*****SPOILER-FREE SYNOPSIS*****
Synopsis: Inspector Zenigata, in his pursuit of infamous thief Lupin III, finds himself in the Roviet Union, where a bomber with Lupin’s face is at large. When another Lupin appears, he is determined to bring him in, or at least question him thoroughly. But Roviet forces have their own ideas of justice, preferring to eliminate their target. Which Lupin will be standing when the explosions’ smoke clears? It’s a matter of justice for a relentless Zenigata.
Comments (contain spoilers):
If there’s anything that resonates with me about the Lupin franchise, it’s the newer, more hard boiled approach to its characters and world via the Takeshi Koike features. They haven’t been as layered or fulfilling as, say, the series they spun off from, The Woman Called Fujiko Mine, but they’ve been a really fun time and made the franchise respectable again. I know the big finale is coming up in Koike’s movie, The Immortal Bloodline, but I hope Koike continues to work on the Lupin franchise for years after, too. I don’t want to see everything soften to the point of self-parody again.
Like previous Koike features, this one largely revolves and highlights a particular cast member of the series. They’d already covered Jigen, Goemon, and Fujiko, so it was time to concentrate on the forever tenacious Inspector Zenigata. A Zenigata-centered feature is exactly the kind of variety the franchise needed, as he so rarely gets the spotlight. In this instance, we see him taking on terrorism and political intrigue with resolution and an abundance of grit and guts. This Zenigata is no fool, he is a multi-talented, multi-faceted, and yet single-minded, pursuer.
We get a bit of Cold War politics in this feature, the Soviets and Americans (though the names have been changed to protect… the innocent?) trying to get together and sign a peace deal. But there are forces working from within the Roviet government to sabotage the peace talks for the sake of the war economy. I don’t know why the Fujiko-verse is so adverse to naming names, it’s not like they’re using brand names (my favorite vodka is SNIRNOPE), these are counties, for goodness sake. But it does create an interesting new layer to the proceedings, especially as it ties in with the main theme of the feature, which I’ll get into.
This episode has an exciting element, Lupin versus Lupin! This new Lupin is one rude dude, a psychotic bomber who doesn’t seem to mind being caught in the very explosions he initiates. It takes a special kind of crazy to do that. If there’s one thing our real Lupin hates is somebody pretending to be him, and he takes some offense at this copycat and his methods. We never do find out where the Lupin fake comes from, as his face doesn’t give way to a true one underneath, it’s all real, either radical cosmetic surgery or… well, we’re dealing with a prequel to Secret of Mamo, aren’t we? I mean, a prequel to The Immortal Bloodline, which is speculated to be a prequel to Secret of Mamo. My point is, clone. Clone clone clone. Send in the clones. All we know about the “fake” (clone) Lupin is that he seems to be working for whatever force conspired with the Roviet leader and that he has a bit of a death wish.
The big theme of this feature (and I’m happy this feature is actually ABOUT something) is justice, and specifically Zenigata’s ideas of what justice is and the difference between his ideals and Lupin’s. On the train, Lupin describes justice as “just a convenient excuse to justify murder”. Saving old Pops from dying from his injuries from a bombing, he opines that the two of them aren’t too unlike each other, they’re “both outcasts”, and that “the line between right and wrong is a very fine line”. But this is an insult to Zenigata, who tells him, “There’s a world of difference. He goes out of his way to argue with the Roviet officer charged with taking out Lupin that murder isn’t the same as justice, but the two come to respect each other’s doggedness. On the other hand, the Roviet leader believes that political power makes him his nation’s justice. Zenigata, who only fires his weapon (non lethally) at the fake Lupin, in the end laments that “Justice ethat fails to save even one life has no value whatsoever”. This feature is an interesting look at Zenigata’s sense of justice and his relationship with Lupin on that and other fronts.
But this also serves as a step to Koike’s full-length theatrical movie, The Immortal Bloodline, which is due to come out soon. The final scenes all have to do with Lupin and his gang (including a cameoing Goemon) getting ready for their next adventure: to locate “the island not on any maps” and take on whoever’s been pulling the strings behind the events of all the previous Koike Lupin features. Of course, we know who it is, it’s Mamo… or is it Muomu? I guess we’ll have to find out. I hope it won’t be too long.
Overall, Zenigata and the Two Lupins is definitely the best of the Koike features thus far. It has impressive production values, some suspenseful action, some thematic meat, and really strong performances by its voice actors (particularly Kanichi Kurita as Lupin and Koichi Yamadera as Zenigata). I hope that somebody licenses this for domestic Blu-Ray release soon.
– Penguin Truth
(2025)