By ATSUSHI OHARA/ Staff Writer
December 19, 2022 at 07:00 JST
Lupin, left, and Daisuke Jigen from “Lupin Zero” (Provided by TMS Entertainment Co.)
“Lupin Zero,” the latest offering by director Daisuke Sako, features the master thief as a 13-year-old junior high school student who is torn between a life of crime or keeping on the straight and narrow.
It is now streaming online on DMM TV, a new video streaming service started by DMM.com LLC.
Set in Tokyo in the decade starting in 1955, when Japan’s postwar period of rapid economic growth took off, the six-episode anime series is a spin-off from the long-running “Lupin the Third” series.
The story follows Lupin, who has been trained to become a thief by none other than Arsene Lupin, his grandfather, and his classmate, Daisuke Jigen, whose father is a mercenary. They become embroiled in a black-market transaction of an organized crime group and an incident involving the U.S. military.
“Being in his adolescence, he doesn’t know who he is yet, but he also hates to blindly follow what he is told to do,” Sako said. “I opted to make him a 13-year-old because I wanted young audiences to identify with how he feels.”
The director took a bold approach by portraying Lupin and Jigen as youngsters who smoke, drink, drive cars and use firearms.
“Lupin and others decide what is good and what is not and follow their hearts. To ‘This can’t be shown on TV,’ Lupin would say, ‘So what!?’”
The main screenwriter, Ichiro Okochi, served in the same capacity for “Lupin the Third: Part 5,” a TV series that aired in 2018 for which Sako was attached as deputy director.
He sent anime fans into a frenzy with his scripts for “Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury,” which started airing in October.
Okochi decided the story should revolve around the relationship between the two main characters. While Lupin is still a mischievous youth, Jigen, who prides himself on being a professional hitman, is irritated by his companion but finds himself attracted to the future master thief.
“I was completely satisfied with ‘Part 5’ because I wrote everything I wanted to say, so I thought I’d never work on ‘Lupin’ again,” he said. “But I wanted to write if it was the beginning of Lupin and Jigen.”
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