English Dub Review: Lupin III Part VI “Darwin’s Bird”

Overview

Fujiko checks out the fossil of an archaeopteryx on display in the British Natural History Museum for a man who calls himself Mihail, Michael, or Miguel, on behalf of his lord who wants her to steal it. The specimen was uncovered in a quarry in Solnhofen, Germany in 1861, 2 years after Charles Darwin published On the Origin of Species. Mihail’s employer believes that the three discovered fossils of archaeopteryx are the work of forger Karl Häberlein. Mihail is unconcerned about whether the fossil is real or a fake, but wants her to steal the original which is sealed in a vault within the museum. Fujiko breaks into the museum’s vault and Lupin follows her…

Our Take

Once again, we have another episode written by anime legend, Mamoru Oshii. While the episode he previously wrote was chock-full of movie and movie director references as well as visual references to certain action-oriented anime, this one is more of an unraveling mystery involving the fossils of a long-extinct prehistoric bird called the Archaeopteryx.

Upon research, this story and its ideas & concepts were loosely adapted from a Lupin-related project that Oshii originally wrote, but couldn’t get off the ground during the production of the 1985 Lupin Anime feature film “Legend of the Gold of Babylon”. But to some extent, Oshii managed to accomplish his vision within a half-hour. A lot of the episode was a series of exposition dumps from various characters, and there is very little besides that. There is a nice exploration of conspiracy theories regarding archaeology, which I don’t want to get too much into, but it was interesting to see.

Overall a very weird episode that felt very open to interpretation in its ending. I think certain allegories within its proceedings went over my head, but at the very least, it was a slow burn that lead to an incredible payoff and had a really good atmosphere and tone throughout the episode. Next week we should finally be back to the ongoing Holmes/Raven story that’s said to be the heart of Lupin Part VI and hopefully get more into that unraveling mystery…