Lupin III

On the data. The shape first, because it is the part that is genuinely confusing. Six numbered television series across fifty years, one streaming prequel, roughly a dozen films and OVAs, and 27 television specials. English speaking fans identify the series by the colour of Lupin's jacket rather than by number, and they do it for a reason: the numbering is a mess. Part I is green, Part II is red, Part III is pink, Part IV and Part V are blue, Part 6 is green again, and The Woman Called Fujiko Mine sits between Part III and Part IV in time without carrying a number at all, so some sources call it the fourth television series and then call The Italian Adventure the fifth. The Italian Adventure is Part IV. Nothing here is a sequel to anything. That is the important claim on this page and it is why the story order view is empty. Lupin III has no in-universe chronology: characters do not age, deaths do not carry, the crew reassembles every time, and the same job can be attempted in 1977 and again in 2015 with no acknowledgement of the first attempt. Several entries look like they should fix a timeline, and none of them does. Lupin Zero, a six episode streaming prequel from 2022, shows Lupin as a schoolboy before he is a thief. The 2002 special Episode 0: First Contact tells its own version of how the crew met. Neither is treated as settled by anything that follows, and the two do not agree with each other. So every item on this page carries a null story position, on purpose, and the release grouping is the only ordering the data claims. The one exception is a group rather than a timeline. Sayo Yamamoto's 2012 series The Woman Called Fujiko Mine and the films Takeshi Koike made afterwards share a cast, a visual style and a creative team, and they do run in order: Fujiko Mine in 2012, Jigen's Gravestone in 2014, Goemon's Blood Spray in 2017, Fujiko Mine's Lie in 2019, the streaming prequel Zenigata and the Two Lupins in June 2025 and the feature The Immortal Bloodline a week later on 27 June 2025. That is the closest Lupin has to a serialised story and it is listed as its own group in that order. Wikipedia describes the Koike films as continuations of the Yamamoto series in style and staff rather than as a numbered sequence, so treat the order as a strong convention rather than a stated canon. On where to start, the answer is well known and it is not Cagliostro. Anime News Network's own guide declines to give a single starting point and says instead that what you watch first is a matter of taste. CBR's beginner's guide is more direct: it names Part II from 1977 and Part IV from 2015 as the two best entry points, calls Part IV a self-contained story across its full run that requires little background knowledge, and advises against starting with the original manga or with Part I, on the grounds that both are considerably harder and more crime-focused than what the franchise became. This site follows that and puts Part IV first, with Cagliostro second rather than first. The Castle of Cagliostro from 1979 is the most acclaimed thing with Lupin's name on it and the least representative. Miyazaki rewrote the character as cheerful and essentially decent; Monkey Punch called the film excellent and said openly that Miyazaki's Lupin was not his. Starting there and moving to anything else is a reliable way to be disappointed by the franchise. On episode counts. Part I is 23 episodes, cut short from a planned 26 after poor ratings, and its director Masaaki Osumi was replaced after the second episode by Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata, who softened it; a 1978 rerun then averaged 32.5 per cent and made the franchise. Part II is 155, Part III is 50. Part IV ran 24 episodes in Japan and 26 in the earlier Italian broadcast, and the reason for the difference is not clearly explained by any source checked here; this page lists 24, which is the Japanese figure and the one every current streaming service serves. Part 5 is 24. Part 6 is listed here as 25, which counts the preview Episode 0 broadcast on 10 October 2021 ahead of the numbered run; services that drop Episode 0 show 24, and both describe the same broadcast. The Woman Called Fujiko Mine is 13. Lupin Zero is 6. On the television specials, which is where the counting gets soft. One aired every year on Nippon Television from 1989 to 2013, and three more have aired since: Italian Game in 2016, Goodbye Partner in January 2019 and Prison of the Past in November 2019. Wikipedia's article on Prison of the Past calls it the 27th television special, and 27 is the figure most often quoted, but a straight list of one per year from 1989 to 2013 plus those three comes to 28. The likeliest reconciliation is that the 2009 crossover Lupin III vs. Detective Conan is counted separately rather than as a numbered special, which would make 27 correct and this list of 28 broadcasts correct too. All 28 are listed here. The English titles are a separate problem again. The same special can appear as Island of Assassins or Walther P38, as The Columbus Files or Da Capo of Love, as Missed by a Dollar or 1 Dollar Money Wars, depending on whether you are looking at a Japanese listing, an old Funimation or Geneon release or a recent Discotek one. The titles used here follow the English Wikipedia list, with the alternates noted on the individual entries where the difference is large enough to lose you. What is left out and why. The 1974 live action film, the stage plays, the pachinko and game tie-ins and the very large body of manga are all omitted: the manga is the source rather than an adaptation, and none of the rest is animation. Several short promotional pieces, anniversary shorts and Master File style documentary releases are omitted because they are production material rather than stories. Some listings also include a cancelled 1980s American co-production, Lupin VIII, which was never finished and is not watchable. Completeness is not the goal on a franchise this size; being honest about its shape is. The shape is: pick an entry point, watch that thing, and stop worrying about the rest of the list.

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