Lupin the Third: Part 5

Episode 21

Lupin the Third: Part 5 has been building up to this final "episode" for a while now. We keep seeing Jeff-Bezos—excuse me, Enzo—hanging around the shadows of our previous plots. They're all related in some way to technology, and the blessings and drawbacks it brings to our lives. Now he's got something far more insidious than the Lupin Game to foil the group's plans. It's an app called PeopleLog (or Hito-Log, in Japanese) that not only tracks people's whereabouts, but attempts to use personality data to predict where they're going.

It's the culmination of many real-world worries about how the Internet is eroding our privacy. If you're a millennial or younger, you've largely grown up online, and if people know where to look, they can find stuff you posted from throughout your life, as if preserved in amber. People use this for all sorts of nefarious purposes already. I've seen people get "dragged" (as the Internet calls it) for stuff they wrote a decade ago that they no longer think. There are all sorts of creepy online "yellow pages" that track your address throughout your life, with convoluted processes to opt out (not in). Many of us even share this kind of info freely; it's not too hard to follow most people's whereabouts through what they share on Facebook, Twitter, or Instagram. And yet, the implications of this PeopleLog are even more worrisome. It basically encourages users to spy on everyone around them, and its predictive aspect makes it more difficult for people to try and change or disappear from harassment, with no way whatsoever to opt out.

So it's pretty obvious where Lupin III takes this idea: it's the "Lupin Game" 2.0, except even worse. Now basically everyone is in on the action, not just a bunch of online pranksters. Goemon can't even hide out in the jungle without a shy girl who crosses his path finding out that he's a trained killer! It also means that their hideout is toast, and the app can even see through Lupin and Jigen's old-man masks. They have to pretend to kidnap the café owner just so the furious protesters won't believe that she's part of Lupin's schemes. The predictive aspect of the app also adds a twist the Lupin Game did not have, now that his past adversaries can update the app with information about his patterns. Even the Rat Clan, from way back in the Bwanda arc, has managed to track them down from a French chateau. We also see some more comical versions of how the app changes everyday life, when Lupin, Jigen and Goemon are thwarted in their attempt to pose as janitors and steal a statue from a museum by a crowd surrounding a man accused of cheating on his wife.

One of the most interesting aspects of this episode is the way Enzo's character functions as a criticism of tech moguls. When Zenigata brings up that the "voyeuristic" aspects of PeopleLog make it an invasion of privacy, Enzo just shrugs and says that's "for the people to decide," not him. He's not interested in considering the morality of the app he launched to the world, that's for other people to grapple with while producing revenue for him. It felt like a criticism of the way that giant tech mega-corporations refuse to consider the social implications of their work. There's been huge discussions recently about the ability of social media to harass people out of jobs based on past comments—something that PeopleLog would obviously make even easier. But far too many of the people running companies have shrugged, muttered something about "free speech", and just left it to the people to decide, ignoring that people who are victimized by others through these apps don't get to "decide" how abuse of this technology hurts them. Part 5 has been full of social commentary, but Enzo feels like the most poignant and relevant target yet.

This arc obviously allows for the re-emergence of familiar characters to deal with the PeopleLog problem. Ami is an obvious choice, given her tech brilliance and her usefulness in multiple previous arcs. Lupin mentions that he was planning on calling her anyway, which of course gets her all flustered. I wonder if her crush will come up more in this arc too. Albert is also there, though in a way that makes it less obvious if he'll directly help Lupin in any way. But PeopleLog is obviously a concern for him and the government body he works with, since it not only subverts their authority but could make the very idea of government obsolete.

In the end, the characters are forced into a confrontation with Enzo sooner rather than later. He kidnaps Fujiko, holding her hostage (and naked!) in his grand estate. For all Enzo pretends to be "above it all," he's very much a part of and enjoying the "game." He wants to capture Lupin himself, if only to prove the superiority of his app above all others. He's amoral on a level that allows for especially clever satire.

Lupin the Third: Part 5 has at times felt like Lupin III by way of Black Mirror, exploring all the ways that advancing technology is changing our lives, and by extension, how it would throw a wrench in things for Lupin and his compatriots. This final arc feels like the culmination of all those themes, upping the ante to an unexpected degree. When even Zenigata is allying himself with Lupin (at least to the extent of giving him info about Fujiko), you know something is seriously wrong. I'm super excited for where this final arc plans to go.

Rating: A

Lupin the Third: Part 5 is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.

Rose is a Ph.D. student in musicology, who recently released a book about the music of Cowboy Bebop. You can also follow her on Twitter.