Lupin the 3rd Part 6

Episode 5

By this point I'm appreciating the litany of different methods Lupin the 3rd Part 6 is using to introduce its various literary references. The Ellery Queen episode simply included some guest stars, last week's Hemingway allusion had the characters deliberately reenacting the story, and now this week, Lupin himself just straight-up time-travels back to 1930s Tokyo so he can clash with Kogoro Akechi! Of course, Lupin is no stranger to the odd supernatural aside (nor was Akechi, for that matter), so I'm not terribly bothered by this kind of eccentric entry. Lupin raced a ghost just back in Part 5, so who are we to think we're too good for this cartoon to get a little weird? No, the main concern with this episode, if I must have one, is that it's a mere 'part one' of a setup mystery story that already has a ton of components moving about in it, so I can't be quite sure where it's going with all this for the moment.

It's hard to be too fussed by an abundance of complexities though, when they seem to be cohabitating just fine for the time being while having plenty of fun overall. This Taku Ashibe-written storyline is definitely acting as some kind of fulfillment funtimes for fans of Edogawa Ranpo's old Akechi material, with Lupin and his regular cast filling in the roles of Akechi-verse characters like Inspector Namikoshi and The Black Lizard. So it makes immediate sense for Lupin himself to slip into the role his grandfather Arsene Lupin had as 'The Golden Mask' in Ranpo's story of the same name. Obviously, I'm enough of an easy sell for both literary and Lupin trivia (did you know that Lupin actually crossed paths with an elderly Detective Akechi in the late '60s in the original anime pilot film?) that this sort of thing appeals to me as much as it does the folks composing it. But as we saw with that Ellery Queen episode, simply acknowledging the concept of fictional historical inter-universe building does not a slam-dunk of a story make.

If there is a core issue at hand with this episode of Part 6, it's that the nature of Lupin's time-travel drop-in necessitates the story we're following to seem already well underway by the time we get to it. There's an appreciable sensibility to how it avoids wasting our time, giving us the in media res intro of Lupin realizing he has no idea where he is and needing to run from ZenigataNamikoshi, and we do get caught up on the basics eventually thanks to information on the ancient Chinese time machine that doubles as the heist target for this little adventure. But several of the surrounding points, like the history of expedition leader Ruriko Shigetomi, her gal-pal Sarantuya, and the in-progress pursuit of the time machine by both Akechi and Japanese imperials come off more like odd background details overheard by Lupin (and us), rather than dedicated story points of their own. It's honestly kind of a compliment to those points that I would have been happy to follow them on their own terms rather than worrying about them as a framework for Lupin's plot of trying to get back to his own time, but we've still got a whole other episode to watch them coalesce, so I'll give them the benefit of the doubt for now.

Treating Akechi and Shigetomi's plot as details like that at least helps them feel more integrated into the arc of the episode (as opposed to, again, that dang Ellery Queen entry). I like Shigetomi as a headstrong expedition leader, and she's even effective enough to suss out the 'tired routine' of Lupin disguising himself as someone else, with that bit being especially funny given how that turns out to not be the case this time (to say nothing of the fact that this takes place a good 30+ years before 'our' Lupin would get to deploy that famous trick). And Akechi himself is as cool as a legacy homage like him must be, on par with the Sherlock Holmes we saw all those episodes ago. You gotta love anyone who can throw off some pushy imperialists with only a single forged telegram. And even before that tidy resolution, the scene as it occurs is strong, constructing this tense situation where virtually everyone we've followed up until now converges on the treasure at the heart of this odd supernatural mystery, and it manages to not feel overly crowded or complicated as a setup. Perhaps that's another benefit to having so many of the pieces set up before we even got here.

It's that brisk efficiency that has me enjoying this plot so far, I think. Sure, it was fun to see Oshii's laborious Hemingway indulgence for most of the episode last week, but sometimes the quicker, more direct approach is the right one when you're tasked with presenting some kind of layered homage. This arc honestly has more of the feel of the odd stand-alone Lupin TV special than an episodic entry in a Part-numbered ongoing series (the time-travel context jettisoning much of the 'modern times' theming the show seems to have been trying to embrace since at least Part 5 contributes to that, I think), but that's not necessarily a bad thing. Lupin gets into some escapade while trying to pull a heist. A cool guest detective works his magic unravelling a mystery. Fujiko is there. Lupin himself is able to roll with all this as soon as he arrives in this odd, initially-unexplained situation, and thus, so am I.

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Lupin the 3rd Part 6 is currently streaming on HIDIVE.

Chris is a freelance writer who appreciates anime, action figures, and additional ancillary artistry. He can be found staying up way too late posting screencaps on his Twitter.