Lupin the IIIrd: Zenigata and the Two Lupins

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. 

Lupin the 3rd vs Cat's Eye

Although co-directors Hiroyuki Seshita and Kobun Shizuno's Lupin the 3rd vs Cat's Eye isn't the first time that the storied cat burglar has been recreated using computer generated animation, it's truly a bizarre experience to see Monkey Punch's inky, elasticated thief rendered here as such a stiff, immovable marionette. Whereas a comparable feature like Lupin III: The First trapped its expressive, polygonal models in beautifully lit dioramas, this crossover instead attempts to ape the flatness inherent to traditional animation but without any of the stylistic flourishes that bleed in when somebody has to draw then re-draw a moving figure over and over again. These figures are baked and manipulated; subject to only the lightest of stresses and never smearing. As a result then, this streaming special ends up registering as a cheap example of previs that has somehow made it off Amazon's internal servers. Really all Lupin the 3rd vs Cat's Eye can offer is a kind of unblemished, trundling uniformity; a commitment to dangling playsets and basic replication that might appeal to avid collectors of articulated action figures. Little more than an unusually stern guest star in this piece, Lupin (voiced by Kanichi Kurita) brushes up against the ongoing adventures of Tsukasa Hojo's Cat's Eye art thieves, a trio of sisters who (when not appearing in 80s issues of Weekly Shonen Jump) are attempting to secure the lost masterpieces of their dearly departed Dad.

Lupin III: The Mystery of Mamo

Beginning with the gentleman thief's execution, Lupin III: The Mystery of Mamo (also known as Secret of Mamo, Lupin III: Lupin vs The Clone or, simply, Lupin III) quickly locks itself into a pattern of episodic action. The film is a series of vignettes, loosely arranged around a plot that slowly inches its way towards secret histories and supernatural intrigue. Mystery of Mamo operates like a riff then, with director Soji Yashikawa and co-writer Atsushi Yamatoya feeding Monkey Punch's elasticated bandits into ceaseless, wonderfully arranged spectacle. Motorbikes snake around inside the Giza Necropolis; a liquid lunch in Paris is gatecrashed by an attack helicopter that machine guns dozens of innocent bystanders to pieces.

Mamo's many chases blur together, immediately overwhelming the central story to the point where frantic pursuits and death-defying feats become the film's primary method of communication. The best of these processions plays out like Chuck Jones' interpretation of Steven Spielberg's Duel - Lupin and the gang crammed into a red BMC Mini while an enormous, frowning, 18-Wheeler smashes everything else off the road. Police patrol cars and metal crash barriers included. Yashikawa and his animations are dizzy with big screen possibilities, the TMS crew quite apparently using their theatrical-sized budget to speed through every interlude or set-piece denied to them while working on the less extravagantly budgeted Lupin the Third Part I and Lupin the Third Part II television series. The result? Beautifully animated incoherence that works tremendously hard to be constantly, breathlessly, entertaining.