Sep 8

Sep 8 Does the Lupin III series have a timeline?

Please note that this article contains spoilers for The Woman Called Fujiko Mine and The Immortal Bloodline.

*Above: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine, 2012*

Three things in life are certain; death, taxes, and a long-running franchise eventually going down the dark and gritty reboot route. Batman, James Bond, Spider-Man, and even Superman — the epitome of bright, colorful, and cheerful — all eventually had to go through a depressing emo phase because a bunch of grey suit executives believed that audiences wouldn’t take them seriously. Or… maybe Zack Snyder just had a lot of clout in Hollywood, but I digress.

With Lupin III having returned to Japanese cinemas this year via The Immortal Bloodline (you can read our review for that here), I decided to rewatch The Woman Called Fujiko Mine and its spin-off sequels directed by Takeshi Koike. Lupin III has varied in tone over the many decades of existence, but that 2012 series was easily its darkest moment — at least in animation. What’s ironic is that while many fans viewed this show as a complete whiplash compared to what the franchise is typically known for, it’s actually the closest to what Monkey Punch originally envisaged for the characters when he wrote them back in 1967. The Lupin most know and love has always been somewhat of a scoundrel, but Monkey Punch’s creation was a real bastard who had few qualms over murder and rape.

I should preface the rest of this essay by stating that while there are still plenty of Lupin III shows and films I have yet to see, I consider myself to be decently knowledgeable about the franchise’s overall lore. Well, if Lupin III even has anything that can be called lore. You see Dear Reader, going back to the Fujiko series was the impetus for me writing this whole piece to begin with. It’s not my go-to version of these characters because I think Lupin should be funny instead of deeply psychological, but I appreciate the show for being an interesting one-off that’s a rare instance of deconstruction actually working, for the most part. While it is ostensibly an origin story about everyone’s favorite femme fatale in question, it also apparently serves as a prequel to the 1971 Green Jacket series directed by Masaaki Osumi, Hayao Miyazaki, and Isao Takahata.

But not so fast! Are we seriously supposed to believe that the tenacious and unruly gang we see in Sayo Yamamoto’s noirish psychological thriller are the same cast of characters that later feature in Miyazaki’s family friendly adventures? Is the no-nonsense Zenigata who beds Fujiko to satiate his carnal desires really the same loveable goofball that appears in the long-running 1977 Red Jacket series? And come on…, is this lecherous Lupin really the same chivalrous gentleman thief who leaps across rooftops to rescue Clarisse in The Castle of Cagliostro? Believe it or not, you can rationalize these jarring differences and piece together some semblance of a timeline. Sort of. Maybe. Not really. Well, it’s complicated.

Being a product of the 1960s, Lupin III more or less exists in a floating timeline where the year might change, but the ages of the characters stayed static. Think Peanuts or The Simpsons. On paper, this model of storytelling is why it’s simultaneously possible for The Mystery of Mamo to subtly feature 1970s geopolitics and more modern entries to have present-day technology like smartphones. Lupin III in general has usually tried to maintain a nostalgic retro feel while also being somewhat up to date with the current era, so it can still be relevant for younger audiences.

The Woman Called Fujiko Mine, however, explicitly winds the clock back to circa 1971. We can come to this conclusion based on background text, as well as certain character and vehicle designs being directly modelled off the Green Jacket television series. Beyond just aesthetics, the showrunners deserve praise for the difficult task of trying to honor the existing continuity of a decades-old franchise that never really seemed to have much care for continuity in the first place. The biggest indication that Fujiko Mine is a prequel to Green Jacket revolves around the interactions between the characters.

Lupin, Fujiko, Jigen, and Goemon clearly do not know each other. In the 1971 show, the stoic samurai makes his first appearance in Episode 5 as Fujiko’s boyfriend, but doesn’t officially join the Lupin Gang until Episode 7. In Fujiko Mine, Goemon meets Fujiko for the first time, and his “boyfriend” status is established. Lupin and Jigen, however, never directly encounter Gomeon. The thief and the samurai pass each other in the street without noticing each other. The series finale of Fujiko Mine even takes measures to preserve this continuity by having Jigen and Goemon duel while under the influence of hallucinogenic drugs.

It’s relatively straightforward to go directly into the Green Jacket series after watching Fujiko Mine, but character designer Takeshi Koike directed his own series of films from 2014 to 2025 which once again appear to explore the early days of the Lupin Gang. The first of those films, Jigen’s Gravestone, shows that Lupin and Jigen’s partnership hasn’t totally formed yet, so we still see lingering suspicions between them. Similarly, the second film, Goemon’s Blood Spray, depicts the samurai at a time when he’s still hired muscle for the yakuza, quite hot-headed, and not working with our beloved thief. It appears to take place sometime after Episode 5 of Green Jacket as everyone knows each other, but before Episode 7 because the Lupin Gang still isn’t a thing by the end of the film. Goemon doesn’t even appear in Fujiko’s Lie, the next entry in the series, which is more or less a standalone story about the eponymous buxom criminal and spy.

Zenigata and the Two Lupins and The Immortal Bloodline are the latest and possibly final entries in Koike’s Lupin universe. The shadowy figure, Mamo, has maintained a subtle presence as the real villain pulling the strings throughout, but he plays a bigger role than ever in these two films. Well, his minions and monster spawn do at least. Lupin and his friends don’t actually meet the diminutive Paul Williams lookalike until The Mystery of Mamo and Koike intentionally tries to maintain continuity with that 1978 film. By the end of The Immortal Bloodline, the Lupin Gang have finally realized that some big (er, little) bad is working behind the scenes - the giant brain from the end of Mamo makes a brief appearance, and we even get a hint that Fujiko will be recruited by the man himself someday.

I sort of feel like another chapter is needed to bridge the gap between the Koikeverse and The Mystery of Mamo since a lot of questions are still unanswered, but even if that never happens, it’s interesting watching the latter after the former. Just to be sure, I popped in my Blu-ray of Mamo shortly after seeing The Immortal Bloodline at the cinema. When Lupin wakes up on Mamo’s island of clones and meets the tiny guy himself for the first time, he’s rather nonplussed about the entire strange scenario. You previously could chalk that up to the thief’s nonchalant attitude about most things, but with the context of everything that happened before chronologically, we now have a retconned explanation for why Lupin isn’t that surprised about Mamo’s existence.

*Above: Lupin III: The Mystery of Mamo, 1978*

Am I overanalyzing a nearly 50-year-old Japanese animated movie featuring clones, impossible physics, and zany sci-fi elements that were nonsensical even back in 1978? Most likely, but it’s also hard to watch Koike’s films and not come to the conclusion that his appreciation for The Mystery of Mamo had a pretty significant influence on certain storytelling decisions. Other entries in the franchise like Return of Pycal and Is Lupin Still Burning? are direct callbacks to old episodes or villains, so he would be far from the first to lean back on nostalgia.

In fact, if there’s one word which describes the overarching themes of Lupin III, “nostalgia” would be it. The character himself is a parody of a French gentleman thief from a bunch of old short stories, for crying out loud! Jigen is based on classic Hollywood gunslingers, while Goemon and Zenigata are also references to existing literary characters. Right out of the gate, the franchise was already paying homage to the past. Pretty much every entry aims for retroism with how it depicts people, exotic locales, classic vehicles, realistic weapons, and more. That attention to detail is what separated Lupin III from other 1970s anime.

So, does Lupin actually have a timeline? The second television series is stated as taking place five years after the first and some view Hayao Miyazaki’s The Castle of Cagliostro as the chronological “finale” to the entire universe, since it features a more wizened and mature Lupin III. However, we quickly run into problems trying to make sense of it all. The television specials which started in 1989 appear to take place in “real time” with technology and world events matching each year they aired, so that’s far removed from the 1970s setting of Cagliostro and inconsistent with how Lupin is portrayed in that film. Episode 0: First Contact features a completely different origin story for the gang than The Woman Called Fujiko Mine and LUPIN ZERO would contradict things yet again years later.

The recent Part 4, Part 5, and Part 6 television series reference previous works, but the timeframe of what happened before appears to have been retconned closer to the present day. There’s also miscellaneous stuff to consider. Green vs. Red is probably too meta to fit anywhere. The 3D CGI film Lupin III: The First seems to be yet another reboot returning things back to the 1970s. The vs. Detective Conan and vs. Cat’s Eye crossovers just open another can of worms, because then we’d have to consider where Lupin fits in with other franchises. I certainly don’t feel like going down an MCU-esque multiverse rabbit hole. Some fans have tried to square all of this with the theory that there are multiple timelines, but by that point I think we’re making things way too complicated.

While Takeshi Koike’s works have attempted to build the most consistent timeline for Lupin III, strict continuity was never Monkey Punch’s intention. Unlike so many long running IPs which require a ton of prior knowledge, you can basically jump into Lupin at any point. Put on a random episode and more likely than not you’ll soon get the gist of who everyone is. In the pre-internet days, no-one in Japan was expected to read every manga chapter or catch every television episode that aired. Unlike now where we have unlimited content only a few clicks away, people who grew up with Lupin III for most of its existence watched things sporadically with the reassurance that they weren’t really missing anything.

At the end of the day, Lupin III is about thieves who go on zany capers across the world with the intention of stealing valuable items while being on the run from the law. They’ll occasionally encounter deeper conspiracies or maybe an ancient civilization or two, but that’s about as far as the complexity goes. If you want family friendly adventures, look toward Miyazaki. If you want something darker and more serious, look toward Koike. Lupin III has been around for over half a century and there will always be stories for just about everyone - for that is one of the greatest appeals of Lupin III as a franchise.

A huge thanks to Oliver for this superb opinion piece! If you would like to read more of Oliver’s work, you can check him out over on X (formally Twitter), or by viewing his official website, Foreign Perspectives, which offers a fantastic selection of both free and paid articles. If you enjoyed this article, I am certain you will find something of interest there, too!