The History of Lupin the Third

A three-month job in 1967 that has now run for nearly sixty years.

Lupin III began on August 10, 1967, in the first issue of Futabasha’s Weekly Manga Action, drawn by Kazuhiko Katō under the pen name Monkey Punch. The commission was meant to last three months. Instead the gentleman thief’s grandson became one of the permanent fixtures of Japanese popular culture: seven animated television series, a shelf of feature films, near-yearly television specials from 1989 to 2013, video games, stage musicals, and a kabuki play.

The constant through every version is the drawing. Monkey Punch built Lupin out of Maurice Leblanc’s Arsène Lupin, James Bond, and the cartooning of Mad magazine, and every later incarnation, from Miyazaki’s gentle green-jacket hero to the sketch-lined thief of 2012, is an argument about how to read that original line.

Lupin III Futabasha Bunko volume 1 cover — **THE BUNKO VOLUMES**Futabasha's pocket-size Bunko edition, volume 1: the reprint line that kept Monkey Punch's original manga in Japanese bookstores for decades.

THE PAPER YEARS

1967 to 1981

1967 · The manga

Lupin III debuts in Weekly Manga Action on August 10, 1967: 94 chapters of a darker, adult comic, collected in 14 volumes. Additional New Adventures chapters follow from 1971.

1969 · The Pilot Film

Tokyo Movie makes a short Pilot Film introducing the five leads, hunting for backers. It goes unsold, but it is the seed of the television series two years later.

1977 · Shin Lupin III

Monkey Punch returns with a second manga series in Weekly Manga Action, running to 1981, looser and more cartoonish than the original run.

THE SCREEN YEARS

1971 to today

1971 · Part I

The first anime: 23 episodes, a hard-boiled opening run, and a famous mid-series takeover by Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata.

1979 · Cagliostro

The Mystery of Mamo (1978) is the first animated feature; a year later Miyazaki makes his feature debut with The Castle of Cagliostro, now the franchise’s best-loved film.

1989 · The specials begin

Bye Bye, Lady Liberty opens a run of near-yearly television specials that lasts until 2013, the backbone of Lupin on Japanese TV for a generation.

2012 · Fujiko Mine

The Woman Called Fujiko Mine returns the anime to the manga’s darker register, with designs drawn straight from Monkey Punch’s page.

2015 to 2022 · The blue years and Part 6

Part IV (Italy, 2015) and Part 5 (France, 2018) modernise the gang in blue; Part 6 (2021) marks fifty years of the anime, and Lupin Zero (2022) goes back to the boy thief.

2025 · Still running

Takeshi Koike’s The Immortal Bloodline (2025) is the first traditionally animated solo Lupin feature in nearly thirty years. The three-month job is not finished.

Who is Monkey Punch? →

The Lupin III Manga Gallery →

The History of Lupin the Third

THE PAPER YEARS

THE SCREEN YEARS

THE FIRST WORD