English Dub Season Review: Lupin III Part VI

Lupin III Part VI continues the adventures of Lupin and his crew in a now newly updated era full of technological advancements, intrigue, and a slew of new mysteries and unusual twists begin to unfold. The first half of the series has the titular Lupin III contending with detective Sherlock Holmes when Lupin becomes the top suspect in the murder of the former’s longtime partner, Dr. Watson. Lupin is also after a treasure hidden by a secretive Illuminati-like syndicate called “The Raven”, a mysterious organization that manipulates the British government from the shadows. The second half revolves around Lupin’s search for a mysterious woman named Tomoe, whom Lupin believes to be his mother. Along the way, Lupin encounters other disciples of Tomoe and begins to piece together forgotten memories of his past…

On the technical side, Lupin the Third Part 6 was produced at TMS Entertainment and directed by Eiji Suganuma, and written by Takahiro Ōkura with character designs by Hirotaka Marufuji. The series features scripts from guest writers like Mamoru Oshii, Masaki Tsuji, Taku Ashibe, Kanae Minato, and Akio Higuchi and even aired with episode 0 in conjunction with the 50th-anniversary celebration of the anime during its Japanese release with Shigeru Murakoshi doing series composition for Part 6, beginning with episode 13. Plus, the Lupin the 3rd theme is too damn iconic to replace.

As far as the storytelling goes, the ongoing story arcs have a good deal of plot development and foreshadowing that elude to elements of their situations as things build up, while the episodic plots in the series either attempt to get experimental exploring different heists or characters within Lupin’s gang or providing humor to attempt balancing out the more serious direction of the ongoing story arcs.

I also liked their unique & updated interpretation of Sherlock Holmes, as he was written to be Lupin’s equal on an intellectual and analytical level and his character design was cool, but they don’t really do anything with the rivalry that was set up and he just fades away into obscurity around the halfway point of the season. While the “Tomoe” arc attempts to add some fleshing out of Lupin’s past as a group of paramilitary thieves are connected to an old teacher Lupin had in his childhood named Tomoe, though this plot gets a bit convoluted to follow in later episodes as more about these connections are revealed.

The episodic format can be largely hit or miss. In Lupin’s case, the writing has resulted in some epic tales and the series has shown consistency so far. However, In between these arcs, the guest-written storylines are a bit hit and miss with their quality, as I tended to lean more favorably for the more comedic episodic plots for the series, though sometimes many of them are unrelated to pulling off a heist such as one involving a mermaid fan-fiction obsessed fangirl, or a fun yet bittersweet Jigen-focused episode where he attempts to save an old flame from his past from an assassination attempt due to possibly marrying the wrong guy.

The dialogue remains one of the show’s strongest points as all the main characters are brilliantly written and their lines are always witty, clever, and funny when they mean to be. And the English Dub cast remains the same and I mean that in a good way of course. Tony Oliver continues to voice the titular protagonist as he remains the clever mischievous and charming bastard we all know and love who always finds whatever means to try and get out of a bad situation. The cast is larger than life, and the plot twists always continue to shock or surprise their audiences which never gets boring.

Overall, while this rendition of the titular series largely offers almost all of the same beats in its storytelling and twist-heavy story structures from past renditions. It still manages to set itself apart by updating the setting to modern times while managing to navigate this unique balance of pleasing longtime fans of the franchise and also making it a decent jumping-on point for newbies to understand the stories and characters regardless of where you start. With the recent announcement of future Lupin III projects, It’s going to be one of those shows that will hopefully stand the test of time as long as Japan keeps making compelling storylines built around this beloved franchise for years to come.