The Lupin III TV specials

For twenty-five years, Japanese television had a standing appointment with a thief.

The television specials are the franchise’s load-bearing wall: feature-length Lupin adventures made for broadcast, airing nearly every year from 1989 to 2013 on NTV, beginning with Bye Bye, Lady Liberty on April 4, 1989. Twenty-six specials deep by the standard count, they kept the red-jacket formula, crime, comedy, a famous treasure, a doomed romance, in front of a mass audience long after the series era ended.

The institution had its rituals and its events. The 2009 crossover Lupin the 3rd vs. Detective Conan drew a record 19.5% audience share. The 2011 special Blood Seal of the Eternal Mermaid quietly recast Fujiko, Goemon, and Zenigata, the first change in those roles in sixteen years. After the yearly run closed with Princess of the Breeze in 2013, specials became occasional again: the Part IV tie-in Italian Game (2016), then Goodbye Partner and Prison of the Past in 2019.

Lupin the Third: The Secret of Twilight Gemini poster — **A TV SPECIAL**The Secret of Twilight Gemini (1996): one of the near-annual feature-length TV specials that ran for over two decades.

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1989 to 2019

Episode 0: First Contact · 2002

The special that tells the gang’s first meeting as a framing story: the specials’ own attempt at an origin, and a fan-consensus high point of the whole run.

The Elusiveness of the Fog · 2007

The manga’s 40th-anniversary special, bringing back Kyosuke Mamo, a villain from the very first television series: the institution celebrating itself.

Formula, honestly assessed

Reference works and reviewers have long noted the specials’ formulaic streak. That was also their function: a dependable annual ritual, the same pleasure on schedule, like a holiday broadcast.

Part II: the red jacket →

Lupin III: The First →

The Lupin III TV specials

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THE FIRST WORD