My perspective on the early Lupin manga

[mooncrescent53]

This might or might not be a new take on the Lupin manga or anything, but I feel like it's worth sharing.

The way that I see the Lupin manga, I almost kind of look at it as a guilty pleasure in a way. Yes, I know that it doesn't hold up as well as the anime. Yes, I could just be reading a better manga. But despite that, it has this weird charm that makes me want to keep reading it.

It's almost as if Monkey Punch himself is just keeping me in a trance every time I look at it with no shame whatsoever. Or maybe it's because of his art style, I don't know lmao!

 

[The Gentleman Thief]

I think the art style is what made Lupin III what it is. The plots and characters would not be the same with more shall we say "presentable" style. I haven't read it myself due to it's more questionable aspects (the nudity) but I think I recall Peater having an excellent essay on it if you look in the description of his youtube.

Edit: Its in his bio too the Shin Lupin thing

 

[Peater]

I don't know which one you're talking about honestly but please don't read my 1 year old essays they're so embarassing LMAO

I don't think OP was talking about Shin Lupin anyway, but the OG manga is definitely more of an acquired taste or something that you slowly begin to appreciate the more you expose yourself to it.

I know I used to have a really hard time reading the OG manga because of just the whole bad scans stuff, the art style, just something i wasn't used to. But from rereading it over and over, paying attention to every detail, I really like how entertaining the stories are and how unique they are from the typical Lupin III stories. The art style in the later chapters are actually really good and expressive and there's a ton of awesome panels. It may not be as easy to read as New Adventures or Shin Lupin, some stories may not be good but it's something worth reading because it's still a unique piece of Lupin art even after 50 years.

 

[The Gentleman Thief]

I don't know which one you're talking about honestly but please don't read my 1 year old essays they're so embarassing LMAO

I don't think OP was talking about Shin Lupin anyway, but the OG manga is definitely more of an acquired taste or something that you slowly begin to appreciate the more you expose yourself to it.

I know I used to have a really hard time reading the OG manga because of just the whole bad scans stuff, the art style, just something i wasn't used to. But from rereading it over and over, paying attention to every detail, I really like how entertaining the stories are and how unique they are from the typical Lupin III stories. The art style in the later chapters are actually really good and expressive and there's a ton of awesome panels. It may not be as easy to read as New Adventures or Shin Lupin, some stories may not be good but it's something worth reading because it's still a unique piece of Lupin art even after 50 years.

The website you have that I was referring too is called Shin Lupin the essay was called
The Lupin Manga has a Poor Reputation, Why is that?

 

[Tsushi]

I would say to me the downside of the manga is that it can be difficult to "read" what is happening in the scene. Something about the scans but also about the earlier content, I think later Monkey Punch improves as an artist on on showing action that you can follow better.

But I like how out there it is, I think his linework is beautiful and raw. And I think it had the qualities that made Lupin the character that remains compelling to people to this day.

 

[Peater]

The website you have that I was referring too is called Shin Lupin the essay was called
The Lupin Manga has a Poor Reputation, Why is that?

Ohhh, sometimes I forget that my carrd is called shin lupin lmao. I usually host my essay on tumblr so I got confused. The essay is a bit outdated since I have a better view on the OG manga now, but I basically explained that the reason it has a bad reputation is because of the high amount of sexual content which can offset readers, the bad scans, and the added amount of negativity in the fandom. People can honestly form an opinion about something that they haven't read just because someone else said that it was bad. There was even a time when people said that Monkey Punch was a bad person just because of the story he told in the manga.

But yeah I agree that the early manga is pretty hard to read as well. MP uses a lot of small panels, often dividing in 4 rows and columns. Added with the low quality scans and it's pretty hard to absorb the contents of the drawing and understand what is going on. Tokyopop's translation's prioritization of shocking and dark humor instead of accuracy also didn't help people understand the chapter too because some of the dialogue was tonally all over the place.