LupintheThird.com

UPDATE! UTB has informed me that "...all 155 episodes will be aired.  Re-run has not been determined yet." Better turn on those TiVos, guys!

Thanks to Anime News Network for this one.

The local digital TV station UTBHollywood 18.2 (run by United TV Broadcasting) has been airing Lupin the Third Part I and Part II in Japanese with English subtitles Monday-Friday at 10pm. Sadly, we only found out about this recently, after it had completed its run of Part I (which has no official translation nor home video release Stateside) and the station has since moved well into Part II. However, if the Episode List for Part I is any indicator, the translation may not have been as great as we might have hoped for (darn afternoon-rain!). It's also possible those episode titles were quickie translations done by UTB just to have an English version episode list: one ANN forums member said the "subtitling is excellent and the film print is pristine...." Anyone in the area wanna volunteer to record these if they rerun? Who knows - they might air translated Part II beyond the original DVD release by Geneon (they only have up through episode 23 scheduled, the same length as Part I as a whole).

Unmentioned in the news article is a short UTB trailer that includes what seem to be revised opening sequences for both shows - using the "golden" Lupin logo used by FUNimation's DVD releases instead of the original Japanese logo. Check it out on their front page here: http://utbhollywood.com/en/ (Only the first part is Lupin-related, the rest is a different trailer.)

Announced on the 21st of December, the new Lupin the Third TVSP (short for "TV Special") will be called - in English - "the Last Job" (complete with lowercase "the").

The story involves a Nazi German sanitarium and a cultural Japanese treasure, the "Hell Buddha" found therein. A band of ninja thieves and their leader Morgana pursue the treasure, clashing with Lupin and killing Zenigata(!!) in the process.

Editors's Note: Of course, since they actually told us that Zenigata dies in the press release, we know that he can't actually be dying. That would be like putting the ending of a movie like The Sixth Sense in the press release. That aside, the "killing a character" gimmick is always a good draw - it worked for me when the announcement for the 2000 TVSP "One-Dollar Money Wars" / "Missed by a Dollar" proclaimed Lupin's death.

For more information, I recommend keeping tabs on the forums thread linked below, which also has some stills taken from the Mainichi article.

Source: Reported on several Japanese news sites including Mainichi Shimbun (picked up by ANN) and Yahoo News Japan. There's also been an ongoing discussion on the Forums.

Discotek has announced a target release time frame for First Contact of March, 2010. Extras include a trailer and "photos" (I assume this means still images from the movie). I'm planning on doing a commentary for this one as well (much like for their Fuma Conspiracy disc).

Check out the HUGE cover art after the jump.