“Lupin III,” marking 55 years since the series began airing in 1971, is getting a commemorative “Best Episodes Selection” special, airing on Nippon TV starting late night on October 3. Chosen by fan vote from all 316 episodes, the #1 pick for each series was: Episode 1 for PART1; “Farewell, My Beloved Lupin,” directed by Hayao Miyazaki, for PART2; “Gold Calls for Lupin” for PART III; “The Marriage of Lupin III” for PART4; the final episode for PART5; the episode marking voice actor Kiyoshi Kobayashi’s retirement for PART6; and Episode 1 for “The Woman Called Fujiko Mine.” In the thread, discussion split between reactions that misread the voting scope (mistaking it for one that included the theatrical film “The Castle of Cagliostro”), pushback against how Miyazaki-directed episodes tend to land near the top, and disagreement over “which series counts as the ‘real’ Lupin.”
As a commemorative project for “Lupin III,” marking 55 years since the first TV anime episode aired in 1971, “Lupin III Best Episodes Selection,” in which fans voted to decide which episodes would air, begins broadcasting on Nippon TV every Saturday late night starting October 3. To coincide with the broadcast start, the #1-ranked episode in each series, chosen from a total of 316 episodes, has been announced.
“Lupin III Best Episodes Selection” is set to air 13 episodes in total: the top 2 episodes from each of the TV series “PART1” through “PART6,” plus the #1 episode from the spin-off “LUPIN the Third: The Woman Called Fujiko Mine.” The #1 spot in all 7 series went to whichever episode was already leading at the interim results announced in August, with no changes at the finish line.
The final #1 picks were: for “PART1,” the landmark Episode 1, “Is Lupin Burning…?!”; for “PART2,” “Farewell, My Beloved Lupin,” directed by Hayao Miyazaki under the pseudonym Tsutomu Teruoka; for “PART III,” “Gold Calls for Lupin”; from “PART4,” “The Marriage of Lupin III”; from “PART5,” the final episode, “Lupin III Forever”; from “PART6,” “EPISODE 0 – The Era -,” the episode marking the retirement of Kiyoshi Kobayashi, who voiced Jigen Daisuke for roughly 50 years; and from “The Woman Called Fujiko Mine,” Episode 1, “Master Thief vs. Female Phantom Thief.” The remaining six episodes will only be revealed once they actually air.
Source: cinematoday.jp / Original article here
2AnonymousOct 3, 2026 07:51
Cagliostro wins no matter what, right?
48AnonymousOct 3, 2026 08:50
Re: #2
It's a TV anime popularity poll, though.
90AnonymousOct 3, 2026 09:40
Re: #2
Cagliostro lost to Mamo lol (the villain from "The Mystery of Mamo" movie)
6AnonymousOct 3, 2026 07:54
Only the first series is real Lupin.
Everything else, Cagliostro included, doesn't count as Lupin.
17AnonymousOct 3, 2026 08:05
Re: #6
By that logic the first series has its own original spin on things too, so it's not "real" Lupin either.
Only the original manga is real Lupin.
35AnonymousOct 3, 2026 08:21
Re: #17
Monkey Punch himself was such a big-hearted guy, telling creators "just do it your own way," and yet lol
Monkey Punch wanted everyone — including himself as the original author — to do their own thing, but he seems to have been frustrated that most people only make watered-down Miyazaki knockoffs, with a lot of fans refusing to accept anything outside the Miyazaki lineage
(It's a famous story, but there was that time he tried doing it his own way as the original creator and the staff told him it wasn't "real" Lupin)
Re: #6
Even within the first series, Osumi's episodes and Miyazaki's episodes go in pretty different directions.
47AnonymousOct 3, 2026 08:49
Re: #6
Right. Osumi is supreme. Cagliostro is at the bottom. They should just make a sequel to the Lupin vs. Conan movie and THE FIRST instead.
7AnonymousOct 3, 2026 07:55
Wasn't there an episode where the characters were basically straight out of Laputa (Castle in the Sky)?
8AnonymousOct 3, 2026 07:57
Re: #7
The one with Maki Koyamada.
10AnonymousOct 3, 2026 07:58
There used to be this old guy from Arizona — an American who reviewed Japanese anime — who said he watched all of Lupin III, TV series and movies included, and in the end Cagliostro was still the most fun.
46AnonymousOct 3, 2026 08:49
Not much different from the 50th-anniversary "Kin-Ro" (Friday Road Show) best-episodes special.
According to the official site, they're also putting out a digitally remastered disc of the old Lupin series.
Next year marks half a century since PART2 aired, but that doesn't seem to be connected to this.
Re: #10
That's one of those clips that gets recycled over and over with random subtitles slapped on.
12AnonymousOct 3, 2026 08:00
Wild — neither the article nor the official site says what time on the 3rd it actually airs.
51AnonymousOct 3, 2026 08:52
Re: #12
Same here. I checked the official site after October started and there was nothing new, just the disc release and merch design reveals — no voting results — so I was wondering what was going on.
13AnonymousOct 3, 2026 08:01
Well, but now that we're in an era where people scream "source-material rape" (fan slang for adaptations seen as betraying the original) at any liberty taken, talents like Miyazaki probably won't come along again.
19AnonymousOct 3, 2026 08:07
Re: #13
Like with Detective Conan — there are people who straight-up say "I made the boring source material interesting." That generation (Tomino, Dezaki) had the mindset that the source material is just raw material, and the anime is the director's own work.
23AnonymousOct 3, 2026 08:08
Is there a thing where people insist Lupin has to be voiced by Yasuo Yamada or nobody?
24AnonymousOct 3, 2026 08:11
Re: #23
The impersonator-comedian who took over the role is at an age where it wouldn't be shocking if he died any day now, so they'll need to go find yet another impersonator-comedian next.
42AnonymousOct 3, 2026 08:27
Re: #23
That's only a tiny handful of weirdos.
58AnonymousOct 3, 2026 09:01
Re: #23
Re: #42
There are actually a ton of them.
Even I still find Kurita Kan'ichi's (nicknamed "Kurikan," the current Lupin voice actor) half-hearted impression-style voice a bit off.
28AnonymousOct 3, 2026 08:17
Apparently Lupin is always in disguise, and even his "official" face is actually just another disguise — nobody's ever seen his real one.
41AnonymousOct 3, 2026 08:25
Re: #28
"Official" or not, in the original manga the setting is that "even that familiar face is a disguise, and we don't even really know his gender" (there's exactly one character who knows Lupin's true face, and there's a story where Zenigata goes to ask that character about it). Face aside, the gender thing feels like a stretch lol.
37AnonymousOct 3, 2026 08:22
Airing just this lopsided selection doesn't seem like it accomplishes much…
People who already know the series will find these episodes too famous already, and people who don't know it will just be totally lost if they suddenly watch the PART2 finale out of nowhere.
65AnonymousOct 3, 2026 09:11
Re: #37
It's faster to just dig through the character-focused episode compilations TMS Entertainment posts for free on YouTube.
Everything except the Miyazaki episodes and "The Woman Called Fujiko Mine" shows up there.
Search "TMS official Lupin III" on YouTube and you'll get a whole lineup of official Lupin III uploads.
38AnonymousOct 3, 2026 08:23
Give the Fuma Clan arc some love.
It's well put together and I really like it.
52AnonymousOct 3, 2026 08:53
Re: #38
The Fuma arc has decent voice acting too, and the treasure is just plain old gold-and-silver treasure, which I like.
43AnonymousOct 3, 2026 08:35
What about "Albatross, Wings of Death"?
75AnonymousOct 3, 2026 09:18
Re: #43
Isn't that the #2 pick?
56AnonymousOct 3, 2026 08:59
"Farewell, My Beloved Lupin" barely even has Lupin in it, though.
59AnonymousOct 3, 2026 09:02
Re: #56
Go watch it again.
Lupin's on screen non-stop from the very start.
57AnonymousOct 3, 2026 08:59
Lupin has no connection whatsoever to Arsène Lupin — he's just an ordinary Japanese guy, you know.
70AnonymousOct 3, 2026 09:12
Re: #57
In the original early setting: there's Edogawa Ranpo's novel "The Golden Mask" (whose true identity is Arsène Lupin), and Lupin III is the grandson of Arsène Lupin — the son of a child Arsène had with a Japanese woman.
61AnonymousOct 3, 2026 09:05
Re: #1
If we're talking about the first series, it should be Episode 2, "The Man Called a Magician."
91AnonymousOct 3, 2026 09:41
Re: #61
Right?
Well, in polls like this Episode 1 always has an edge.
64AnonymousOct 3, 2026 09:07
"Farewell, My Beloved Lupin" is already too famous — for PART2 I wanted to discover some other hidden gems instead.
71AnonymousOct 3, 2026 09:12
Re: #64
There's kind of a "just default to Miyazaki" vibe to it, yeah.
81AnonymousOct 3, 2026 09:30
Is Miyazaki's Lupin really that good?
He seems to win #1 every single time.
82AnonymousOct 3, 2026 09:31
Re: #81
It's just people who haven't actually watched it properly voting for it purely because it's Miyazaki.
87AnonymousOct 3, 2026 09:36
If they'd done one single combined vote across every series, PART4 through 6 would probably get shut out entirely, but they have to include them to push the newer voice cast.
89AnonymousOct 3, 2026 09:39
Re: #87
Even PART III is shaky.
PART4 onward, people don't even know it exists.
Background and Key Points of This Topic
This vote covered only the TV series (PART1 through 6) and the spin-off, not the theatrical films — “The Castle of Cagliostro” was never part of the tally to begin with. The thread’s “Cagliostro lost” reactions stem from that mismatched premise, and it’s worth flagging that this isn’t made clear in the article itself: it’s a separate count from any theatrical-film popularity contest. The tendency for Hayao Miyazaki-directed episodes like “Farewell, My Beloved Lupin” to rank at the top across multiple series also appears to reflect the director’s fame and later critical reappraisal, which is what drove the thread’s pushback against a “just default to Miyazaki” mood. The fact that the episode marking Kiyoshi Kobayashi’s retirement — after voicing Jigen for nearly 50 years — was chosen to represent PART6 also lines up with a genuine production-side milestone: a cast change within the series. The final results simply locked in whatever was leading at the August interim announcement, with no reversals in the final rankings.
*This article is compiled from excerpts and a summary of the 5ch (Geisokuho+) thread ““Lupin III” 55th Anniversary Best Episodes Selection: Final #1 Picks by Series Announced, Airing from October 3.”
