1978, Japan. Starring (original Japanese language) Yasuo Yamada, Kiyoshi Kobayashi, Eiko Masuyama, Makio Inoue, Goro Naya; (English dub) Tony Oliver, Richard Epcar, Michelle Ruff, Lex Lang, Jake Martin. Directed by Soji Yoshikawa. Written by Atsushi Yamatoya, Soji Yoshikawa. Buy it now from Amazon.com.

I had the bright idea of getting a three-part series review done, but it was a hard road to walk, and I was badly in need of some shut-eye after a night that ran on until four in the morning and involved four pints of Newcastle at a local pub washed down by three science fiction cocktails that glowed unnatural colors, bought from a posh bar hidden in a back room of a Japanese udon restaurant. An hour train ride home in a slightly tilting world was followed by some cold water and a viewing of Space Thunder Kids, which did more to screw me up than any amount of drinking could ever accomplish. I finally managed to drift off to sleep at precisely the same moment the alarm went off to wake me up. An hour of the snooze button, a cold shower, and eight ounces of skim milk and whey protein later, and I'm out the door on the way to work, buried in a Kem Nunn book for the duration of the train ride that takes me to a day at the office that passes sluggishly. After work was supposed to be more of the same, and thirty-four is neither too old nor too young but it is the sort of age you hit and realize that you can't keep going like you used to be able to. So I cashed in early and bowed out of a second night of decadence and debauchery and unclad gyrating strangers sitting on my lap while I downed a scotch and watched another twenty dollar bill vanish, and I decided to simply hit the pavement and head for home where the scotch was cheaper and the music was better.

But you guys and dolls are our loyal readers, so you know the Teleport City lifestyle. This is how we roll. One night it's all Japanese bartenders in tuxedos and women slinking around poles while I trade wit and whiskey with a dame in a short black dress, and the next day it's off to work then home to watch and review a Lupin the Third movie as I work my way steadily through a bottle of Soca rum and a bag full of limes and split my brain between analyzing an old Japanese cartoon and trying to account for the hours of four and six in the morning, until I remember that I was watching Space Thunder Kids and finishing off a bottle of Orangina while doing my best to figure out what was in the glowing red drink I'd had just a couple hours earlier. It was, to say the very least, a strange way to start an anime review, but this is me we're talking about, and the anime is Lupin the Third, so it all seems fitting somehow. Let this be a lesson to you though. If you live the life the way I encourage you to live the life -- full of fast women, cheap movies, and free-flowing booze -- make sure you space the nights out a little better.

Lupin the Third is something we should have talked about a long time ago. If I was ever to put together a list of movies that would serve as examples of how a man should live his life, Lupin the Third would be at the absolute top of the list, right next to the Sean Connery James Bond movies, Danger; Diabolik!, and that scene in The Ambushers where Dean Martin's bed slides forward and dumps him and his hot chick of the week into a bubbly hot tub with a bar that drops down from the ceiling. Anything less is unbecoming of a man.

Created by Japanese artist Monkey Punch (surprisingly, not his real name) in the 1960s, Lupin the Third was a mixture of James Bond, Matt Helm, Cary Grant from To Catch a Thief, and whatever guy you can think of who grabs boobs a lot. Bill Clinton, I guess. Lupin the Third was meant to be the globe-trotting super-thief great grandson of Arsene Lupin, a much beloved French pulp story character who was very much the "gentleman thief." Lupin the Third jettisons the gentleman part most of the time but excels in the thievery department. Quite in contrast to his famous relative, Lupin the Third is a crass, horny, occasionally sleazy, always smart-alec guy with a weakness for beautiful girls. Together with his parters in crime Jigen (a former yakuza hitman and reportedly the greatest crack shot in the world) and Goemon (a guy who identifies a little too heavily with the romantic ideal of the mysterious, wandering samurai), Lupin trots the globe in search of treasure to be found, banks to be robbed, chicks to be nailed, and smug rich guys to be kicked in the jaw.

Complicating Lupin's life are two more characters: dogged Interpol inspector Zenigata, whose entire life revolves around finally arresting the wily Lupin; and Fujiko (whose name means "peaks"), a big-breasted flirt who is sometimes Lupin's partner, sometimes his rival, and usually both.

And there you have the simple set-up for one of the longest-lived characters in Japanese pop culture. Lupin the Third dominated manga and television for years before finally making the jump to a feature film, The Mystery of Mamo, in 1978. Castle of Cagliostro followed shortly thereafter, and then much later and after a few other films, another movie called Dead or Alive was released. Since then, a whole slew of Lupin movies have been released, some better than others, all highly enjoyable if you are a fan of the series (some enjoyable even if you aren't). We'll be looking at abovementioned three films because: 1) the first one was the first one; 2) the second one marks the feature film directorial debut of regular Lupin television series director Haiyo Miyazaki, who would go on to create such critically- and fan-acclaimed films as My Neighbor Totoro, Spirited Away, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, and Fist of the North Star (I could be wrong about that last one, butI'm pretty sure); and 3) Dead or Alive is directed by Lupin creator Monkey Punch. So each one has its own historical significance, as well as being snapshots of how a character can evolve with advances in anime technique and storytelling while also remaining essentially the same, unchanged character that everyone loves. Well, everyone but my friend Lyn, who I thought would be a huge Lupin fan until I brought it up and she flew into a rage and boldly proclaimed that she would rather be forced at knifepoint to watch a One Piece marathon than ever waste another second on seeing anything involving Lupin the Third. Man, just when you think you know someone...

Mystery of Mamo marks the first time Lupin appeared on the big screen (unless you count the live-action film, which I guess counts, so it's the second time, but first in pure animated form), and coming hot on the heels of the revival of the television series in 1977, that meant that the movie was going to basically do everything the series did, only bigger and with more bared tits. Lupin was snottier, the heists were crazier, and Fujiko was nakeder -- what more could anyone ask for? How about knockout action setpieces, great animation, a funny script, and a plot that manages to be completely over-the-top weird yet somehow still manage to work in the world of Lupin, which was always grounded in reality -- or at least the kind of reality that allows you to drive little European cars up the side of mountains or down pyramids.

Mamo begins with the death of Lupin the Third, which comes as a major shock to Lupin the Third when he hears about it. This initial puzzler sends Lupin, Goemon, and Jigen on a wild quest that brings them face to face with the United States Navy and a mysterious, reclusive billionaire named Mamo, who happens to look like one of those freaky blue kids from Akira, only with bad "aging record label executive" hair and a lavender leisure suit worn with white platform shoes and a bow tie. One thing the Lupin franchise has always been is a challenging roadmap to high fashion. If you watch this movie then follow the advice doled out by Walt "Clyde" Frazier in Rockin' Steady: A Guide to Basketball and Cool (sample: "I slap cologne all over my body -- lookin' good, smellin' fine"), then you, too, will soon find yourself raiding pyramids and making time with busty cat burglars or suave international men of action.

Mamo, it turns out, is up to far more than setting fashion trends, and before the end of things, Lupin and crew will find themselves in a race to save the whole of human race from annihilation.

Secret of Mamo crackles with fun and action. It's every frame is infused with kinetic energy and a lusty gusto that makes the movie a ton of fun from beginning to end. The jokes are good, the action is spectacular, and the characters are expertly written and used. No real surprise there. With Monkey Punch's brilliant original creations to work with, scriptwriters Atsushi Yamamoto and Soji Yoshikawa (also the director) had excellent source material. Yamamoto was already a highly regarded screenwriter, having penned the script for the outrageous, ground-breaking Seijun Suzuki-directed gangster film Branded to Kill in 1967 and the wild girl gang exploitation classic Stray Cat Rock: Sex Hunter from 1970 and starring exploitation film goddess Meiko Kaji, best known for her role in Lady Snowblood, the live-action films based on the Kazuo Koike manga of the same name, and the Female Convict 701 Scorpion films. He also wrote and directed a 1967 film called Inflatable Sex Doll of the Wastelands, which is something I know nothing about -- and I do sorely regret my ignorance.

He was a screenwriter with one foot in the avant garde Japanese new wave and the other in sensational pulp exploitation. Stray Cat Rock was directed by one of our favorites, Yasuharu Hasebe, a protege of Seijun Suzuki and also the director of the trippy go-go spy adventure film Black Tight Killers, as well as the Female Convict films, Bloody Territories, and the old Specterman series that only I seem to love. Obviously, he was a superb candidate for writing a big screen Lupin adventure, even though he'd had no real experience with anime. Despite being a cartoon, Lupin is a perfect fit with Yamamoto's list of credits. It allows him to blend outrageous action, psychedelic art design, saucy sexploitation, and cutting-edge wit to a world brimming over with cool hitmen, boob-grabbing super-thieves, and insane Interpol agents, as well as a weird blue guy with Edgar Winter hair and white loafers.

Equally inexperienced with anime -- and inexperienced with just about all aspects of filmmaking -- was director and co-writer Soji Yoshikawa. Mamo was his first -- and apparently only -- credit as a director, though he did go on to write scripts for Lensman and Armored Trooper Votoms during the eighties. His inexperience doesn't show, though, as Mystery of Mamo is crisply directed and magnificently paced, taking full advantage of the inherent chances for action, tension, and comedy in every scenario. The world of Lupin is larger than life, and the team of Yamamoto and Yoshikawa work in perfect harmony with character designer Yuzo Aoki (a veteran of the Lupin television series) to breathe life into the brightly-colored world of ridiculously curvaceous dames and amusingly-contorted men. Lupin is all flailing limbs and flapping blazers, just as likely to run away screaming from a situation as he is to stand his ground and deliver a knock-out punch to some chump's jaw. And Fujiko -- frequently unclothed during the film -- seems like an obvious influence on other "hot thief with a heart of gold" characters -- namely Cowboy Bebop's Faye -- and Lupin bears more than a few similarities with that same show's Spike Speigal (they even have similar dress sense and footwear). Ditto Jigen and Jet, who sport similar bizarre facial hair and gruff attitudes. However, I don't know that you'd really say stoic samurai throwback Goemon is especially similar to Ed.

The acting is uniformly top notch. They just hired all the same people who worked on the series, including Yasuo Yamada (Lupin), Kiyoshi Kobayashi (Jigen), Makio Inoue (who joined the Lupin series in 1977 as the voice of Goemon, replacing Chikao Otsuka), Eiko Masuyama (as Fujiko, also from the 1977 series, replacing Yukiko Nikaido -- although it was Eiko who voiced Fujiko in the original promotional clip that was used to sell the series in 1971), and the venerable Goro Nayo as Inspector Zenigata (Nayo was last seen around these parts in our review of Crusher Joe). Obviously, each of these people is intimately acquainted with the character they inhabit, and the transition from television to the big screen is smooth and seamless.

The English-language dub is also quite good. The voice actors for the Lupin series are, by this point, almost as familiar with the characters as the original Japanese cast. The English language cast includes Tony Oliver (who always does a superb job as Lupin and was last heard here when we mentioned the English dub on Golgo 13: The Professional), Richard Epcar as Jigen (now doing the English dub voice of Bato in Ghost in the Shell and also credited as directing the English-language version of Mamo), Michelle Ruff as Fujiko, Lex Lang as Goemon, and the hilarious James Martin as Zenigata (gotta admit I actually like his voicing of Zenigata more than the original Japanese). All of these people had experience dubbing the 1977 Lupin series, and although Mamo and Lupin came very in the careers of each performer, they're all exceptional at their job (which is why they're all still doing it). I generally prefer the original language, but truth be told, I have absolutely no problem listening to any of the above English language actors. They do a top notch job and have, in many was, become every bit as definitive a chorus of voices as the original actors.

Some parts of the movie seem to have been redubbed for the recent DVD release. An American representative sounds (and looks vaguely) like Henry Kissenger, which given the character design, I assume was part of the original plan. But the voice of the President of the United States is decidedly George W. Bush-ian, and I have a pretty rock solid belief that that's not how it was originally. If it was, then that's just amazing!

Still, given the quality of dubbing from the main players, it's a minor gripe (and I rarely consider leaving the original language off a disc to be minor), and you will quickly forget as soon as you get caught up in just how much fun Mystery of Mamo is. Without a doubt, one of my favorite anime movies, and one of the high water marks for anime. It's got action, jokes, insane escapes, plot twists galore, lots of boobs, and a brash, snotty aesthetic that seems straight out of punk rock.

Amazingly, things would get even better, although markedly different, just one year later when the second big screen Lupin adventure was brought to life.

Labels: Anime and Animation, Anime: 80s, Espionage, Series: Lupin III, Year: 1978