Fifth Lupin movie post
Amidst the school assignments it really feels good to sit down and write something that doesn't need references to articles from 1972 or people with strange German names. Nope, writing about cartoon characters blowing stuff up with really big guns tops that one I'm afraid.
Oh, and fair warning: I'm going to deviate from my usual Lupin movie post form - instead of adding the five new movies into the ever-growing list of good-to-bad, I'm just going to compare the five movies to each other and list them accordingly. With so many movies that fell into the "meh, not good, not bad, but watchable" category it just became too difficult to list them all from best to worst.
Tell you what, if I see a Lupin movies that I'd consider part of the top five, I'll tell. And if one is really really bad and deserves the place at the very very bottom you'll know (Hint: THE ONE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE CUT IS THE WORST THERE IS. IT CAN'T GET ANY WORSE, IT JUST CAN'T.)
And I'm sorry, no GIFs this time because you've been bad I've had some computer troubles lately. Mostly solved now, but there wasn't really any scenes that stood out enough for me to go back and start fiddling with GIMP.
Sweet Lost Night (TV special, 2008)
For this movie I tried something new: Watching it on a train - or rather, trying to watch it on the train while making sure nobody looked over my shoulder. - And in case somebody did, praying that there'd be no gratuitous nudity or creepy sexual stuff.
Thank you movie. That sure was integral to the plot. [IF YOU WERE SITTING NEXT
TO ME ON THE BERGEN-OSLO TRAIN, PLEASE BELIEVE ME WHEN I SAY I ACTUALLY
HAVE GREAT TASTE IN MOVIES]
But anyway: Sweet Lost Night, or: Lupin Does Memento.
I feel this movie falls in that regular middling ground the majority of the newer Lupin movies do, where you just have to compare the bad things and the good things and see where you wind up.
The plot, initially concerning Lupin trying to get hold of Aladdin's lamp might seem overly silly and fantastical, but in good old Lupin fashion it turns out that the magical aspects are in fact SCIENCE. The long and short of it is: Lupin winds up with a microchip in his brain that erases his memories from 7 PM to 7 AM every day (and yes, that means sex jokes. Of course it means sex jokes).
The weird thing is, that actually makes for a pretty entertaining plot device, where you really get these Memento-like jumpcuts from one scene to another and have to try to figure out what on earth happened, along with Lupin. I really enjoyed it as something fresh in Lupin storytelling - though sadly the microchip is designed to kill Lupin after three nights so the idea never quite reaches it full potential.
Another thing I like is a return to the good old "Jigen rescues his boyfriend buddy Lupin" side plots, but Jigen being Jigen he OF COURSE hurts his gun arm - BUT (and this is where I started squirming in my seat because you're not meant shout "OH HELL YEAH" on a crowded train) he makes up for his handicap by getting himself THE GREATEST GUN THAT HAS EVER BEEN MADE.
A SIMONOV PTRS-41 ANTI-TANK RIFLE. Damn that's a sexy gun, dude.
If you didn't have me pegged as a gun nut you're absolutely right, but in my eyes there can never be enough Soviet anti-tank rifle action in a Lupin movie. If you think that's odd, keep in mind that Castle of Cagliostro is one of my favourite movies ever. I know I've said repeatedly how I hate Lupin movies being bogged down with references to CoC, but man those rifles are just so ngh cool and cumbersome and shoot stuff really good. Yesss.
(I have no idea where my fascination comes from, sorry.)
Sweet Lost Night's got something a theme going, rare for a Lupin movie, and amnesia is the dish of the day: Besides Lupin losing all recollections of nights, Goemon has his "impure thoughts" (ho hum) removed and therefore loses all loyalty to Lupin, and Zenigata takes one on the noggin and forgets who he is.
Actually the Zenigata part of the plot, short as it was, surprised me by being pretty entertaining (but as a fan of Eight in Doctor Who I guess I've been conditioned to appreciate amnesia plotlines). It's simultaneously funny and cute how he figures out he must be a criminal, seeing how Interpol is looking after him.
Yes I didn't really expect that Sweet Lost Night would wind up at the top in any selection of Lupin movies. It's by no means perfect or one of the best Lupin movies I've seen, but it has a somewhat fun plot, decent animation, made me laugh on a couple of occasions (HOW DID THEY MAKE A "GOEMON HAS A CELLPHONE" JOKE FUNNY?), there are some good new tunes from the pen of Yuji Ohno (my favourite this time around being 'Samba a go go') and ANTI TANK RIFLE BLOWING STUFF UP WOOOOO.
Legend of the Gold of Babylon (theatrical movie, 1985)
Oh joy. Eighties Lupin in all his pink-clothed glory. My eyes, they burn!
Actually I can't quite make my mind up about this movie. Sure, the art is... yeesh -
Fujiko suddenly seems to have a case of the Hapsburg Jaw.
- the supporting voice cast is a somewhat varied, the humour is overly cartoony and non-sequiteur for a Lupin movie (Zenigata seems to turn into Wile E. Coyote at one point, trying to blow up Lupin with dynamite), the plot is utterly weird and an unholy soup of mysticism and scifi -
Me neither, Fujiko. Me neither.
- and the racism is... there.
Now, actually looking at it like that I realize I'm not really on the fence after all, it's not a good movie. It does, however, have parts I quite enjoyed. I'm one of those people who can love details so much I sort of forget that the overall thing I'm looking at is subpar. As for stuff:
The overall plot is closely tied to the nursery rhyme 'How many miles to Babylon', which is cute. You know the one:
How many miles to Babylon?
Three-score and ten
Can I get there by candlelight?
There and back again
If your feet are nimble and light
You can get there by candlelight
See, using a plot device like that charms my socks off right away. As it is the key to the mystery we get pretty much every character quoting the text in more or less badly pronounced English, which is always fun.
My love for using an old nursery rhyme as the main plot device was only diminished by how utterly stupid it was used in the, you know, actual plot.
What? No! «Score» means «twenty» you ignorant fuck! How do you solve the riddles
if you don't even know what the goddamn words mean?
Zenigata somehow winds up with the contestants of the Miss Interpol competition on his team and that plotline never really goes anywhere but hey I punch the air every time we get to see women actually working with the ICPO - so I'm game. Goemon of course has the hots for one of them and at one point midfight he accidentally catches a glimpse of her underwear and they're both so weirded out they just have to cease battle.
To my great great shame I laughed at that. What can I say, I was in a good mood after being a treated to another rare appearance of Jigen's ludicrous nightcap.
So, what, where you guys just chilling in a closet together or...?
And I gotta say, once they reach the Tower of Babel it's actually presented in a somewhat cool and distinctive way. I liked it, even though that was the point where the plot really dove off the cliff.
All in all, The Legend of the Gold of Babylon isn't a good movie, but seemingly by accident it did do some things right. An acceptable two hour's worth of entertainment, but not much more.
Stolen Lupin (TV special, 2004)
This is where my new approach to doing these movies really screws me over. Instead of writing up this summary immediately after watching each movie (like I've done until now) I've watched five movies and gosh, I can't for the life of me remember what on earth Stolen Lupin was about.
Oh I know! At one point Lupin sits in a bar/cafe listening to the Yuji Ohno Trio.
(Because he does that in pretty much all of them, geddit?)
On one hand I imagine it can't have been much good if it didn't leave an impression, but that also means it wasn't terrible (not From Russia With Love terrible in any case because I'll remember that one).
Well we can't go on like this, let's check with Lupin Encyclopedia for a moment.
Oh. Oh that one.
Yeah, now I remember. The main plot concerns the baddie kidnapping Lupin and forcing him to do a heist so impossible Lupin would never attempt it if he didn't absolutely need to. Meh, as a plot it's got some potential, I know it's even been used in the original manga - problem is, when it comes right down to it the heist doesn't seem so terribly much harder than the sort of stuff the gang would do in any of the episodes. In addition to that I distinctly remember being so annoyed with Lupin for not telling Jigen and Goemon why they suddenly need to do this stupid crazy heist. They just follow obediently - and thusly feels oddly out of character.
At least Jigen and Goemon get to do a proper old-school teamup again, which is awesome as usual.
The most memorable part is the one concerning a young brash thief named Becky. I'm not saying she's more developed than your average female-supporting-character-in-Lupin (I think there's a law that there has to be a new plucky female for Lupin to interact with in every single movie), but she is handled in a slightly different way than the others. Why? Well I don't think I'm spoiling it considering how it's never truly addressed in the movie, but we're served a couple of vague hints that she might be Lupin's daughter.
Hey it's something new. Not much, but I commend them for trying.
Anyway the TV special is pretty much like the other recent ones: Somewhat promising idea, disappointing execution, but enough good scenes to not feel like a total waste of time. Adequate but ultimately forgettable.
The Elusiveness of Fog (TV special, 2007)
One thing you might have noticed about the Lupin franchise is it doesn't exactly pile up recurring characters. Sure, apart from the five main characters you might have a two or three villains who pop up in a couple of episodes from 1976, but all in all supporting characters appear, do their job and are never seen again.
Until the producers of the TV specials decided they wanted to shake it up. Like, say, bringing back a villain from the original manga/Green Jacket series, named Mamou (not to be confused with the blue midget Mamo in the first theatrical movie). Mamou was this crazy scifi guy with a time machine and a very vague reason for wanting to kill Lupin, it was a bit of Green Jacket silliness, nothing more. Can you see this character being interesting enough to support his own movie? Yeah, me neither.
So what happens is the gang plus Zenigata are forcibly time shifted to Medieval Japan? The movie goes to great lengths to point out this is Medieval Japan even though it looks nothing like Medieval Japan and instead looks rather more like Medieval Europe. If you are very drunk and possibly blind. Had they put them in a made-up country I wouldn't be so bitter, but what the hey.
The gang lands smack middle in a tribe war which they then have to try to solve while they pick up a plucky child sidekick (and you KNOW how much fun THEY ARE) and run into Fujiko's ancestor (who in a twist is not voiced by Fujiko's actress but by some Japanese pop singer who regrettably couldn't act if her life depended upon it). They couldn't find a plot function for poor Zenigata so he spends the majority of the movie locked up in a shed trying to figure out why he's got no cell phone reception.
Thouh that is a pretty cute reference with the phone wallpaper and all.
It's a poor movie that can't give Zenigata anything to do.
Well the time machine plot doesn't really work (and I'm the kind who love time paradox stories so that's saying something), the cashing-in-on-medieval-fantasy-movies doesn't really work, there's an ancient riddle but one that only makes sense to Lupin, there are no character moments that really seem to stand out...
Overall this movie is a rather cynical attempt to cash in on former glory - which seems kind of pointless, considering none of the characters remember having met Mamou before.
Though it has given us the best MMO war cry ever.
The Return of Pycal (OVA, 2002)
I thought I'd seen the worst of what the Lupin franchise had to offer. I really did. Boring, stupid, badly animated - I saw it, I moved on.
The Return of Pycal is so bad it actually defies description. Me, I love to riff on bad movies, I love to pick stupid things apart. With Return of Pycal I really don't know where to begin. I was expecting something stupid and uninspired: This movie is after all a sort of companion piece to The Elusiveness of Fog, Pycal being another villain from the original manga/Green Jacket series - as far as I can remember he was a cocky magician Lupin and the gang wound up debunking.
The movie doesn't feel like telling you this and instead show a jumble of manga pages you don't have time to decipher.
Yes, where to begin indeed.
Say what you will about From Russia With Love, at least it followed traditional dramaturgical lines, at least every scene had some discernable connection with the scenes before and after. Let me tell you, Return of Pycal doesn't. I'd say every single art film I've ever seen made more narrative sense than Return of Pycal. It's doesn't even feel like a movie; It's a montage. I had no idea what I was looking at half the time. This movie makes me angry when I think about it. If it tries to be surrealistic on purpose, well I'm sorry, the Secret of Mamo did it first and did it good.
What the everloving fuck, movie?
Even when the movie tried for action scenes they too seemed like montages, like they didn't have a storyboard to work from: Lupin and Jigen run from an Indiana Jones-style boulder, Lupin and Jigen shoot at metallic birds, Lupin and Jigen sit in a spacecraft, Lupin and Jigen sail away in an amphibious Volkswagen Beetle. There were no transitions between these things.
Add to that how the animators must have had the smallest budget ever (maybe they spent most of it on LSD) because the art was horrid, there was CGI when traditional animation would easily have done the job -
Why do you have such tiny hands, Lupin? Why do you have to hold CGI jewels, Lupin?
- there was a lot of jumpcutting to actual live-action footage (like water running down a drain. Seriously, you couldn't animate that?), and the majority of the action scenes were just a series of still images.
As for the plot, huh. The one plotline I actually understood was that Jigen's pollen allergies granted him super hearing. No, I'm not kidding, and no, this had no effect on the overall movie.
And I'm not sure but I think he took a wrong turn at Yellow Submarine and wound
up in the Sea of Holes.
Even the voice direction was completely shit, and that's usually not something you notice.
All in all: I was told that Return of Pycal is a movie so bad that not even devoted Lupin fans can possibly get a single moment of enjoyment out of it. I didn't listen. My life is poorer for it.
That makes twenty-five Lupin movies. I'm really far along now - trouble is, at this point I've exhausted most of my sources: I literally do not know where I'll find another Lupin movie.
And you know what? Bad as a lot of them are, it's sort of scary to run out. Talk about your guilty pleasure.
Oh, and fair warning: I'm going to deviate from my usual Lupin movie post form - instead of adding the five new movies into the ever-growing list of good-to-bad, I'm just going to compare the five movies to each other and list them accordingly. With so many movies that fell into the "meh, not good, not bad, but watchable" category it just became too difficult to list them all from best to worst.
Tell you what, if I see a Lupin movies that I'd consider part of the top five, I'll tell. And if one is really really bad and deserves the place at the very very bottom you'll know (Hint: THE ONE AT THE BOTTOM OF THE CUT IS THE WORST THERE IS. IT CAN'T GET ANY WORSE, IT JUST CAN'T.)
And I'm sorry, no GIFs this time because you've been bad I've had some computer troubles lately. Mostly solved now, but there wasn't really any scenes that stood out enough for me to go back and start fiddling with GIMP.
Sweet Lost Night (TV special, 2008)
For this movie I tried something new: Watching it on a train - or rather, trying to watch it on the train while making sure nobody looked over my shoulder. - And in case somebody did, praying that there'd be no gratuitous nudity or creepy sexual stuff.
Thank you movie. That sure was integral to the plot. [IF YOU WERE SITTING NEXT
TO ME ON THE BERGEN-OSLO TRAIN, PLEASE BELIEVE ME WHEN I SAY I ACTUALLY
HAVE GREAT TASTE IN MOVIES]
But anyway: Sweet Lost Night, or: Lupin Does Memento.
I feel this movie falls in that regular middling ground the majority of the newer Lupin movies do, where you just have to compare the bad things and the good things and see where you wind up.
The plot, initially concerning Lupin trying to get hold of Aladdin's lamp might seem overly silly and fantastical, but in good old Lupin fashion it turns out that the magical aspects are in fact SCIENCE. The long and short of it is: Lupin winds up with a microchip in his brain that erases his memories from 7 PM to 7 AM every day (and yes, that means sex jokes. Of course it means sex jokes).
The weird thing is, that actually makes for a pretty entertaining plot device, where you really get these Memento-like jumpcuts from one scene to another and have to try to figure out what on earth happened, along with Lupin. I really enjoyed it as something fresh in Lupin storytelling - though sadly the microchip is designed to kill Lupin after three nights so the idea never quite reaches it full potential.
Another thing I like is a return to the good old "Jigen rescues his boyfriend buddy Lupin" side plots, but Jigen being Jigen he OF COURSE hurts his gun arm - BUT (and this is where I started squirming in my seat because you're not meant shout "OH HELL YEAH" on a crowded train) he makes up for his handicap by getting himself THE GREATEST GUN THAT HAS EVER BEEN MADE.
A SIMONOV PTRS-41 ANTI-TANK RIFLE. Damn that's a sexy gun, dude.
If you didn't have me pegged as a gun nut you're absolutely right, but in my eyes there can never be enough Soviet anti-tank rifle action in a Lupin movie. If you think that's odd, keep in mind that Castle of Cagliostro is one of my favourite movies ever. I know I've said repeatedly how I hate Lupin movies being bogged down with references to CoC, but man those rifles are just so ngh cool and cumbersome and shoot stuff really good. Yesss.
(I have no idea where my fascination comes from, sorry.)
Sweet Lost Night's got something a theme going, rare for a Lupin movie, and amnesia is the dish of the day: Besides Lupin losing all recollections of nights, Goemon has his "impure thoughts" (ho hum) removed and therefore loses all loyalty to Lupin, and Zenigata takes one on the noggin and forgets who he is.
Actually the Zenigata part of the plot, short as it was, surprised me by being pretty entertaining (but as a fan of Eight in Doctor Who I guess I've been conditioned to appreciate amnesia plotlines). It's simultaneously funny and cute how he figures out he must be a criminal, seeing how Interpol is looking after him.
Yes I didn't really expect that Sweet Lost Night would wind up at the top in any selection of Lupin movies. It's by no means perfect or one of the best Lupin movies I've seen, but it has a somewhat fun plot, decent animation, made me laugh on a couple of occasions (HOW DID THEY MAKE A "GOEMON HAS A CELLPHONE" JOKE FUNNY?), there are some good new tunes from the pen of Yuji Ohno (my favourite this time around being 'Samba a go go') and ANTI TANK RIFLE BLOWING STUFF UP WOOOOO.
Legend of the Gold of Babylon (theatrical movie, 1985)
Oh joy. Eighties Lupin in all his pink-clothed glory. My eyes, they burn!
Actually I can't quite make my mind up about this movie. Sure, the art is... yeesh -
Fujiko suddenly seems to have a case of the Hapsburg Jaw.
- the supporting voice cast is a somewhat varied, the humour is overly cartoony and non-sequiteur for a Lupin movie (Zenigata seems to turn into Wile E. Coyote at one point, trying to blow up Lupin with dynamite), the plot is utterly weird and an unholy soup of mysticism and scifi -
Me neither, Fujiko. Me neither.
- and the racism is... there.
Now, actually looking at it like that I realize I'm not really on the fence after all, it's not a good movie. It does, however, have parts I quite enjoyed. I'm one of those people who can love details so much I sort of forget that the overall thing I'm looking at is subpar. As for stuff:
The overall plot is closely tied to the nursery rhyme 'How many miles to Babylon', which is cute. You know the one:
How many miles to Babylon?
Three-score and ten
Can I get there by candlelight?
There and back again
If your feet are nimble and light
You can get there by candlelight
See, using a plot device like that charms my socks off right away. As it is the key to the mystery we get pretty much every character quoting the text in more or less badly pronounced English, which is always fun.
My love for using an old nursery rhyme as the main plot device was only diminished by how utterly stupid it was used in the, you know, actual plot.
What? No! «Score» means «twenty» you ignorant fuck! How do you solve the riddles
if you don't even know what the goddamn words mean?
Zenigata somehow winds up with the contestants of the Miss Interpol competition on his team and that plotline never really goes anywhere but hey I punch the air every time we get to see women actually working with the ICPO - so I'm game. Goemon of course has the hots for one of them and at one point midfight he accidentally catches a glimpse of her underwear and they're both so weirded out they just have to cease battle.
To my great great shame I laughed at that. What can I say, I was in a good mood after being a treated to another rare appearance of Jigen's ludicrous nightcap.
So, what, where you guys just chilling in a closet together or...?
And I gotta say, once they reach the Tower of Babel it's actually presented in a somewhat cool and distinctive way. I liked it, even though that was the point where the plot really dove off the cliff.
All in all, The Legend of the Gold of Babylon isn't a good movie, but seemingly by accident it did do some things right. An acceptable two hour's worth of entertainment, but not much more.
Stolen Lupin (TV special, 2004)
This is where my new approach to doing these movies really screws me over. Instead of writing up this summary immediately after watching each movie (like I've done until now) I've watched five movies and gosh, I can't for the life of me remember what on earth Stolen Lupin was about.
Oh I know! At one point Lupin sits in a bar/cafe listening to the Yuji Ohno Trio.
(Because he does that in pretty much all of them, geddit?)
On one hand I imagine it can't have been much good if it didn't leave an impression, but that also means it wasn't terrible (not From Russia With Love terrible in any case because I'll remember that one).
Well we can't go on like this, let's check with Lupin Encyclopedia for a moment.
Oh. Oh that one.
Yeah, now I remember. The main plot concerns the baddie kidnapping Lupin and forcing him to do a heist so impossible Lupin would never attempt it if he didn't absolutely need to. Meh, as a plot it's got some potential, I know it's even been used in the original manga - problem is, when it comes right down to it the heist doesn't seem so terribly much harder than the sort of stuff the gang would do in any of the episodes. In addition to that I distinctly remember being so annoyed with Lupin for not telling Jigen and Goemon why they suddenly need to do this stupid crazy heist. They just follow obediently - and thusly feels oddly out of character.
At least Jigen and Goemon get to do a proper old-school teamup again, which is awesome as usual.
The most memorable part is the one concerning a young brash thief named Becky. I'm not saying she's more developed than your average female-supporting-character-in-Lupin (I think there's a law that there has to be a new plucky female for Lupin to interact with in every single movie), but she is handled in a slightly different way than the others. Why? Well I don't think I'm spoiling it considering how it's never truly addressed in the movie, but we're served a couple of vague hints that she might be Lupin's daughter.
Hey it's something new. Not much, but I commend them for trying.
Anyway the TV special is pretty much like the other recent ones: Somewhat promising idea, disappointing execution, but enough good scenes to not feel like a total waste of time. Adequate but ultimately forgettable.
The Elusiveness of Fog (TV special, 2007)
One thing you might have noticed about the Lupin franchise is it doesn't exactly pile up recurring characters. Sure, apart from the five main characters you might have a two or three villains who pop up in a couple of episodes from 1976, but all in all supporting characters appear, do their job and are never seen again.
Until the producers of the TV specials decided they wanted to shake it up. Like, say, bringing back a villain from the original manga/Green Jacket series, named Mamou (not to be confused with the blue midget Mamo in the first theatrical movie). Mamou was this crazy scifi guy with a time machine and a very vague reason for wanting to kill Lupin, it was a bit of Green Jacket silliness, nothing more. Can you see this character being interesting enough to support his own movie? Yeah, me neither.
So what happens is the gang plus Zenigata are forcibly time shifted to Medieval Japan? The movie goes to great lengths to point out this is Medieval Japan even though it looks nothing like Medieval Japan and instead looks rather more like Medieval Europe. If you are very drunk and possibly blind. Had they put them in a made-up country I wouldn't be so bitter, but what the hey.
The gang lands smack middle in a tribe war which they then have to try to solve while they pick up a plucky child sidekick (and you KNOW how much fun THEY ARE) and run into Fujiko's ancestor (who in a twist is not voiced by Fujiko's actress but by some Japanese pop singer who regrettably couldn't act if her life depended upon it). They couldn't find a plot function for poor Zenigata so he spends the majority of the movie locked up in a shed trying to figure out why he's got no cell phone reception.
Thouh that is a pretty cute reference with the phone wallpaper and all.
It's a poor movie that can't give Zenigata anything to do.
Well the time machine plot doesn't really work (and I'm the kind who love time paradox stories so that's saying something), the cashing-in-on-medieval-fantasy-movies doesn't really work, there's an ancient riddle but one that only makes sense to Lupin, there are no character moments that really seem to stand out...
Overall this movie is a rather cynical attempt to cash in on former glory - which seems kind of pointless, considering none of the characters remember having met Mamou before.
Though it has given us the best MMO war cry ever.
The Return of Pycal (OVA, 2002)
I thought I'd seen the worst of what the Lupin franchise had to offer. I really did. Boring, stupid, badly animated - I saw it, I moved on.
The Return of Pycal is so bad it actually defies description. Me, I love to riff on bad movies, I love to pick stupid things apart. With Return of Pycal I really don't know where to begin. I was expecting something stupid and uninspired: This movie is after all a sort of companion piece to The Elusiveness of Fog, Pycal being another villain from the original manga/Green Jacket series - as far as I can remember he was a cocky magician Lupin and the gang wound up debunking.
The movie doesn't feel like telling you this and instead show a jumble of manga pages you don't have time to decipher.
Yes, where to begin indeed.
Say what you will about From Russia With Love, at least it followed traditional dramaturgical lines, at least every scene had some discernable connection with the scenes before and after. Let me tell you, Return of Pycal doesn't. I'd say every single art film I've ever seen made more narrative sense than Return of Pycal. It's doesn't even feel like a movie; It's a montage. I had no idea what I was looking at half the time. This movie makes me angry when I think about it. If it tries to be surrealistic on purpose, well I'm sorry, the Secret of Mamo did it first and did it good.
What the everloving fuck, movie?
Even when the movie tried for action scenes they too seemed like montages, like they didn't have a storyboard to work from: Lupin and Jigen run from an Indiana Jones-style boulder, Lupin and Jigen shoot at metallic birds, Lupin and Jigen sit in a spacecraft, Lupin and Jigen sail away in an amphibious Volkswagen Beetle. There were no transitions between these things.
Add to that how the animators must have had the smallest budget ever (maybe they spent most of it on LSD) because the art was horrid, there was CGI when traditional animation would easily have done the job -
Why do you have such tiny hands, Lupin? Why do you have to hold CGI jewels, Lupin?
- there was a lot of jumpcutting to actual live-action footage (like water running down a drain. Seriously, you couldn't animate that?), and the majority of the action scenes were just a series of still images.
As for the plot, huh. The one plotline I actually understood was that Jigen's pollen allergies granted him super hearing. No, I'm not kidding, and no, this had no effect on the overall movie.
And I'm not sure but I think he took a wrong turn at Yellow Submarine and wound
up in the Sea of Holes.
Even the voice direction was completely shit, and that's usually not something you notice.
All in all: I was told that Return of Pycal is a movie so bad that not even devoted Lupin fans can possibly get a single moment of enjoyment out of it. I didn't listen. My life is poorer for it.
That makes twenty-five Lupin movies. I'm really far along now - trouble is, at this point I've exhausted most of my sources: I literally do not know where I'll find another Lupin movie.
And you know what? Bad as a lot of them are, it's sort of scary to run out. Talk about your guilty pleasure.