Lupin the Third Part I: the green jacket series

Twenty-three episodes, two directing regimes, and the whole future of anime in the gap between them.

The first Lupin III anime began on YTV on October 24, 1971 and ran 23 episodes to March 26, 1972. It opened hard: director Masaaki Ōsumi’s early episodes kept the manga’s adult edge, with Lupin in a green jacket and the violence mostly unsoftened. Ratings and sponsors pushed for change, Ōsumi departed, and the series was handed to two young directors named Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata, who steered it toward the genial caper tone that would define Lupin for fifty years.

The series’ reputation now dwarfs its size. Japan’s Agency for Cultural Affairs placed it on its best-anime list, and Animage ranked it among the ten best anime productions of all time. It is also a founding document of Studio Ghibli: Miyazaki, Takahata, and animator Yasuo Ōtsuka all passed through it on the way to The Castle of Cagliostro.

Lupin the Third Part I key visual — **PART I (1971)**The first TV series: dark jacket, a Fiat 500, and a harder edge than anything that came after it.

TWO SERIES IN ONE

Ōsumi, then Miyazaki & Takahata

The Ōsumi episodes

The opening run: moodier, more violent, closer to the seinen manga. Lupin kills, scams, and shrugs. Collectors of tone treat these as the “dark” Lupin in embryo.

The takeover

Miyazaki and Takahata redirected the show mid-run: same cast, warmer heart, cleverer capers. Their Lupin steals to protect as often as to profit, the template Cagliostro would perfect.

Episode one

The debut episode’s title became an heirloom: the 50th-anniversary memorial episode Is Lupin Still Burning? (2018) is a direct riff on it, restaging the story with later villains folded in.

THE MUSIC CHANGES HANDS

Yamashita to Ohno

Takeo Yamashita

Part I’s score, jazzy and lean, belongs to Takeo Yamashita. When Part II arrived in 1977, Yuji Ohno took over and wrote the theme the world now hums; between them they account for more than fifty Lupin soundtrack albums.

Part II: the red jacket →

The Castle of Cagliostro →

Lupin the Third Part I: the green jacket series

TWO SERIES IN ONE

THE MUSIC CHANGES HANDS

THE FIRST WORD