A streaming-only prelude to a forthcoming feature (and itself structured like two episodes of a television series roughly glued together), director Takeshi Koike's Lupin the IIIrd: Zenigata and the Two Lupins sees the gentleman thief framed for a terror attack on a seventies-presenting glimpse of the Soviet Union. Naturally, this detonation occurs on the eve of peace talks with this story's United States analogue. Given the expressive, inky property and the presence of an elasticity specialist like Redline (not to mention several wonderfully springy shorts screened during concerts for the boy band SMAP) director Koike, you'd be forgiven for expecting this net animation to explode into a riot of clashing colours and improbable physical dexterity. In the main though, Zenigata and the Two Lupins is, like its snowed-in setting, a chilly affair; far more excited about replicating the halting rhythms of pre-Glasnost espionage thrillers than cartoonish derring-do. There are a few dangling insinuations about secret islands where the rich and powerful are able to retreat from public life to indulge themselves - seemingly as much a reference to 1978's Lupin movie The Mystery of Mamo as it is the real-life practices of untouchable elites - but, largely, Zenigata and the Two Lupins focuses on stuffy police procedure and playacting politicians. This is not to say that Koike's piece completely fails to acknowledge the more lively, caddish aspects of Monkey Punch's original manga. The scarred double who sullies Lupin's good name is allowed to luxuriate in the kind of violent, sex-pest behaviour that was ironed-out of the character when the series made the jump from early issues of Weekly Manga Action to much more heroic adventures on the big and small screen.
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