
The “go in fully prepped” method is fairly difficult at the moment, because some installments in this story arc aren’t legally streaming in the U.S., and the available ones are scattered among different services. The “just charge in” method isn’t much of a problem, at least for anyone who’s watched or read a previous Lupin III story, like Hayao Miyazaki’s beloved directorial debut The Castle of Cagliostro, or the character’s first CG outing, 2019’s Lupin III: The First. The franchise’s five primary characters have been doing roughly the same things in the same ways since this franchise launched in 1967, and in this movie, they fall right back into their expected roles, though with a sense that they’ve never faced as daunting a challenge as they do in this movie.

