Finally, the original Lupin III manga

Finally, the original Lupin III manga


Chapter 9

Finally we reach where it all began. I’ve referenced Monkey Punch’s original manga, which ran from 1967 to 1969, here and there throughout these reviews, but mostly through reputation or decontextualized snippets I found online—I did not manage to get my hands on one for reference until my most recent reviews, in late October. All I knew of the comic was its reputation: energetic, sketchy, with a slapsticky sense of humor and on the problematic side of risqué. While in basic outline a lot of that may be true, the actual comic was nothing like, and far beyond, what I imagined.

It starts with the look—while it evolves over the course of the series, early on, especially, the manga has a dark, grayscale tone—not just dark skies and dark rooms but shaded curves of faces and bodies and finely-textured fabrics: Zenigata makes his first appearance—hatless!—in a meticulously-textured herringbone sportcoat, with lines spaced so finely it actually registers as brown on the black-and-white page. There’s ample use of ink wash, too. Many of the stories start out with expansive, vertiginous landscape paintings, compressing to labyrinths of closed rooms or narrow forest roads as the stories progress. You’re peering into a hidden valley, watching something secretive, something you maybe shouldn’t be seeing. Monkey Punch also has a tendency to draw from odd perspectives, furthering the feeling that you’re peaking in.


Chapter 1

That’s not to say the series is naturalistic—Monkey Punch happily reshapes bodies and spaces for emphasis. And not every page is so richly textured—even in the first chapter he takes a break from this style for something sketchier, and the color becomes more black-and-white as the series goes, ending on a very finely-lined style (I wonder if that might be the result of assistants by the end as well). It conveys much the same character, though—not just because of the shared style but because the more sketched-out panels share some of the same rumpled-by-action look. Even if these panels lack the gradations and texture of his more elaborate ones, Monkey Punch tends to pack them (and he has some rather ingenious panel-packing on pages) with activity.

That actually can end up a liability. While comics allow for a more fluid storytelling logic, the rotating parade of similar-looking villains and girls, frequent use of disguises, and literally explosive twists push some Lupin III chapters beyond comprehensibility—that extra breathing room afforded by the “Green Jacket” series’s 24-minute length was much needed (more on adaptation below). Just as often, though, plot and medium are better matched—the short chapters mean that we get a satisfying piece of the action that does not overstay its welcome (avoiding the sort of artificial extension that plagued the “Red Jacket” series—often a manga chapter will just be adapted into the first act).


Chapter 37

Strange, then, that when we actually get an origin story for Lupin III in volumes three and four, and it’s languid, decadent, and almost Aubrey Beardsley-esque. It’s also unique in that it features the original Arsène Lupin, though in very different form than the gentleman-cambrioleur of Maurice Leblanc. Degeneracy has set in—he is old and infirm, confined to a courtesan-filled bed in a a treasure-filled mansion. Jeune Arsène III wanders the halls, surrounded by supple women, paging through books as Arsène I waits for him either to grow into his footsteps or die. Arsène I is not much of a family man—it is implied Arsène II was killed when he failed one of his father’s self-serving tests, and, given the ultimatum he gives his grandson, may well have butchered him for new organs. Thematically, we are quite distant from Leblanc. Young Lupin III does earn his grandfather’s favor, though, and is rewarded with a book—Lupin I’s manual (a device which would occasionally pop up in the shows), which in his grandson’s hands makes him richer than the rest of Lupin’s heirs.

Despite the strangeness of Lupin’s origin and apparent The first two chapters, on the other hand, tend to roughly follow the outline of LeBlanc’s first two Lupin stories. First we have a big soirée that takes place in a setting emblematic of the times: for LeBlanc’s Lupin that was a new steamship, whereas for Monkey Punch’s Lupin it’s at a college party. Youth culture is in, Japan’s developing and becoming more educated, and even if it was not a direct inspiration it’s hard not to see some of T. Hayashida’s Take Ivy in a lot of the menswear (even Lupin wears the most American of shirts, the button-down collar). College is also a hotspot for technological advancement and changing sexual mores, both of which feature. The first story actually has some of the most shocking sexual content of the entire manga (I was not entirely sure about continuing on), but Lupin himself isn’t involved, only revealing himself to swoop in—and get caught—at the end, again paralleling the first of LeBlanc’s stories.


Chapter 9

The tactic of Lupin gaining the audience’s sympathy by being less bad than his opponents, then, starts at the beginning—indeed, it is part of Lupin’s whole raison d’être from day one. It also, as in the “Green Jacket” series, takes a while for Lupin-as-thief to crystallize. Initially the stories are very, very Bondian—Lupin steals and deals almost exclusively in state secrets and advanced weaponry early on, and at one point even works under contract for the government. They’re also the only time where the Lupin manga seems to have a political edge, including the first germs of Lupin’s well-established anti-proliferation streak. If there’s any particular politics, though, it’s a sort of anarchism, favoring mercenary thieves, private eyes, assorted double-crossers over officially-sanctioned members of the military-industrial complex, connected mobsters, and of course the police.

Of course, like his literary progenitor, Lupin is captured by the police in his first outing. Monkey Punch follows up on Leblanc’s clever narrative choice, clueing us in early that we whether their Lupin gets caught won’t be the point of these stories, diffusing that tension early and sending Lupin to prison in the second chapter. Chapter two was also rather straightforwardly adapted into the fourth episode of the “Green Jacket” series, which serves as a nice point of comparison between the two storytelling techniques. Both follow roughly the same story—an initial misdirection on Lupin’s part, a long interlude in prison featuring a visit from a monk, and a blackly comic escape. The focus on those middle sections is different, though. It’s more straightforwardly comic with the focus being on Lupin’s frustrations in prison, with a bit of classic anti-clericism as it’s revealed the monk sharing in Lupin’s fantasies.


Chapter 2

The monk still appears in the episode, but the joke here’s on his materialism, not his libido. He doesn’t visit Lupin, either, but Jigen goes in disguise, visiting Lupin out of concern and friendship. There are no sexual fantasies—this might be in part due to censorship (though that didn’t keep breasts and some light bondage out of the early part of the series). Instead we get a subplot of Fujiko trying to rescue Lupin, while denying to herself that she’s attracted to him.

This comparison is a bit lopsided, as neither Jigen nor Fujiko had made their first appearance in the manga yet. But the shift to animation led to a shift towards character nonetheless. Jigen is essentially just another body in the comic, and initially just one of many—in early volumes Lupin heads a large organization. Even though Jigen has been a static character since his first animated appeareance the 1960s—he’s even been, with one exception—played by the same guy, Kiyoshi Kobayashi, he’s nonetheless been rounded out, thanks in no small part to Kobayashi. Jigen doesn’t change, but he does have facets and a definite character beyond his role as hired help and sounding board for Lupin.


Chapter 3

Fujiko’s case is more complex. Mine Fujiko features in chapters three and four, procedes to Miss Futen, P.I. in Chapter Ten, and then a series of different women, all named Fujiko (with some unnamed ones in between, likely), with their acquaintance and precise role in the story rebooting with every chapter or arc. The modest emotional arc Fujiko got over the first half of the first series never develops in the manga—“An Assassin Sings the Blues,” where that arc culminates, is actually based on a manga chapter. But the sentiment of the story feels out of place in the manga, whereas it feels a natural culmination in the show.

But that out-of-place feeling also reflects the benefit of rebooting Fujiko’s character with each sortie. The Fujikos aren’t like Bond girls, mostly-interchangeable beauties—she’s a definite character, and while Fujiko in the manga is the most frequently-appearing female figure she’s not everygirl (as she often is in animated Lupin). Of all the characters (even Zenigata) she’s the closest thing Lupin has to a real rival or partner, someone able to operate at, or above, his level. That means they have a complex relationship, with neither ever gaining an upper hand over the other for long. The reboots are a means not of running the experiment over again and seeing what happens—maybe it will be love, more often it will be a swift kick to the nuts.


Chapter 4

That complexity even comes about in terms of gender roles: at the end of her first story, Fujiko tells Lupin that, when she gains control of her mark’s company, she’ll hire Lupin as her secretary and engage in a sordid twist. The role-reversal even gets played out literally, since Fujiko successfully disguises herself as Lupin at points. While it’s certainly true that Monkey Punch has a thing for eroticized sexual violence (though not typically carried out by Lupin in this run, but still caveat lector), in terms of story dynamics many Lupin chapters feel significantly more modern than entries in the Bond series.

That episodic, experimental nature of the chapters is one of the manga’s great pleasures: it’s possible to go from spy story to heist to gothic horror to melodrama to picaresque adventure in a single volume. There are a handful of two-chapter stories, and a few longer arcs based on a particular setting. Lupin’s childhood is one; another has Lupin become a college student, maybe playing to the readership base. There’s also an interminable arc in Volume 7 about Lupin as a junior salaryman (he steals…his office-mate’s ideas on increasing productivity!) that made me give up the manga for a few months, but luckily Lupin was back in fine outlaw form by Volume 8.

There is not any broad narrative or character arc (such as Fujiko’s half-series arc in “Green Jacket,” or Lupin’s whole-series arc over that same series and The Castle of Cagliostro), though things do tend to crystallize a bit as the series draws to a close. Lupin’s world contracts—while in Volume 1 he is heir to a vast and well-staffed criminal organization, as time goes on he seems to act more as an independent actor, and by the end we’re basically in series mode, with Jigen, Goemon and Fujiko all playing their typical roles. By the final volume the stories have converged on comic novelty thefts. Even the style is different, more thinly-lined and cartoonish (maybe from exhaustion—Monkey Punch put out 109 chapters in two years).


Chapter 104

Nonetheless, if there’s anything we should take away from the manga it is this: in terms of story potential for further Lupin, animated or otherwise, we have still barely scratched the surface of potential stories or directions. Indeed, it’s little surprise that A Woman Called Fujiko, for instance bears both an aesthetic and thematic resemblance to some of the overlooked aspects of the original (the rich shading and tinges of gothic horror) while updating the themes for a modern audience and finally giving Fujiko—so often Lupin’s equal in terms of skill—a focus as well. While I have to admit that (the “Red Jacket” reviews especially) made me a bit tired of Lupin, all I have to do is crack open that first volume to get excited again.

Recommended?
Certainly—these are out of print and currently very, very hard to find online (if they are still there), but they’re great quick-and-fun reads, lots of fun to look at, and usually inexpensive (I don’t think, including shipping, I paid more than $6 per any volume, though given their rarity occasionally people try to sell them for as much as $90 on abebooks). The first volume might be the best—the fact that Lupin hasn’t been strictly defined yet makes it all the more exciting, and there’s something extra in the art as Monkey Punch tries to prove himself. Vols. 8-10 are also a sustained high point, where Monkey Punch has really gotten into the rhythm of storytelling without getting fatigued. Vols. 2-4 and 6 are good, Vol. 14 has its charms—the salaryman chapters in Vol. 7 are the only parts I truly found a slog. I haven‘t read Vols. 5, or 11-13.

Stray Observation
There isn’t really any mechanical fetishism here—Yasuo Ōtsuka and, later, Hayao Miyazaki were responsible for all of that—there isn’t even mention of Lupin’s Walther, which became a pretty standard piece of Lupin’s outfit. Lupin doesn’t drive anything regularly, but there’s definitely a preference for big, powerful American cars, in contrast to the smaller, more mechanically sophisticated European ones of the series (though in the pilot film and “Green Jacket” opening sequence there’s a Buick Riviera, which is more typical of the sort of cars implied by Monkey Punch’s art).

There is also, surprisingly, not much in terms of globe-hopping—almost the entire manga run seems to take place with Japan, with the odd mention of or trip to nearby fictional Pacific (vaguely Indonesian-seeming) islands.