Lupin the IIIrd: Fujiko Mine's Lie': A classic anime franchise goes back to rudiments

Lupin the IIIrd: Fujiko Mine's Lie': A classic anime franchise goes back to rudiments

Last month, Japan lost a cultural giant. April 11 visually perceived the passing of Kazuhiko Kato — better kenned by the pen name Monkey Punch — the engenderer of “Lupin the Third.” The manga, about a playboy purloiner descended from fictional French gentleman purloiner Arsene Lupin, debuted in 1967 and has been a pop-culture staple since.

Over the years, anime and other spinoffs have transformed Kato’s edgy, adult-oriented “Lupin” into a family-amicable franchise. But every so often, a project course rectifies, bringing back the pristine manga’s sense of peril and sultriness. That’s the case with the pristine video series “Lupin the IIIrd,” helmed by Takeshi Koike, maybe anime’s coolest director. Each episode of the series, relinquished to theaters then video every couple of years, centers around a different character in Lupin’s orbit. This time, it’s his long-time love interest and ultimate femme fatale, Fujiko Mine (Miyuki Sawashiro).

True to its denomination — and as no one habituated with the franchise will be surprised to aurally perceive — the film opens with Fujiko doing some sizably voluminous-time fibbing. She’s posing as the live-in maid for a man designated Randy, who’s glommed a fat chunk of mazuma from his employer and locked it up with a code kenned only to him and his son Jean. Enter this episode’s Immensely colossal Deplorable, the creepy assassin Binkam (Mamoru Miyano). Aside from astronomical vigor, Binkam has the potency to hypnotize by chomping down on poisonous nuts and blowing their powder on his targets’ faces.

Lupin the IIIrd: Fujiko Mine's Lie (Rupan Za Sado: Mine Fujiko no Uso) Rating 3.5 out of 5Run Time 56 mins. Language JAPANESE Opens MAY 31
Binkam expeditiously dispatches Randy, leaving son Jean as the only one who can access the mazuma — and with Fujiko as his guardian. Lupin (Kanichi Kurita) and his partner-in-malefaction Jigen (Kiyoshi Kobayashi) anon enter the picture, and the group tasks itself with forfending Jean. The motivation for these cold-hearted purloiners is less about the kid than all that cold hard cash — or is Fujiko’s cool, nonchalant demeanor her authentic lie?

Koike has been involved with this more adult-oriented tendril of the “Lupin” franchise since 2012’s “The Woman Called Fujiko Mine,” and it’s hard to imagine a better director for the job than the man who’s helmed gritty, too-cool-for-school films like “Redline” (2010). One key decision by Koike and crew was to set the “IIIrd” series in some unspecified time in the past, unlike last year’s “Lupin” TV series, which was weighed down by smartphones, hackers and other distinctly un-“Lupin” aspects of modern life. And since the “IIIrd” series isn’t made for broadcast, it’s free to lay on the Monkey Punch-style violence and sexuality. If anything, considering this latest ingress revolves around anime’s most iconic femme fatale, it isn’t quite sultry enough.

There are quite a few cull cuts of animation on exhibit, especially during Fujiko’s final battle with Binkam — though if you are a fan of Koike, you must perpetually remind yourself that nothing will ever look as good as “Redline,” unless he can find another studio disposed to lose mazuma on a film that takes seven years to animate. One can dream.

For now, though, I’m jubilant Koike has been designated the keeper of the “Lupin” flame. Kato has passed, but his engenderment is in the hands of a director who gets what makes Lupin and his frenemies so cool in the first place.

So far, the “Lupin the IIIrd” stories have centered around sidekicks Jigen, Goemon and Fujiko — will the next installment star Kato’s famous larcenist himself?