Lupin III/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


  • Alternate Character Interpretation: Manga!Lupin not only regularly scores with Fujiko but is an outright rapist whose capers can be anywhere in the moral alignment and committed for any reason; Anime!Lupin is an unsuccessful Handsome Lech whose crimes tend to be either harmless or against AssholeVictims; and Cagliostro!Lupin a Chivalrous Pervert securely on the side of good.
  • And the Fandom Rejoiced: The green jacket series is FINALLY coming to our shores next year. And who better to do the job than Discotek?
    • A new anime series starring Fujiko is airing in April. Over 20 years since the Pink Jacket series ended!
      • What's more, Takeshi Koike will be doing the character designs and the style will be more in line with Monkey Punch's original manga.
  • Antagonist in Mourning: In Mystery of the Fuma Clan, Zenigata has actually quit his job and become a Buddhist monk because he believes Lupin to be dead. When asked why, he says that if he prays enough, Lupin may be reincarnated as a law-abiding man. Possibly a Crowning Moment of Heartwarming.
    • And in "The Last Job", when Zenigata is presumed dead Lupin spends a moment or two looking depressed before going off to do his thing again.
  • Non Sequitur Scene: The opening motorcycle chase sequence from The Legend of the Gold of Babylon gets a big "WTF" from a lot of first-time viewers.
  • Crowning Music of Awesome: Has its own page.
  • Die for Our Ship: Fujiko suffers this at the hands of fangirls sometimes.
  • Discontinuity: Both the producers and some of the fans would like to ignore the pink-jacket era (consisting of the third anime series and Legend of the Gold of Babylon) altogether.
  • Estrogen Brigade / Periphery Demographic: Despite the series clearly being a seinen, the sometimes unintentional Ho Yay moments between the lead males in the anime entries manage to attract a growing female fanbase.
  • Italians Love Lupin III
  • Les Yay: It is a seinen, after all. A fairly light amount but it is there such as in the Columbus Files where Fujiko woke up in a bed belonging to a young woman by the name of Rosaria. After Rosaria explained to Fujiko about that Rosaria brought her here after she found Fujiko's unconscious body nearby but jokingly reassured her that "she didn't do anything to her". The episodes where they contain cults of scantly clad curvy women can occasionally give that vibe as well. Expecially when one of them try to seduce Fujiko... only to punch her in the stomach very hard when she refuse and point a gun at her.
  • Macekre/TheyJustDidntCare:
    • The Cliff Hanger laserdisc game, made using footage from The Castle of Cagliostro and Mystery of Mamo.
    • The Carl Macek dub of Castle of Cagliostro contains one of Macek's most infamously cheesy "translations": when Goemon slices off Lupin's burning clothing, "Once again I've cut a worthless object" becomes

Goemon: Should've worn an asbestos suit.

  • Memetic Mutation:
  • Memetic Outfit:
    • Lupin's jacket comes in three different colors; fans actually refer to series and movies by which color he's wearing.
    • The red jacket in particualar is the most recognized and often the most refrenced, often serving as a sort of shorthand Shout-Out to the series itself.
  • MST3K Mantra:
    • Having been in the hands of so many directors and writers throughout its 40+ year history, any real continuity between the films, TV episodes, and TV specials is pretty much nil, other than the most basic aspects of the characters and plot.
    • Even the original manga has this issue; Monkey Punch was known to set up stories in one chapter, only for him to abandon them completely by the next one, with not even a reference in the new story to what had happened before.
    • Hell, his original plan was to have "Fujiko Mine" be the name of every woman in the series. This resulted in Fujiko having no fewer than four origin stories within the first few volumes. Monkey Punch eventually got just as confused as everyone else and decided to just make Fujiko a single character.
  • Nightmare Fuel: In Goodbye Lady Liberty, the scene where Fujiko is forced into a possession ritual by the Three Masons sect might make your skin crawl.
  • Shout-Out: Almost every Lupin TV special or movie since the early '90s has involved some sort of homage or reference to Castle of Cagliostro or, in rarer cases, the Miyazaki Lupin III TV episodes—featuring similar situations or plot elements, derivative chase sequences, re-uses of title music, or recycled vehicle designs. Green vs. Red is a particularly egregious example—given that its entire raison d'être is to be referential to every single incarnation of Lupin that came before, spotting the references is practically a Drinking Game.
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