HAPPY BIRTHDAY, LUPIN! HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SILLY LITTLE GUY!!
Well, i guess thats it! This is the last one!! This week was pretty fun, i learned alot about different ways to make an art in one day and overall created at least four pieces i actually really enjoy (this one included!) eeeeven so i little bit messed up with the day two art, cause it doesn't feature Lupin in it :")
Thanks to @peaterookie for creating this week, it was a lot of fun :3
No matter how much awesome analysis I read from you (and peaterookie) [and tsukumo-nya!], I can't change knowing how neglected the original manga is sometimes but I have too many mixed feelings about Monkey Punch that I wouldn't recommend the manga to anyone. A little detail I can't help but notice is how Anime Goemon's Zantetsuken has a bigger entry than Manga Goemon himself on the Lupin Fandom wiki and Japanese Wikipedia page and that is hilarious. Being a fan of Manga Goemon is a curse :(
thank you for calling the analysis awesome!!!
i get how you feel yeah... my only hope is that at least someday we'll get some animated adaptation of goemon from the manga, but i think the folks at tms are a little afraid that he doesn't resemble at all the anime version most people associate the name with. i kind of like anime goemon but it really seems like the writers don't know what to do with him most of the time, and i think having a concrete basis for who the character is would help very much.
i understand how you feel about the manga though. many parts of the original made me feel uncomfortable, and even if monkey punch did grow as a person over time and stopped justifying lupin's actions, it was still a prominent part of the manga. i feel like he was even making readers feel this way on purpose sometimes, like in chapter 31 "Strange Bedfellows"/"Goemon's Close Call" of shin where it's so prolonged that you really worry about goemon.
if you wanna recommend something of the manga, honestly new adventures is great cause it's pretty tame. only bad thing i can really think of was that scene where for some reason (monkey punch logic) lupin and crew have to have sex with rasputin's 3 wives in order to break their hypnosis, but they end up failing anyways. i kind of wish new adventures was separated from the original manga on mangadex to make it easier to just recommend those chapters but it's whatever.
i like doing these posts because it's my way of documenting the things i think of the manga and even some of the research i've had to do, but it's not exactly great to have to scroll through all these posts so idk lol. at least it's providing more information than the fandom wiki and japanese wiki have so that's something.
also if it makes you feel any better about liking manga goemon, you should look up 原ゴエ ("genngoe") on sites like pixiv and twitter.
it's a term that combines "gennsaku" (meaning original work) and "goemon" that people use. there's so much good art and even stuff like fan comics and writing to dig through that it puts a smile on my face. some of my favorite art is from mochiko/もちこ (https://www.pixiv.net/en/users/9208) and みやの (https://www.pixiv.net/en/users/5582408), but there's a bunch of other cool artists too.
"Today, Jigen, Goemon, and Fujiko threw me a surprise birthday party.
At first I was confused, I'm sure everyone knew that I didn't have a birthday, until I remembered the time I lied to Fujiko and told a random date so she would stop nagging me about it. If I knew she'd take it that seriously I would've zipped my mouth.
I'm unfamiliar with how birthday parties work, but I think this one was more… exciting than the usual. Goemon botched the cake. He put some mystery ingredient that ruined the taste. Fujiko almost stole my gifts, which was foiled when Zenigata and Melon Cop were caught trying to burn the house down. He won't even give me a break on my birthday!
After we chased them off, I had to put out the fire. Jigen did not help and kept playing with that stupid blower thing.
Normally this would be a failure of a party, but I enjoyed it for some odd reason. I hope they do something like this next year, with a better cake..!"
- Lupin
i made cookie run versions of the lupgang, uh if you dont know, cookie run is a video game franchise about these gingerbread cookies and you should not play it
anyways, time for me to explain for hours about the thought that went in these designs!!!
Lupin III - Cactus Cookie
firstly, yes, cacti can be eaten. for lupin's case i think you'll deadass die if you eat him
the reason i chose cactus for his flavor is because of his incredible persistent to survive in the most dangerous and impossible conditions, much like how cacti dont need a lot to survive in the desert.
i think this may be a reach but i recall a lot of times where lupin is in the desert but idk that bitch can be anywhere bro
also hes a prick
I used the green color of the cactus, but cactus cookie can change the color of his cactus coat and the flower tie.
also cacti can sprout flowers! that's very gay of them to do, very lupincore
if you're curious about his eyes, i based it off of strawberry cream cookie's eyes, i think it fits a lot with lupin's googly eyes
Jigen Daisuke - Shiitake Cookie
i think his flavor was the hardest to decipher, but i decided to use shiitake, mainly because another certain mushroom themed cookie uses it as a huge hat...
also, shiitake mushrooms have a rather strong, meaty and earthly taste, which i think fits jigen's strong and gruff personality.
I also added some pepper on the mushroom, which is just, intensifying the strength
peppercorn can also be used for bullets !
in addition, shiitake mushrooms are one of the ingredients of sukiyaki, which i think is a rather iconic food for jigen !
Goemon Ishikawa XIII - Soba Cookie
SOBAAAAAA
soba is earthly noodle and it looks like the color of goemon's hair, that's literally it sorry i dont have anything else HAHAHAH
nvm i think i have more design notes for goemon
some of his design elements are inspired off of rebel cookie, which is based off of a korean classical character hong gildong jeon, who has a very similar story to ishikawa goemon !
also goemon's swords are chopsticks, tehe
Fujiko Mine - Cinnamon Bun Cookie
I wanted to show her deceitful personality through the flavor, and i arrived on cinnamon buns, primarily because cinnamon is a spice that can be very harmful to consume in huge doses, but many people seem to like the cinnamon flavor.
i use the cinnamon flower on her head, like how i put a flower on lupin's head, to kinda show that they have a similar personality and profession
also design inspo
Koichi Zenigata - Macadamia Cookie
the flavor was very easy to decide on. if you don't know, cookie run detective characters are typically nut cookies! (walnut cookie, almond cookie)
so i decided on macadamia nuts, the hardest nuts, because of his stubborn and headstrong personality
other than that, not a lot to comment. if you wonder why there's blue in his designs, i dont really know tbh, i used blue as a color base and i found it pretty on him.
ahhhh god ok my stupid stupid silly au i made a year ago.... this will be a bit long so get ready
tldr: lupin died, the gang is alive. goemon finds lupin but he's a shark merman!? and lupin remembers nothing!!!
long version:
so this AU follows upon the story of shin lupin, which basically, the gang gets killed off by zenigata because he rigged an island full of explosives.
instead of them all dying however, lupin decides to knock the gang unconscious and find a way for them to escape off the island safely, leaving only him in the island to die.
the rest of the gang had no idea how they escaped and assumed that lupin had sacrificed himself for them. they woke up adrifted on the ocean until they eventually got picked up by a ship where the invisible captain from new adventures returns. but ah ill spare the details for another day
---
2 years have passed and the gang just kinda separated to do their own thing. we'll only focus on goemon cuz he's the featured character of this comic.
goemon decided to escape the life of crime that has burdened him for years living as a part of the lupgang. he's mostly a wanderer now and tries to do good and help people along the way
funnily enough, goemon is not the first person to find lupin, but I'll talk about this later. but goemon is definitely very mixed about seeing his friend who he thought was dead for years. he doesn't know whether to be happy or worried.
---
lupin, at the brink of death after the explosion, plummets down the ocean and wakes up one day, feeling like he's been rebirthed!
essentially, lupin became a merman because right before he could die, his body (i mean what's left of it 💀) interacted with a magic crystal that has the ability to grant life to a living being.
It's really rare, but it exists in clusters deep in the ocean floor or- deep under the rocks of an island :) you can say im bullshitting, which i am but i dont think exploding an entire island down to every rock has happened before, so it can kinda make sense why something so coincidental about these crystals could happen. (I AM TOTALLY MAKING EXCUSES I JUST WANTED TO MAKE LUPIN A MERMAN.)
and so these crystals used whats left of lupins body and reassembled him back, and idk other essences of the ocean to make him a merman!
the memories of his past life have definitely been buried deep inside his brain to the point he can't remember any of it though, so he thinks that he was born under the ocean and has lived there for his entire life. other than that he retains almost everything about himself, down to stealing stupid shit and messing with humans just for the fucks of it. he's kinda seen as like a nessie.
---
anyways, y'know how i said goemon wasn't the first one to meet lupin? that's because lupin has met zenigata before!
living a life with only fishes around means lupin's kinda lonely and likes to stalk humans sometimes. the interaction with him and zenigata did not end well though, and lupin has no idea why zeni wants him dead so much.
after that he's way more cautious around people that look like zenigata- hatted big men with guns. its gonna be fun once he sees jigen.
ok what else... i think that's all i want to reveal now. will i do more of this? maybe. maybe not. kinda embarrassed of this because of how silly it is but i hope you people find this interesting! byebye
To celebrate Lupin's upcoming birthday on Feb 10th, I'm deciding to host #LupinWeek2024, a daily art prompt series that will last during the week leading up to it!
Here's the list of prompts for whoever wants to join in. I'm not expecting anyone to do this but it'll be cool 😁