aligning jigen w/ his moralities & beliefs.
or: if i had a penny for everytime jigen gets depicted with religion-related imagery/analogies/metaphors
been wanting to assemble some of my thoughts on jigen’s sense of morality & justice for a while since to me that is a major part of why i find him so interesting as a character? so here’s a small lore™ dump for which i gathered up information from various different episodes and movies (which also means plenty of ‘spoilers’ if there is such a thing in the lupin world).
of course some of this is vaguely more of a headcanon write-up than outright stated in the show but i think for the most part it’s pretty close to the main material and even if you should disagree maybe it’ll still be interesting : )
I. jigen and religion.
there are several episodes that touch on this. in part 2 episode 34 the gang faces off a bunch of vampires and eventually comes across a local myth that the grave of jesus christ is located in a small village nearby. jigen immediately corrects that this is impossible as, according to the bible, jesus was buried in golgotha. when fujiko tells him afterwards that lupin has been turned into a vampire, he is shown to already know and performs the sign of the cross, expressing his pity along with an ‘amen’. (this is also one of the episodes where it’s shown that he is quite knowledgeable when it comes to folklore, being familiar with how to best fight vampires and believing in fortune telling – but his superstitiousness might be a whole separate post to make …)
in a later episode (part 2 episode 153) the gang accidentally winds up helping a nun rebuild a church and, of course, abandons the task in lieu of their original mission. jigen expresses some bit of dismay at that decision by telling lupin that doing so weighs on his conscience and that he’s never been able to ‘get on well with god.’ he slouches uncomfortably in his seat when lupin jokes about ‘divine punishment.’
jigen thinking about deeds & punishment overall is actually extremely prominent. to me it’s pretty safe to say that this is due to his mindset being heavily influenced by catholicism when it comes to morality. that also means that he feels guilty about pretty much anything he’s ever done in his far-from-divine life.
we see shades of this in part 2 episode 76 as well, where he gets into touch with an ex of his (angelica) whose advances he turned down in the past and who, as a consequence, became a nun ‘seeking love in god’ instead. she explicitly tells him that her decision is partly his responsibility. she dies near the end of the episode and jigen is seen standing at her grave, asking for forgiveness.
in the movie farewell to nostradamus he chides one of his adversaries (who is aligned with a corrupt sect) that a person praying to a god should at the very least believe in said god. in the mystery of mamo he is seen unsettled by mamo’s seeming omnipotence – and though hesitant to call mamo a god, strongly urges lupin not to fight him and outright refuses to join him in battle. after considering his reaction briefly, lupin smiles at him and says that that’s alright as this job may simply not be for someone too religious.
II. jigen and sins.
in twcfm episode 2 we once again receive some insight on his past in shape of his former employment as a bodyguard in a mafia family. though hired for general bodyguard work, the boss at one point orders him to look out for his (strongly implied) suicidal wife cicciolina who orchestrates an odd game of hide and seek that ends inside a church where she waits to be found inside a casket (probably completely naked, by the way). jigen does find her and is dragged inside by her just as cicciolina’s husband arrives, as well. she has him remain put by pointing out that they’d both be killed if they were to exit while he is there. her husband suspects foul play anyway, though, and later confronts cicciolina at home where the pair ends up fighting and the mafia boss is accidentally shot in the process. jigen comes running at the noise and decides to take the blame so that cicciolina would not get into trouble with the rest of the family. he escapes and is years later baited into reuniting with her at the very same church after having his gun stolen. here, he is mocked for his sincerity and jumped by several men with guns. however, what seems a simple ambush at first turns out to be a once more orchestrated farce by cicciolina who reveals that she’d either want to see jigen killed or die herself – then corrects that if she had to die, it should be by jigen’s hands (the latter of which occurs). at her grave, jigen is seen blaming himself (similar to how he was blaming himself for angelica’s death) before fujiko interrupts the scene and points out that cicciolina was killed by her past (implied: not by him).
jigen reappears in episode 5 where he is first seen on a small sailing boat headed for egypt, reading a book on egyptian mythology. specifically, he is reading a section on the scales of justice: “if his sins in life were heavy, the scales will tip and the deceased will never be reborn again. this is known as ‘the judgement of the dead’”. once he puts foot on land he encounters a tourist version of those scales when a child offers him to ‘weigh his sins’ for a fee. he is presented with a scale that carries a miniature heart and a feather and is told to pick up the heart and think back on his past sins. having done just so, jigen places the heart back on the scale and the scale smacks down at the heart’s end instantly, suggesting that his sins weigh very heavy. though he plays this incident off as ‘ridiculous,’ we see him still mulling over the concept much later when he is stuck inside the pyramid and comes across yet another scale of justice that is tied to a puzzle. lupin appears and we get this tidbit of conversation:
lupin: “the weight of a person’s sins, eh? sounds interesting. so it’ll open if this (miniature heart, similar to the one before) balances it out?”
jigen: “probably. but it ain’t gonna happen. there’s no one who’s sinless. it’ll tip no matter what. not to mention …”
lupin: “… that we’re sinners to the core? what’re you scared of? you don’t need a god to judge if your sins are heavy or not; you know full well what you’ve done in life. besides, if you do get rewarded with a rebirth, there’s no guarantee your new life’ll be a nice one.”
jigen: “my future is bleak either way.”
lupin encourages him either way and says that ‘there is no harm in wishing for a little fun’ before placing the miniature heart onto the scales that, unexpectedly, remain balanced just fine. in the following scene a trap triggers anyway and they are both swept away into a pit of quicksand. here, jigen admits that he is “no longer in a rush to die” following lupin’s ‘pep talk’ (thanks lupin for helping him figure that out, even) suggesting that he was extremely preoccupied with notions of death and potential religious consequences prior.
III. jigen and morality
the bottom line so far is that jigen is interesting because instead of being a cold, calculating hitman he is a (semi-)cold, calculating hitman while on the job but ends up with several regrets and second thoughts (although not in shape of ‘i should not have done that’ – much rather in shape of ‘there must no doubt be consequences for leading a life such as mine’). feeling guilty does not prevent him from carrying out dirty jobs and killing people, but it does make him pause, and there are many moments where his sense of morality also saves lives (one of the most well-known probably being in part 2 episode 44 where lupin and jigen steal an armored truck for its valuable cargo that turns out to carry zenigata inside. it is revealed that zenigata is slowly suffocating inside the truck and jigen repeatedly urges lupin to simply return the truck to its owners so that the detective could be freed, emphasizing that zenigata is a good person and that ‘his life is not replaceable’).
i’d say this is also the reason for why we get interesting scenes such as in part 4 episode 4 where jigen confronts an antagonistic gang for deliberately putting people into a comatose state. (the setting changes to a church here again, by the way. isn’t this fun?) they try to take him out but wind up shooting each other while jigen dodges their bullets, leaving only their boss alive who jigen decides to spare on the condition that he’d promise ‘to never do anything like this again.’ sure enough the boss breaks that promise almost instantly and jigen shoots the chandelier above him which then crushes the man. it’s striking that, for one, he did not kill any of the lackeys at all (which zenigata emphasizes upon arriving at the ‘crime scene’ and discovering the bodies), and for the other, that he first chooses to not take a life, then chooses to take it indirectly using a part of the church’s interior (divine justice, anyone?).
in spite of his line of work jigen IS concerned with doing the right thing (and i’m pretty sure lupin has called him out on that before; that their line of work isn’t exactly 100% reconcilable with jigen’s values. whenever i come across the ep again i’ll add it here?); for better or worse.
IV. bonus. jigen and imagery
this will be more of an image dump than anything because i’ve been collecting a couple of them and couldn’t quite fit them in elsewhere without giving the text a clunky feel. but lupin iii actually does imagery pretty well (especially koike, i’ll have to say), so here’s some of my favorites:
in part 4 episode 3, jigen is captured by mi6 agent nyx and tied to a giant cross where he is interrogated and electrocuted for his lack of cooperation. lupin arrives to his rescue by travelling from a catholic church, through the sewers, to the run-down house jigen is held in. some of the images following each other are these (it’s nicely done given that jigen is pretty much choosing to suffer through his ‘crucification’ to protect lupin. note that while jigen is far from the first to be hugging crosses, other characters are not really put into immediate relation with church/religion like that. i think that in many cases the animators just liked the cross as an alternative visual over being tied to a chair etc).
in jigen’s gravestone we have, of course, the moment where after their first encounter with the movie’s main antagonist, jigen and lupin end up talking at a graveyard in front of jigen’s gravestone that’s been left with a small, blossoming parsley plant. lupin notes that this flower symbolizes death. (jigen is understandably not amused. considering that his opponent has a 100% success policy when it comes to predicting his targets’ deaths and jigen being susceptible to most things related to fate/destiny, that’s no surprise).
later during the final showdown jigen is shown on top of a church (?) bell tower delivering the arguably most decisive bullet with a long-range rifle while being surrounded by (probably) seagulls that look decisively close to white doves (which would have been hilarious, really). again, the idea of judgement ‘from above’ is one of the first things that come to my mind here (aside from how cool that scenes was).
if you read this far btw ilu say hi to jigen’s guilt complex for me ♡
it's so funny that for a lot of people the july 23rd has just started and for some people (like in england) it's alredy ending.........time works in mysterious ways..........
