Post by Jean Luc de Lemur on Mar 28, 2023 18:17:42 GMT -5
Emerging fully formed: Lupin Zero
Spoilers within, though major events is behind tags in Stray Obvservations
I was not planning on watching this. I was very, very disappointed with Part VI, and a bit part of that was that it seemed to be (with a few notable exceptions, mostly for bad), sort of juvenilized. Stories were more diagrammatic (and typical episodic Lupin isn’t that complex), the humor more childlike, with the crew either listlessly going through their paces or, more often, being shoved aside in favor of guest characters, in many cases minors. The idea of teen, high-school-attending Lupin, then, was the last thing I wanted to watch.
I saw someone complain online, though, about nudity in the new series and I got interested, not because I wanted to see nudity per se but because it indicated this series might not be what I expected it to be.
Plus it’s only six half-hour episodes long so why not give it a try?
It is a vast improvement over Part VI, and certainly feels far more a proper Lupin series. The change in setting is fairly radical—Lupin and Jigen are now high school students. Lupin starts, somewhat surprisingly, as a studious “poor little rich boy” with a mostly-absent father. Jigen is technically his classmate, but is perpetually absent and delinquent (he brought a gun to school!). The two form their bond on one of the few times Jigen’s in class and become partners in petty crime. Initially they’re more after thrills—sneaking into nightclubs, launching fireworks at ground level, stealing booze, petty robbery—than actual criminality. Lupin develops an innocent crush on Yoko, a connected nightclub singer, and an entry-point into a world of real danger.
There’s a lot of explicit nostalgia or meta-nostalgia in recent Lupin but by simply making it a prequel and setting it before the main series they’ve managed to sidestep the weight of references. There’s a good texture to the setting. The urban landscape in the background is clearly older and dingier than the than post-Olympic sheen of Tokyo-set Part I episodes. We hear period-appropriate pop-torch (don’t know the genre’s exact name) singing and the Part I-derived music (shorn of its late sixties eccentricity) that further helps place it in the past, too. The Americans presence is overt and helps drive the second half of the series. Lupin and Jigen’s heist to steel the Americans’ booze supply is one of the series’s highlights.
Plus this is one of the few times Lupin drives a recognizably Japanese car: Mazda’s first, the delightful R360.
Just as changing the background sidesteps a lot of the need to make overt references, it paradoxically reduced the pressure to change Lupin and Jigen. They are recognizably the “big” guys we know. Even the voice acting fits in seemlessly with previous iterations—I actually wonder whether this was partly a means of finding younger, less expensive talent to voice the leads going forward. Initially it’s a big relief, as I feared Japanese anime high school archetypes and antics.
There’s even a a fairly direct manga chapter adaptation. Lupin I invites his son to a deadly challenge with other thieves, the final prize to be awarded with morbid irony. While in the manga’s Lupin I has little connection to the original, here we get recognizable signifiers to Leblanc’s original, making his slide into decadence all the more explicit and a nice extra knife-twist (this is also where the nudity comes in—part of that decadence is accesorizing with cooing beauties elderly Hefner-style).
In keeping with the period the final heist is centered on a real American superweapon, the M65 atomic cannon. The ideological context around the cannon, the rebel group, and the military was clearly an attempt to make the show “smarter” that confuses “more stuff” for “more sophisticated.” Those final beats will be familiar, resembling any number of other action-filled Lupin finales but with too-many half-ideas, too many story threads, and too many characters to squeeze in. It ends up both too messy and too simple, with the worst simplifications reserved for our leads.
Lupin and Jigen’s recognizability, so helpful in helpful in letting us ease into the series, turns into a disadvantage. There’s no growth because they already are who they’ve always been. Plus from the start they lean a bit too hard into Lupin’s charismatic, superhero aspect, which feels out of place since in so much of Lupin—particularly early Lupin—he has so many moments of very human (very primate) weakness. If he’s not a bit goofy as a teen then…when? This problem really mushrooms in the finale.
Jigen reveals he’s already a contract killer living on his own. Lupin takes off his school uniform to reveal he’s wearing his mature green jacket getup underneath. Why can’t we see Jigen’s first kill and how it affects him? Why can’t we have a Lupin that’s still transitional, a bit awkward in his actions and looks? Leaning so hard into their heroic aspects so young—really for both of them, in their own ways—ends up quite jarring.
This comes out at its worst in the story’s treatment Lupin’s chaste crush Yoko. In the finale she inexplicably lets herself die with Lupin looking on. It’s classic fridging but it doesn’t even seem to have any effect on Lupin. Her death had neither strong internal motivation nor did it motivate anyone else. After their first experience of real violence Lupin and Jigen are unmoved and unchanged.
The best critique of Lupin Zero comes from within. Episode 3 and its manga source make clear that one needs to earn their title. Lupin Zero, though, is content to rely on birthright.
Recommended?
I’m going to say Inessential—that describes the end feeling of it all but also represents the median between two sets of episodes.
The three that do more to fulfill the premise, 1, 3, & 4 (the episodes aren’t named), are Recommended.
Those that don’t, 2, 5, & 6, are Not Recommended. I didn’t mention the second episode but it’s basically a cliché Lupin mediocre heist—just change the costumes and it could be filler in any other series. In that sense it presages the end but is unconnected with it.
Stray observations
• While I fully understand why they didn’t do this, the early sixties was something of a golden age for Japanese youth criminality so it can’t help but feel like a giant missed opportunity to show young Lupin in the context of genuine juvenile delinquency.
• It’s nice that they made Jigen the same age as Lupin. Kioyshi Kobayashi’s aging voice (and some of Jigen’s attitudes) drove him to full generation older than Lupin by Part V so the reversion is refreshing.
• I’m jealous of how young Jigen could pull of a maroon turtleneck without looking pretentious and a lavender one without looking feminine.
• I am the only person on the internet with no real opinion about the appropriate level of homosociality between Lupin and Jigen but
• Though Episode 4 was my favorite of the series it has one of the most egregious moments of uncharacteristic maturity. Instead of saying they drunk too much Lupin says they got drunk too young. That might be the lamest line in the entire franchise.
• Although Lupin II has rarely appeared in the franchise he’s always been, to my knowledge,
• In the first episode Yoko sings a song about how she wishes her crush were older. I couldn’t find any information on it but based on its non-appearance on the soundtracks (rights issues?) I think it’s a real period ballad. It’s one of the series’s best “textures.”
• I mentioned outfits above it would be interesting for Lupin to have a more period-correct, even Ivy-ish, look. Around this time Japanese youths wearing button-down collars and sportcoats were actually rounded up by the police—imagine Zenigata first encountering Lupin because of that.
• I’m pretty surprised we didn’t get even a wordless cameo from Zenigata. A quick reveal that he’s always been an old dude would have been fun.
• On the other hand I am extraordinarily grateful we didn’t get a young Fujiko.
• Although the music was almost certainly meant to be based on the Part I score from the beginning, Yuji Ohno is in very poor health so thoughts his way.
Next week (and I actually pre-wrote this one) we’ll tackle Lupin’s millennial—in the calendrical sense—showdown with one of his better rivals in Missed by a dollar. It also has a tiny Japanese car and pretty good music.
Spoilers within, though major events is behind tags in Stray Obvservations
I was not planning on watching this. I was very, very disappointed with Part VI, and a bit part of that was that it seemed to be (with a few notable exceptions, mostly for bad), sort of juvenilized. Stories were more diagrammatic (and typical episodic Lupin isn’t that complex), the humor more childlike, with the crew either listlessly going through their paces or, more often, being shoved aside in favor of guest characters, in many cases minors. The idea of teen, high-school-attending Lupin, then, was the last thing I wanted to watch.
I saw someone complain online, though, about nudity in the new series and I got interested, not because I wanted to see nudity per se but because it indicated this series might not be what I expected it to be.
Plus it’s only six half-hour episodes long so why not give it a try?
It is a vast improvement over Part VI, and certainly feels far more a proper Lupin series. The change in setting is fairly radical—Lupin and Jigen are now high school students. Lupin starts, somewhat surprisingly, as a studious “poor little rich boy” with a mostly-absent father. Jigen is technically his classmate, but is perpetually absent and delinquent (he brought a gun to school!). The two form their bond on one of the few times Jigen’s in class and become partners in petty crime. Initially they’re more after thrills—sneaking into nightclubs, launching fireworks at ground level, stealing booze, petty robbery—than actual criminality. Lupin develops an innocent crush on Yoko, a connected nightclub singer, and an entry-point into a world of real danger.
There’s a lot of explicit nostalgia or meta-nostalgia in recent Lupin but by simply making it a prequel and setting it before the main series they’ve managed to sidestep the weight of references. There’s a good texture to the setting. The urban landscape in the background is clearly older and dingier than the than post-Olympic sheen of Tokyo-set Part I episodes. We hear period-appropriate pop-torch (don’t know the genre’s exact name) singing and the Part I-derived music (shorn of its late sixties eccentricity) that further helps place it in the past, too. The Americans presence is overt and helps drive the second half of the series. Lupin and Jigen’s heist to steel the Americans’ booze supply is one of the series’s highlights.
Plus this is one of the few times Lupin drives a recognizably Japanese car: Mazda’s first, the delightful R360.
Just as changing the background sidesteps a lot of the need to make overt references, it paradoxically reduced the pressure to change Lupin and Jigen. They are recognizably the “big” guys we know. Even the voice acting fits in seemlessly with previous iterations—I actually wonder whether this was partly a means of finding younger, less expensive talent to voice the leads going forward. Initially it’s a big relief, as I feared Japanese anime high school archetypes and antics.
There’s even a a fairly direct manga chapter adaptation. Lupin I invites his son to a deadly challenge with other thieves, the final prize to be awarded with morbid irony. While in the manga’s Lupin I has little connection to the original, here we get recognizable signifiers to Leblanc’s original, making his slide into decadence all the more explicit and a nice extra knife-twist (this is also where the nudity comes in—part of that decadence is accesorizing with cooing beauties elderly Hefner-style).
In keeping with the period the final heist is centered on a real American superweapon, the M65 atomic cannon. The ideological context around the cannon, the rebel group, and the military was clearly an attempt to make the show “smarter” that confuses “more stuff” for “more sophisticated.” Those final beats will be familiar, resembling any number of other action-filled Lupin finales but with too-many half-ideas, too many story threads, and too many characters to squeeze in. It ends up both too messy and too simple, with the worst simplifications reserved for our leads.
Lupin and Jigen’s recognizability, so helpful in helpful in letting us ease into the series, turns into a disadvantage. There’s no growth because they already are who they’ve always been. Plus from the start they lean a bit too hard into Lupin’s charismatic, superhero aspect, which feels out of place since in so much of Lupin—particularly early Lupin—he has so many moments of very human (very primate) weakness. If he’s not a bit goofy as a teen then…when? This problem really mushrooms in the finale.
Jigen reveals he’s already a contract killer living on his own. Lupin takes off his school uniform to reveal he’s wearing his mature green jacket getup underneath. Why can’t we see Jigen’s first kill and how it affects him? Why can’t we have a Lupin that’s still transitional, a bit awkward in his actions and looks? Leaning so hard into their heroic aspects so young—really for both of them, in their own ways—ends up quite jarring.
This comes out at its worst in the story’s treatment Lupin’s chaste crush Yoko. In the finale she inexplicably lets herself die with Lupin looking on. It’s classic fridging but it doesn’t even seem to have any effect on Lupin. Her death had neither strong internal motivation nor did it motivate anyone else. After their first experience of real violence Lupin and Jigen are unmoved and unchanged.
The best critique of Lupin Zero comes from within. Episode 3 and its manga source make clear that one needs to earn their title. Lupin Zero, though, is content to rely on birthright.
Recommended?
I’m going to say Inessential—that describes the end feeling of it all but also represents the median between two sets of episodes.
The three that do more to fulfill the premise, 1, 3, & 4 (the episodes aren’t named), are Recommended.
Those that don’t, 2, 5, & 6, are Not Recommended. I didn’t mention the second episode but it’s basically a cliché Lupin mediocre heist—just change the costumes and it could be filler in any other series. In that sense it presages the end but is unconnected with it.
Stray observations
• While I fully understand why they didn’t do this, the early sixties was something of a golden age for Japanese youth criminality so it can’t help but feel like a giant missed opportunity to show young Lupin in the context of genuine juvenile delinquency.
• It’s nice that they made Jigen the same age as Lupin. Kioyshi Kobayashi’s aging voice (and some of Jigen’s attitudes) drove him to full generation older than Lupin by Part V so the reversion is refreshing.
• I’m jealous of how young Jigen could pull of a maroon turtleneck without looking pretentious and a lavender one without looking feminine.
• I am the only person on the internet with no real opinion about the appropriate level of homosociality between Lupin and Jigen but
Lupin’s “first theft” being Jigen’s heart isn’t a sentimental moment. It’s an anvil made of stilton.
• Though Episode 4 was my favorite of the series it has one of the most egregious moments of uncharacteristic maturity. Instead of saying they drunk too much Lupin says they got drunk too young. That might be the lamest line in the entire franchise.
• Although Lupin II has rarely appeared in the franchise he’s always been, to my knowledge,
depicted as a scrub. He starts out an scrub here, but in a twist he’s secretly a nice guy and supportive dad. I barely knew Lupin II existed before this but the change still rings false to me. It sacrifices even a low level of complexity in favor of a hollow audience cheer moment.
• In the first episode Yoko sings a song about how she wishes her crush were older. I couldn’t find any information on it but based on its non-appearance on the soundtracks (rights issues?) I think it’s a real period ballad. It’s one of the series’s best “textures.”
• I mentioned outfits above it would be interesting for Lupin to have a more period-correct, even Ivy-ish, look. Around this time Japanese youths wearing button-down collars and sportcoats were actually rounded up by the police—imagine Zenigata first encountering Lupin because of that.
• I’m pretty surprised we didn’t get even a wordless cameo from Zenigata. A quick reveal that he’s always been an old dude would have been fun.
• On the other hand I am extraordinarily grateful we didn’t get a young Fujiko.
• Although the music was almost certainly meant to be based on the Part I score from the beginning, Yuji Ohno is in very poor health so thoughts his way.
Next week (and I actually pre-wrote this one) we’ll tackle Lupin’s millennial—in the calendrical sense—showdown with one of his better rivals in Missed by a dollar. It also has a tiny Japanese car and pretty good music.