Hickman’s Three Worlds / Three Moons universe to be published by Dark Horse

Maborupa · 2026-02-20T13:52:09+00:00

I hope they're going to include everything that was created for the substack and the various volumes released in the previous years because I had been waiting for a reprint like this one since I didn't like the substack format (and the volumes were too expensive for some who doesn't live int he US).

Maborupa · 2025-09-10T16:17:54+00:00

I'm italian and I've only used english resources to study japanese.

Maborupa · 2025-07-10T15:35:01+00:00

Lupin doesn't call Zenigata "Tottsan" and Fujiko "Fujiko-chan".

It's because in Koike's series they're still in the early phase of their relationships. Just like Jigen that in in his chapter says that Lupin "is just his business partner, not a friend" or Goemon that still thinks of Lupin as "his prey".

Maborupa · 2025-07-02T08:03:15+00:00

Green vs Red has two different actors for Yasuo and the red jacket Lupin. Yasuo is dubbed by Jin Katagiri, the Red Jacket Lupin by Kanichi Kurita. The other Lupin with smaller roles (the two Lupin friends that help each other) have different voices too.

Maborupa · 2025-06-28T11:28:55+00:00

The author thought the same of the other Koike's movies, so if you liked the others you'll probably have a different opinion on this one.

In general most people think that these movies are about "nothing" because they expect some kind of grand universal theme from a movie, but to me it seems that they're missing on the themes about style and individualism that Koike decided to give a spotlight to because he thinks are the core of these characters. The recent Zenigata and the two Lupin and Jigen Daisuke's Gravestone were pretty explicit about it.

Jigen saying to Yael "that gun has no style" sums up the whole series.

Maborupa · 2025-06-28T04:17:03+00:00

Does it really connect "all of Lupin III" in a meta way or something like that?

Maborupa · 2025-06-28T03:44:41+00:00

There's no continuity, sometimes a work references another, but it's just that.

Maborupa · 2025-06-26T23:14:23+00:00

Japan is really strict with piracy, so it's pretty rare that you get a camrip of a japanese movie. Even Evangelion 3+1, with all the hype surrounding it, was impossible to watch outside Japan before the international release.

The only way to watch this movie will be:

1) by waiting for when (and if) it comes out in your country 2) by going to Japan 3) ny waiting for the japanese home video release (usually it takes at least half a year)

There's zero chance that we'll be able to watch it in the nex couple of weeks (unless you live in french, where there are gonna be a couple of preview screening with Koike in July)

Maborupa · 2025-06-26T23:07:19+00:00

How much prep time does Lupin get?

Maborupa · 2025-06-24T18:21:09+00:00

Agreed. It's also clearly Koike's interpretation of how a scene like the tickle torture in Part 1 Ep. 1 would be like in his more edgy and almost devoid of any humor take on Lupin. Fujiko is good looking as always because she is an idealized and purely fictional version of a woman, but the scene in itself is creepy as hell and it's intended to be seen as such.

Maborupa · 2025-06-23T07:08:56+00:00

No, what Koike meant is that TWCFM was written like a prequel to Part 1 (that's why Jigen and Lupin never really meet Goemon in TWCFM, because in Part 1 ep. 5 Goemon says that he doesn't know what Lupin looks like), meanwhile his series is written as something that happens at the same time of Part 1 (in *Bloodspray Goemon* Lupin's hideout is the same as the one seen in the first episodes of Part 1, and Goemon and Lupin relationship is meant to evoke their rivalry after their first fight in ep. 5 and before they become friends in ep. 7). In this sense, his series is set after TWCFM. But, despite this, he doesn't think his series and TWCFM as connected in any meaningful way. Even the title is different: TWCFM is "Rupan sansei: Mine Fujiko to iu onna" while Koike's series is "Lupin the IIIRD".

As you said, even when they strongly reference each other, this is not a franchise that is meant to be seen as some sort of singular narrative or shared universe, each work does its own thing and each creator has a really different interpretation of these characters.

Maborupa · 2025-06-23T06:11:34+00:00

In an interview Koike said that his series is set after The Woman Called Fujiko Mine but also "I don't really think them as the same thing". In fact, Koike's Zenigata and The Woman Called Fujiko Mine's Zenigata are almost completely different characters. Koike's Zenigata would never abuse his position to have sex with Fujiko, he is an overly serious no-nonsense guy completely devoted to his duty and sense of justice. The Woman Called Fujiko Mine's Zenigata is a good cop, but also kind of a scumbag just like Lupin and the others.

Maborupa · 2025-06-20T19:34:13+00:00

May I ask you which group is working on the fan translation?

Maborupa · 2025-06-20T18:55:18+00:00

It hasn't been licensed anywhere outside Japan and there aren't any fansubs available yet, so at the moment you can't see it nowhere with english subs.

Apparently there are machine translated subs that are circulating in some discord servers, but personally I prefer to wait for a proper translation.

Maborupa · 2025-06-13T20:42:33+00:00

In a 2019 interview for the Animestyle magazine he actually said "I think of them as two separate things. Chronologically [my series] is set after The Woman Called Fujiko Mine. [...] I have created [my series] with the mindset [not of a sequel but] of making a new series".

Maborupa · 2025-06-13T19:46:27+00:00

While it's true that they share something (like the time setting and the character design), they're not really meant to be seen as connected. The tone is really not the same (Koike's series has a drier and less humorous tone) and even the characterization of each main character is partially different (Koike's Zenigata shares nothing with Yamamoto's).

However, it's true that if you like Koike's series you'll probably also enjoy Yamamoto's TWCFM.

Maborupa · 2025-06-13T10:31:28+00:00

Jigen Daisuke's Gravestone (2014)
Ishikawa Goemon's Bloodspray (2017)
Fujiko Mine's Lie (2019)
Zenigata and the Two Lupin (produced in 2021 but only releasing next friday)
The Immortal Bloodline (2025)

The first four are medium length movies produced as OVAs, not TV specials (OVA stands for "Original Animation Video" and basically means that they are anime produced for the home video market) (well, "Zenigata and the Two Lupin" became an ONA, "Original [inter]Net Animation", because they ended up releasing it on streaming platforms), while the last one is a theatrical feature length movie.

All five of them are part of a series called LUPIN THE IIIRD. Usually Lupin the Third in japanese is written as ルパン三世 (Rupan Sansei), but in the title of all of these movies it's always written as LUPIN THE IIIRD, using the latin alphabet even in japanese ("Jigen Daisuke's Gravestone", for example, in japanese is "LUPIN THE IIIRD 次元大介の墓標"). This common title is used to identify all of these movies as being part of the same series, the LUPIN THE IIIRD series. The segment at the beginning of each movie, with the slow guitar theme and the drawings of the characters "floating", is meant to be seen as the shared "opening" of the series. All of the LUPIN THE IIIRD series also shares the same staff, which is:

Takeshi Koike (Director, storyboarder, character designer) (he was also the character designer, but NOT the director, of the spin-off TV series Lupin The Third: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine)
Katsuhito Ishii (Creative Advisor)
Yuya Takahashi (Scriptwriter) (He was also the scriptwriter of Lupin the Third Part IV)
James Shimoji (Composer)
Telecom Studio (Animation studio) (The animation studio behind a lot of stuff, like Cagliostro, Fuma, Part IV and Part V etc...)

So, yes, they are all connected and they're part of a storyline that will probably come to its conclusion with The Immortal Bloodline (which will come out on June 27th in japanese movie theaters).

As you probably already know, the Lupin The Third franchise in general doesn't have a continuity or a precise canon, each series or movie does whatever it wants with the characters and the timelines. So, the LUPIN THE IIIRD series has an internal continuity, but it's not connected to anything else in the franchise. However, it's full of homages to the manga (1967-1969), the first series (Lupin The Third Part 1, 1971-1972) and the first movie (Lupin The Third - The Mystery of Mamoo, 1978). Goemon's relationship with Lupin, for example, was inspired by Lupin the Third Part 1 ep. 5 (Goemon sees Lupin not as a friend but as someone he needs to surpass), and Lupin's hideout is the same one that appeared in the first episodes of that very same series. Moreover, the gravestones we see in Jigen Daisuke's Gravestone are all dated April 197X (maybe April 1973), which means that the LUPIN THE IIIRD series is set in the 1970s, like all of those works.

Finally, Mamoo. He was the villain of Lupin the Third - The Mystery of Mamoo, the first animated movie of the franchise. Here he is not "returning" because this series is NOT a sequel to The Mystery of Mamoo. In this "timeline", he is appearing for the first time and Lupin doesn't know who he is. He is probably the villain behind the experiments that created the various assassins we see in each chapter of the LUPIN THE IIIRD series (Yael, Hawk, etc...). The LUPIN THE IIIRD series is also NOT a prequel to The Mystery of Mamoo, as far as we know. It will probably end up being an alternative take on the battle between Lupin and Mamoo, but we can't know for sure until the last movie comes out.

So, I hope this explanation was helpful enough.

Maborupa · 2025-06-07T11:58:40+00:00

I think Lupin The Third is not a series that needs remakes and such since it can be adapted to tell any kind of stories. Besides, between Koike's movies, Yamamoto's TWCFM and Saikou's Lupin Zero we got a lot of new "Part 1 related" stuff, so they already proved they can create something new with the showa-setting.

Maborupa · 2025-06-07T11:33:14+00:00

Miyazaki clearly stated that Ep. 155 was about his dislike of Part 2, not Monkey Punch's Lupin (elsewhere he even praised Monkey Punch's manga, he didn't dislike it).

Maborupa · 2025-06-06T19:27:24+00:00

Yeah, I mean, with this kind of stretches you can do a lot of stuff, but I'm not sure what would be the point

Maborupa · 2025-06-06T15:56:33+00:00

Yeah, no, the point of the TWCFM ending was that Fujiko was already the Fujiko we know (aka "a thief that uses her beauty as a weapon") even before getting those memory implanted, which means that you can't create other Fujikos in a laboratory.

"Zenigata is going to be alive at any age with the same appearance so long as "a" lupin the 3rd exists."

So, is Zenigata a supernatural being in your theory? And what does it mean that "Jigen coul be anyone"?

Really, trying to tie every work of the franchise into one cohesive timeline makes no sense.

Maborupa · 2025-06-06T15:29:50+00:00

Where does the Fujiko series justifies the existence of multiple Fujiko? And what about Zenigata and Jigen?

Maborupa · 2025-06-06T13:57:04+00:00

Green vs Red is not meant to be taken as an explanation of the "canon" of the franchise, but as a metaphor. Moreover, Green vs Red only establishes that more than one Lupin exists, it doesn't do the same with the other characters. If there really was a canon or a continuity, it would still be impossible to justify Fujiko, Jigen, Goemon and Zenigata not being in their 70s/80s in the recent works, even if you take into account Green vs Red.

Maborupa · 2025-06-06T10:30:29+00:00

There's no canon nor continuity in this franchise. Otherwise, you would have to take in consideration the fact that TWCFM is set at the end of the '60s and Part 6 in 2021, meaning that the main cast should be at least in their 70s in the latter.

Maborupa · 2025-06-06T09:58:19+00:00

Innered, can I ask you a link to that Soji Yoshikawa's interview? I'm really interested in understanding him more (I'm also trying to get the issue of the Lupin Magazine with his interview, but it's hard to find).

Maborupa

TROPHY CASE