Director – Takeshi Koike – 2025 – Japan – Cert. 15 – 93m
***
Lupin and his friends are lured to a zombie-populated island run by an immortal being where a toxic gas kills people after 24 hours – out in UK cinemas on Saturday, February 21st
Lupin III (or LUPIN THE IIIRD as he’s called here) has been around in Japan a very long time, first in the manga created by artist Monkey Punch in 1967 and later in live action movies, animated TV series, animated features and various other media formats.
You be forgiven for thinking that makes the franchise inaccessible for the newcomer, but this latest instalment opens with a burst of fuzz guitar and black and white images of ink clouds in liquid and drawings of the five main characters, who are helpfully introduced one by one, invaluable to the newcomer but equally, given the stylish drawings and the rapid pace at which they are introduced, a pleasure also for the viewer already familiar. Thus, we meet master thief (and narrator) Arsène Lupin III (voice: Kenichi Kurita) (“the cops are always after me”), his gunslinging partner Daisuke Jigen (voice: Akio Otsuka), his friend Goemon the swordsman (voice: Daisuke Namikawa), his friendly rival the curvaceous Fujiko Mine (voice: Miyuki Sawashiro), briefly zipping up cleavage that appears have been considerably enlarged for this particular film, and his nemesis Inspector Zenigata (voice: Koichi Yamadira) who has failed to apprehend him for decades, here introduced as an ace even though elsewhere in the franchise he’s pretty hapless. And then, someone shoots first and we see an actress or singer shot dead on a stage…
There follow serial hired assassins named, given about a minute of fight sequence with the various regulars they have been sent to kill. These even include an Lupin III imposter turned suicide bomber, confronted by Zenigata. The reason for these hired killers is apparently related to an island (!) to which the four receive invites in the form of playing cards. (Zenigata receives one too, but throws his away, perhaps not realising its significance.)
So far so good. The tone is arguably more sexually suggestive (Fujko’s cleavage!) and undoubtedly more splattery and violent than earlier, more family-friendly Lupin animated outings. Except, something in me isn’t convinced by the idea of the island, which sounds like it might indicate to lazy plotting. The film so far has been lavishly realised, the animation executed in eye-popping fashion far removed from the usual Japanese aesthetic of eschewing full, Western-style motion and making great use of held, static artwork or ‘holds’.
And then, everything that follows the introduction and opening scenes, in terms of both the level of artistry in the animation and the promising inventiveness of the script, plummets. As if the production team have blown 80% of the budget on the opening ten minutes (and, for that matter, the closing titles, which are likewise impressive).This is a long way from the consistent quality of earlier Lupin III animated feature outings. To be fair, the script and its execution does maintain the consistent quality of the franchise’s five regular characters and the two or three newly-penned assassins who turn up again on the island.
A month ago, in flashback, Lupin drives (a very flashy modern sports car unseen in previous incarnations of the character) to his castle home full of fine wines and art which explodes and burns down on approach. Next, he and his companions are flying to the island (evading Zenigata in another plane) before all of them are shot down in a tropical jungle and separated into the lone Lupin and two pairs (the others). While Lupin fights a kickboxing robot zombie, Fujiko is abducted and Zenigata attacked in a missile graveyard by Mexican-wrestler-mask-wearing zombies, and Jigen and Goeman, in a gun cache on a beach, come under first from a woman archer marksman at great distance, and from Yael Okuzaki (voice: Akio Hirose).
Meanwhile, heavily muscular Master Muom (voice: Ainosuke Kataoka), who looks a little like the Frankenstein monster without the neck bolts and wearing an S&M-inspired costume from the waist down, is looking after a young blonde child Salifa (voice: Aoi Morikawa), making sushi for her as Erik Satie music plays on the soundtrack. Lupin, following one of the masked zombies, breaks in and confronts him. The girl, Master Muom’s interpreter, tells Lupin to follow them. Muom explains that he lures trash (hitmen, killers, and so forth) to the island so they can die. He later reveals the island’s atmosphere has a gas that will kill off ordinary humans in 24 hours. Lupin shoots Muom in the head, but his head regurgitates the bullet a minute later. Muom will subsequently be caught in a fireblast and similarly reconstitute.
Muom goes out for his constitutional and challenges another assassin from the opening of the film, promising to let him leave the island if he can last 10 seconds in combat, before defeating him in thee seconds flat. He then fights Goeman, but lets him live (presumably because Goeman’s a franchise regular). By this point, your reviewer was losing the will to live as the plot limped predictably on, the word ‘filler’ springing constantly to mind. It turns out that Muom is not the actual villain of the piece; there’s an evil mastermind in constant telecommunication with global world leaders in a base in the clouds above the island, but by the time the narrative gets around to him, I’d pretty much lost interest.
Much of the franchise’s animated output, including such high points as such as Castle of Cagliostro (Haytao Miyazaki, 1979) or Lupin III the First (TakashiYamazaki, 2019) outings, have been cited as more family-friendly than the source manga. If The Immortal Bloodline is trying to redress that balance, it certainly succeeds. The problem is, it seems to have removed much of the storytelling’s lovable slapstick and silliness in the process. Horror fans and gorehounds may approve, but lovers of the animation medium may feel short changed and admirers of prior animated Lupin III outings may well wonder what exactly director Koike (four Lupin III features 2014-2025; Redline, 2009; The Animatrix, 2003) was thinking when he shifted the overall feel.
Severely disappointing.
LUPIN THE IIIRD The Movie: The Immortal Bloodline is out in cinemas in the UK on Saturday, February 21st.
Trailer: