Lupin III

9Reduced, this title gives 9. It sits on The Closing with the rest of a completion.

What it is

Monkey Punch's Lupin III began in Futabasha's adult manga weekly Manga Action in 1967, with the original series running until 1969 and later series following. Lupin the Third is the grandson of Arsène Lupin, the gentleman thief of Maurice Leblanc's novels. He steals for the challenge as much as the money, accompanied by the marksman Daisuke Jigen and the samurai Goemon Ishikawa, betrayed again and again by the thief Fujiko Mine, and pursued across the world by Inspector Kōichi Zenigata.

How it works

Each story is a caper: a target, a plan, a disguise, a double-cross and an escape. Lupin is a master of disguise and his plans are always one step ahead of the reader. The original manga is much darker and more sexual than the later anime, with a cynical, violent Lupin, and it was aimed at adult readers.

The style

Monkey Punch drew in a loose, angular style influenced by American magazine cartoonists, which looked unlike anything else in Japanese manga at the time. Its speed and wit carried over into the characters' famous silhouettes: Lupin's thin legs and jacket, Jigen's hat over his eyes, Goemon's sword.

Why it matters

The anime adaptations, beginning in 1971, made the characters national icons. Hayao Miyazaki's first feature film, The Castle of Cagliostro (1979), is a Lupin story. Because the Lupin name was protected by copyright outside Japan, some early overseas releases renamed him, but today he is one of the most recognisable figures in Japanese popular culture.

The title by its numbers

Lupin27III27total54 → 9

総画 strokes15 → 6years serialised3debut year1967 → 5

Counted letter by letter this title comes to 54 — 9 once reduced. The weight sits in “Lupin”, which carries 27 on its own and reduces to 9.

The reference files it as a completion. The number's contribution is endings, compassion, and the closing of cycles — and with it the 9's sense of a cycle closing and something being released, which is the thread the reference follows here.

Split the title again and the vowels give a Heart's Desire of 3 (expression) against a Personality of 6 (responsibility) in the consonants — expression underneath, responsibility on the surface. The gap between them is where the subject is most interesting.

The letters give 9; the subject's own figures do not agree. 総画 strokes is 15, a 6, years serialised is 3 and debut year is 1967, a 5. Where the two part company the reference trusts the figures, because a title is a decision somebody made about the thing, and these are the thing.

Read on the 9's terms, this entry asks you to work out what survived the ending. The 9 sentimentalises. An ending is not automatically a meaning, and the reference tries not to pretend otherwise. The other entries that reduce to 9 are collected on The Closing.