By: A.J. Merch

Staff Writer

amerchant1@umassd.edu

Lupin was a surprisingly interesting Netflix original for me, before the show had been released there was a sort of controversy around the show based on the name. Many people thought the show was based on the anime classic of the same name, and they had changed the main character to Black man. But as things progressed those who were angry would end up learning that the show ultimately was based around an old French book called Arsène Lupin the gentleman thief. Whereas the anime is based solely on the book and his grandson Lupin III unlike the Netflix show which was based around it.

So I had seemingly forgotten about the show till I started watching Bridgerton. But I stopped midway to go watch Lupin a french Netflix Original and I would go down this extremely thrilling rabbit hole, which I recommend to watch with english subtitles. Lupin is about Assane Diop as he sets out to avenge his father for an injustice inflicted by a wealthy family that he had worked for, who was directly inspired by the adventures of Lupin the gentleman thief. The show is shown through 5 episodes which highlights the smoothness of character which exhibits his quick thinking and perfectly executed heist.

Within the story, Assane uses the book to his advantage and follows everything it states. He uses everything that Lupin would use and styled himself to follow suit of his role model. From the start of the first episode we are given motivations and reasoning the character for the rest of the story. This is shown through the actions of the past and present and how it impacted Assane. We see Assane as a sort of Bond type of character who has a certain feel when he enters any area. Additionally the relationship with his son was very intriguing and brought importance to the story because it causes a connection to viewers to see strong families on screen go through difficulty.

As the story progressed we fall in love with how he makes mistakes and we fall in love with Assane’s character. We feel for him as we know he was treated wrong similar to his father, whose wealth impacted those less fortunate.