My only Lupin experience is catching clips of various episodes here and there and watching The Castle of Cagliostro. The latter is a genuine masterpiece.
This... is not. A friend recommended I watch it just to see how completely insane it is.
It is, essentially, a very long TV episode. It opens telling you that the real, actual Lupin the Third has been executed. Killed. Dead. For real. Not a hoax, not a fakeout, not another one of Lupin's schemes. Lupin the Third is dead for really real.
...
And then he turns up in a coffin in Transylvania, alive and well. Folks, that's the first five minutes, and it's not even the weirdest thing in this movie.
The animation budget is not great. Again, this is basically just an extended TV episode, and it never really strives to be better than that. Which is weird, because supposedly this movie had an unnaturally high budget for an animated feature; more comparable to a live-action film. I cannot tell the difference.
The issue I have with The Mystery of Mamo is characterization. Everybody's morals are constantly flip-flopping and nothing really seems to matter. Lupin's horny antics start to cross the line into feeling like rape at least once, and the way Fujiko simultaneously seems to both care for Lupin and would also leave him for dead if it served her goals is something the movie goes back and forth on a lot.
Even Jigen and Goemon get in on it, completely unable to decide if they're terrified of this Mamo guy, want to help Lupin out, or something else. Nobody ever picks a motive and sticks to it except for maybe the villain.
And yet... because it's all so bizarre, so out there, so up it's own butt, there is at least some entertainment value to be gleaned if only to wait and see what the next wacky, nonsensical twist is. That's the real heart of this movie's value, and I suppose it does not disappoint, even if it's kind of ugly and weird.
This... is not. A friend recommended I watch it just to see how completely insane it is.
It is, essentially, a very long TV episode. It opens telling you that the real, actual Lupin the Third has been executed. Killed. Dead. For real. Not a hoax, not a fakeout, not another one of Lupin's schemes. Lupin the Third is dead for really real.
...
And then he turns up in a coffin in Transylvania, alive and well. Folks, that's the first five minutes, and it's not even the weirdest thing in this movie.
The animation budget is not great. Again, this is basically just an extended TV episode, and it never really strives to be better than that. Which is weird, because supposedly this movie had an unnaturally high budget for an animated feature; more comparable to a live-action film. I cannot tell the difference.
The issue I have with The Mystery of Mamo is characterization. Everybody's morals are constantly flip-flopping and nothing really seems to matter. Lupin's horny antics start to cross the line into feeling like rape at least once, and the way Fujiko simultaneously seems to both care for Lupin and would also leave him for dead if it served her goals is something the movie goes back and forth on a lot.
Even Jigen and Goemon get in on it, completely unable to decide if they're terrified of this Mamo guy, want to help Lupin out, or something else. Nobody ever picks a motive and sticks to it except for maybe the villain.
And yet... because it's all so bizarre, so out there, so up it's own butt, there is at least some entertainment value to be gleaned if only to wait and see what the next wacky, nonsensical twist is. That's the real heart of this movie's value, and I suppose it does not disappoint, even if it's kind of ugly and weird.