Lupin III: Prison of the Past (original) (raw)

I've watched all Lupin III's seasons and a lot of the movies. This film felt like a parody of Lupin's 50 year legacy and I'll explain why in this review.

Animation: clean, colourful and with the old school charm that is part of Lupin III's iconic visuals. However, at the end of the movie, it was quite inconsistent.

Sound:

  1. Lupin III's iconic theme song was ruined by some dodgy lyrics and vocals. For 50 years, the instrumental has been a constant presence in every episode, movie, OVA, special. Yet, for some odd reason, this movie wanted it to be different and it was just... awful. There's a saying that goes "if it ain't broken, don't fix it" and it fits perfectly here.
  2. "Super Hero"'s version for this movie had terrible vocals. Again. if it ain't broken, don't fix it.

Story and characters:

  1. this film is more cartoon-like in terms of comedy and action and I feel that this new approach didn't help the level of enjoyment at all because it's just not Lupin III's style.
  2. Lupin's gang and Zenigata and his assistant felt like parodies of themselves: Zenigata is never really focused on arresting Lupin, Lupin doesn't act as expected towards Fujiko, ... just to give a few examples.
  3. the story feels rushed and many events make no sense whatsoever.
  4. SPOILER: in every Lupin's story there's always a girl/woman that happens to pretty and they need help. I would love to see some creativy story-wise because it just gets old and too predictable for it to be enjoyable.

Overall, because the story is poorly executed and the characters don't feel like their real selves and also because the iconic soundtrack got butchered, I have to rate this film a 3/10.