LUPIN III was launched in 1967 in WEEKLY MANGA ACTION, a Japanese "men's manga." The creator constructed a loose backstory for the titular character, who was supposedly the grandson of the 1905 "gentleman thief" Arsene Lupin, but Monkey Punch was not particularly concerned with continuity. Though 35 volumes of Lupin stories were released in Japan, few of these have been translated into English, not even online. However, there have been enough reprints-- largely from 1990 editions of the earlier works-- to establish that the Lupin stories usually follow a proscribed pattern. Lupin III is a master thief devoted to ripping off the fabulously wealthy, often though not always aided by his gangster-confederates Jigen and Goemon. Though Lupin often seems extravagant and foolish-- Monkey Punch's art emphasizing his frenetic, Jerry Lewis-like energy-- most stories show him winning in the end, demonstrating that he can out-think almost anyone who challenges him, either on the right or wrong side of the law.
The one opponent who frequently gets the upper hand against Lupin is Fujiko Mine, a busty adventuress who's also a slick master thief and manages to hijack Lupin's loot at the end of some stories. She's like Irene Adler to Lupin's Holmes, though the principal weapon in her arsenal is her hotness, which often causes the priapic Lupin to lose his cool. Her precise feelings for Lupin are not stated outright in the translated manga, but at the very least the two of them enjoy one-upping one another.
"Research Animals" is an atypical comic romp even for an artist as gonzo as Monkey Punch. The first panels take place in a shadowed forest at nighttime, which looks forbidding save for one potentially comic image, the sight of a bound man hanging upside down from a tree.
The man is Lupin, and as he awakens, he sees that Fujiko stands before him. He speculates that she knocked him out in his sleep, which all the backstory we get. Fujiko, whose usual pattern is to horn in on the master thief's schemes, explains that she's become curious to know Lupin's "true identity." The thief-hero rails at her past history of stabbing him in the back, but Fujiko's current scheme has nothing to do with profit. She's become a member of the "United Nations Secret College," and in order to graduate from this institution, she has to analyze Lupin's criminal genius.
Lupin breaks free and tries to attack Fujiko, and, to complicate things further (and also to set up a later joke), a dog pops out of nowhere, apparently responding to Lupin's cry of "Sic 'em," and joins the melee. However, Fujiko isn't alone either: two of her college-confederates lasso Lupin and drag him to a temporary tent-HQ. The dog simply vanishes until it's time for it to play its role later.
At this point, Lupin is subjected to a series of comical tortures: being conked on the head by a machine wielding differently-sized hammers, or having spears hurled at him. Fujiko doesn't seem to take any sadistic pleasure in clobbering Lupin; she seems blase about his sufferings, though going by the translation it's hard to see what she has to gain from her loopy experiments, or what her findings are going to mean to the United Nations. It's not impossible to imagine her going through this rigmarole because she simply wants to one-up Lupin in a new way. Certainly Monkey Punch gives the reader no clue, though gender-conflict still seems to be at the root of things.
Then one of the other students tells Fujiko that Lupin's agility is "at the level of a wild dog." Fujiko looks outside the tent and sees Lupin's dog skulking around. At the same time she hears the embattled Lupin yipping in canine fashion, and jumps to the conclusion that Lupin is actually outside in a dog costume, while his dog has taken his place on the experimental table. (Absurd as this sounds, such a scenario is not unusual in the ongoing series.) The dog saunters off and Fujiko tells her two aides to pack everything up to leave. She then wonders if they ought to take the dog with them for future analysis, but-- surprise! It's been the real Lupin all along, and in a conclusion that could appear only in a dominantly male venue, the master thief spends the last panel taking his pleasure with Fujiko, quite against her will.
So here we have a much more nonsensical version of the situation seen in Robert E. Howard's story, "The Frost-Giant's Daughter." In my discussion of this story here, I noted that although many readers wouldn't care for Conan taking his pleasure with the daughter of the title, her near-rape is entirely her own responsibility, given her attempt to set up Conan to be killed. Lupin III's life may not be in danger, but it's also hard to fault him for taking revenge for the pains he suffers. Going by the discontinuous nature of the series, I strongly doubt that Monkey Punch ever references this event again. Still, given the flamboyant nature of the Lupin-Fujiko relationship, it's hard to imagine her bearing a grudge against him for his retaliation. If anything, in Monkey Punch's fantasy-universe, it would have done no more than embolden her to even greater efforts to undermine and flummox her destined opponent.
ADDENDUM: I should note that since it was a regular thing in many Monkey Punch stories to show Lupin waving his wang about (usually obscured by the Greek symbol for "manhood,") it may be significant that most of Fujiko's assaults on Lupin in "Research Animals" consist of pounding on his head to test his stamina. I don't know if the contrast "big head vs. little head" had any natural parallel in Japanese culture, but since it's likely that the artist had encountered the symbolism somewhere, one might assert that Fukiko's making a quasi-sexual assault on Lupin long before he turns things around and does the same to her.
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