Lupin III 9
Posted: December 7, 2007 Filed under: Lupin III Leave a comment »This was the best volume of Lupin I’ve read in awhile. Instead of having themed stories, this was once again just random stuff, and at the end of every story things twisted and Lupin wound up on top. You got to love it, especially since the tone is just so goofy and loveable. I know I’m kind of hard on this series sometimes, but it really is wonderful, and I really love the art (but yes, it can be hard to follow, though I didn’t have any trouble in this volume).
The strangest story in this volume by far was one about a man who was time traveling from the far future and had a grudge against the Lupin family. He comes back into the present to kill Lupin, then goes back further into the past to kill the easier target, Lupin’s farmer great-grandfather. This terrifies Lupin since there’s no way he can prevent his own death. For some reason, he kills Fujiko’s ancestors from the past, so she just vanishes in the present in the middle of sex with Lupin. The ending is priceless. It always is, but it feels particularly good here since this story is not as comedic as usual.
This volume also has one of the most surreal pages of comic art ever. The last story features one of Lupin’s dreams, and one of the images is a full-page illustration of the Statue of Liberty from the waist-up emerging from the clouds. She is naked, and there is a small naked Lupin straddling one of her breasts. It’s just… bizarre. My scanner’s broken, or I would have broke protocol and included it in this post. It’s great.
