A Question on the Lupin III Manga

Hello again

My journey with Lupin III has been going well as I watch the series daily however I ran into an issue outside of the world of Lupin. I needed new books. So I decided to look into getting the manga as I had heard good things about it. Of course this endeavor leaves with two questions that I would be most obliged if you could answer.

1. The necessary nudity check. I am quite capable of skipping pages if it isn't anything too egregious and I don't really care about any other "mature" aspects of it. Even innuendos and rapeish jokes are okay and I am fine with gore.

2. Is it good? And this forum has novels on it. Are there any novels of Lupin III worth reading?

Thanks everyone

-The Gentleman Thief
 
Pronouns
he/him
Your best bet is the recent "Greatest Heists" Collections

However the nude is pretty bad I won't lie, they do censor the REALLY bad stuff but I wouldn't go into it below at the age of 16/17 or so
some stories don't have it at all which is nice, some are just super goofy.

You should be able to check preview pages via Kindle (if you have access to that) before making the purchase, the hardcover is pretty expensive so you could be better buying the digital copy.
 
1. Yes... It does have nudity of the feminine and the masculine (even Lupin himself) variety. Some of it is more juvenile intended to be comedic while others are sex scenes or worse. It's really a chapter by chapter basis. If there's a woman/girl involved with the plot, then chances are pretty high. Not always though but just to watch out as to be expected for an adult manga from the 1960s/1970s.

I only have Greatest Heists in terms of the manga. Out of GH, there's three chapters that features the topic and other deep themes (including the first manga chapter ever, that happens to be the 2nd chapter in the book), the rest don't feature any nudity at all or just one panel if that. The questionable ones can be previewed on Amazon to see if it is acceptable to your tastes. I don't know about the follow up Thick as Thieves but imagine that it will feature it. Why I mentioned these two is because they are selected chapters from the manga and are the easiest available English translations. A bonus is that some of these were later adapted into anime episodes so you can see what they changed. The others as in what was translated are long out of print, hard to find and also have translation errors. There is no complete official translation of the manga, either the Monkey Punch series (Lupin III & New Adventures, New/Shin Lupin III, Sexy Lupin III, Lupin Jr, the Italian comic that can never get a reprint due to rights issues) or the later ones that are more closer to the anime. There are fan translations of most of the Monkey Punch ones that weren't officially translated though.

2. There are novels and choose your adventure books but sadly as it is the case of Lupin III, most of them are not translated into English or indeed any other language outside of Japanese, many of these were printed a long time ago and can be difficult to find. This is a common theme to expect out of the series. The Futabasha Gamebook series do seem interesting but there's not even a fan translation out there... The closest novel is the Italian "knockoff" where it combines elements from both Arsène Lupin and Lupin III but is sort of a retelling of The Castle of Cagliostro and I don't know if it's any good.

There's plenty of good fan fiction around that does fill in the gap and can be tailored to your likes.
 
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