Third Lupin movie post
Dec. 5th, 2010 05:12 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
tilly_stratfordIt's that time again, kids! We've got your rants, your GIFs, your CAPSLOCK rage and squee!
I can't believe I've watched fifteen of these fuckers. What am I doing with my life. Watching cartoon characters shooting stuff and losing their trousers at an alarming frequency, that's what.
Of special note this time: I was really planning to catch most of the backlog first, but for fear of being spoilered about this year's TV special (The Last Job) I somehow found time for it.
Here's a spoiler for you: Goemon has an iPhone.
Not sure how I feel about that.
You remember how it goes - best at the top, worst at the bottom.
1. Episode 0 – First Contact (TV special, 2002): Previous review
2. The Castle of Cagliostro (theatrical movie, 1979): Previous review
3. Farewell to Nostradamus (theatrical movie, 1995):
It's camp, it's slapstick, the plot has everything plus the kitchen sink (there's a diamond in a doll, a cult, a book written by Nostradamus, a presidential candidate, the presidential candidate's bratty daughter, Lupin's uncle, an Alcatraz-like prison island, a two-hundred storey building, the Brazilian football team, and adventures in the Amazon to mention a few plot points) but if you cut right down to it this is quite an enjoyable movie.
And Lupin fans HATE IT. On my excursions into the fandom I've noticed that this more than any other top the "worst Lupin movie" lists, and I can't say I agree with their reasons. Yes sure the president's daughter as the plucky sidekick can get overly annoying, but mostly people complain that it's "too silly" or has "too much physical comedy". I can get fed up with the bad slapstick that pervades certain parts of the Lupin franchise too, but the fact is that this movie was made by people who very obviously know how to make a pratfall look funny.
This might be just me, but I was delighted at the animation in this movie - the art might not be as pretty as in Green vs. Red but I think you'll need to search hard for a Lupin movie in which the characters are so cleverly rubbery, and I'm not usually big on slapstick. I especially like how all the regulars get to do some comedy - usually it's Lupin and Zenigata who are the card-bearing "comic relief" but I think this works better.
It's also a return to old form: In the movies I feel the tendency for new love interests for Lupin is pretty common, but this movie makes the Lupin/Fujiko relationship seem pretty fresh again:
This movie is also of note because it's the first Lupin movie made after the demise of the original Lupin voice actor, Yasuo Yamada (the credits has a rather sweet in memoriam to “the eternal Lupin, Yamada”). I don't know if that might have something to do with how fans hate it. If that's the case they shouldn't, as the replacement - the current Lupin seiyū (yes, that was the word I was looking for!) Kanichi Kurita is just about equally perfect for the job. The movie really plays to his strenghts too - he's got excellent comedic timing, even so far he can make me laugh by the way he says a word, even if I need to rely on the subtitles.
I would also like to “thank” the internet for giving me the knowledge that meant that even without looking at the subtitles I immediately realized what the presidential daughter was saying when she kept referring to Lupin as “Lolicon ojisan!” (in the subtitles cheerfully translated to “Mr. Pedophile”). That's the internet for you.
4. Goodbye Lady Liberty (TV special, 1989): Previous review
5. The Fuma Conspiracy (theatrical movie, 1987): Previous review
6. The Columbus Files (TV special, 1999):
Something as unusual as a Fujiko-centric movie - which could be awesome if she didn't get amnesia in the beginning and as a result spend the rest of the movie very un-fujikolike. Of the movies I feel this is the one most written as a love story between Lupin and Fujiko. Odd how several scriptwriters obviously think the only way they can write a moving romance between the two is if Fujiko is bereft of her usual personality. But anyway. The love story is cute enough, and Lupin is slightly more decent and heroic than usual - it's treated as a sort of Orpheus-and-Eurydice story with Lupin out to rescue his kidnapped lover.
One of the more memorable parts of the movie is the villain (not often that happens, is it? Lupin villains tend to all come out of the same evil-machine). No, not the scientist that becomes the Hulk; I'm talking about Nazaroff.
He's pretty much Lupin - he even seems to have raided Lupin's early-seventies wardrobe - with all of Lupin's negative traits tuned up to eleven. What I think I like the most about that is that at no point does the movie state it outright. Good going, movie, you pleasantly surprised me.
Otherwise, the movie is merely an adequate Lupin outing. There's a legendary object to grab, ancient puzzles to figure out, a labyrinth, more sex jokes than usual, and also the movie has an odd fixation with the cast's underwear (everybody seems to lose their trousers on an alarming rate) and oh - it's not often they appear but I always love it when they do: Zenigata's SWAT team!
They give Zenigata someone to interact with while also doing a lot of the slapstick, freeing up Zenigata to have more character moments. This movie made me wonder about the team though - they sound so crestfallen when Zenigata orders them to put their clothes back on. Ho hum.
The art and animation isn't all that - barely better than the TV show, but it makes up for it by having some rather unusual and unexpected gags.
And I who kept thinking the fangirls were joshing me when they talked about "the infamous beach scene"...
As if this gang wasn't already a sausage fest.
Am I the only one who feels the urge to hum the song 'Detachable Penis'? Yes? Okay then.
7. The Alcatraz Connection (TV special, 2001):
Okay so it does have several hallmarks of the Lupin franchise, like nefarious secret organizations, the gang making use of/wrecking famous landmarks (it's in San Francisco, how can they not hijack a cable car?), a light-hearted scene featuring Lupin and Jigen squabbling over food, a real beauty of a conspiracy (regarding the assassinations of the Kennedys no less, and the REAL reason The Rock was unescapeable) and more references to the gangsters of the 1920s than you can shake a stick at.
Things like that makes the movie merely okay, but then you've got the detractors – the dialogue and delivery sound oddly forced and flat (sometimes it's like the scriptwriter must have added jokes that only made sense to himself), and the gags are equally annoying and lifeless. The only time I cracked a smile was such a cheap gag anyway -
The characters are written in a astonishingly annoying way (Fujiko is PARTICULARLY bad, but special points goes to the subplot with Goemon falling in love with an eeevil underwear model), but at least the recurring theme of Jigen having to rescue Lupin again and again from the villains when the gang is dissolved is charminglyromantic funny.
But to me, as always the one to get hung up on visuals, one of the worst things about this movie is its clumsy animation. Not only does every movement seem cumbersome and slow (at one point Lupin and Jigen do something I can only guess is supposed to be a high-five, but it comes across as a very awkward attempt at holding hands for some reason), but I've never seen so many animation mistakes in a Lupin movie before – things flash in and out of existence (take a look at the part with Lupin swinging on a chandelier – the chandelier is only present in parts of the shot), and things phase through each other. There's something quintessentially anime about the producers spending the majority of the animation budget on the opening scene...
(floofiest hakamas yet)
(I'd add a GIF of Fujiko's entrance too, only, you know it's Fujiko so it's mostly about how she has bouncy boobs)
...before the quality of animation drops down several notches:
(they're firing TOMMY GUNS, how does that translate to "pink happy laser show"?)
8. Napoleon's Dictionary (TV special, 1991): Previous review
9. Green vs. Red (TV special 2008): Previous review
10. The Last Job (TV special, 2010):
I'd never think you could out-convolute the convoluted plot of Green vs. Red, but here you go: The Last Job. I have no idea what this movie is about. I think the cover does a good job of representing the movie:
This happens.
At the end there are characters running around shouting “What does this thing do? Why is that guy important? What's going over there? I thought we needed that thing, not this thing?” and it's supposed to be funny but I'm going "I FEEL YOUR PAIN". Lupin et al act like everything is clear from the start, which only makes the movie twice as frustrating (at least in Green vs. Red the characters were as confused as I was).
So the plot is virtually impenetrable, which really just means the movies strenght has to lie in the individual scenes. I'm not so hard to please - did you see how high I rated Green vs. Red even though it both confused and annoyed me? Well, in The Last Job the music is supercatchy as always, the animation is nice – in fact, the fifteen first minutes of the movie are pretty damn entertaining:
It just doesn't feel like a Lupin movie if it doesn't start with a completely outrageous chase scene. This movie delivers.
(Yes, that's a homemade Segway)
But generally it feels like there was no quality control when they made this movie – there are some clever ideas, but there are many times as AUGH THAT IS SO STUPID-type ideas. You immediately get the sense of "bad decision galore" as the opening scene, for reasons that are beyond me, is lovingly framed like this:
Goemon, jeesh...
But sure, the action scenes are very nice - you get the feeling they're really trying to up the ante from the previous thirty-two movies -
Like adding kittens.
- and for once they try to facilitate all the regulars by giving them comparable foes; Like a samurai with a magic sword for Goemon:
- quickly heading into "bad idea" territory with the inclusion of Jigen's opposition, who I'm 99% sure was only added for the sake of a weak pun:
(The pun? Lupin greets him with "Yo, yo-yo ninja!" Argh.)
This movie just about comes with its own drinking game: Take a shot every time this moviereferences pays homage to rips off The Castle of Cagliostro. Yes it's the most successful Lupin movie ever. Yes it was made by Miyazaki. Most Lupin movies give a nod to it but this movie is downright SHAMELESS. If I never see another autogyro in a Lupin movie it'll be too soon.
Even the movie's big gimmick (ZENIGATA DIES) is hardly played up at all. One of the things I dearly love about certain episodes and movies of this franchise is that at the apparent death of any of the regular characters, it's played straight - of course you know they'll return within five minutes but meanwhile you get a lump in your throat at the way it's handled (compare with Lupin's death in The Fuma Conspiracy, where Zenigata shaves his head in mourning and dedicates his life to praying for Lupin's soul so he might be reincarnated as an honest man. D'AWW...!) and dude, I was prepared to have my heart-strings tugged...
...and then they just leave it at that. It's hardly brought up after the first fifteen minutes at all. COME ON DAMN MOVIE, MANIPULATE MY FEELINGS WILL YA?
Why have I put it this far up the list? Well, it did actually make me laugh out loud several times – but even that wasn't very straightforward. I can't help but think there must have been at least two writers making the jokes for this movie: One of them experiments with types of comedy that until now has been pretty underused in the franchise, like setting up something early in the movie and then coming with a punchline that takes you completely by surprise, someone who for once uses Jigen and Goemon as a short of snarky, bantering Greek chorus to the things that are happening.
And then there's the other one, who in a moment of inspiration scribbles down "DOG PISSES ON LUPIN. LUPIN FARTS IN A DOG'S FACE." in a sticky notebook before falling off his chair laughing.
Oh okay one more awesome thing, and another factor in shoving this movie up on the list: Jigen's motherfucking CRUTCH CANNON.
Worth the price of admission RIGHT THERE.
11. Voyage to Danger (TV special, 1993):
From the start this seems like a pretty interesting movie. The premise seems promising enough; Zenigata has been removed from the Lupin case and the gang decides to help him out with his new case so he might get his old one back.
See, plots involving Lupin and Zenigata teaming up tend to be chockful of fun (not this one though); Goemon is involved from the start, which is a rare treat; there are several subplots without making the movie feel crowded or hard to follow; and you'd think you'd get your fill of drama with the apparent deaths of both Jigen and Goemon.
And yet... This movie feels really half-arsed. The visuals might not be too bad, and the voice actors are up to it, but the writers don't deliver at all – there are hardly any reactions to what is happening, you'd think with two dramatic deaths among the regulars you could expect some attempt at tugging your heart strings, but as with The Last Job, they writers don't even make an attempt.
Lupin's answer seems to be to take a gay little holiday with the inspector.
I think my biggest disappointment with this movie is how it handles Zenigata - he starts out as surprisingly three-dimensional at the defeat of losing his main case, and then he spends the rest of the movie going "Lupiiin, what shall we do now? Lupiiin, tell me what to do! Lupiiin, you're so clever and smart and kind!" Fuck you, movie.
Add to that the first two thirds of the movie hardly involves any conflicts of any kind and you've got yourself a tremendously unengaging movie.
On the plus side - gun porn.
Don't get too excited lady, Jigen's track record with women is nonexistant if you catch my drift.
12. Island of Assassins (TV special, 1997): Previous review
13. The Secret of Mamo (theatrical movie, 1978): Previous review
14. The Hemingway Papers (TV special 1990): Previous review
Lupin III vs Detective Conan (TV special 2009): Previous review
And now, with some eighteen Lupin movies remaining (and according to my research a bunch of them are pure shit) I think I'm going to take a break and pick up these reviews again in 2011. The good news is that by sticking to watching an episode of the seventies' TV series a day makes me reeeaaally appreciate the animation of these movies.
I can't believe I've watched fifteen of these fuckers. What am I doing with my life. Watching cartoon characters shooting stuff and losing their trousers at an alarming frequency, that's what.
Of special note this time: I was really planning to catch most of the backlog first, but for fear of being spoilered about this year's TV special (The Last Job) I somehow found time for it.
Here's a spoiler for you: Goemon has an iPhone.
Not sure how I feel about that.
You remember how it goes - best at the top, worst at the bottom.
1. Episode 0 – First Contact (TV special, 2002): Previous review
2. The Castle of Cagliostro (theatrical movie, 1979): Previous review
3. Farewell to Nostradamus (theatrical movie, 1995):
It's camp, it's slapstick, the plot has everything plus the kitchen sink (there's a diamond in a doll, a cult, a book written by Nostradamus, a presidential candidate, the presidential candidate's bratty daughter, Lupin's uncle, an Alcatraz-like prison island, a two-hundred storey building, the Brazilian football team, and adventures in the Amazon to mention a few plot points) but if you cut right down to it this is quite an enjoyable movie.
And Lupin fans HATE IT. On my excursions into the fandom I've noticed that this more than any other top the "worst Lupin movie" lists, and I can't say I agree with their reasons. Yes sure the president's daughter as the plucky sidekick can get overly annoying, but mostly people complain that it's "too silly" or has "too much physical comedy". I can get fed up with the bad slapstick that pervades certain parts of the Lupin franchise too, but the fact is that this movie was made by people who very obviously know how to make a pratfall look funny.
This might be just me, but I was delighted at the animation in this movie - the art might not be as pretty as in Green vs. Red but I think you'll need to search hard for a Lupin movie in which the characters are so cleverly rubbery, and I'm not usually big on slapstick. I especially like how all the regulars get to do some comedy - usually it's Lupin and Zenigata who are the card-bearing "comic relief" but I think this works better.
It's also a return to old form: In the movies I feel the tendency for new love interests for Lupin is pretty common, but this movie makes the Lupin/Fujiko relationship seem pretty fresh again:
This movie is also of note because it's the first Lupin movie made after the demise of the original Lupin voice actor, Yasuo Yamada (the credits has a rather sweet in memoriam to “the eternal Lupin, Yamada”). I don't know if that might have something to do with how fans hate it. If that's the case they shouldn't, as the replacement - the current Lupin seiyū (yes, that was the word I was looking for!) Kanichi Kurita is just about equally perfect for the job. The movie really plays to his strenghts too - he's got excellent comedic timing, even so far he can make me laugh by the way he says a word, even if I need to rely on the subtitles.
I would also like to “thank” the internet for giving me the knowledge that meant that even without looking at the subtitles I immediately realized what the presidential daughter was saying when she kept referring to Lupin as “Lolicon ojisan!” (in the subtitles cheerfully translated to “Mr. Pedophile”). That's the internet for you.
4. Goodbye Lady Liberty (TV special, 1989): Previous review
5. The Fuma Conspiracy (theatrical movie, 1987): Previous review
6. The Columbus Files (TV special, 1999):
Something as unusual as a Fujiko-centric movie - which could be awesome if she didn't get amnesia in the beginning and as a result spend the rest of the movie very un-fujikolike. Of the movies I feel this is the one most written as a love story between Lupin and Fujiko. Odd how several scriptwriters obviously think the only way they can write a moving romance between the two is if Fujiko is bereft of her usual personality. But anyway. The love story is cute enough, and Lupin is slightly more decent and heroic than usual - it's treated as a sort of Orpheus-and-Eurydice story with Lupin out to rescue his kidnapped lover.
One of the more memorable parts of the movie is the villain (not often that happens, is it? Lupin villains tend to all come out of the same evil-machine). No, not the scientist that becomes the Hulk; I'm talking about Nazaroff.
He's pretty much Lupin - he even seems to have raided Lupin's early-seventies wardrobe - with all of Lupin's negative traits tuned up to eleven. What I think I like the most about that is that at no point does the movie state it outright. Good going, movie, you pleasantly surprised me.
Otherwise, the movie is merely an adequate Lupin outing. There's a legendary object to grab, ancient puzzles to figure out, a labyrinth, more sex jokes than usual, and also the movie has an odd fixation with the cast's underwear (everybody seems to lose their trousers on an alarming rate) and oh - it's not often they appear but I always love it when they do: Zenigata's SWAT team!
They give Zenigata someone to interact with while also doing a lot of the slapstick, freeing up Zenigata to have more character moments. This movie made me wonder about the team though - they sound so crestfallen when Zenigata orders them to put their clothes back on. Ho hum.
The art and animation isn't all that - barely better than the TV show, but it makes up for it by having some rather unusual and unexpected gags.
And I who kept thinking the fangirls were joshing me when they talked about "the infamous beach scene"...
As if this gang wasn't already a sausage fest.
Am I the only one who feels the urge to hum the song 'Detachable Penis'? Yes? Okay then.
7. The Alcatraz Connection (TV special, 2001):
Okay so it does have several hallmarks of the Lupin franchise, like nefarious secret organizations, the gang making use of/wrecking famous landmarks (it's in San Francisco, how can they not hijack a cable car?), a light-hearted scene featuring Lupin and Jigen squabbling over food, a real beauty of a conspiracy (regarding the assassinations of the Kennedys no less, and the REAL reason The Rock was unescapeable) and more references to the gangsters of the 1920s than you can shake a stick at.
Things like that makes the movie merely okay, but then you've got the detractors – the dialogue and delivery sound oddly forced and flat (sometimes it's like the scriptwriter must have added jokes that only made sense to himself), and the gags are equally annoying and lifeless. The only time I cracked a smile was such a cheap gag anyway -
The characters are written in a astonishingly annoying way (Fujiko is PARTICULARLY bad, but special points goes to the subplot with Goemon falling in love with an eeevil underwear model), but at least the recurring theme of Jigen having to rescue Lupin again and again from the villains when the gang is dissolved is charmingly
But to me, as always the one to get hung up on visuals, one of the worst things about this movie is its clumsy animation. Not only does every movement seem cumbersome and slow (at one point Lupin and Jigen do something I can only guess is supposed to be a high-five, but it comes across as a very awkward attempt at holding hands for some reason), but I've never seen so many animation mistakes in a Lupin movie before – things flash in and out of existence (take a look at the part with Lupin swinging on a chandelier – the chandelier is only present in parts of the shot), and things phase through each other. There's something quintessentially anime about the producers spending the majority of the animation budget on the opening scene...
(floofiest hakamas yet)
(I'd add a GIF of Fujiko's entrance too, only, you know it's Fujiko so it's mostly about how she has bouncy boobs)
...before the quality of animation drops down several notches:
(they're firing TOMMY GUNS, how does that translate to "pink happy laser show"?)
8. Napoleon's Dictionary (TV special, 1991): Previous review
9. Green vs. Red (TV special 2008): Previous review
10. The Last Job (TV special, 2010):
I'd never think you could out-convolute the convoluted plot of Green vs. Red, but here you go: The Last Job. I have no idea what this movie is about. I think the cover does a good job of representing the movie:
This happens.
At the end there are characters running around shouting “What does this thing do? Why is that guy important? What's going over there? I thought we needed that thing, not this thing?” and it's supposed to be funny but I'm going "I FEEL YOUR PAIN". Lupin et al act like everything is clear from the start, which only makes the movie twice as frustrating (at least in Green vs. Red the characters were as confused as I was).
So the plot is virtually impenetrable, which really just means the movies strenght has to lie in the individual scenes. I'm not so hard to please - did you see how high I rated Green vs. Red even though it both confused and annoyed me? Well, in The Last Job the music is supercatchy as always, the animation is nice – in fact, the fifteen first minutes of the movie are pretty damn entertaining:
It just doesn't feel like a Lupin movie if it doesn't start with a completely outrageous chase scene. This movie delivers.
(Yes, that's a homemade Segway)
But generally it feels like there was no quality control when they made this movie – there are some clever ideas, but there are many times as AUGH THAT IS SO STUPID-type ideas. You immediately get the sense of "bad decision galore" as the opening scene, for reasons that are beyond me, is lovingly framed like this:
Goemon, jeesh...
But sure, the action scenes are very nice - you get the feeling they're really trying to up the ante from the previous thirty-two movies -
Like adding kittens.
- and for once they try to facilitate all the regulars by giving them comparable foes; Like a samurai with a magic sword for Goemon:
- quickly heading into "bad idea" territory with the inclusion of Jigen's opposition, who I'm 99% sure was only added for the sake of a weak pun:
(The pun? Lupin greets him with "Yo, yo-yo ninja!" Argh.)
This movie just about comes with its own drinking game: Take a shot every time this movie
Even the movie's big gimmick (ZENIGATA DIES) is hardly played up at all. One of the things I dearly love about certain episodes and movies of this franchise is that at the apparent death of any of the regular characters, it's played straight - of course you know they'll return within five minutes but meanwhile you get a lump in your throat at the way it's handled (compare with Lupin's death in The Fuma Conspiracy, where Zenigata shaves his head in mourning and dedicates his life to praying for Lupin's soul so he might be reincarnated as an honest man. D'AWW...!) and dude, I was prepared to have my heart-strings tugged...
...and then they just leave it at that. It's hardly brought up after the first fifteen minutes at all. COME ON DAMN MOVIE, MANIPULATE MY FEELINGS WILL YA?
Why have I put it this far up the list? Well, it did actually make me laugh out loud several times – but even that wasn't very straightforward. I can't help but think there must have been at least two writers making the jokes for this movie: One of them experiments with types of comedy that until now has been pretty underused in the franchise, like setting up something early in the movie and then coming with a punchline that takes you completely by surprise, someone who for once uses Jigen and Goemon as a short of snarky, bantering Greek chorus to the things that are happening.
And then there's the other one, who in a moment of inspiration scribbles down "DOG PISSES ON LUPIN. LUPIN FARTS IN A DOG'S FACE." in a sticky notebook before falling off his chair laughing.
Oh okay one more awesome thing, and another factor in shoving this movie up on the list: Jigen's motherfucking CRUTCH CANNON.
Worth the price of admission RIGHT THERE.
11. Voyage to Danger (TV special, 1993):
From the start this seems like a pretty interesting movie. The premise seems promising enough; Zenigata has been removed from the Lupin case and the gang decides to help him out with his new case so he might get his old one back.
See, plots involving Lupin and Zenigata teaming up tend to be chockful of fun (not this one though); Goemon is involved from the start, which is a rare treat; there are several subplots without making the movie feel crowded or hard to follow; and you'd think you'd get your fill of drama with the apparent deaths of both Jigen and Goemon.
And yet... This movie feels really half-arsed. The visuals might not be too bad, and the voice actors are up to it, but the writers don't deliver at all – there are hardly any reactions to what is happening, you'd think with two dramatic deaths among the regulars you could expect some attempt at tugging your heart strings, but as with The Last Job, they writers don't even make an attempt.
Lupin's answer seems to be to take a gay little holiday with the inspector.
I think my biggest disappointment with this movie is how it handles Zenigata - he starts out as surprisingly three-dimensional at the defeat of losing his main case, and then he spends the rest of the movie going "Lupiiin, what shall we do now? Lupiiin, tell me what to do! Lupiiin, you're so clever and smart and kind!" Fuck you, movie.
Add to that the first two thirds of the movie hardly involves any conflicts of any kind and you've got yourself a tremendously unengaging movie.
On the plus side - gun porn.
Don't get too excited lady, Jigen's track record with women is nonexistant if you catch my drift.
12. Island of Assassins (TV special, 1997): Previous review
13. The Secret of Mamo (theatrical movie, 1978): Previous review
14. The Hemingway Papers (TV special 1990): Previous review
Lupin III vs Detective Conan (TV special 2009): Previous review
And now, with some eighteen Lupin movies remaining (and according to my research a bunch of them are pure shit) I think I'm going to take a break and pick up these reviews again in 2011. The good news is that by sticking to watching an episode of the seventies' TV series a day makes me reeeaaally appreciate the animation of these movies.
