Director – Takashi Yamazaki – 2019 – Japan – Cert. 12a – 93m
****
Master thief Lupin III sets out to steal a diary protected by a lock with a fiendishly complex mechanism and becomes embroiled in an occult, Nazi plot to take over the world – was out in Showcase cinemas in the UK on Wednesday, June 2nd at 7.30pm only (and not press screened beforehand)
A character with a long history in Japan in anime, manga artist Monkey Punch’s celebrated gentleman thief Arsène Lupin III, a descendant of Maurice LeBlanc‘s Arsène Lupin character for reasons, initially at least, of copyright avoidance rather than innocent genealogy. LeBlanc’s bona fide character recently featured in the French live action Netflix series Lupin (creator: George Kay, 2021).
For this Japanese reboot, Lupin III and his fellow franchise characters are back on the big screen, now lovingly animated in state of the art 3D animation which has never looked quite like this. The nimble movements of Lupin as he typically evades the grasp of Interpol’s Inspector Zenigata by firing a climbing line at a ceiling, outwits an ingenue girl thief on Paris rooftops and finally has his stolen object taken off his hands by the shapely Fujiko Mine as she dangles from a helicopter rope ladder would look good in drawn animation – for similar antics look no further than earlier Lupin III outing Castle Of Cagliostro (Hayao Miyazaki, 1980) – but they look considerably better rendered in full 3D CG here. … Read the rest