Lupin the Third Part II: the red jacket series
The red jacket is the default Lupin because this is the Lupin the world actually grew up with.
Part II ran on NTV from October 3, 1977 to October 6, 1980: 155 episodes, more than all the other television series’ original runs combined at the time, with Lupin in the red jacket and Yuji Ohno’s jazz theme out front. This is the populist Lupin: broader comedy, globetrotting capers, the gang working as a true ensemble, and the tone most films and TV specials still use as their home key.
Its reach was literal. Geneon’s English dub of the first 79 episodes aired on Adult Swim in 2003; Streamline had earlier dubbed episodes 145 and 155 as Tales of the Wolf. Those two episodes are a footnote with a famous author: Miyazaki returned to direct the series’ final adventures, working under a pseudonym, a year after Cagliostro.
THE POPULAR CANON
1977 to 1980Ohno’s theme
Yuji Ohno’s “Theme from Lupin III” (1977) is one of Japanese television’s permanent standards, re-recorded across fifty-plus soundtrack albums and endless jazz-trio arrangements.
Episodes 145 & 155
The two episodes American distributors reached for first. Both are Miyazaki’s: aerial adventure and a fond farewell, made while the ink on Cagliostro was barely dry.
The Adult Swim era
Twenty-six of Geneon’s dubbed episodes aired on Cartoon Network in 2003, the run that made red-jacket Lupin the American default. Discotek later released all 155 episodes in North America (2017–2020).