"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."
"Let me prophesize: the world will come to an end within the next few days. But only those chosen by me will continue to live...eternally. Only those who are beautiful and brilliant will be given eternal life."
— Mamo, The Mystery of Mamo
Ever since the franchise was created in the 1960s, with the first anime in the 1970s, Arsène Lupin III and his allies have faced all sorts of criminals, terrorists, and others. Here are the worst.
Entries in each group are by release date.
All spoilers are unmarked. You Have Been Warned!
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Multiple
- Mister X is one of Lupin's most recurring enemies, both his earliest and one of the vilest. 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, tickling 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
Examples
- "I Melt With You" & "It's a Purloin-a-palooza!": Fantoma Mark III, grandson of Fantômas, is a Diabolical Mastermind intent on flooding most of the world and rebuilding civilisation with himself as a ruler. After Lupin beats him in stealing the Punjab Ruby, needed to power the laser with which Fantoma intends to melt the ice, Fantoma kidnaps Fujiko and threatens to kill her unless Lupin gives up the ruby. Going back on his word, Fantoma has them both launched into space and Forced to Watch as he floods the world. Beaten and gravely injured, Fantoma organises a Thieves Race, intending to have Lupin killed, and even placing an Earthquake Machine beneath the stadium, uncaring about the lives of the spectators.
- "The Yam is Mightier Than the Sword": Sherlock and Al Camone intend to start a war so they can profit. After attacking the Lupin gang with tanks, they hire Fujiko Mine to steal Zantetsuken from Goemon, attaching it to one of their drones to maximize its potential. To start their war, Camone uses the drone to destroy several military bases on both sides of the conflict, with both sides quickly blaming the other and leaving them both flocking to Sherlock's company for extra weapons. Fully intending to continue this pattern until they bleed both countries dry of resources, the two of them gleefully continue using the drone to destroy as much as they possibly can until they're finally defeated.
- "Games of Chance": Robert is the chief of staff to the corrupt casino mogul Domino, and a key participant in Domino's insurance scam to destroy the artificial island his own casino is on and collect the insurance money; neither one of them cares that a few thousand people are going to die in said casino's destruction. However, Robert goes beyond the original plan when he reveals that he set it up for Domino's daughter Nina to die in the trap. Then, he proceeds to plan on killing Domino himself and Fujiko Mine so that, with Nina dead, he will be the sole beneficiary of the insurance money.
- "The Bride Came D.O.A.": Wealthy socialite William Huffner is Fujiko Mine's husband and mark to steal his jewels. Huffner, however, 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.
Others
Examples
- Part 1's "When the Seventh Bridge Falls": 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.
- The Woman Called Fujiko Mine: Count Luis Yu Almeida, head of Glaucus Pharmaceuticals, spent the Cold War conducting cruel experimentation, violating the minds and bodies of his victims. Convincing his colleagues to give their daughter Aisha for his research, Almeida murdered said colleagues and began tormenting Aisha by implanting the memories of his other victims into her mind. Driven completely insane by present time, Aisha continues the deceased Almeida's work by kidnapping people and brainwashing them to a cult-like devotion as they are used to keep the experiments going. Theorized by Lupin to be driven to create the perfect slave, Almeida's evil lives long after him, far worse even than any of the criminals who compose the main cast.
- The Italian Adventure:
- "With a Gun in My Hand": 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.
- "Requiem for the Assassins": Leopoldo Fa(r)go/Flago is a popular politician whose success hides a dark secret. Raising the orphan girl Belladonna as his personal assassin, Fago has her eliminate rival criminals as well as his other assassins to hide his activities. With Belladonna completely twisted to his will, Fago 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.
- Part 5:
- "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.
- Part 6's "Two Terrible Ladies": Grayson is a vain child trafficker responsible for countless youths being worked to death. Scarred while trying to brand Fujiko when she attempts to steal proof of his crimes, Grayson hides his face as a cult leader and later tries to brutally torture her to death.
Movies (Theatrical & OVA)
Examples
- 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 Adolf Hitler and Mao Zedong 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 horrid advances.
- Farewell to Nostradamus: Chris is a power-hungry mercenary ostensibly under the employ of cult leader Rhisley. Hijacking a bombing on a jumbo jet to kidnap the daughter of a presidential candidate, Chris later brutally tortures Lupin's uncle to death. Revealed to have led his soldiers on a village massacre, Chris finally betrays Rhisley to plant bombs on a building housing countless people, threatening to blow it up unless he receives access to the Nostradamus prophecies which he seeks to use to rule the world.
- Dead or Alive:
- General Headhunter is a violent nanomachine android who murdered the royal family of Zufu to take power. Instilling a military dictatorship, Headhunter has any dissidents sent to prison where they are either formally executed or used in a sadistic annual hunting game for the warden to enjoy. Seeking to amalgamate himself with the control center of the nanomachines when the former Prince seemingly attempts to launch a rebellion, Headhunter tortures the Prince's lover and boasts of his intent to crush the freedom fighters and continue his tyranny.
- Crisis is the smug and sadistic right-hand man to Headhunter. Ensuring his boss's reign of tyranny never ends, Crisis heads a spy network, even forcing the former Prince's lover to work for him weeding out and imprisoning any who go against the regime. When Lupin arrives on Zufu, Crisis calls countless assassins to the nation and tries to torture the Prince's lover for the secret of the nanomachines.
- Green vs. Red: Mike Logan, aka 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 to 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, 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.
Yearly specials
Examples
- 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.
- Voyage to Danger: John Klause, the head of Shot Shell, is one of the nastiest arms dealers Lupin ever faces. A merchant of death to beat them all, John Klause plans to spark World War III and kill millions, all for the sake of profit.
- Island of Assassins:
- Gordeau is the head of Tarantula, a sinister coalition of killers responsible for assassinations, bombings and massacres across the world. Gordeau ensures absolute obedience by poisoning his men with a venom that will agonizingly kill them should they leave his island without his special gas masks, and has no compunction having underperforming minions used as live game for the others. Demanding loyalty while possessing not a drop of his own, Gordeau ultimately sets up the death of everyone in his entire organization to make off with the gold hidden beneath his island, and finally meets his end trying to betray and kill his last remaining subordinate.
- The seemingly-affable Doc is actually Gordeau's accomplice who matches his boss's reprehensible cruelty. Once Lupin's partner who betrayed him during a getaway, Doc would go on to assist Gordeau in his assassinations, taking an active part in carrying them out. Doc helps set up the death of everybody in Tarantula by tricking Ellen and the renegade assassins into stealing fake gold, resulting in dozens of casualties on both sides. Killing Gordeau to acquire the real gold for himself, Doc sadistically reveals to Ellen that he slit her brother's throat, afterwards attempting to leave everybody on the island behind to die with the gold in hand.
- 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.
- Elusiveness of the Fog (2007): 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, a vile Arms Dealer who uses his company for medical technology as a front for his dealings, 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.
Others
- Inspector Zenigata's "Chase the Mysterious Skull Crime Gang!": Akai Toshiki is the leader of "Docro Magnons 5", a gang of sadistic miscreants who kidnap innocent people to torture and beat them for their own merriment. Toshiki makes a sadistic game of hunting his victims through an abandoned warehouse, pounding them with chains and iron bars until they finally give out and Toshiki tosses them on the brink of death out onto the streets. Toshiki even ends up killing one of his victims during the chase, and while the rest of his gang is horrified, Toshiki is smugly apathetic.
