"Witch of the Fourth-Dimension"note , with the English title "Auntie Ballistic". Released in 2004 by Geneon on Volume 5: Mission Irresistible.
Inspector Zenigata arrives at Paris police headquarters to investigate the rumor that Lupin has been living in a suburb nearby. While the chief confirms the rumors, he explains that Arsene Lupin I (and by extension, his grandson) are considered a national treasure of sorts, and therefore he cannot go after the master thief. Zenigata leaves, disgusted. After he departs, the chief chuckles in a familiar voice; it is, of course, Lupin himself. Outside, Zenigata rants about the French people's crazy attitude, but he trails off when he spots Fujiko riding in a car with a man who is clearly not Lupin. However, Zenigata remains unconvinced, hijacking a nearby taxi and taking off after the duo until he wrecks that car. Upon which, he hijacks another car and crashes it. And again...
At Lupin's mansion, Lupin is playing a game of chess against a sophisticated robot. Annoyed by being abandoned by Fujiko, he lets his temper get the better of him when he starts losing and ends up in a fight with the robot that ends most destructively. Jigen urges Lupin to calm down, but is interrupted by a phone call from the lady herself. Jigen asks her to hold for a moment and goes to discuss the situation with Goemon, but the two hear Lupin jump out the window after figuring out who was on the phone. Leaping into his car, Lupin happily goes off to meet with his favorite gal. Not even Zenigata or a roadblock can stop him as he heads for a villa that Fujiko rented in Ledgeo, Italy.
Upon ariving at the villa, however, Lupin is greeted by two men firing machine guns and bazookas at him. Lupin manages to survive (though his car nearly doesn't), and ends up crashing what's left into a second story window. He runs for the sound of Fujiko's laughter within, but instead finds a holographic version of her. The curtains in the room draw back to reveal the two men, on either side of a very large older lady.
The woman explains she is Bujiko Mine, Fujiko's aunt, and she used her niece's name and image to get Lupin to come and help her on a little treasure hunt. Bujiko has information about Rommel's treasure of buried gold, hidden somewhere in the Sahara Desert; she naturally needs the master thief to help her find it. Lupin refuses, however, still reeling from his encounter with the curse of the gold mask of King Tut. He tries to escape, but stops when Jigen and Goemon are brought in, captured by Bujiko's men. After sitting through a lecture on the history of the treasure delivered by the holographic Fujiko, Lupin decides it's not so bad after all and sets about decoding the hieroglyphics. After hours of pouring over books, he gets completely frustrated, but can't give up when Fujiko's hologram reveals that if he can't find an answer, Bujiko's men will kill him at dawn. After hours more work, he stumbles across the code at the last minute and goes to report his findings to Bujiko.
The gang, Aunt Bujiko, and her men, travel to a point off of the Tunisian coast. There, Lupin finds undersea ruins referencing the Falcon of Malta, which he uses to calculate the correct location. With Lupin's coordinates and plot, Bujiko decides she no longer needs the thieves and orders them to jump overboard. However, distracted by insults from Jigen and Goemon, Lupin throws a smoke bomb and Goemon cuts the motorboat in half. Their half still working, Lupin and his gang ride off, leaving Bujiko behind on her sinking ship.
The gang makes their way to El-Alamein, the "garden of the devil" and site of where the British forces dug in while fighting Rommel's army. There, they dig a hole amid the ruined tanks and military vehicles, succeeding in finding Rommel's stash of gold bars. That night, however, Bujiko and her men approach Lupin's gang. When she orders her men to take the gold, they fall into a sinkhole, the remains of one of Rommel's old trenches. Without her men to back her, Lupin proposes he, Jigen, Goemon, and Bujiko split the gold four ways. Before Bujiko can agree, Lupin borrows Zantetsuken and makes a few slices at Bujiko. Her hat splits and her face and body fall away to reveal a rather scantily clad Fujiko. She agrees to the split as Lupin, gallant as ever, offers her his jacket against the cold desert air.
This episode features examples of:
- Abhorrent Admirer: Bujiko for Lupin. While she's using him to find the treasure and is ready to kill him if he steps out of line, she also seems to find him attractive, kissing him and smothering his face with her breasts when she has the chance.
- Absurdly Sharp Blade: Goemon cuts a motorboat in half lengthwise. He apparently does it so well the motor still works!
- A.I. Is a Crapshoot: Lupin's chess playing robot, which calls him a loser and gets into a fight with him. Though to be fair to it (at least in the Japanese version), the robot seems to be merely making a statement of fact, and it's Lupin who throws the first punch (er... kick). It even calls him out on being such a sore loser!
- Berserk Button: Don't call Bujiko ugly. Please, don't. Invoked later by Jigen and Goemon when they get fed up with her.
- Big Eater: The reason why Bujiko's so fat. In one scene she's seen chomping on a large chop of roast meat.
- Call-Back: A rare one for Shin Lupin III, when Lupin freaks out over the hieroglyphics. They remind him of his encounter with King Tut's curse.
- Celebrity Impersonator: Zenigata, in a moment of snark:French Taxi Driver: Who are you?Zenigata: I'm Jerry Lewis! *hijacks cab*French Taxi Driver: You've lost weight!
- *Cough* Snark *Cough*: Zenigata does this twice behind his hat to the police chief.
- Covered in Kisses: When Lupin accepts to work, Bujiko is so glad she pins him down and showers him with kisses. When Goemon almost calls her ugly and she points her pistol at him we can see Lupin's faces smeared with lipstick marks.
- Disproportionate Retribution: According to the henchmen, hundreds of people died because they called Bujiko "ugly". She later points her pistol at Goemon when he almost call her that and when Jigen and Goemon openly insults her she gives them three seconds to scram before her own henchmen open fire on them with machineguns.
- Easily Forgiven: Fujiko takes the cake in this episode. The crap she put the rest of the gang through the entire episode is forgotten pretty much as soon as Lupin reveals her identity.
- Hero Stole My Bike: Zenigata, although he chooses to stop his targets via gun.
- Ignore the Fanservice: After being incentivized to work by getting fanservice from a hologram of Fujiko, he starts to tune her out because he can't touch her. When the real Fujiko shows up, he completely ignores her.
- Implausible Fencing Powers: Lupin has apparently been taking lessons from Goemon, as he removes Fujiko's disguise without injuring her.
- I Was Quite a Looker: According to Bujiko, all the women of the Mine family ends up fat like her despite their looks, and claims that Fujiko will eventually look like her too. The whole thing seems to imply that she used to be prettier.
- Last-Second Word Swap: Performed by Goemon after Bujiko starts making out with Lupin.Goemon: Just why we have to work with that ug- (Bujiko points her gun at him)... that old lady?
- Latex Perfection: Lupin of the police chief. And Fujiko of Bujiko.
- Marshmallow Hell: Lupin, though alas for him it is Aunt Bujiko and not Fujiko.
- Meaningful Name: The Bu from Bujiko is the Japanese onomatopoeia for the pig's grunts. It also calls to mind "Busu" (Ugly, the word she loathes in the original dub) and "Buta" (pig). "Buji" itself means something like peaceful and serene, which is only meaningful in the sense that Aunt Bujiko is anything but.
- Nazi Gold: Erwin Rommel was a famous WWII general. For the Axis Powers.
- Trash Talk: Lupin's chess-playing robot.Robot: Ooo, I'm scared. Come on, ass-[deleted], you want a piece of this?
- Verbal Tic: Some of the robot's vocabulary has been removed from it's databanks. Resulting in the word [deleted] replacing them.
- Victoria's Secret Compartment: Played for Fan Disservice when Bujiko fishes a paper from her cleavage, squicking Lupin.
- You Wouldn't Shoot Me: Not in so many words. When Bujiko turns on the gang, she tells them that she's willing to let them leave alive, but warns them that on the count of three she's going to order her men to open fire. Lupin and co. just stare at her smugly. She goes to two-and-a-half.
- What Measure Is a Mook?: Blatantly so. Near the end of the episode a small army of mooks wind up accidentally murdering themselves trying to run through quicksand. The only reaction anyone has to this (both Lupin's gang and the mooks' own employer) is that now it'll be simpler to split up the treasure.
