
"There's a reason he can't let you die. If you die, a woman from the future will disappear. Now, hand over the time machine."
Ever since the franchise was created in the 60s, with the first anime in the 70s, Arsène Lupin III and his allies have faced all sorts of criminals, terrorists, and others. Here are the absolute worst of the lot.
Mutliple[]
- Mister X is one of Lupin's earliest, most recurring, and most vile adversaries. In his first appearance, he spends years building and cultivating a racetrack with the explicit purpose of killing Lupin during the race, attempting to do so through various means such as running him off the road and dropping logs on him. Along the way, Mister X kidnaps Fujiko Mine and sexually tortures her while forcing her to watch as he attempts to kill Lupin. When Lupin succeeds and wins the race, Mister X rigs the trophy to explode, taking the entire racetrack and almost everyone inside with him. Decades later, he allies with Kyosuke Mamo to ruin Lupin's life, deciding that if he can't kill the thief, he'll deprive him of everything he holds dear instead; not content with this, he also kidnaps Fujiko again to continue his sexual and emotional torment, never losing his sadistic smile all the while. Perverted to the core and never caring how many people are hurt in his schemes, Mister X set the standard of depravity for the multitudes of villains that came after him.
TV series[]
- Part I, aka "Green Jacket": Volvo is a bridge-bombing terrorist who by the start of his episode has blown up five bridges and killed several dozen people. To force Lupin to steal a huge score from an armored truck, Volvo threatens to saw a random woman in half, later trying to kill her anyway and frame Lupin. Volvo is even willing to cause further bombings all across the city to distract from his plan, and he remains cheerfully indifferent to the countless people who will die when he goes ahead with his scheme.
- Part II, aka "Red Jacket": The wealthy socialite William Huffner, introduced as Fujiko Mine's husband and her mark to steal his jewels, is secretly a ruthless Serial Killer who cheerfully murders his wives to preserve their corpses in a twisted form of art and relishes killing the women with his bare hands. To date, Huffner has murdered 99 wives and intends on making Fujiko the 100th, gloating when he corners her to try to kill her and add her to his sick tableau.
- Part V:
- "His Name is Albert" to "Thief and Thief": José is the cybernetic head of a group of mercenaries gunning for a black notebook containing dirt on France's higher-ups. José has Lupin's detective ally Camille Bardot murdered, then proceeds to near-fatally torture the minion who pulled off the hit for not scoring Lupin as well. José later betrays the person he was initially going to turn the black book over to so he can ally with Calvess, allowing terrorists to wreak havoc across France and kill dozens to cow the country into electing Calvess. José is also happy to have underperforming minions murdered, even in the midst of Lupin storming his own headquarters.
- "The Bow, the Princess, and the Terrorist": The unnamed leader of the Whales of Liberation is a vicious terrorist who attacks a school purely to kill as many children as possible. After taking over the school with his forces, the leader captures the children of particularly powerful people, hoping to create a hostage video so that his captured men will be released; when Dolma refuses to play along, the leader prepares to execute her on the spot, having already previously shot her In the Back when capturing her. After Fujiko defeats him, she reveals that he had intended to blow up the school whether or not his men were released, uncaring of whether or not his forces survived as long as he got to kill as many people as possible.
- In The Woman Called Fujiko Mine, Count Luis Yu Almeida stands out in an already dark cast filled with thieves, murderers, seductresses, assassins, and gang bosses as the protagonists. The mastermind behind horrible human experimentation and the owner of Glaucus Pharmaceuticals, Count Almeida and his scientists conducted Cold War experiments, including mind control, hypnosis, memory and personality manipulation, sensory deprivation, physical abuse, and rape. During the course of these experiments, Almeida convinced two scientists, Dr. Fritz Kaiser and his wife, to include their young daughter in the experimental trials, before murdering Dr. Kaiser. Almeida adds the memories of the tortures he puts his other experimental subjects through to her memories. Thirteen years later, we see how insane this woman has gone from everything the Count has done to her. Glaucus Pharmaceuticals is now kidnapping children and adults, disguising human experimentation as cult fanatics, and keeping surveillance almost everywhere. Based on all the evidence Lupin compiles on Almeida's guilt, the Count's only desire was to create the perfect slave. The revelation that Luis is already dead by the time the series takes place only drives in the injustice of all he has done.
- The Italian Adventure:
- Eric "The Unkiller" Orgiani is a sadistic crime boss who goes from town to town forcing protection money from the residents until he runs them dry. Given his moniker for his preferred method of punishment, Eric has his men non-fatally shoot any resistors, leaving hospitals full of the "living dead", even crippling a child and old man for slighting him.
- Leopoldo Fargo/Flago is a popular politician whose success hides a dark secret. Raising the orphan girl Belladonna as his personal assassin, Fargo has her eliminate rival criminals as well as his other assassins to hide his activities. With Belladonna completely twisted to his will, Fargo also molests her at his leisure and even planted a bomb within her, viewing her as his doll to do with as he sees fit.
Movies & Specials[]
- Lupin III: The Mystery of Mamo: Mamo himself is an ancient being out to recreate the world in his image as a god. Thousands of years old, Mamo has sown all sorts of horrors through human history, claiming credit for its worst tragedies, from wars to plagues, all in his quest for immortality and godhood. Mamo plans to unleash a nuclear holocaust onto the Earth and wipe out all life except himself and Fujiko, hoping to use the unwilling woman to start a new breed of humankind in his name, with clones of "brilliant" minds such as Hitler and Mao populating his new world. Along the way, Mamo has an entire street of people shot dead, subjects Arsene Lupin to Mind Rape, and casually tries to murder Fujiko when she rejects his advances.
- Green vs. Red: Mike Logan, the "Merchant of Death", is a greedy man whose viciousness contrasts the lighthearted nature of the film. Dying of cancer, Logan cowardly murdered his own terrified eight-year-old son so that he may live on in the boy's body. Continuing his underground dealings, Logan aims to get his hands on a powerful superweapon to further enrich himself without care for who might be harmed, and is also seen in present keeping a drugged-up consort for his pleasure.
- Gravestone of Daisuke Jigen: The unnamed club owner is the middle man between Mamo and Yael Okuzaki, working to start a war between East and West Doroa through controlled assassinations. After hiring Yael to kill Queen Malta at her peace concert, the club owner then orders a hit on Jigen to get rid of the only witness who could catch him. He is then properly introduced when he captures Fujiko, strips her naked, and then throws her into a cage to be raped by a robot with a power drill, all in front of dozens of his patrons. When Lupin III rescues her, the club owner then hires Yael to kill both of them and retrieve the Calamity File they stole to cover his own tracks.
- Mystery of the Hemingway Papers: President Carlos and Combalona Maledorich Nanno Consano embroil Corcaca Island in a Civil War, driving out the residents to fight each other for a legendary treasure. Throwing away the lives of their men en masse, Consano even takes to recruiting international Arms Dealer Mr. Marces to bolster his side before betraying and killing the man to take his mercenaries. Shakily allying to dig for the treasure, the two order their entire forces into treacherous conditions just to devote all manpower to their expedition.
- Elusiveness of the Fog: Kyosuke Mamo is a rogue time-traveler who dedicates himself to wiping out the entire Lupin line because he got rejected by a girl. Developing a time machine and using it to conduct several deadly experiments, Mamo strands Lupin and his friends 500 years in the past, taunting them by letting them believe they have a chance to get home before erasing it from existence. When Lupin almost tricks him into giving up the time machine, Mamo goes mad with rage, arming the violent Norse nation with modern weaponry to have them massacre the Shine. Participating in the battle personally by blowing up the defenses with an RPG, his efforts lead to dozens of deaths before a peace settlement is finally reached. When all else fails, Mamo simply takes Ofumi hostage, willing to erase Fujiko from existence just to spite Lupin one last time.
- Blood Seal ~Eternal Mermaid~: Himuro is a vile Arms Dealer who uses his company for medical technology as a front for his dealings and seeks the blood of his immortal descendant Yaobikuni for his own ends. After introducing himself by murdering a rival crime lord and all of his men with a smirk on his face, Himuro is later revealed to be sadistically experimenting on dozens of innocent people to figure out the secret behind Yaobikuni's immortality, at one point shooting one of his victims to see if they've become immortal and remaining indifferent when they don't resurrect. Himuro uses a 14-year-old girl as a Human Shield; tortures and abuses his fellow immortal descendant Mika; throws his own Mooks to die in death traps; and ultimately wants to throw the entire world into war and kill as many people as he can with immortal Super Soldiers.
- Crisis in Tokyo (aka Tokyo Crisis): Michael Suzuki seeks to profit off forever wars. Having murdered the father of journalist psychic Maria, Suzuki intends to harvest her genetic material with her kept as a slave to help enhance his army of Super Soldiers. Suzuki will then sell them to militaries, militias, and mafias to make conflicts worse and profit off endless death, with no compunction in gunning down anyone on his side before trying to murder Lupin and the rest.