Goemon Week: 108 Zentetsuken’s Lament & 112 Danger! Goemon

108 Zentetsuken’s Lament



or, Iron Cutter Sword with Blues

Lupin’s character is multifaceted, and while different installments tend to emphasize different aspects of his character there’s always a little bit of him everywhere. Even when he’d deadly seriously a hint of goofiness shines through, even when he’s being heroic a bit of self-interest peaks in. He tries for sexy, but it can lead him to stupidity (more on that in the next episode). If there’s one side that’s been progressively deemphasized since that first episode of the original series, though, is his ruthlessness. Partly that’s due to to Yasuo Yamada’s voice—he does ruthlessness well, but there’s an inherent friendliness in his tone that the writers (smartly) took advantage of. But Partly that’s due to standards-and-practices—the sort of stories told on television had to be, more-or-less, family-friendly, which meant there was less use for a useless Lupin, and by the second series the focus shifted towards gadget-oriented heists and slapstick. In both our entries this week, though, something slipped through.

Lupin isn’t the focus of “Zentetsuken’s Lament,” but he does drive the action. Goemon, Lupin, and Jigen are on a late-winter vacation at an onsen. Jigen, again, proves himself the master of small pleasures (and manages to stay out of the episode’s action):



Lupin takes in the hot springs, and Goemon moodily sits by the sea, slashing at wave droplets and snowflakes. Goemon’s approached by a girl, Nami, who flirtatiously compliments him on being like a character from a samurai film, which opens Goemon up to some teasing from Lupin. So far Lupin’s still the personable goof, but there’s a hint of impropriety—the girl’s sixteen or seventeen, and while Goemon’s the youngest of the group I don’t think he’s necessarily that young.

And things get creepy, quickly. Nami is working for her grandfather, a swordsmith who wants to make a copy of Goemon’s iron-cutting sword, and he’s using his granddaughter to gather intelligence on Goemon. There’s a hint of incest—or at least an unusual amount of control—in the relationship between the two, and she tries to gain access to the sword by seducing Goemon. She goes to Lupin first, who quickly oversteps his bounds, and goes to Goemon the next night, stripping and telling Goemon about the previous night, to which Goemon responds by first drawing his sword against Nami, before realizing where the blame really lies and nearly sticking the sword there (see above).

The secret of Goemon’s sword, it turns out, is that it violates the laws of thermodynamics, keeping consistently warm. Mirroring Goemon’s motion, the swordsmith tests his ability to reproduce this by placing the sword against Nami’s—chest? breasts? the animators demur a bit on this point.

This is all pretty horrible. The swordsmith’s a nasty piece of work for putting Nami in this position, and Lupin’s terrible for trying to take advantage of her. And Goemon—the group’s superego—can’t win against the swordsmith, since every time he defeats him the swordsmith comes back with a new sword and a new challenge. The only way to defeat the swordsmith is to defeat him unfairly. Lupin tricks him by switching in Goemon’s sword, finally giving the swordsmith a (false) sense of satisfaction, allowing him to finally die.

Goemon’s own sense of fair play was only prolonging the conflict—you need someone willing to forgo the honorable course to defeat a dishonorable opponent, and Lupin provided that. There is a bit of a thrill in seeing the show return to its harder-edged, more amoral and exploitative roots. But it’s not comfortable viewing, either.

Recommended?
Though it has the benefit of standing out a bit from the series’s norm, “Zentetsuken’s Lament” doesn’t quite manage to pull it off—it doesn’t really know how to make the creepier elements work, resulting in the episode feel like it’s simultaneously like its stepping over the line and pulling its thematic punches, if that makes any sense. That makes it more a relic from the 1970s than the intense bit of pulp it clearly wanted to be.

Stray Observations
•  Yeah, I have no idea who the audience for Lupin III Part II was—a lot of adult content slips in but a lot seems mollified for family-level viewing, the humor’s frequently childish but the stories touch on more mature themes. I’m guessing adults with a slapstick sense of humor? I really wish I could figure out what its airtime was (I know the original series and the infamous Part III (“Pink Jacket”)aired during primetime, and Part IV (“Blue Jacket”) aired late-at-night, though from what I gather Hulu (Japan) was treated as the main venue.

•  Subtitles become noticeably worse in the fourth season. There are obvious typos and errors in English grammar, odd and inconsistent transliterations (“Nami” is called “Naomi” on wikipedia—I’m honestly not sure which is right), a complete loss of the ability to spell the odd French word that makes its way into dialogue, etc. A number of episode titles are also poorly translated, apparently taken a very direct, context-free approach. I’ll be using wikipedia’s somewhat looser but more accurate translations for these reviews, leaving Crunchyroll’s in the subtitles (episode numbers remain the same, so that shouldn’t be a problem).

112 Danger! Goemon

or, Goemon’s Close Call



Much like “Zentetsuken’s Lament,” this episode also capitalizes on the gap in personality between Goemon and Lupin. A pair of (apparently) Spanish assassins, Wolf and Rose, are after Lupin to make a name for themselves. They lure him with Goemon, who’s again resting at an onsen. He’s taken captive by Rose and Wolf—Rose enters the hot spring, a bashful Goemon (this is, evidently, his big weakness) backs away and into Wolf’s hands.

Goemon, then, spends most of the episode captured as a lure for Lupin, and he’s tortured for information by Wolf and Rose, hoping that he’ll reveal Lupin’s weakness. This lends the episode its infamy—we get a lot of Goemon being tortured (including dental torture), making this the most graphically violent of this series by a wide margin. <i>But</i> it’s also kind of gorgeous: Goemon is a very handsome man, and a number of his torture scenes have a similar beauty as Renaissance paintings of Christian martyrs. Early in the first series they toyed a bit with Fujiko-in-bondage imagery, but “Goemon’s Close Call” far outdoes that.

On the other hand we have Lupin, who provides an excellent mirror to Goemon. We first encounter him in a bath, too, but he’s not intimidated by female companionship but wanting it. There’s no way around this: this episode unambiguously features Lupin masturbating in the bathtub. Nothing’s said explicitly and there are enough suds, but there it is. If Goemon’s repressed Lupin’s oversexed.

The comically desperate aspect of Lupin’s sex drive is a pretty common theme (though it’s usually bowdlerized to wanting to “marry” Fujiko), but it’s actually handled uniquely well here. Usually in this series Lupin’s lust makes him stupid, and we’re primed to think that will be the case here. But Lupin never lets his lets his lust get the better of him—it’s there, but he even manages to use it to his advantage, making this one his best-characterized and well-balanced episodes. He’s lech, genius, prankster, and avenger, all without compromise.

It’s also one of the funniest episodes. Rather than pushing Jigen aside like in “Zentetsuken’s Lament” he’s used effectively here as Lupin’s foil and confidante, someone who’s able to call out Lupin while still being a reliable partner. Their dialogue, as written, could come across as sniping; as read, though, it comes across as two old friends able to see through their own BS.

While “Goemon’s Close Call” is famous for its big moments—and its conclusion is pretty damn operatic, too—as is often the case it’s the small details that elevate the episode from curiosity to classic.

Recommended?
Certainly—this episode is famous for the wrong reasons. It’s not the torture that makes it stand out but the fine character work. Although people often conflate “adult content” (stuff like violence and sex) with “mature content,” this manages to do both well.

Stray Observations
•  Goemon sings “YMCA” at one point in the episode. I don’t think there’s any intended connection between it and anything in the episode, but it’s a cute little reminder of Goemon’s relative youth compared to the other characters and that even someone as self-serious as Goemon is able to loosen up a bit, at least when he thinks nobody is looking.

•  Each season of Lupin has expanded the soundtrack, both thanks to regular additions to the music library from Yuji Ohno and additions from the films. The fourth season soundtrack stands out from the rest, though—it’s often a bit slower, a bit more melancholy, and aims more for jazz than fusion (probably inspired by Cagliostro’s score, snippets of which also pop up from time to time). Both of these episodes make excellent use of this new, moodier score.

•  Of all the weeks I chose to break the episodes’ order for thematic reasons, this is one of the few where there’s actually a bit of inter-episode continuity. In the previous episode, to be reviewed next week, Fujiko arrives makes her arrival in the episode in a balloon. Here, Lupin and Jigen use the same balloon as part of an escape plan.

Next week we devote to Lupin’s other loyal sidekick, Jigen, with two episodes where he takes the lead: 111 “Is the Invader Safe Open?” and 129 “In Jigen, I Saw the Gentleness of a Man’s Soul”.