Director: Sōji Yoshikawa
Screenplay: Atsushi Yamatoya and
Sōji Yoshikawa
Based on the manga by Monkey
Punch
Voice Cast: Eiko Masuyama as
Fujiko Mine; Gorō Naya as Inspector Zenigata; Kiyoshi Kobayashi as Jigen
Daisuke; Kō Nishimura as Mamo/Howard Lockwood; Makio Inoue as Goemon Ishikawa
XIII; Yasuo Yamada as Arsene Lupin III
Monkey Punch, the late Kazuhiko
Katō, create a few characters in his career as a manga artist. Since his
2019 death, a greater curiosity has swung, thanks to the 2003 TV series
adapting it was released by Discotek,
to Cinderella Boy, in which due to supernatural shenanigans a male detective
and his female partner end up in the same body, turning into one another and
switching gender. Also, there's Musashi
Gundoh (1997), which infamously had a 2006 animated series so bad the
Japanese fans demanded their DVD releases to include the original TV broadcast
mistakes to be intact, thus helping export irony to the country. But Monkey Punch will be known for Lupin III,
a character who, since his 1967 manga debut, has become a cultural pulp
phenomenon in Japan who is still having animated tales made for, like Batman to
the Americans and Sherlock Holmes to the British. This is ironic knowing the character
is explicitly meant to be the grandson of Arsène Lupin, the legendary French
pulp character of Maurice Leblanc, which for a while was a huge sore spot in
terms of copyright until recently1. Thus from one cultural
institution we got another in an entirely different country.
Like Batman, various versions of
Lupin exist, and it's apt in lieu to how The
Mystery of Mamo, as the first theatrical animated film in the franchise,
turned out how it did. Note with this that, barely knowledgeable with the
franchise and with an outsider's gap, I am at least aware of these versions are
divided by the colour of Lupin's jacket. As much of it is based on the various
TV series - "Green jacket" the original 1971-72 series, "Red
Jacket" 1977-1980, "Pink Jacket" for 1984-1985, and "Blue
Jacket" for the 2015 series on. But as much of it is based on tone too
even if there are examples which do affect this, a loose framework for each.
The 1971-2 series is famous for Hayao
Miyazaki working on it, but it was only by his own theatrical debut The Castle of Cagliostro (1979) the
Green Jacket version was cemented, the more family friendly version of the
character with Lupin a more serious, debonair figure. Pink jacket, emphasised
by the Seijun Suzuki co-directed The Legend of the Golden Babylon (1985),
was divisive in that, knee deep into the eighties, it changed the character
styles and also started including explicit sci-fi and supernatural material,
something to bear in mind with The
Mystery of Mamo. The Blue Jacket is one I need to see to make thought of,
but from the 2015 Italian-Japanese co-produced series, I am aware the 2010s Lupin III deals with new details for
the character like modern technology and is in lieu to modern animation
production. Again, this is from an outsider delving further into these
versions, so none of this is entirely canon in the slightest.
But it's important to point out
as, whilst there are possible exceptions, Red Jacket has always been connected
to the original Monkey Punch creation. More slapstick, but also adult, the idea
at least with The Mystery of Mamo
and other depictions that the Red Jacket version of Lupin III is the darker and
edgier version of the character. Lupin in the manga was a cruder figure, has
been depicted in adaptations as a literal id, a thief with an obsession with
sex particularly with female thief and fatale Fujiko Mine. This is poignant
knowing that in terms of the seventies version of Lupin, and the version most
well known of the entire franchise, it's probably Hayao Mizayaki's The Castle
of Cagliostro that is the most seen, the truest gentleman thief and good
guy with none of this darker content thus making the experience likely to be completely
jarring to change to this version.
Basically, like Arsène Lupin,
Lupin III is a thief who scours the world for valuable objects. On his team
includes Jigen, a grizzled crack shot of a gunslinger, and Goemon, meant to be
a decendent of the real life figure Ishikawa Goemon, who is a wandering samurai
in the current day. Fujiko Mine, who has the most fascinating revision when
female anime director Sayo Yamamoto
and female scriptwriter Mari Okada got
to create the series The Woman Called
Fujiko Mine (2012), is the female thief who has Lupin wrapped around her
little finger, as in Mystery of Mamo
as much likely to be on the opposite side as on his, whilst finally there's
detective Zenigata, who is so obsessed with catching Lupin that, as Mamo has in a subplot, the fact you
learn he has a daughter but has been outside of Japan all this time shows a
pathological obsession with catching his prey.
Like many other stories in the Lupin III franchise, there is a valuable
object in the centre, in this case a philosopher's stone Lupin has to acquire
from an Egyptian pyramid, and an antagonist but The Mystery of Mamo is an odd one in how it is, whilst a great
film, a curious piece in lieu of the way the character was being adapted to
animation2 and in context to over decades of the character existing.
With its villain being the titular Mamo, imagine Paul Williams in Phantom of
the Paradise (1974) without the glasses, the story is already a peculiar
mix of slapstick but with adult content at the start, in-between Fujiko having
a lot of nude scenes to scenes incredibly rare in the franchise of people being
gunned down in the French streets by a helicopter, all whilst adding upon this
a schism dramatically between Lupin's rational scepticism of Mamo's claims but
streaks of over surrealism dominating the tone. Literally, in one case as Lupin
literally flees from goons through Salvador
Dali's The Persistence of Time among other famous Surrealist paintings in
one sequence, melted clocks and all ran over. In the midst of Mamo claiming to
be a thousand year old godhead, you have cameos by Napoleon and Hitler in the
then-modern day, a subplot which never goes anywhere in which a Lupin is
publically executed (in the opening shot) by hanging, and a lot of Looney Tunes cartoon physics, where a
giant American truck meant to run Lupin off the road makes French cop cars look
like ants and Lupin himself moves about as a perverted Bugs Bunny.
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| From http://img1.ak.crunchyroll.com/i/spire2/12dff1132994 5762e26bc255ffd079961500987250_full.jpg |
In lieu to that plot, where a large part of the story is Lupin dismissing Mamo as a charlatan who really only uses his wealth and goons to cause strange phenomena, all as Mamo tries to claim both the philosopher's stone and Fujiko for himself, what happens in the film concludes this schism in the strangest way possible. Without spoiling the ending, the final reveal of what Mamo is after the other twists twirls over the line into the fantastical with glee, a level of ridiculousness that is to be applauded but really feels like a peculiarity, when before this franchise kept in its own grounded (but cartoonish) format. It even more so jars with the later Castle of Cagliostro, released a mere year later, and feels like a prelude to future tales having actual UFOs and magic when you get to the Pink Jacket scenarios.
The other aspect is that, until
the last decade, it'd probably be a shock to see a much more violent and sexual
version of the characters despite being closer to Monkey Punch's source material. One of the greatest virtues of this
franchise, like Batman to Sherlock Holmes, is that these characters all have
their distinct personalities but can exist in any form. Lupin III is a
trickster thief, Jigan the grumpy old veteran, Goemon in this film a literal
monk in attitude, Zenigata relentless and obsessive, and Fujiko the gorgeous
lady out for herself. They have versions in films, TV specials and series which
can vary from a more wholesome adventure, to explicit excuses to nudity, to
crossovers with other famous characters or a feminist revision of Fujiko in The Woman Called Fujiko Mine which is
actually even darker, more sexually explicit and nastier in tone than The Mystery of Mamo. But it is a shock
if you aren't prepared for The Mystery
of Mamo.
Probably one of the more
fascinating things is that, despite a really uncomfortable moment of Lupin
trying to "seduce" Fujiko which is of its era, a huge subplot which
comes to a boil in the end is that he and Fujiko are always meant to be with
each other, actually the one emotional aspect to a bizarre, psychotronic romp. At one point, witnessing the inside of Lupin's
mind, this is emphasised when his mind consists entirely of real photographs of
nude women, Fujiko naked and Zenigata like a super ego constantly interrupting
this by threatening to arrest him3.
As a production, The Mystery of Mamo is an impressive
production, as seventies as you can get in its style alongside the clear sense,
even in its ridiculous escalation, that everyone on this project was a risk.
Copyrighted objects are drawn onscreen, the aesthetic and style is this
aforementioned mix of cartoon logic and grittiness, and the music lays on the
jazz with disco influence in a way, just for the trademark Lupin III theme, that'll
melt the heart of even the detractors of this film. Even the fact the film,
whilst naming them as something else in the version I watched, effectively has Henry Kissinger, in the cast, as the
Americans intervene on the plot and blown everything up, has a sense of a
caustic, scattergun sense of satire and playfulness on the production.
Again, it's an odd circumstance that
sandwiched in a period where the franchise was gaining steam, this film was
made. Despite being originally unsuccessful,
repeats of the original series allowed a second to be made and the motion to
begin in continually adapting the source material; this, a deliberate attempt
at briefly capturing the original source material, stands out a lot in lieu to
the various versions you'd get immediately in 1979 onwards. As much, a factor
is knowledge that, in the decades to pass, many TV specials and other anime
productions would be made and, for every one which might be a lot more
explicit, those specials up to The Woman
Called Fujiko Mine became more of an institution rather than something
remotely as jarring and transgressive as this. It does feel a unique premiere
to have seen in the cinema and, as the first these characters will have in my
writing to be talked about, aptly emphasises how much the franchise has changed
over the years. Certainly, for the one hundredth review, it felt appropriate to
cover this.
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| From http://analoghousou.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/mamo_bottom.jpg |
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1) The irony is not lost,
referencing these characters, that Maurice
Leblanc infamously wrote Sherlock Holmes into one of his Lupin stories
without permission, thus for a period having to change the name barely to not
get Sir Arthur Conan Doyle on his
back. It's a hilarious history to have when all three (Holmes, Lupin, Lupin
III) are all immortalised pulp figures in the current day.
2) That's not even mentioning the
1974 live action Lupin the Third or the 2014 live action Lupin III, which are
their own entities.
3) One of the biggest surprises, uncovered
after Monkey Punch's death, is that
he did actually make a manga Lupin Kozō
(1975-6), about the son of Lupin and Fujiko, as a spin-off that adds
dimensions to the parents in their relationship (canon or not).
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