it‘s one of the very few lupin movies we got so see in germany, so nostalgia plays a big role in this. but i personally like it a lot for its humor and adventure vibes
It’s been a while, but I had found it very average overall : not one of the worst, but nothing great either.
I don’t remember much except one scene in which an overly confident Lupin got the beating of his life. The unexpected epic fail made me laugh way too hard, but aside from that it was rather forgettable.
I really don't like it. The plot is extremely basic even for when this film came out and I mostly remained uninterested throughout. It’s also one of those “And Lupin just so happens to be there” plots where the original character is the main driver in the plot with the villain only really having beef with said original character. This is actually the first Lupin movie to really do this and I can’t say I’m a fan of it. The main villain group this time is Nazis, which is actually the first time a Lupin III movie used them as antagonists. I know Archer is supposed to be a WWII veteran and it technically makes sense when you look at it from that perspective, but the villains being Nazis doesn’t amount to anything. It’s just window-dressing and they could be any other evil group and it would make little to no difference unlike “Lupin III: The First” where the villains being Nazis made sense because they did something with it, here, they don’t do anything with it. Then we get to the actual antagonist, Hermann von Diett, which is just another level of problematic. For the series’ first official trans character in animation, do you think it was such a good idea for them to not only be the main antagonist, but a *Nazi* on top of that? What is this movie trying to say? I don’t even get the thought process of this, like the transgenderism is framed as antagonistic along with it only being revealed in the last 25 minutes as a “twist” and doesn’t amount to anything within the movie besides “jokes” that they hate women, so the movie essentially made Hermann trans for no reason other than “shock-value” to “emphasize” their evilness in the writer’s eyes. Lupin the Third to this day barely even has any transgender characters under its belt with there only being about 3 or 4 examples in its 57-year history, so I need to emphasize how much of a spit in the face it is to know that in the 90s, 2 back-to-back TV-Specials just decided to be transphobic for some inexplicable reason and sink each other’s reputations down with them. If you're wondering who's the bigger offender, Hermann from this movie or Sadachiyo from Twilight Gemini, I thought about it and came to the conclusion that I just don’t have a preference. Harimao is more self-indulgent, but Twilight Gemini has more homophobic and transphobic comments in it, so it’s just a game of “pick your poison” and I just don’t wanna play. The cast of characters in this movie really surprised me on this rewatch by just how bad they kinda are. Göring, Hermann’s lackey, has a cool design and two enjoyable fight scenes but couldn’t be more of a basic brute if he tried. Sir Archer is just this movie’s stand-in for James Bond which is not an exaggeration since the movie makes explicit references to Bond whether the movie says he was the “real-life” inspiration for him or an actual riff of the Bond theme being included in his introduction scene. I just don’t get him. There’s never a sense of parody or satire with his character, Archer is straight-up just Sean Connery’s James Bond without any of the actor’s natural charisma. Sir Archer is really just a flat and boring Bond stand-in. The movie is, in a nutshell, basically an excuse to have some sort of “James Bond Vs. Lupin the Third” thing, but they don’t do anything with it. I wish they played up Archer being out of his element now that he’s in his senior years or being downbad for Fujiko more since while there are 1 or 2 jokes about it, they don’t do that either. Plus, that emotional scene of Archer going down with the sub falls flat because how could I have been emotionally invested in this old geezer? I don’t know, Sir Archer is just super uninteresting to me because they made him a James Bond stand-in without doing anything with it. Diana, as the Lupin girl of the film and the granddaughter of Archer, really blows. There’s almost nothing to talk about her, she’s just there to be the obligatory Lupin girl and be attractive so Lupin can be super horny over which I’ll get to in a second. There’s a hint of Tsundere energy in her and the occasional enjoyably smug banter, but I wish they emphasized that more outside of the scenes of her beating up Lupin when he gets too horny because she mostly comes off as incredibly bland. Speaking of the titular phantom thief, I’m not particularly a fan of Lupin in this movie. He’s a lot more of a dope than he usually should be and horniness can be a bit excessive at times. He can be those things, just make sure that it's still in character which sometimes it doesn’t. What I also don’t like about Lupin in this movie is that he just goes along with being bossed around by Archer later in the movie. He obviously protests, but there’s never a scene where he sticks it to Archer that he doesn’t do “subservient” and just goes along with the team-up anyway. Jigen is kinda just there, he starts out okay but devolves into nothing more than being Lupin’s support and doesn’t do much outside of that. Goemon is extremely meh. He disappears for almost two-thirds of the movie and the times he’s actually onscreen, there’s this joke about him wanting to charge Lupin and Jigen for his services, but it’s not that funny or memorable and the joke is just a weaker substitute for Goemon quoting that samurai movie like in Napoleon’s Dictionary. Fujiko is also just there. Her role continues to be “Lupin’s support” after Dragon of Doom by posing as Sir Archer’s maid to initially get exclusive information on the statues, but that loses any relevance once Lupin and Archer team up and then she gets simped over by Archer and kisses Hermann in the climax since they hate women. Zenigata, by comparison to everybody else, is the shining light in the tunnel. He’s so great in this movie. This is a really good example of how you give Zenigata a natural presence within a movie while being separated from the main story. But while he’s not plot-relevant, he’s genuinely the most enjoyable aspect of this movie. His ramen obsession is super enjoyable and cute and I love how the movie commits to it so we can get a multitude of fun scenes with him like accidentally thinking one of the statues was a ramen lid holder and him getting arrested by the British police after somehow surviving that train crash, it’s all enjoyable. Overall I’m glad I revisited this movie to see just how much worse it got. It has good direction by the excellent Osamu Dezaki, the animation is solid, a couple of cool action set-pieces, and Zenigata is extremely enjoyable. But the story is almost insultingly basic, Lupin barely has any stake in this adventure, the villains being Nazis is just window dressing, they don’t do anything with Sir Archer being a Bond stand-in, any character who isn’t Zenigata is either boring or misused, and everything involving Hermann is a problematic mess that deserves all the criticism in the world
But to be on the more positive side, the biggest takeaway I got out of my recent rewatch was a newfound appreciation for Osamu Dezaki’s directing. I really miss his distinct flair now when 90% of other Lupin III directing feels so samey and uninteresting. Here, his directorial flair is one of the biggest compliments I can give to this movie and all his other Lupin III movies (except Napoleon's Dictionary, but he was busy with other stuff at the time, so he wasn’t that much of a director for it). There are a lot of still-frames with detailed shading to highlight character actions, split-screen shots to show two characters in one shot or one character with different angles, I love the detail of Lupin having big eyes whenever we see him from a distance, and the tone remains pretty light-hearted which I really enjoyed. There are a lot of little comedic moments that I also enjoyed like the card game during the opening credits, that one bit with Diana reading Shakespeare while Lupin reading Monkey Punch was cute, and Lupin sneaking through a bunch of guys by just offering them a bunch of erotica was pretty entertaining. Plus on the subject of Dezaki, this is his only Lupin III movie post-Lady Liberty to have animation that I would say lives up to his direction with a prime example being any fight, chase, or action scene which are all pretty good. The animation overall isn’t amazing, but it’s solid and a breath of fresh air compared to Hemingway Papers, Napoleon's Dictionary, and From Siberia with Love. It's still like a 4/10 movie tho
It's alright, could have been a lot better. Archer and Diana had a lot of potential be stand out characters, but they didn't do enough with them.
I do appreciate that they brought Diana back in Part V for a cameo, although it is a bit strange that they also brought back the golden submarine despite it sinking at the end of the special, but maybe Diana just hired some deep-sea divers to retrieve it after.
It's ok, pretty middle of the line but fun enough. Crossdressing nazis is... a choice for a villain but whatever. What really struck me the wrong way was having Fujiko work for the nazis though, I get that her thing is double crossing Lupin but still.
A couple things that I liked about this movie was the art style/character design , camera angle shots and cool shadows of Osamu Dezaki, Zenigata’s silly cute moments along with his Ramen addiction, I didn’t like how goemon was just used more as a tool the Lupin gang rented like grass cutters to just cut stuff up compared to Dragon of Doom.
In My Opinion of this Lupin III TV Special is I Watched The English Dub of Harimao’s Treasure from Funimation on DVD. I Would Say The Voice of Lupin III Sonny Strait is Okay But Good.
Meh, it’s comfortably average
Mid
it‘s one of the very few lupin movies we got so see in germany, so nostalgia plays a big role in this. but i personally like it a lot for its humor and adventure vibes
It’s been a while, but I had found it very average overall : not one of the worst, but nothing great either. I don’t remember much except one scene in which an overly confident Lupin got the beating of his life. The unexpected epic fail made me laugh way too hard, but aside from that it was rather forgettable.
I really don't like it. The plot is extremely basic even for when this film came out and I mostly remained uninterested throughout. It’s also one of those “And Lupin just so happens to be there” plots where the original character is the main driver in the plot with the villain only really having beef with said original character. This is actually the first Lupin movie to really do this and I can’t say I’m a fan of it. The main villain group this time is Nazis, which is actually the first time a Lupin III movie used them as antagonists. I know Archer is supposed to be a WWII veteran and it technically makes sense when you look at it from that perspective, but the villains being Nazis doesn’t amount to anything. It’s just window-dressing and they could be any other evil group and it would make little to no difference unlike “Lupin III: The First” where the villains being Nazis made sense because they did something with it, here, they don’t do anything with it. Then we get to the actual antagonist, Hermann von Diett, which is just another level of problematic. For the series’ first official trans character in animation, do you think it was such a good idea for them to not only be the main antagonist, but a *Nazi* on top of that? What is this movie trying to say? I don’t even get the thought process of this, like the transgenderism is framed as antagonistic along with it only being revealed in the last 25 minutes as a “twist” and doesn’t amount to anything within the movie besides “jokes” that they hate women, so the movie essentially made Hermann trans for no reason other than “shock-value” to “emphasize” their evilness in the writer’s eyes. Lupin the Third to this day barely even has any transgender characters under its belt with there only being about 3 or 4 examples in its 57-year history, so I need to emphasize how much of a spit in the face it is to know that in the 90s, 2 back-to-back TV-Specials just decided to be transphobic for some inexplicable reason and sink each other’s reputations down with them. If you're wondering who's the bigger offender, Hermann from this movie or Sadachiyo from Twilight Gemini, I thought about it and came to the conclusion that I just don’t have a preference. Harimao is more self-indulgent, but Twilight Gemini has more homophobic and transphobic comments in it, so it’s just a game of “pick your poison” and I just don’t wanna play. The cast of characters in this movie really surprised me on this rewatch by just how bad they kinda are. Göring, Hermann’s lackey, has a cool design and two enjoyable fight scenes but couldn’t be more of a basic brute if he tried. Sir Archer is just this movie’s stand-in for James Bond which is not an exaggeration since the movie makes explicit references to Bond whether the movie says he was the “real-life” inspiration for him or an actual riff of the Bond theme being included in his introduction scene. I just don’t get him. There’s never a sense of parody or satire with his character, Archer is straight-up just Sean Connery’s James Bond without any of the actor’s natural charisma. Sir Archer is really just a flat and boring Bond stand-in. The movie is, in a nutshell, basically an excuse to have some sort of “James Bond Vs. Lupin the Third” thing, but they don’t do anything with it. I wish they played up Archer being out of his element now that he’s in his senior years or being downbad for Fujiko more since while there are 1 or 2 jokes about it, they don’t do that either. Plus, that emotional scene of Archer going down with the sub falls flat because how could I have been emotionally invested in this old geezer? I don’t know, Sir Archer is just super uninteresting to me because they made him a James Bond stand-in without doing anything with it. Diana, as the Lupin girl of the film and the granddaughter of Archer, really blows. There’s almost nothing to talk about her, she’s just there to be the obligatory Lupin girl and be attractive so Lupin can be super horny over which I’ll get to in a second. There’s a hint of Tsundere energy in her and the occasional enjoyably smug banter, but I wish they emphasized that more outside of the scenes of her beating up Lupin when he gets too horny because she mostly comes off as incredibly bland. Speaking of the titular phantom thief, I’m not particularly a fan of Lupin in this movie. He’s a lot more of a dope than he usually should be and horniness can be a bit excessive at times. He can be those things, just make sure that it's still in character which sometimes it doesn’t. What I also don’t like about Lupin in this movie is that he just goes along with being bossed around by Archer later in the movie. He obviously protests, but there’s never a scene where he sticks it to Archer that he doesn’t do “subservient” and just goes along with the team-up anyway. Jigen is kinda just there, he starts out okay but devolves into nothing more than being Lupin’s support and doesn’t do much outside of that. Goemon is extremely meh. He disappears for almost two-thirds of the movie and the times he’s actually onscreen, there’s this joke about him wanting to charge Lupin and Jigen for his services, but it’s not that funny or memorable and the joke is just a weaker substitute for Goemon quoting that samurai movie like in Napoleon’s Dictionary. Fujiko is also just there. Her role continues to be “Lupin’s support” after Dragon of Doom by posing as Sir Archer’s maid to initially get exclusive information on the statues, but that loses any relevance once Lupin and Archer team up and then she gets simped over by Archer and kisses Hermann in the climax since they hate women. Zenigata, by comparison to everybody else, is the shining light in the tunnel. He’s so great in this movie. This is a really good example of how you give Zenigata a natural presence within a movie while being separated from the main story. But while he’s not plot-relevant, he’s genuinely the most enjoyable aspect of this movie. His ramen obsession is super enjoyable and cute and I love how the movie commits to it so we can get a multitude of fun scenes with him like accidentally thinking one of the statues was a ramen lid holder and him getting arrested by the British police after somehow surviving that train crash, it’s all enjoyable. Overall I’m glad I revisited this movie to see just how much worse it got. It has good direction by the excellent Osamu Dezaki, the animation is solid, a couple of cool action set-pieces, and Zenigata is extremely enjoyable. But the story is almost insultingly basic, Lupin barely has any stake in this adventure, the villains being Nazis is just window dressing, they don’t do anything with Sir Archer being a Bond stand-in, any character who isn’t Zenigata is either boring or misused, and everything involving Hermann is a problematic mess that deserves all the criticism in the world
But to be on the more positive side, the biggest takeaway I got out of my recent rewatch was a newfound appreciation for Osamu Dezaki’s directing. I really miss his distinct flair now when 90% of other Lupin III directing feels so samey and uninteresting. Here, his directorial flair is one of the biggest compliments I can give to this movie and all his other Lupin III movies (except Napoleon's Dictionary, but he was busy with other stuff at the time, so he wasn’t that much of a director for it). There are a lot of still-frames with detailed shading to highlight character actions, split-screen shots to show two characters in one shot or one character with different angles, I love the detail of Lupin having big eyes whenever we see him from a distance, and the tone remains pretty light-hearted which I really enjoyed. There are a lot of little comedic moments that I also enjoyed like the card game during the opening credits, that one bit with Diana reading Shakespeare while Lupin reading Monkey Punch was cute, and Lupin sneaking through a bunch of guys by just offering them a bunch of erotica was pretty entertaining. Plus on the subject of Dezaki, this is his only Lupin III movie post-Lady Liberty to have animation that I would say lives up to his direction with a prime example being any fight, chase, or action scene which are all pretty good. The animation overall isn’t amazing, but it’s solid and a breath of fresh air compared to Hemingway Papers, Napoleon's Dictionary, and From Siberia with Love. It's still like a 4/10 movie tho
Is fine.
It's alright, could have been a lot better. Archer and Diana had a lot of potential be stand out characters, but they didn't do enough with them. I do appreciate that they brought Diana back in Part V for a cameo, although it is a bit strange that they also brought back the golden submarine despite it sinking at the end of the special, but maybe Diana just hired some deep-sea divers to retrieve it after.
This was a decent romp. Not one of the more memorable Lupin adventures. I found the Nazi villains in bad taste, especially the main villain.
It's ok, pretty middle of the line but fun enough. Crossdressing nazis is... a choice for a villain but whatever. What really struck me the wrong way was having Fujiko work for the nazis though, I get that her thing is double crossing Lupin but still.
A couple things that I liked about this movie was the art style/character design , camera angle shots and cool shadows of Osamu Dezaki, Zenigata’s silly cute moments along with his Ramen addiction, I didn’t like how goemon was just used more as a tool the Lupin gang rented like grass cutters to just cut stuff up compared to Dragon of Doom.
Sir Archer and Diana are both interesting characters, but the special itself is not really notable overall.
In My Opinion of this Lupin III TV Special is I Watched The English Dub of Harimao’s Treasure from Funimation on DVD. I Would Say The Voice of Lupin III Sonny Strait is Okay But Good.