Continuity & Consistency: Lupin in the Aughts

Episode 0: First Contact



Lupin’s been so durable over the decades, in part, because there is no expectation of continuity from the series. There’s no deep canon of continuing story lines to catch up on, no need to worry about the mechanics of character age or temporal setting, a minimal supporting cast beyond the regulars and most importantly no need for major, world-clearing reboots. By getting rid of continuity Lupin achieves consistency.

That lack of continuity and strong sense of consistency turned out to be a bit of a curse—it precludes the possibility of any real growth in the characters (there’s no reward for growth when everything will be reset next time, so why bother?) and, in practice, has more often served as an excuse to tell similar stories over again rather an excuse to try something radically new. This dynamic is most obvious in the yearly specials produced from 1989 through 2013, which as a whole left Lupin running in place.

Episode 0 is a clear stand-out among these specials in that it manages to actually go somewhere. It does this not by moving forward but by resetting the baseline—it’s an origin story for the Lupin gang, giving the characters’ relationships a chance to grow into their familiar dynamic. Episode 0 doesn’t really lend itself to analysis and is more like a delicious cheeseburger (or should I say HAMBARGAH!)—it may lack thematic nutrition, but it’s put together well and hits the spot perfectly. It’s a well-made heist-adventure, and while that’s “all” it is it’s perfect at what it sets out to be.

This is only possible, of course, because Episode 0 makes the rare break in continuity. An odd side-effect of Lupin’s lack of continuity is that a lot of it holds together fairly well (if we ignore the animated agelessness)—very little is self-contradictory because very little carries over. Episode 0 is a definite break (it’s a bit hedged by a framing device, but it’s strongly implied that we are getting the actual origin ) with one of the few places we see continuity in the Lupin franchise: the original “Green Jacket” series. While we never see Lupin and Jigen’s first meeting, we do have a bit of a mini-arc with Fujiko and Lupin’s relationship, the first encountert with Goemon and his turn from enemy to friend, and on a broader scale the change in Lupin’s personality which gets confirmed in The Castle of Cagliostro (not to mention smaller bits of continuity such as Zenigata accurately keeping track of the number of times he’s caught Lupin or Lupin’s shift in cars). Episode 0 is only possible because it doesn’t take that as canon, and why should it? It debuted in 2002, pre-Hulu, pre-Crunchyroll, pre-whole series torrents. The original series was ancient history, and it was time for a new origin consistent with the tone aesthetic of the other yearly TV specials.

Episode 0 has a fitting substitute for continuity, though: reference. A number of little moments—the flaming duel between Lupin and Goemon, an homage to “Introducing Goemon XIII”—let the attentive audience know that the past is not forgotten and acknowledging that this is, at its core, a similar sort of story. Most usefully, though, is that these references are unobtrusive. The film doesn’t lean on them for meaning and they don’t detract from the action.

Recommended? HAMBARGAH!

Stray Observation
•  While, for the most part, the music consists of reused and lightly reworked Ohno themes and cheesy synth stings, we do get something unique—bossa versions of classic Lupin themes. One of Ohno’s first gigs was as a backing musician to Sonia Rosa, a singer who, at the tail-end of the bossa nova movement in Brazil, relocated in Japan, and she provides vocals here. The themes translate surprisingly well to the new, spare acoustic setting and Portuguese lyrics.

Green vs. Red



In Green vs. Red, on the other hand, reference is essentially all there is. This indulgence is justified, though, since it was released specifically for the fortieth anniversary of the Lupin franchise. And, like The Fuma Conspiracy, it was a video release, not a TV special—this granted it a more generous animation budget, making it one of the best looking (if not the best looking) installments between Fuma and our decade’s Lupin renaissance. Much as Fuma was a chance to try something different (new voice cast, meticulously detailed local setting), Green vs. Red offered the opportunity to do something different, too—to explode assumptions about the way Lupin worked.

The operative assumption of Green vs. Red is that there is one continuity, but multiple Lupins. A globe’s worth of them descends on Tokyo after one gets caught stealing a “lad’s mag” from a convenience store, embarrassment of embarrassments. The first twenty minutes or so is ingenious and energetic, but the film quickly retreats from its dizzying premise. Zenigata, recently returned to his home jurisdiction, there is only one real Lupin, or at least one at a time. And then he sees two in a face off on a bridge, one wearing green, the other wearing red.

It’s an exciting start, but the film never really manages to make it work from there. A major reason is that the new Lupin for the film, the green jacketed Yasuo, doesn’t really seem up to it. He’s just frustrated with his life and happens to work next to an antiquarian book store, whose aged owner is strongly implied to be the original green jacket Lupin. He has chutzpah, but it comes across more from desperation from competence, and his aged predecessor seems to be doing all the legwork. While there’s definitely an attempt at meta-commentary about Lupin and escapism, Yasuo’s character’s a better warning against escapism.

This theme would get partly reused in A Woman Called Fujiko, but there it was embedded in a broader critique of midcentury (and contemporary?) standards of femininity and a full-throated defense of Fujiko’s sometimes controversial character, allowing her to claim her role next to Lupin as a personification of human freedom (borrow Monkey Punch description of Lupin). And, while there are metafictional themes in A Woman Called Fujiko, they remain firmly in the story space. In Green vs. Red they break thorugh—Yasuo listens to The Castle of Cagliostro soundtrack on repeat, for instance.

Yasuo’s awkward enough as a protagonist, and introducing awkward story mecvhanics does not help. Neither does the straightforward inclusion of Lupin’s gang—if Lupins are shifting (and it’s strongly implied we meet the original Lupin III), how is his gang so stable? While a singular Zenigata works (and Zenigata’s role—and Gorō Naya’s acting—are among the best things about about this special), but with the gang there’s no reason to stick with the animated precedent. For an anniversary film a more fluid approach to supporting characters would be appropriate. For instance, in the original comic Lupin met a series of Fujikos, a joke on Monkey Punch’s preferred female type and the interchangeability of spy-fi femmes fatales (ironically, of all the gang members, Fujiko’s character works best in the special: her shifting allegiance from Lupin to Lupin makes the most sense, and the combination of voice actor Eiko Masuyama’s audible aging and the fact that we mostly Fujiko in the shadows gives her the air of someone who’s experienced, but not truly old). Only Zenigata, clearly older (both in the animation and in Gorō Naya’s voice), makes sense here, and one of the bright spots of Green vs. Red is that it serves a showcase for him.

Green vs. Red’s failing is in trying to have it both ways: it wants continuity, but it doesn’t want to break that nice, easy consistency that had been built up over the decades. There’s an abundance of hedging—the film’s climax is intentionally confusing, mainly because it’s meant to provide the audience with whatever escape hatch it wants. Yasuo’s the new Lupin, the old familiar red jacketed Lupin from previous specials bested him, whatever, it doesn’t matter. Green vs. Red had the chance to be a thrilling one-off, but by invoking a Lupin continuity it negated that possibility. Everything had to be reset for the next installment.

Recommended? This is hard, given that there’s a lot of ingenious stuff in Green vs. Red but it doesn’t assemble into a decent movie. I’d follow the great slettlune’s advice and watch it you’d watch a music video, not like you’d watch a film.

Stray Observation:
• Although there’s a sort of fandom dichotomy between “green jacket” and “red jacket” Lupin—the former leaning more towards gentleman, the latter more towards cambrioleur—that does not play a role in Green vs. Red (and that dichotomy doesn’t really hold, either).

• The televised Lupin special this year was The Elusiveness of Fog which is more subtle look back on the franchise, though also deeply flawed.

Next week we delve a bit more into the “why” of Lupin with an overview of Blood Seal-Eternal Mermaid, which marked the beginning of the end of the conventional yearly Lupin TV specials.