Lupin VIII: the series that almost was

We already know the thief Lupin III, born from the pencil of Monkey Punch (Kazuhiko Katō), protagonist of many animated series and films, but do you know that there was a project about his descendant Lupin VIII? Well yeah, today we talk about a series that was never completed but surprisingly helped in the creation of other two projects.

Cover for the DVD edition
of Ulysse 31

Let’s go back in time: it was the year 1982 and the company TMS was interested in the production of Lupin III’s third animated series after the first two from the 70s. The previous year, French television company DIC Audiovisuel (currently DIC Entertainment) worked in collaboration with TMS on the science-fiction animated series Ulysse 31. Created by Jean Chalopin, the series tells the adventures of Ulysse and his team against the divine entities that rule over the universe in the 31st century, who are the ancient gods of Greek mythology. This futuristic re-imagination of the odyssey was the first of a series of collaborations between the two studios, which lasted until 1996.

Lupin VIII and Jigen VI

The intent of this project was to introduce the character of Lupin to a western audience: because of this they decided to change a few of his characteristics in order to conform to the standards of foreign televisions, instead of Japanese TV's more forgiving rules regarding animated series. First of all, DIC and TMS detached their protagonist from the figure of thief Lupin III, focusing on his descendant Lupin VIII and setting his adventures in the 22nd century. Furthermore, all the protagonist’s friends are descendants of the gang’s original members: we have Jigen Daisuke VI, Fujiko Mine VI and Goemon Ishikawa XVIII. However this Lupin is not a thief, but a private investigator! Of course you can’t do without a persistent and stubborn inspector: Koichi Zenigata VI, who like his ancestor keeps pursuing his rival. Even though Lupin is an investigator, almost a colleague of Zenigata, he considers him suspicious and keeps monitoring his actions to make sure he is not doing anything criminal.

Reference sheet for the five characters (source: lupincentral)

Goemon XVIII
with his laser sword

Regarding elements such as violence by firearms, blood, smoking and any reference to sexual attraction, even if only through jokes: they had to be removed in favor of a more appropriate tone for a younger audience. For this reason all the weapons are converted into their sci-fi counterpart: Jigen has a laser gun and Goemon uses a sword similar to those from Star Wars. Talking about smoke: Zenigata uses a pipe, but instead of smoking tobacco he can use it as a communicator, meanwhile Jigen completely abandons the cigarette in favor of a lollipop.

Pre-production art of Jigen with a lollipop
(source: lost media wiki)

Currently the information we have on the team who worked on this series are not 100% confirmed, but here is what we know with the details that leaked through the years. Monkey Punch participated in the conceptual phase of the character design, later finalized by Shingo Araki and Michi Himeno. The director of the episodes would have been Rintarō, known for his work on the series Uchū Kaizoku Captain Harlock in 1978 and the features Galaxy Express 999 (1979) and Adieu Galaxy Express 999 (1981). Although the scripts of some episodes were completed and part of the following ones were in pre-production, only the first episode was completed in its animation and soundtrack, lacking the voices of the characters.

Why was such a promising project canceled? The problem rose at the moment of proposing the project in Europe: while in Japan and Italy the name of Arsène Lupin could be used with no problems, in France the descendants of author Maurice Leblanc had no intention of let them proceed for free. The price of the royalties set by the Leblanc family was too high compared to the economic resources for the project and because of this TMS and DIC decided to cancel the series.

Inspector Gadget and his integrated helicopter (DIC, 1983)

However, this does not mean that the material created during the production was a waste of time. In fact, the cancellation of a project helped in the creation of two series! DIC used the concept of private investigator with futuristic tools and created the iconic Inspector Gadget: the series debuted in 1983 and originated a successful franchise, with several animated series, spin-offs, films and video-games in the past decades. On the other hand, TMS used the production material to create another Lupin III series, calling once again Shingo Araki as design supervisor and animation director. The series, Lupin III Part 3, debuted in 1984 and is known among fans mainly for the different art styles that alternated through the episodes batches: the style of the early episodes is the closest to the appearance of the Lupin VIII characters, slowly deviating until reaching a much more stylized and dynamic style.

A scene from an episode of Lupin III Part 3 (TMS, 1984)

The information about the pilot episode were only rumors and low quality pictures until the year 2012 with the release of the Lupin III Master File, created to celebrate the 40 years since the debut of Lupin in animated form in 1972. This DVD and BluRay release features a new animated short film (Lupin III: Family All Stars), interviews with the five characters’ voice actors and other important figures for the franchise, the experimental short film Lupin 3DCG and finally the Lupin VIII pilot with subtitles. Coincidentally, the usage rights of Maurice Leblanc’s works entered the public domain exactly in 2012.

Animation cel from one of the incompete sequences

To this day, the complete pilot is once again difficult to find, but you can see compilations of scenes and a promotional video of that time. However, the group of Italian fans TIME MACHINE CHANNEL managed to make a good fandub of the pilot: this production was available on YouTube and was later moved to another archive site, accessible through a link in the description of its own music video. Through the years new animation cels of incomplete sequences have been found, maybe in the future we could piece together more of the history of the series that almost was.

A very big thank you to the fan operated website Lupin Central for being one of the main sources that inspired the creation of this article.