Why was Lupin called “the Wolf” in America?

Monkey Punch never asked permission to use Arsène Lupin. At the time, Japan did not enforce the relevant trade copyrights, and by the time Maurice Leblanc’s estate acted in Japan, the name was held to have entered common usage there. Abroad was another matter. North American and European distributors stripped the name from releases: Lupin became “Wolf” in Streamline Pictures’ and Manga Entertainment’s English dubs and “Rupan” in AnimEigo’s. In France, Leblanc’s homeland, the series ran as Edgar, Detective Cambrioleur, its hero renamed Edgar de la Cambriole. Monkey Punch’s own position was a lawyerly shrug: using the character’s design, behavior, and face would be illegal; a name alone, he maintained, was not.

The dispute has a body count. The planned French-Japanese series Lupin VIII was cancelled in 1982 largely because the estate demanded a large fee for the name in France. The thaw came by calendar: Leblanc died in 1941, and in 2012, seventy years on, Arsène Lupin entered the public domain in France, freeing the name across most of the world. Modern releases, from Discotek’s sets to Part 5’s French homecoming, use Lupin III openly at last.