Animated feature films played and still play a crucial role in the Lupin The Third franchise and this is especially true for the first one: Mystery of Mamoo. In this article I will take you through the history of how this movie came to be and I will analyse its themes and why it still is interesting and relevant today.
Let's take a step back. Lupin III Part 1, the Green Jacket series of 1971 directed at first by Masaaki Ōsumi, was a huge flop. It was the first anime TV series made specifically for an adult audience and that's exactly why it flopped: back then adults didn't watch anime series on TV and kids were proihibited to watch this series because parents thought it had too much violence and erotism. Even the arrive of the new directing team composed by Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata (Studio Ghibli's future founders) and their efforts to move the show to a more kid-friendly target couldn't do anything to save the Green Jacket series. That's why it was cancelled only after 23 episodes, half directed by Osumi and half directed by Miyazaki and Takahata. What saved the Lupin The Third franchise from a premature death were the continuous reruns of Lupin III Part 1 that helped the show find its audience and finally become a success. TMS, who had never stopped to believe in Lupin The Third's potentiality, took the opportunity and started the production on a new series: Lupin III Part II. Also called the Red Jacket series, it ran from 1977 to 1980 with a total of 155 episodes. To fulfill this task TMS arranged a completely new team because the old one was occupied with something more ambitious: the first feature-lenght Lupin The Third film for a theatrical release.
Now, when I'm talking about "the Green Jacket team", don't get me wrong: I'm not talking about directors Masaaki Osumi, Isao Takahata or Hayao Miyazaki, but the people who have worked with them. The movie was supervised by Yasuo Ōtsuka, character designer and head animator of the first series, and directed by Sōji Yoshikawa, storyboarder and scriptwriter of many of its episodes. The character design for the movie was created by Yuzo Aoki, key animator of episodes 11 and 23, while layouts were handled by Tsutomu Shibayama, character designer of the Pilot Film realized to get TMS and Monkey Punch approval on producing the first series. The script was written by Soji Yoshikawa and Atsushi Yamatoya, who already was in Part 1's writing team but was mostly known for being one of the most famous Pink Movie scriptwriter in the industry. His works include the script for Branded to Kill, Seijun Suzuki's masterpiece. The only new entry in the team was Yuji Ohno, the genius behind Lupin The Third's distinctive Jazz OST that the audience learned to love since his work on Part II.
This outstanding team was supported by an even more outstanding financial investment. TMS, at theirs first feature-lenght production, invested 500 million yen in the project, which at the time was a really large amount for a japanese animated production. 62.000 cels (5.000 cels was the average for a 20 minutes episode of the time) and a year and three months later, on December 16 of 1978 the first Lupin The Third movie debuted in japanese theaters. The movie was simply known as Lupin The Third, but was later retitled Lupin The Third: Lupin vs The Clone (ルパン三世 ルパンVS複製人間), while in the west is known as Lupin The Third: Mystery of Mamoo.
While Lupin The Third Part II staged light-hearted adventures for an all ages audience, Mystery of Mamoo was created to appeal to a more adult audience and to the earlier fans of Lupin III that loved the more mature tone of the earlier episodes of Lupin The Third Part 1 and Monkey Punch's original manga series. For this reason, Yoshikawa and Yamatoya's script was ambitious, combining a big action-adventure plot, that had nothing to envy to the overseas blockbuster of the time, with the tipical humour and erotism of Monkey Punch (who was even called to draw the film poster). Also, Yuzo Aoki's character design had an adult caricatural style, with a more-than-ever monkey look for Lupin's face and bodies with large torsos and thin limbs.
The movie opens with the execution of a man that is revealed to be, without any doubt, Lupin The Third. But Lupin si alive, oblivious to who that man was and why they shared the exact same DNA, and is occupied with the theft of ancient findings connected to the myth of immortality. Behind these thefts there is, as always, a promise made to Fujiko who this time got involved with a very dangerous man. The result of this premise is one of the most complex plot in the Lupin the Third franchise that puts our beloved thief against his most terrible foe.
The element of the plot that strikes the most is the science-fictional one, not only because it is unusual for this franchise, but also because it was really ahead of its time. At the end of the '70s there really wasn't a lot of talking about cloning and the famous experiment of the sheep Dolly was 18 years away. Also, by focusing on the implication of a man playing God, even if with a light tone, the movie feels ambitious even to today's standard. Arrogant more than anyone else on Earth, Mamoo (the villain of the movie) thinks of himself as a superior being that is allowed to play with life and history. He's disgusted by humanity's flaws and that's why he tries to get as far as he can from his human nature, which is not even really confirmed in the movie. What he considers worth of his time are only humanity's greatest achievements in the fields of knowledge and the arts, achievements that he actively tries to separate from their human and mortal condition to traslate them to his divine and immortal one. His collection, which even includes real living being, lives therefore in a sad and eternal present and during the movie, charmed by Fujiko's beauty and Lupin's incredible skills, Mamoo offers our protagonist couple immortality in exchange of becoming part of it. Needless to say, Lupin refuses his proposal.
Mystery of Mamoo is the story of a man that refuses the Garden of Eden. Unlike Adam in the biblical myth, Lupin choses consciously to leave, before Mamoo/God could expel him angered by his sins. Lupin isn't interested in living in a perfect world because life wouldn't be interesting without its flaws. And Lupin never had as many flaws as in this movie. Instead of just celebrating his incredible abilities like in the manga and in the first series, this movie is in fact mainly focused on Lupin's vices. The major example are the sexual urges that dominate him during the entire movie and irritate a lot his companions Jigen and Goemon. Mamoo is disgusted by this aspect of Lupin's character because he can't contemplate any other kind of relationship with life and its beauty that doesn't only concert preserving and admiring them from a distance and without really enjoying them. Mamoo is a voyeur for life and beauty and the scene with Fujiko in the shower makes it pretty clear.
The battle at the center of The Mystery of Mamoo is between Mamoo's eremitism and Lupin The Third's edonism, and, ironically enough, to win is the second using a weapon the first thought belonged only to himself: rationality.
Around this ideological battle, Soji Yoshikawa and Atsushi Yamatoya build a really fun and dynamic movie. Yoshikawa directing is an interesting mix between the adult tone of Masaaki Osumi's episodes and the funnier comedic action of Isao Takahata and Hayao Miyazaki's ones. The first act of the movie is full of engaging chasing scenes and gags while the mystery around Mamoo's identity is nicely built. From the manga and the second series of the anime the movie takes its cosmopolitan soul, with its characters traveling around the world and visiting Egypt, France, Transylvania and other places. Overall, it also does a great job in traslating Lupin The Third into a cinematographic dimension where the audience expect everything to be more epic and spectacular compared to a TV episode. Things like the invincibility of Mamoo and the involvement of the american secret service help the plot to feel like something a lot bigger than Lupin's regular weekly adventure.
Another aspect taken from the second series is the bigger focus on the characterisation of Lupin's companions, not bidimensional characters anymore but more alive and capable of questioning Lupin's actions. The most notable example is Fujiko Mine, which resumes her two-faced attitude, but with a more mysterious and self-contradictory attitude than the Part 2's version of the character. At first she just seems really cold and manipulative, but in the second half of the movie she reveals how much she cares for Lupin. It's no coincidence that in this movie we have the first and one of the few animated kisses between Fujiko and Lupin.
In the second act Lupin's playful and unpredictable nature arise, making him closer to Bugs Bunny than to the James Bond he is in the first act and getting the movie closer to the slapstick style of Monkey Punch's second series of the manga. This shift in tone is perfect to emphasize the contrast between Lupin's humanity and Mamoo's austerity and seriousness. Particularly fascinating during this act is the chasing scene that takes place inside different famous paintings. Another memorable scene is the one where Mamoo scans Lupin's subconscious and discovers that Lupin doesn't dream. In my opinion, that scene is a defining scene for the character and it inspired me another article where I analyze its meaning. You can find it here.
The movie is closed by a slightly disappointing third act which fail to succeed on giving a satisfying ending to Goemon and Jigen's arc and a battle between Mamoo and Lupin that lives up to the action scenes of the first act. Said so, it still is a decent ending that closes nicely enough Mamoo's character and gives us some memorable scenes.
Despite its flaws, Mystery of Mamoo is one of the most remarkable movie starring Lupin The Third and his friends both thanks to its spectacular scenes and to its ambitious plot. Being the first, this feature-lenght work was not restricted by the classic formula that has been established by later Lupin's movie and can be a refreshing surprise even for today's audience.
At the time, The Mystery of Mamoo was a big success and made Lupin The Third the japanese national treasure that still is today. That's why TMS quickly started the production of a second movie calling back one of the first series director. That director was Hayao Miyazaki and what came out in 1979 was his debute feature-lenght movie Lupin The Third: The Castle of Cagliostro.
So, this is it! If you want you can leave me a comment to let me know which are your thoughts on this movie and on my retrospective, share the article if you enjoyed and leave a like on my Lupin The Third Facebook Page and on my Illustrated Lands Facebook Page. You can find other Lupin The Third articles by me here.
Now, when I'm talking about "the Green Jacket team", don't get me wrong: I'm not talking about directors Masaaki Osumi, Isao Takahata or Hayao Miyazaki, but the people who have worked with them. The movie was supervised by Yasuo Ōtsuka, character designer and head animator of the first series, and directed by Sōji Yoshikawa, storyboarder and scriptwriter of many of its episodes. The character design for the movie was created by Yuzo Aoki, key animator of episodes 11 and 23, while layouts were handled by Tsutomu Shibayama, character designer of the Pilot Film realized to get TMS and Monkey Punch approval on producing the first series. The script was written by Soji Yoshikawa and Atsushi Yamatoya, who already was in Part 1's writing team but was mostly known for being one of the most famous Pink Movie scriptwriter in the industry. His works include the script for Branded to Kill, Seijun Suzuki's masterpiece. The only new entry in the team was Yuji Ohno, the genius behind Lupin The Third's distinctive Jazz OST that the audience learned to love since his work on Part II.
This outstanding team was supported by an even more outstanding financial investment. TMS, at theirs first feature-lenght production, invested 500 million yen in the project, which at the time was a really large amount for a japanese animated production. 62.000 cels (5.000 cels was the average for a 20 minutes episode of the time) and a year and three months later, on December 16 of 1978 the first Lupin The Third movie debuted in japanese theaters. The movie was simply known as Lupin The Third, but was later retitled Lupin The Third: Lupin vs The Clone (ルパン三世 ルパンVS複製人間), while in the west is known as Lupin The Third: Mystery of Mamoo.
While Lupin The Third Part II staged light-hearted adventures for an all ages audience, Mystery of Mamoo was created to appeal to a more adult audience and to the earlier fans of Lupin III that loved the more mature tone of the earlier episodes of Lupin The Third Part 1 and Monkey Punch's original manga series. For this reason, Yoshikawa and Yamatoya's script was ambitious, combining a big action-adventure plot, that had nothing to envy to the overseas blockbuster of the time, with the tipical humour and erotism of Monkey Punch (who was even called to draw the film poster). Also, Yuzo Aoki's character design had an adult caricatural style, with a more-than-ever monkey look for Lupin's face and bodies with large torsos and thin limbs.
The movie opens with the execution of a man that is revealed to be, without any doubt, Lupin The Third. But Lupin si alive, oblivious to who that man was and why they shared the exact same DNA, and is occupied with the theft of ancient findings connected to the myth of immortality. Behind these thefts there is, as always, a promise made to Fujiko who this time got involved with a very dangerous man. The result of this premise is one of the most complex plot in the Lupin the Third franchise that puts our beloved thief against his most terrible foe.
The element of the plot that strikes the most is the science-fictional one, not only because it is unusual for this franchise, but also because it was really ahead of its time. At the end of the '70s there really wasn't a lot of talking about cloning and the famous experiment of the sheep Dolly was 18 years away. Also, by focusing on the implication of a man playing God, even if with a light tone, the movie feels ambitious even to today's standard. Arrogant more than anyone else on Earth, Mamoo (the villain of the movie) thinks of himself as a superior being that is allowed to play with life and history. He's disgusted by humanity's flaws and that's why he tries to get as far as he can from his human nature, which is not even really confirmed in the movie. What he considers worth of his time are only humanity's greatest achievements in the fields of knowledge and the arts, achievements that he actively tries to separate from their human and mortal condition to traslate them to his divine and immortal one. His collection, which even includes real living being, lives therefore in a sad and eternal present and during the movie, charmed by Fujiko's beauty and Lupin's incredible skills, Mamoo offers our protagonist couple immortality in exchange of becoming part of it. Needless to say, Lupin refuses his proposal.
Mystery of Mamoo is the story of a man that refuses the Garden of Eden. Unlike Adam in the biblical myth, Lupin choses consciously to leave, before Mamoo/God could expel him angered by his sins. Lupin isn't interested in living in a perfect world because life wouldn't be interesting without its flaws. And Lupin never had as many flaws as in this movie. Instead of just celebrating his incredible abilities like in the manga and in the first series, this movie is in fact mainly focused on Lupin's vices. The major example are the sexual urges that dominate him during the entire movie and irritate a lot his companions Jigen and Goemon. Mamoo is disgusted by this aspect of Lupin's character because he can't contemplate any other kind of relationship with life and its beauty that doesn't only concert preserving and admiring them from a distance and without really enjoying them. Mamoo is a voyeur for life and beauty and the scene with Fujiko in the shower makes it pretty clear.
The battle at the center of The Mystery of Mamoo is between Mamoo's eremitism and Lupin The Third's edonism, and, ironically enough, to win is the second using a weapon the first thought belonged only to himself: rationality.
Around this ideological battle, Soji Yoshikawa and Atsushi Yamatoya build a really fun and dynamic movie. Yoshikawa directing is an interesting mix between the adult tone of Masaaki Osumi's episodes and the funnier comedic action of Isao Takahata and Hayao Miyazaki's ones. The first act of the movie is full of engaging chasing scenes and gags while the mystery around Mamoo's identity is nicely built. From the manga and the second series of the anime the movie takes its cosmopolitan soul, with its characters traveling around the world and visiting Egypt, France, Transylvania and other places. Overall, it also does a great job in traslating Lupin The Third into a cinematographic dimension where the audience expect everything to be more epic and spectacular compared to a TV episode. Things like the invincibility of Mamoo and the involvement of the american secret service help the plot to feel like something a lot bigger than Lupin's regular weekly adventure.
Another aspect taken from the second series is the bigger focus on the characterisation of Lupin's companions, not bidimensional characters anymore but more alive and capable of questioning Lupin's actions. The most notable example is Fujiko Mine, which resumes her two-faced attitude, but with a more mysterious and self-contradictory attitude than the Part 2's version of the character. At first she just seems really cold and manipulative, but in the second half of the movie she reveals how much she cares for Lupin. It's no coincidence that in this movie we have the first and one of the few animated kisses between Fujiko and Lupin.
In the second act Lupin's playful and unpredictable nature arise, making him closer to Bugs Bunny than to the James Bond he is in the first act and getting the movie closer to the slapstick style of Monkey Punch's second series of the manga. This shift in tone is perfect to emphasize the contrast between Lupin's humanity and Mamoo's austerity and seriousness. Particularly fascinating during this act is the chasing scene that takes place inside different famous paintings. Another memorable scene is the one where Mamoo scans Lupin's subconscious and discovers that Lupin doesn't dream. In my opinion, that scene is a defining scene for the character and it inspired me another article where I analyze its meaning. You can find it here.
The movie is closed by a slightly disappointing third act which fail to succeed on giving a satisfying ending to Goemon and Jigen's arc and a battle between Mamoo and Lupin that lives up to the action scenes of the first act. Said so, it still is a decent ending that closes nicely enough Mamoo's character and gives us some memorable scenes.
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| From Tad Hoshiya's blog |
Despite its flaws, Mystery of Mamoo is one of the most remarkable movie starring Lupin The Third and his friends both thanks to its spectacular scenes and to its ambitious plot. Being the first, this feature-lenght work was not restricted by the classic formula that has been established by later Lupin's movie and can be a refreshing surprise even for today's audience.
At the time, The Mystery of Mamoo was a big success and made Lupin The Third the japanese national treasure that still is today. That's why TMS quickly started the production of a second movie calling back one of the first series director. That director was Hayao Miyazaki and what came out in 1979 was his debute feature-lenght movie Lupin The Third: The Castle of Cagliostro.
So, this is it! If you want you can leave me a comment to let me know which are your thoughts on this movie and on my retrospective, share the article if you enjoyed and leave a like on my Lupin The Third Facebook Page and on my Illustrated Lands Facebook Page. You can find other Lupin The Third articles by me here.
Thank you for this thoughtful, intelligent examination of this film. I get so fuckin' annoyed when people simply write Mamo off as just a weird, surreal film. There is a ton of substance beyond it's style.
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome my friend ! Unfortunately, everything else that you stated is true. Many prefer Miyazaki's Lupin because it has the greater commerical appeal. I can't wait to read more of your future Lupin essays !
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