English Dub Review: Lupin the Third: Part V “Introducing Detective Jim Barnett III”

 

 

Overview (Spoilers Below)

For years, Lupin has been pining after a deceased count’s family heirloom—a gaudy, old ring. But every time he’s tried to steal it in the past the count’s widow stopped him in a really embarrassing way by using various security systems designed by her dead husband. But now the old lady wants to make peace with Lupin in order to catch the person who murdered the count.

She offers him the emerald ring he covets if and when he can determine the true killer. She invites the three suspects for dinner that evening. The first is a famous sommelier who also wanted to get his hands on that ring. The second is the count’s nephew whose father committed suicide because of his uncle’s actions. And the final—or maybe penultimate—suspect is a computer expert who lost his job and livelihood when the count bought out the business he created.

The countess secretly monitors these men—along with Lupin and her maid—with face-recognition technology. The tech is there to make sure nobody besides the six of them enters the estate during the murder investigation. Lupin agrees to the scheme and uses the alias Rusty Shackleford Jim Barnett, a private investigator.

It turns out the old lady is even more batty than originally suspected, considering this wacky caper. Once the suspects are gathered and they begin fighting in the dining room, the lights go out and somebody shoots the countess in the heart—just as the old lady planned. You see, she never would’ve offered Lupin her husband’s precious ring if she expected to live through the night. Before his death, the old count had become a fan of Lupin III as did his wife, who now trusts the thief to solve the murder after her demise.

With the old lady dies, the house goes on lockdown for the evening, giving Lupin all night to solve the case. To start, he collects a few clues. The hallway curtains had been drawn, the countess’ fatal bullet came from her own gun, somebody’s car struggled a bit while driving through the rain, and one of the flower vases had an excess of pollen on the floor beside it. That’s all the information Lupin needs.

It couldn’t have been the maid—the obvious suspect due to her access—because she burned her hands earlier in the week. So it had to be one of the actual suspects. And it kind of was. Unfortunately, the answer was a cop out, and the culprit was the nephew’s twin brother. It was a long-lost twin brother, which explains why the cops never caught on, but the solution was still quite lame.

 

Our Take

Case Closed is a Japanese anime that had a cross-over movie with Lupin III a few years back. The child detective, Jimmy Kudo—a.k.a. Detective Conan—is the protagonist of those stories which are surface-level convenient much like this episode. The creators need to allow Lupin to be Lupin, even in the less-than-impressive one-off episodes that fill in the gaps between arcs of this season. While the one-offs weren’t very good—with the exception of the Goemon episode a few weeks back—at least they were specifically Lupin stories.

The one bright moment came when Lupin cleared the maid of any wrongdoing. In stories like these, some writers try to throw the audience off their game by having the killer be somebody who isn’t one of the “suspects.” The creators could have easily sent the maid up the river, but that would have been weak and predictable even for a Detective Conan adventure.

With that being said, the twins’ angle is even worse. Other than that Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, and David Bowie movie, The Prestige, an identical person reveal is never clever. As I mentioned, the nephew’s brother—who is another nephew, I suppose—was unknown to the rest of the family. But keeping this secret for years doesn’t strike me as realistic. What did these twins do in the three years between their convenient crimes? Oh well, at least Lupin shot and killed one of them because that tired plotline was getting super annoying!

So… it’s been established in the mythos that despite his ill intentions, Lupin is actually a nice and sensitive guy. However, giving back the ring to the dead countess at the end felt a little out of character. I know he’s not a Vulcan or anything, but how logical is it to leave a precious piece of jewelry on the finger of a dead body? And then he mentions heaven! Since when did Lupin find religion? And now he wants to be a P.I. someday with this random maid as his assistant?

That’s another thing. We get no Goemon or Jigen, but somehow we’re supposed to just accept that Lupin has this long colorful history with this old count and his long-faced bride. The world of Lupin already has a ton of incidental characters that could’ve filled the countess’ place or at least provided an actual connection for us to work with. It doesn’t matter. I just have to accept that the Lupin one-offs are never going to live up to the majesty of the serialized plots and be done with it.