Animators
1	金塊はルパンを呼ぶ The gold bullion calls to Lupin			荒木プロダクション 姫野美智　荒木賢一　高鉾誠　山田雄二 Araki Production Michi Himeno, Kenichi Araki, Makoto Takahoko, Yuji Yamada
青木悠三 Yuzo Aoki			荒木伸吾 Shingo Araki
2	大いなる罠を暴け Break through the big trap			アニメーション501 宇都木勇　鈴木丈司　伊藤郁子 Animation 501 Isamu Utsugi, Joji Suzuki, Ikuko Ito
こだま兼嗣 Kenji Kodama			小川博司 Hiroshi Ogawa
3	こんにちは地獄の天使 Hello, angel from hell			アリプロダクション 道下有希子　松本小百合　斉藤真理子 Ari Production Yukiko Michishita, Sayuri Matsumoto, Mariko Saito
青木悠三 Yuzo Aoki		橋本三郎 Saburo Hashimoto	田中平八郎 Heihachiro Tanaka
4	テレパシーは愛のシグナル Telepathy is love's signal			鍋島修　松原京子　飯島正勝　長岡康史　伊藤富士子 Osamu Nabeshima, Kyoko Matsubara, Masakatsu Iijima, Yasuchika Nagaoka, Fujiko Ito
鍋島修 Osamu Nabeshima			松原京子 Kyoko Matsubara
5	五右ェ門無双 Goemon the invincible			古田詔治　太田博光　鈴木秀司　山中英治　牧野行洋 Shoji Furuta, Hiromitsu Outa, Hideshi Suzuki, Hideji Nakayama, Yukihiro Makino
中村亮之介 Ryonosuke Nakamura		板倉則子 Noriko Itakura	高田三郎、柳野龍男 Saburo Takada, Tatsuo Ryuno
6	ルパンが戦車でやってきた Lupan arrived in a tank			スタジオイルカ 川越ジュン　あべじゅん子　小松ひな子　菖蒲隆彦 Studio Iruka Jun Kawagoe, Junko Abe, Hinako Komatsu, Takahiko Ayame
こだま兼嗣 Kenji Kodama			神村幸子 Sachiko Kamimura
7	死神ガーブと呼ばれた男 The man called Garb the God of Death			荒木プロダクション 姫野美智　荒木賢一　佐々木聡　高鉾誠 Araki Production Michi Himeno, Kenichi Araki, Satoshi Sasaki, Makoto Takahoko
吉田しげつぐ Shigetsugu Yoshida			荒木伸吾 Shingo Araki
8	聖母マリヤの脱出作戦 Plan to free Holy Mary			AIC 太田博光　山中英治　兼島信幸 AIC Hiromitsu Outa, Eiji Yamanaka, Nobuyuki Kanejima
奥脇雅晴 Masaharu Okuwaki			高田三郎 Saburo Takada
9	コピー人間は高くつく Copied people are expensive			アニメーション501 小川博司　宇都木勇　鈴木大司 Animation 501 Hiroshi Ogawa, Isamu Utsugi, Hiroshi Suzuki
橋本三郎 Saburo Hashimoto			小川博司 Hiroshi Ogawa
10	秘宝は陰謀の匂い Hidden treasure smells of conspiracy			スタジオイルカ 川越ジュン　あべじゅん子　小松ひな子　菖蒲隆彦 Studio Iruka Jun Kawagoe, Junko Abe, Hinako Komatsu, Takahiko Ayame
こだま兼嗣 Kenji Kodama			神村幸子 Sachiko Kamimura
11	ルビーは血の汗を流す The ruby sweats blood			牧野行洋　ふくだ忠　古田詔治　あべどん　青村悦子　飯田つとむ Yukihiro Makino, Tadashi Fukuda, Shoji Furuta, Don Abe, Etsuko Aomura, Tsutomu Iida
板倉則子 Noriko Itakura			柳野龍男、尾鷲英俊 Tatsuo Ryuno, Hidetoshi Owashi
12	バルタン館のとりこ Prisoner of Baltan House			飯島正勝　長岡康史　伊藤富士子　長崎重信　松原京子 Masakatsu Iijima, Yasuchika Nagaoka, Fujiko Ito, Shigenobu Nagasaki, Kyoko Matsubara
鍋島修 Osamu Nabeshima			松原京子 Kyoko Matsubara
13	悪のり変装曲 Variations on a bad joke			道下有希子　高田三郎　松本小百合　太田博光　斉藤真理子 Yukiko Michishita, Saburo Takada, Sayuri Matsumoto, Hiromitsu Outa, Mariko Saito
吉田しげつぐ Shigetsugu Yoshida			田中平八郎、高田三郎 Heihachiro Tanaka, Saburo Takada
14	誘拐ゲームはお好き Let's play the kidnapping game			小川博司　川崎博嗣　宇都木勇　阿部どん　鈴木大司　飯田つとむ Hiroshi Ogawa, Hirotsugu Kawasaki, Isamu Utsuki, Don Abe, Hiroshi Suzuki, Tsutomu Iida
橋本三郎 Saburo Hashimoto			小川博司、尾鷲英俊 Hiroshi Ogawa, Hidetoshi Owashi
15	殺しが静かにやってくる Death comes quietly			飯島正勝　長岡康史　伊藤富士子　長崎重信　道下有希子　高田三郎 Masakatsu Iijima, Yasuchika Nagaoka, Fujiko Ito, Shigenobu Nagasaki, Yukiko Michishita, Saburo Takada
亀垣一 Hajime Kamegaki
16	黄金のリンゴには毒がある Golden apples are poisonous			スタジオイルカ 神村幸子　川越ジュン　あべじゅん子　菖蒲隆彦 Studio Iruka Sachiko Kamimura, Jun Kawagoe, Junko Abe, Takahiko Ayame
こだま兼嗣 Kenji Kodama			神村幸子 Sachiko Kamimura
17	結婚するって本当ですか Are you really getting married?			田中平八郎　高田三郎　松本小百合　太田博光　斎藤真理子 Heihachiro Tanaka, Saburo Takada, Sayuri Matsumoto, Hiromitsu Outa, Mariko Saito
曽我部孝 Takashi Sogabe			田中平八郎、高田三郎 Heihachiro Tanaka, Saburo Takada
18	ショータイムは死の香り Showtime smells like death			古田詔治　川崎博嗣　青海房子　あべどん　菊池通隆　ふくだ忠 Shoji Furuta, Hirotsugu Kawasaki, Fusako Oume, Don Abe, Michitaka Kikuchi, Tadashi Fukuda
青木悠三 Yuzo Aoki			柳野龍男、尾鷲英俊 Tatsuo Ryuno, Hidetoshi Owashi
19	裏切りの荒野を走れ Run across the wasteland of betrayal			スタジオイルカ 神村幸子　川越ジュン　あべじゅん子　菖蒲隆彦 Studio Iruka Sachiko Kamimura, Jun Kawagoe, Junko Abe, Takahiko Ayame
こだま兼嗣 Kenji Kodama			神村幸子 Sachiko Kamimura
20	過去を消した男 The man with no past			長岡康史　長崎重信　伊藤富士子　越智一裕　道下有希子　山下将仁 Yasuchika Nagaoka, Shigenobu Nagasaki, Fujiko Ito, Kazuhiro Ochi, Yukiko Michishita, Masahito Yamashita
鍋島修 Osamu Nabeshima		飯島正勝 Masakatsu Iijima	松原京子、本橋秀之 Kyoko Matsubara, Hideyuki Motohashi
21	さらば黄金伝説 Farewell, legendary gold			ふくだ忠　阿部どん　飯田つとむ　川崎博嗣　北川美樹　佐藤真人 Tadashi Fukuda, Don Abe, Tsutomu Iida, Hirotsugu Kawasaki, Miki Kitagawa, Masato Sato
甲賀電 Kogaden		荻原亨 Ryo Ogiwara	尾鷲英俊 Hidetoshi Owashi
22	ダイヤに炎は似合わない Flames don't suit diamonds			飯島正勝　牧野行洋　道下有希子　古田詔治　北川美樹　佐藤真人 Masakatsu Iijima, Yukihiro Makino, Yukiko Michishita, Shoji Furuta, Miki Kitagawa, Masato Sato
曽我部孝 Takashi Sogabe			柳野龍男 Tatsuo Ryuno
23	ベイルート移動銀行強奪作戦 Beirut moving bank heist plan			アニメーション501 鈴木大司　宇都木勇　中矢卓　新井淑子 Hiroshi Suzuki, Isamu Utsuki, Taku Nakaya, Yoshiko Arai
小川博司 Hiroshi Ogawa
24	友よ深く眠れ Sleep deeply, my friend			長岡康史　伊藤富士子　飯島正勝　道下有希子　北川美樹　佐藤真人 Yasuchika Nagaoka, Fujiko Ito, Masakatsu Iijima, Yukiko Michishita, Miki Kitagawa, Masato Sato
亀垣一 Hajime Kamegaki			本橋秀之 Hideyuki Motohashi
25	俺たちは天使じゃない We ain't no angels			OHプロダクション ふくだ忠　阿部どん　飯田つとむ　川崎博嗣 Oh Production Tadashi Fukuda, Don Abe, Tsutomu Iida, Hirotsugu Kawasaki
甲賀電 Kogaden		荻原亨 Ryo Ogiwara	尾鷲英俊 Hidetoshi Owashi
26	ニューヨークの幽霊 Ghost of New York			柳野龍男　佐藤真人　青海房子　北川美樹 Tatsuo Ryuno, Masato Sato, Fusako Oume, Miki Kitagawa
青木悠三 Yuzo Aoki			青木悠三、柳野龍男 Yuzo Aoki, Tatsuo Ryuno
27	暗号名はアラスカの星 Codeword: Alaskan star			山下将仁　柳野龍男　道下有希子　北川美樹　青梅房子　佐藤真 Masahito Yamashita, Tatsuo Ryuno, Yukiko Michishita, Miki Kitagawa, Fusako Oume, Makoto Sato
ケン･タロウ Taro Ken		荻原露光 Roko Ogiwara	青木悠三 Yuzo Aoki
28	アラスカの星は地獄への報酬 Alaska's stars are payment from hell			道下有希子　飯島正勝　佐藤真人　細谷満　北川美樹　三浦嘉友 Yukiko Michishita, Masakatsu Iijima, Masato Sato, Mitsuru Hosotani, Miki Kitagawa, Yoshitomo Miura
荻原露光 Roko Ogiwara			浪花京子 Kyoko Naniwa
29	月へハネムーンに行こう Let's go on a honeymoon to the moon			スタジオユニコーン 森中正春　浜野裕治 Studio Unicorn Masaharu Morinaka, Yuji Hamano
荻原露光 Roko Ogiwara			森中正春 Masaharu Morinaka
30	カクテルの名は復讐 The name of the cocktail is revenge			山崎理　柳野龍男　曽我部孝　青梅房子　蒲木伸男　佐久間清明 Osamu Yamasaki, Tatsuo Ryuno, Takashi Sogabe, Fusako Oume, Nobuo Kamaki, Kiyoaki Sakuma
曽我部孝 Takashi Sogabe			青木悠三、柳野龍男 Yuzo Aoki, Tatsuo Ryuno
31	逆転 逆転 また逆転 One turn of events after another			OHプロダクション ふくだ忠　阿部どん　飯田つとむ　川崎博嗣 OH Production Tadashi Fukuda, Don Abe, Tsutomu Iida, Hirotsugu Kawasaki
甲賀電 Kogaden		飯田つとむ Tsutomu Iida	尾鷲英俊 Hidetoshi Owashi
32	1000万ドルの鍵 The $10-million key			柳野龍男　曽我部孝　青梅房子　佐藤真人　道下有希子　北川美樹 Tatsuo Ryuno, Takashi Sogabe, Fusako Oume, Masato Sato, Yukiko Michishita, Miki Kitagawa
鍋島修 Osamu Nabeshima		飯田つとむ Tsutomu Iida	松原京子 Kyoko Matsubara
33	天才少年の危険な遊び Dangerous games of a boy genius			柳野龍男　佐藤真人　青梅房子　道下有希子　北川美樹　飯島正勝 Tatsuo Ryuno, Masato Sato, Fusako Oume, Yukiko Michishita, Miki Kitagawa, Masakatsu Iijima
荻原露光 Roko Ogiwara			柳野龍男、曽我部孝 Tatsuo Ryuno, Takashi Sogabe
34	マンハッタン･クライシス Manhattan Crisis			OHプロダクション ふくだ忠　阿部どん　飯田つとむ　川崎博嗣 OH Production Tadashi Fukuda, Don Abe, Tsutomu Iida, Hirotsugu Kawasaki
甲賀電 Kogaden		飯田つとむ Tsutomu Iida	尾鷲英俊 Hidetoshi Owashi
35	ターゲットは白銀の果てに The target at the far edge of the snow			森中正春　曽我部孝　浜野裕治　佐藤真人　道下有希子　北川美樹 Masaharu Morinaka, Takashi Sogabe, Yuji Hamano, Masato Sato, Yukiko Michishita, Miki Kitagawa
曽我部孝 Takashi Sogabe			森中正春、青木悠三 Masaharu Morinaka, Yuzo Aoki
36	鷲の舞い降りる時 When the eagle descends			柳野龍男　大森利之　古田詔治　長谷川仁　町田由美　斉藤弘行 Tatsuo Ryuno, Toshiyuki Omori, Shoji Furukawa, Hitoshi Hasegawa, Yumi Machida, Hiroyuki Saito
中野一 Hajime Nakano		荻原露光 Roko Ogawara	北原匠、柳野龍男 Takumi Kitahara, Tatsuo Ryuno
37	父っつあん大いに怒る Pops gets really mad			丸山政次　佐藤真人　山岸宏　道下有希子　北川美樹　菖蒲隆彦 Masatsugu Maruyama, Masato Sato, Hiroshi Yamagishi, Yukiko Michishita, Miki Kitagawa, Takahiko Ayame
荻原露光 Roko Ogawara			小林勝利、曽我部孝 Masatoshi Kobayashi, Takashi Sogabe
38	俺を愛したレティシア Leticia who loved me			大森利之　佐藤真人　長谷川仁　道下有希子　町田由美　菖蒲隆彦 Toshiyuki Omori, Masato Sato, Hitoshi Hasegawa, Yukiko Michishita, Yumi Machida, Takahiko Ayame
鍋島修 Osamu Nabeshima		飯島正勝 Masakatsu Iijima	北原匠、青木悠三 Takumi Kitagawa, Yuzo Aoki
39	ライバルに黄金を Gold to the rival			OHプロダクション ふくだ忠　阿部どん　飯田つとむ　川崎博嗣 OH Production Tadashi Fukuda, Don Abe, Tsutomu Iida, Hirotsugu Kawasaki
甲賀電 Kogaden		飯田つとむ Tsutomu Iida	尾鷲英俊 Hidetoshi Owashi
40	一枚のお宝で大混戦 Free-for-all over a single piece of treasure			草間アート 柳野龍男　古田詔治 Kusama Art Tatsuo Ryuno, Shoji Yoshida
曽我部孝 Takashi Sogabe			柳野龍男 Tatsuo Ryuno
41	戒厳令の夜 Night of martial order			長谷川仁　町田由美　牟田清司　道下有希子　菖蒲隆彦　佐藤真人 Hitoshi Hasegawa, Yumi Machida, Seiji Muta, Yukiko Michishita, Takahiko Ayame, Masato Sato
荻原露光 Roko Ogiwara			尾鷲英俊 Hidetoshi Owashi
42	ピラミッドの保険金を奪え Grab the pyramid insurance money			スタジオぎゃろっぷ 山内昇寿郎　中矢卓　松岡秀明　田中二郎 Studio Gallop Toshio Yamauchi, Taku Nakaya, Hideaki Matsuoka, Jiro Tanaka
飯島正勝 Masakatsu Iijima		戯家六夫 Mutuso Giga	関町北三 Kitami Sekimachi
43	さらばシンデレラ Farewell to Cinderella			OHプロダクション ふくだ忠　阿部どん　飯田つとむ　川崎博嗣 OH Production Tadashi Fukuda, Don Abe, Tsutomu Iida, Hirotsugu Kawasaki
甲賀電 Kogaden		飯田つとむ Tsutomu Iida	尾鷲英俊 Hidetoshi Owashi
44	ボクたちのパパは泥棒 Our dad's a thief			大森利之　道下有希子　長谷川仁　佐藤真人　町田由美 菖蒲隆彦 Toshiyuki Omori, Yukiko Michishita, Hitoshi Hasegawa, Masato Sato, Yumi Machida, Takahiko Ayame
亀垣一 Hajime Kamegaki		飯島正勝 Masakatsu Iijima	井上昭子 Shoko Inoue
45	コンゲームに乾杯 Salud to the con game			佐藤真人　佐藤雪絵　道下有希子　井上昭子　菖蒲隆彦　長岡康史 Masato Sato, Yukie Sato, Yukiko Michishita, Shoko Inoue, Takahiko Ayame, Yasuchika Nagaoka
飯島正勝 Masakatsu Iijima			井上昭子 Shoko Inoue
46	俺の翼はスクラップ My wings are scrap			スタジオぎゃろっぷ 小野隆哉　西島義隆　小西洋子　梅津美幸 Studio Gallop Takaya Ono, Yoshitaka Nishijima, Yoko Konishi, Miyuki Umetsu
高本宣弘 Nobuhiro Takagi			辻初樹 Hatsuki Tsuji
47	一枚の迷画 A famous painting			兵頭敬　柳野龍男　高橋明信　古田詔治　須貝美佳 Takashi Hyodo, Tatsuo Ryuno, Akinobu Takahashi, Shoji Furuta, Mika Sugai
河島三郎 Saburo Kawashima			柳野龍男 Tatsuo Ryuno
48	ハディスの涙 Hadis's tears			菖蒲隆彦　柳野龍男　宇都宮智　長岡康史　道下有希子　飯島正勝 Takahiko Ayame, Tatsuo Ryuno, Satoru Utsunomiya, Yasuchika Nagaoka, Yukiko Michishita, Masakatsu Iijima
奥脇雅晴 Masaharu Okuwaki			青木悠三 Yuzo Aoki
49	父っつあんが養子になった日 The day pops was adopted			川崎博嗣　福田忠　あべどん　飯田つとむ　高坂希太郎　清水洋 Hirotsugu Kawasaki, Tadashi Fukuda, Don Abe, Tsutomu Iida, Kitaro Kosaka, Hiroshi Shimizu
甲賀電 Kogaden		飯田つとむ Tsutomu Iida	尾鷲英俊 Hidetoshi Owashi
50	原潜イワノフの抹殺指令 Order to destroy nuclear submarine Ivanov			柳野龍男　青木悠三　菖蒲隆彦　柳田勤　高坂希太郎　尾鷲英俊 Tatsuo Ryuno, Yuzo Aoki, Takahiko Ayame, Tsutomu Yagita, Kitaro Kosaka, Hidetoshi Owashi
青木悠三 Yuzo Aoki		荻原露光 Roko Ogiwara	青木悠三 Yuzo Aoki

A selection of random images from the series: