The first time I watched this episode, I was upset.

But after the second time, I grew to appreciate it.

Continuing from the last episode, Fujiko meets Luis Yu Almeida face to face, which puts her into another state of confusion and despair. But thanks to Lupin and his encouragement, she pulls herself together to reach her initial goal. To kill Luis Yu Almeida.

However, the body turns out to be a fake. The marks branded on Fujiko’s feet as a child aren’t there. They never were to begin with. In the control room, Lupin notices that there is a single room that isn’t monitored. Just as he informs Fujiko of this, the drug is released into the control room. Jigen is unaware of the affects of the drug and starts to hallucinate Lupin with an owl head, immediately shooting at him.

Back in the creepy doll room, Oscar goes insane (nothing unusual there), and knocks Zenigata aside, stealing his gun in the process. Zenigata attempts to snap OScar out of it, but damn. He’s just too crazy.

Goemon comes to Fujiko’s rescue, telling her that he wished to figure out her identity. He tells her he was finally able to figure it out.

Fujiko makes a break for it, while the drug is being released to other parts of the castle. However, Jigen is still hallucinating owls and meets Goemon, who he believes to be an owl. Goemon sees Jigen as an owl man too and they have a showdown.

Meanwhile, Fujiko and Lupin end up in some crazy ass room where the walls stick out and start talking.

Eventually, they come across the last minute plot device, Aisha, the scientist’s real daughter who has had experiments performed on her. She is forever rigged to a machine that tracks her eye movements and processes them into messages.

Jigen and Goemon proceed to battle it out, resulting in Goemon changing his sword style.

Back story on Aisha: The Count has scientists and a few test subjects evacuated to his castle. An accident was staged to kill Aisha’s dad, Dr. Fritz Kaiser. Count has private experiments performed on Aisha. Many girls were tested, but only a few were chosen if they produced desirable results. Their results were applied to Aisha’s brain. I guess The Count wanted to create a perfect woman or some shit.

After Almeida passed away, Aisha insisted that they continue the experiments.

Back to Oscar and Zenigata, the song starts playing again, causing all of the dummy girls who sing along, including Oscar who walks away with them, only to shoot Zenigata before he can stop him.

Aisha, had grown curious about the possibilities of these experiments. Shortly after Almeida passed on, she made it seem as if he were still alive and inserted her memories into other girls in order to plant the fear of Almeida in their minds and checked up on how they lived afterwards. However, many of the girls went insane and commited suicide shortly afterwards.

However, a maid by the name of Fujiko came to the castle to work and had experiments performed on her. As soon as Fujiko was released, she pursued a life of crime and sex, a life that Aisha could never have for herself.  Upon learning that Fujiko had sealed away those awful memories, Aisha grew to hate Fujiko and attempted to bring them back.

But there is more to Fujiko than Aisha thinks. While Fujiko did come to the castle as a maid, she had also intended to steal a treasure from the castle. The supposed results of the experiments were only a part of Fujiko’s personality.

Meanwhile, crazy ass Oscar drives a truck into the castle, causing it to explode and burn the other girls alive. Oscar survives, but what the hell happens to him? They never even show it, do they?

Lupin helps rescue Aisha and Fujiko from the burning castle, but here comes another plot twist: Minerva’s Owl is actually Aisha’s mother, using a voice modifier.

Aisha’s mother was also a scientist, unaware of Almeida’s intentions. Dr. Franz Kaiser had given up their daughter to be experimented on in horrible ways. Aisha’s mother didn’t do anything to stop her because she was scared. Way to pussy out, Grandma!

So Lupin leaps off with Aisha, leaving Fujiko with Mama to deal with her. Fujiko is pretty pissed about Mama not doing anything for her daughter. Understandable.

Finally, we reach the end of the series where Lupin and Fujiko take Aisha out to the ocean. Fujiko still seems pissed about having to go through all of that trauma under Aisha’s whim.

So to get back at her, Fujiko goes for a swim.

Meanwhile, Jigen and Goemon decide to stop their battle, parting ways and hoping to never have to fight each other again.

Oh you silly boys

The credits show with the ending theme and what happens to the characters after the show. Goemon is seen fishing on a boat. Zenigata is with the police force at the amusement park and he is shown holding up Oscar’s badge. I’m assuming he died. Jigen picks up Lupin in his truck after having the car dismantled. Fujiko hops aboard a plane, probably to steal her next item of interest.

My final thoughts?

Like I said before, I was disappointed with this episode the first time.

I was initially upset about how they just threw in some plot twist and stripped Fujiko of any character development she had. I thought Aisha was a complete ass pull and it was poorly executed. I also thought it was stupid that Fujiko was like “oh yeah, that happened, did it?”

However, it actually works!

I have to commend this show for how brilliant it is.

Sure, they could have executed it better, but we start out the show trying to find out about Fujiko’s past and get to know her character better, digging deep into her memories.

In the end, there was nothing to be found. Fujiko remains a strong female character who uses her charm and seductive ways to carry out her plans.

We have no idea if she had a real tragic past or not.

And that’s just the way it should be.

I personally did not care for the whole “Tragic traumatic past”. While it made Fujiko a more interesting character, I also felt that it was a bit insulting to her to just give her that trope.

I did feel sorry for her, but I still wished it wasn’t like that.

But thank god for that plot twist. I’m not a big fan of them myself, but I’m glad this one actually happened. I take back what I said about before rewatching it.

Overall, I would give this series an 8.5 out of 10. It could have been a solid nine, but there were two episodes I was not particularly fond of. But even the most perfect shows have their own weaknesses.

Needless to say, I am in a mood to watch some good old original series Lupin after this.

And if you watch the original series and hate it because it’s nothing like this series…

Fuck off.

Episode 13 Eyecatches: