Lupin the IIIrd: Jigen Daisuke no Bohyou

In a movie called "Daisuke Jigen's Tombstone," one might suppose that it would be about, oh, I don't know...Daisuke Jigen. Probably his inevitable death (which will, of course, be fake because he's been kicking since the 60s and do you really think some random movie villain is going to end him?). If you are hoping for a Jigen origin story, you'll find more backstory in many Red Jacket series episodes. Instead of focusing on the titular character (as The Woman Called Fujiko Mine did), this is once again a Lupin adventure. That's, of course, not a bad thing. The Lupin franchise has been going strongwith no end in sight. However, the movie had a strange feel to it. It was very 1970s, but you won't understand why it has such an outdated feel until a certain end scene at which point the Jigen movie now feels like a prequel and the mood makes sense. In other words: go into this short movie (less than an hour) not expecting much, but still leaving satisfied. Ish. STORY: As I said, not much focus on Jigen. I mean, I guess it was titled "Tombstone" and not "Jigen Origin Story," but I expected more from the trailers. I skipped through it before watching it, and found a scene with a woman on stage. I assumed we'd have a detailed backstory about that. Nope. No emotional connection there. And the movie is odd; broken down into two parts. Every single Lupin movie/special has at least one laugh out loud moment, one moment to make you really feel glad you watched it. This movie is so blah it's ridiculous. It's an action movie with very little good action and too many over used (and unsuccessful) story props. HOWEVER! The last 10 minutes will pay off. We get a few good cameos, and one that has me going back to watch the certain movie he or she was in. CHARACTER: As a woman, the only thing I dislike about Monkey Punch's anime and ESPECIALLY the manga, is how much he seems to hate women. They are there to be, either abused, killed off, or romanced. Every single female character in a special is killed off once we've warmed up to the idea of her, or Lupin goes gaga for her, or she's the betraying vixen. Fujiko covers those last two pretty well. This time around, Lupin isn't having any of her B.S. But still, she gets groped, of course, and is nude, of course. The movie takes the rapebait Fujiko trope (and I'm ashamed to admit that's what she is at this point) up a step when Fujiko is set as entertainment for a bunch of pervy old men (picture the club from Speed Grapher) and is almost raped by a giant robot. Really. Horror movie fare, and not something I expected to see in Lupin (despite a good number of his villains being after Fujiko as the norm). All right, enough about Fujiko. Zenigata and Goemon?? Absent from the movie. Entirely absent. And before you whine: 3 second cameos do not count. They count as fanservice, but do not number towards the character count. In the movie, Lupin acts as though he practically owns Jigen -- he's clearly the star of the show, there's no doubt about that. This is a Lupin movie, not a Jigen movie. Even during the end show down, it's all about Lupin looking cool. Oh, and we find out Jigen likes couture. Whoo. So glad we got that backstory out of the way. Not like there's a whole period of his life he spent in America, or his youth, or anything else from his life before Lupin we could have possibly covered in an hour about Jigen, right? Right? ANIMATION: Good, I guess. Steps it up a bit from the Fujiko series while still maintaining the style. The only thing worth mentioning is Lupin's new look. Whether a blue or green jacket, that's debatable as the movie gets a subtle filter that could have shaded the jacket from green to blue (and for the time line laid out, green would make sense). For a few minutes in the movie, Lupin gets a delightful disguise (you know the one -- with the eyepatch). Also, Jigen hasn't looked this good since the Pink Jacket series. As there were only a few characters, they definitely stepped up their allure. SOUND: Where's my jazz?? No Yuji Ohno on this one! Other than that, normal voice acting from the Lupin gang. Nothing worth mentioning. OVERALL: Meh. Watch it because it's as good as watching one long, unimportant episode of Lupin. Watch it because you like mediocore action. Watch it again for the end scenes ^__^

So this film has the same mature and adult tone as the fujiko mine series which I thought overall was good. I really enjoy the Lupin the 3rd series but this was pretty disappointing overall. Right from the beginning we already know that Jigen is not going to actually die which kills some of the mystery or any kind of “suspense” the viewer is supposed to be in. Also what was the point of having Fujiko Mine in this? 90% of her inclusion in this film is just her locked in a glass enclosure naked getting attacked by a robot. Her presence in this wasnothing more than fan service and she could have easily been left out. This ova is pretty much focused on Lupin and Jigen trying to stop a killer with an eye patch that was shooting at them as they were trying to finish a heist at the start of the film. I know this only had a 50 minute runtime but this just felt so rushed with no real tension or any kind of suspense. Just skip this film, you already know that Jigen isn’t actually going to die and the action scenes are pretty mediocre. Visually the film looks pretty good with vibrant and colorful animation. My biggest problem is the audio in this film and I don't mean the music. I prefer to watch my anime dubbed but the dub in this film was pretty atrious to be honest. Tony Oliver, Richard Epcar, Michelle Ruff, Lex Lang , none of these original voice actors are present in this film to reprise their roles. Richard Epcar is in the film but only to voice Zenigata’s 2 lines in the epilogue of this film. What a waste! If you have the original voice actor, why not let him voice Jigen?! The new voice actors they picked to voice the main characters, deliver their lines with no emotion or charisma to the point where I thought about switching the audio to Japanese halfway through the film.

In the early 2010s, Lupin III underwent a revival of sorts with two features: A WOMAN NAMED FUJIKO MINE (a TV series) and THE GRAVESTONE OF DAISUKE JIGEN (a spin-off film). Both took Lupin back to his manga comic roots: the setting was the 1960s-70s, the story was darker and more serious, Lupin and his mates were more self-serving and treacherous. This film-noir hardboiled version was a great hit and successful revival of Lupin III (if rather controversial - some Lupin fans preferred his softer, more popular version of a noble trickster). I would call GRAVESTONE the better part of the revival. The Fujiko seriesdid things differently and delightfully, but it presented a convoluted backstory that turned out to be a falsehood, all for a character that never really had a history to begin with (Lupin deserves as much history as James Bond – it's the adventures he faces rather than his past that matter for him). This story happens to be more straightforward, with Lupin facing off against a gunman who has marked his mate Jigen for death. The artwork and music are wonderfully atmospheric, capturing the suave, sensual and stylish essence of the 1960s-70s era. The story too is well- written and substantial, and pays tribute to the original days of espionage, when espionage was about using one's wits and skill to outsmart an enemy, and not about saving the world with a pocketful of gadgets. There are no fancy schemes at work, simply a hit-man's job and a clash of skill and wits. The only problems with the film is, for me, seen from a Lupin fan's perspective: in a long line of Lupin works, this comes off as a somewhat predictable adventure (the appearance of an enemy from a Lupin film enhances the perception of deja vu). Also the removal of two major characters (Goemon, Zenigata) is a little off-putting, but to be fair they had no place in the story. But as I said, these are a fan's perception: for the most part this story manages to be original enough to draw in viewers, and as with long-running franchises the stories tend to be the same after a while (OO7, which inspired Lupin, is a great example of this). On the whole, it makes for a fairly good Lupin tale. Not necessarily one of the best, but definitely an above average story that makes for a great watch.

The premise is so bad and they know it, so much so that they don't even pretend to create a back story or force something from the past. It's just a random backdrop they created to define Jigen as the best gunslinger in the world, amazing that the best way they found to do that was to get a dubious guy to duel him. The big thing about this movie is that if they just wanted to show Jigen's amazing skills to the audience, why didn't they show his backstory???? We are tired of seeing Jigen being amazing in the anime, so much so thatin this story he doesn't even come close to how good he is in the series in fact! It's ridiculous. They even forced a fake kill AAAAAAAAA. It's so bad, so sad, they even lowered the level and showed a clearly pornographic scene of Fujiko in this disgrace, the character only exists to be naked in all the scenes she appears it's so sad, just in a story that was to finally give the spotlight that Jigen deserved... And the movie ends and I couldn't care less about everything that happened on the screen, the feeling is of lost time. Total garbage.

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