Character · Lupin III
Arsene Lupin III
He announces the theft in advance, by letter, and then walks out with the thing anyway.
In Otakana the clue reads: Grandson of a famous French gentleman thief
- Type
- Character
- Series
- Lupin III
- Letters
- 5 · Normal
Lupin III is the grandson of Arsene Lupin, the gentleman burglar Maurice Leblanc invented in 1905. He inherited the trade and improved the equipment. A typical job involves a disguise good enough to fool a wife, a car chase, an explosion, a betrayal by Fujiko and an escape through something that should not have been survivable, all in twenty-two minutes.
The crew is fixed: Jigen shoots, Goemon cuts, Fujiko takes the loot and Inspector Zenigata of Interpol chases all four of them across every continent with a devotion that stopped looking like police work decades ago. Lupin lets himself be caught roughly once a season, largely because he enjoys the escape.
Monkey Punch began the manga in 1967 in Weekly Manga Action, and the character has run through television series, films and specials without a real break since 1971. The jacket colour tells you which era you are watching: green for the first series, red for the second and most famous one, then pink and blue for later runs. The Leblanc estate spent years disputing the name, which is why some translations call him Wolf or Edgar.
Spelling LUPIN
LUPIN is five letters and the Japanese sound is nowhere near it. ルパン reads Rupan, with the R and A that Japanese actually uses, and English restored the French spelling instead of transliterating what viewers heard. So the L is a decision, not a sound, and the second vowel is I rather than the A you get by ear. The row wants the family name.