Character · Lupin III
Daisuke Jigen
Hat brim down, cigarette lit, and a draw measured at around three tenths of a second.
In Otakana the clue reads: Gunman in a black hat who shoots from under the brim
- Type
- Character
- Series
- Lupin III
- Letters
- 5 · Hard
Jigen is the gunman of Lupin's crew, a marksman with a Smith and Wesson revolver who shoots from beneath the brim of a black fedora rather than lifting his head to aim. The hat is not affectation. Tilting it is how he sets his sightline, and knocking it off is one of the few things that genuinely rattles him. He grew the beard, he says, because a clean-shaven face got him recognised.
In a group of show-offs he is the professional. Lupin improvises, Goemon philosophises, Fujiko double-crosses, and Jigen calculates the exit. He distrusts Fujiko out loud and consistently, and he is right every time, which never once changes the plan. His friendship with Lupin is the steadiest relationship in a franchise built on people betraying each other for gold.
The character has been drawn since 1967 and voiced for nearly fifty years by Kiyoshi Kobayashi, who kept the part from the earliest television series until he retired from it in 2021. That is one of the longest runs any voice actor has held on a single anime role.
Spelling JIGEN
JIGEN is five letters and the G is hard, as in get, not the soft one English puts in gin. Japanese has no soft G at all. The word 次元 means dimension, which is a strange thing to name a gunman. This is the family name; the given name Daisuke is not what the row wants. The two vowels sit at positions two and four, an I then an E, with a hard G between them.