Lupin III: Part II

Lupin III: Part II, on Nippon TV
Anime Galleries; ANN; IMDb; TV Tropes; Wikia Wikipedia
streaming sites: Crunchyroll; RetroCrush

There have been several Lupin III (or "Lupin the Third") TV series. The only one I've seen any of at all is the second series (also known as the "Red Jacket" series, since in each different series, Lupin wore a different colored jacket). Lupin III Part II originally aired from 1977 to 1980. However, I didn't see it until 2003, when 26 of the show's 155 episodes aired on Adult Swim. (And I don't recall if I saw all 26 episodes or not.) There have also been a bunch of movies, which I also haven't seen. But I'd probably like to at least see "The Castle of Cagliostro," someday. In any event, I thought this series was just sort of okay. The first episode didn't do much for me, but after awhile I came to enjoy the series a bit more. Kinda funny stuff. The animation style looks kind of goofy, but I guess that's intentional. And a lot of the plot and dialog seem kind of cornball, but fun. But it's weird, because the dubbed version that aired on Adult Swim is full of modern references, so I have no idea what the original 1970s version of the show was like. (It probably made more sense, but I find it hard to imagine it would have been any less goofy, just more appropriate to its era than to the early 2000s. I'm guessing.)

Anyway, the main character is this international thief named Arsčne Lupin III (his grandfather was a famous French thief). Lupin seems pretty full of himself, and as far as his strategizing talents go, deservedly so. But he's pretty much just a goofy wiseguy who's always hitting on women, particularly Fujiko Mine. Fujiko is another thief who sometimes works with Lupin, but mostly she's just on her own side, and isn't above double-crossing her partners. This includes Lupin, as well as the two other guys he normally works with. One is Daisuke Jigen. He just looks sort of like Abraham Lincoln, to me, but I think he used to be in the mob in Chicago, or something. Anyway, he seems to take his work more seriously than Lupin, when he's actually on the job. The other guy is Goemon Ishikawa XIII, who's very calm and contemplative, and uses a sword... he's a master of some sort of martial art, and is kind of like a samurai or something. In fact he's supposed to be the descendant of a famous samurai of the same name. The other main character in the show is Inspector Kouichi Zenigata, of Interpol. He's constantly chasing Lupin and his cohorts around the world, but never manages to catch them. He's actually a pretty good officer, I think, just not quite as good as Lupin's gang, who manage to make him look rather goofy and bumbling. And... that's all I can tell you.