Lupin III: $1 Money Wars

Missed by a Dollar, from 2000, starts off another fun decade of Lupin in style. Lupin wants a ring that can lead him to yet another legendary treasure, and so does an evil corporation. Meanwhile, we have a subplot where Lupin tries to help the career of an aspiring jazz singer. And, without giving it away, there's a pretty cool twist later on. That's the basic outline, but like usual it's all the wackiness that ensues that makes this such a great show. Lupin and partner Jigen have some very snappy dialogue in this one. They talk about their guns as metaphors for women, a lot ofgreat exchanges like that. Fujiko is fantastic as always, she gets to kill a lot more people with machine guns in this than she often does. In general this one is pretty violent, which is a nice change of pace from some of the more lighthearted specials. Crazy people with guns are out to kill the Lupin gang, and this time around it really does feel urgent. Inspector Zenigata is great in this, as always he's awesomely hilarious when he gets emotional about Lupin. Goemon is solid as ever, though he doesn't have a particularly stand out role here. This is the last Lupin feature made with traditional cel animation before they switched to digital I believe, and it has a dark gritty look to it. Very cool soundtrack by Yuji Ohno, a bit more suspenseful sounding than usual here. All in all, this is some very good Lupin action. If you like Lupin III, you should give this one a watch or two.