FYJ2 Entry 1

みなさんこんいちわ！

My winter break wasn't too eventful so instead I'll be talking about an anime movie I watched recently.

This past weekend, I watched the first Lupin the 3rd movie, The Mystery of Mamo (ルパン三世 ルパンVSクローン, in Japanese). Lupin the 3rd is a very old franchise dating back to the 70s with its original manga and subsequent anime TV series. Fun fact: the TV anime was the directorial debut of Hayao Miyazaki! Miyazaki would also direct the second Lupin movie: The Castle of Cagliostro, which Western anime fans may be more familiar with than other Lupin media. I've been a big fan of Lupin the 3rd ever since I watched part 5 of the anime series which aired back in 2018. Since then I've been making my way through all the different TV shows, movies, OVAs, and TV specials (of which there are currently 27 as there was a new one made annually up until 2013, with them now coming out at varying intervals due to the new seasons of the anime series coming out since around that time). Lupin is a well known cultural icon in Japan, on the levels characters like Doraemon, Shin-chan, and Detective Conan in terms of being long running institutions, and since getting into the series I've been able to see how the archetypes of Lupin's main cast have served as the base for so much different Japanese media.

The movie itself was really good. It focuses on Lupin the 3rd, the grandson of the titular gentleman thief character from Maurice LeBlanc's Arsene Lupin book series, and his gang of thieves made up of Daisuke Jigen, a gruff sharpshooter, and Goemon Ishikawa the 13th, a skilled swordsman and descendent of Goemon Ishikawa the legendary Japanese bandit. The plot of the movie is quite strange and experimental; it begins with Lupin being executed for his crimes, only for the next scene to show Inpector Koichi Zenigata, the Interpol agent who's life mission is to catch Lupin, traveling to a castle in Transylvania where he finds out Lupin is actually alive! But then who was the man who got executed in the first scene??

We later learn that the Lupin who died was a clone created by an immortal mastermind named Mamo, who has been orchestrating world history for centuries, and has created an island of clones of famous historical figures like Napoleon and Lao Zi. Mamo is planning on destroying the world with an arsenal of nuclear weapons in order to start society anew, led by these clones. Mamo also looks like this:

Lupin sets out to stop Mamo so he can save his love interest Fujiko Mine, a conwoman who usually takes advantage of Lupin's heists for her own means, as well as the entire world. In the process, all sorts of crazy stuff happens like Lupin exploring Mamo's reality bending island and going in and out of famous paintings, Lupin's mind being read by a machine that shows his brain is completely empty, meaning he is either "a complete idiot, or a god," and a giant brain getting launched into space on a rocket and getting sent into the sun. Overall, it was a really fun experience.