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This is certainly an interesting one. For one thing, the dub sound quality is way better, not just in mic quality but also in music and sound effects. Since I watched the dub first, I'll talk about it first.

The dub was really great. First of all, the voice acting was solid, even for the smaller roles. Definitely a step up from the Genon days. I learned that Part 1 Lupin was recorded during COVID-19, so that explains a lot; I no longer wanna harbor any negative feelings for it just because of the uphill battle that had to be worked on. Anyway, now that I see what they can do outside of the Genon early 2000s bubble, it's great work. It sticks a lot closer to the script while still throwing in the occasional new lines. Certainly, Tony Oliver's Lupin is still very distinct from Yasuo Yamada's. I think Tony was one of the strongest voice actors in the movie. Although my one complaint is, as I believe I've said before, he can't really do serious situations all too well. His voice is too silly for serious situations to have some weight. This is only really relevant to the scene where Lupin first sees Rosetta as a young woman.

Honestly, Doug Erholtz really won me over here. My only previous exposure to him was Part 1, and I already said what I thought of it. He does a great job and is clearly passionate. That's what I've heard from both fans and his coworkers, and now that I have a first-hand account, I totally see what they meant. He almost has this kind of New Yorker accent, weirdly enough. He might be Japanese-born and raised, but for an English adaptation, sure, this works. I had no problem with it.

A lot of the side characters were good. I think Marciano's voice suits the character well. Rosetta's voice actor is really charming; I enjoyed her a lot. As useless as Chin and Willy were, I got really excited to hear Chin voiced by Todd Haberkorn, one of my favorite childhood voice actors. However, the ICPO girls have much to be desired. They're really rough. Three of them are voiced by the same woman, one even voiced by Michelle Ruff, and the other plays young Rosetta. And I get they were probably working with a shoestring budget; I'm theorizing this was made specifically with the Bluray release of this movie, so this is probably all Discotek money. I can't imagine they have a ton of extra money, and they can just fling around. I know they try to get things dubbed as much as they can, but yeah, that's a lot of work. The issue I have with the limited voice actors, though, is that it's just white women putting on accents. And it's rough. Especially Saranda since she's supposed to be from Kenya, and yet they make her sound African American, and it's a white woman playing the role. Wow, yikes, no, that's not good. I want to give them all the benefit of the doubt and say this was mainly a financial issue versus laziness to actually hire a black voice actor. Not that any of them are too great; the accents are all really bad and about as stereotypical as they get. They're definitely rough to watch, but luckily, the girls are pretty minor characters, so it's not the worst thing.

Oddly enough, they remove one of the gayest lines in the movie, which is really weird considering this cast since they tend to write dialogue to be 10x gayer. But they removed the lines "It makes me want to give you a kiss" and "Then kiss me!" from Lupin to Zenigata. Crazy stuff. But they just turn Zenigata's line into "Monkey see, monkey do." What a shame.

Despite what I enjoy, I'd still rather watch the sub; I could easily see myself switching off, though. Again, the characters are just way better suited to the multi-talented Japanese actors. The ICPO girls aren't great here either honestly. There are a couple of rough lines, like when Saranda is introduced and, as she dances, she just chants "Kenya." You guys really couldn't be bothered to figure out how to say "hi" in Kenyan? It's really frustrating, but at the very least, they don't put on accents, which makes it worlds easier to watch. Rosetta's voice actor I preferred a lot more. When she sings, it reminds me of how my grandma sang to me as a kid, and it makes me nostalgic.


An old lady wanders into a bar where Lupin just happens to be. He's given a delivery, Zenigata, and a massive motorcycle chase ensues. Once Lupin can cool down, he's visited by the old woman, an acquaintance, Rosetta. She tells Lupin about the gold of Babylon, immediately appealing to his interest. Meanwhile, Zenigata's been taken off the Lupin case for failing to capture him again. He's put in charge of an ICPO beauty contest. Afterward, he's given his position back but has to work alongside all the pageant participants.
Meanwhile, Fujiko is with her new boyfriend and former gang boss, Marciano. Fujiko says she'll only plan on marrying him if he's able to acquire the gold of Babylon. He decides to show her his father's collection. While destroying an old building, his father discovered some old cuneiform tablets from ancient Babylon. She is able to see them firsthand and is amazed. However, Marciano notices Fujiko taking pictures with her necklace, and she reveals herself to be Lupin in disguise. Scanning the tablets, he's able to translate what they say about a god and all the city's gold being used to make a grand treasure. Lupin's up for the task, but he's alone in this. After they leave, Rosetta revisits him. She takes the candelabra from Lupin, and he asks what its significance is. She explains that the Babylonians believed God rode on a comit to reach them every 76 years. She also offhandily mentions her loving relationship with Napoleon before leaving. Lupin doesn't understand how she could be alive for 2,500 years. The new gang boss is busy trying to take out Jigen, but Lupin rallies them together to head to Babylon. The gang goonies attack them on the train, but they make it to Babylon intact. They make it to the excavation site, where they already see Marciano getting started. Lupin launches himself into one of the ruins, full of booby traps. In one of these, he's a beautiful woman who calls herself Rosetta. She tells Lupin that God had her descend onto Earth many, many years ago, and she is reborn every 76 years, stuck in an endless loop. Lupin tries to wake himself from the illusion and finds himself in the center of a big room. He pulls a candle holder down, and it reveals a pure gold griffin statue. This also triggers the collapse of the entire ruins, so he makes a mad dash out. He exits right in front of Marciano's dig site but is luckily lifted up by helicopter before they can take the statue. The rope he clings to is cut down by a boomerang, a ploy by Fujiko to get the statue all to herself.
Meanwhile, the guys are out driving in the desert but certainly aren't alone. The ICPO girls managed to acquire some foreign nation's tanks and chase after the gang. They might be close, but their Jeep is aquatic. Fujiko appears on a speedboat in front of them with the statue, but Kowalski, the gang boss, quickly swipes it. Lupin's not too bothered because he's realized where the really big stash is, New York. They notify Marciano that they're there and get to digging. Lupin and Jigen uncover the giant gold stash. Lupin figured it was buried under Madison Garden Square because the recovered Babylonian tablets were found in a roughly circular pattern. This is the other Tower of Babylon, and as Rosetta described, the comet will pass over it in 76 years. Halley's Comet just so happens to be passing in 25 hours from now. They go back to the bar from the beginning but are targeted again. Lupin runs into Rosetta again, and he tells her where the new Tower of Babel is. She tells him that Fujiko has been captured by the gang, so Lupin rushes over. Threatening Fujiko's life, Lupin throws away his weapons and box of cigars before being tied up with Fujiko and sent down the river. As they are washed away, Fujiko asks him what's going on. He explains that God made the Tower of Babel in Babylon, but as he went to grab it, he dropped it, and it landed in New York, and this is why Halley's Comet travels there now. As Rosetta' stands about it, it sends off a UFO after her, and the entire tower flies into the sky. The gang just manages to scramble on before it's too far. Rosetta reverts back to her original self, and she's finally able to return home. After she ascends, Lupin destroys the candelabra to destroy the entire tower and gold for them all.

Honestly, I'm surprised I ended up enjoying this as much as I did. I never liked this movie since I first watched it, and honestly, outside of a few scenes, I didn't remember this movie well. It's been a year and a half since I first saw it. Unlike even some 24-minute episodes of Lupin, it was able to retain my attention a lot better than those. I never felt the need to go do something else while this was in the background. While not always particularly engaging all the time, I never felt bored. The locations are kept fresh, and there's a lot of really fun action. The plot is a bit... weird, to say the least. But honestly, I followed it pretty closely. Knowing about the production, it makes a lot of sense that there were clearly a lot of writers and propositions for this movie, and they got it to work while still making sense. I feel like it just flows well. I think it helps once they relate a lot of the more magical stuff back to Babylonian mythology. It seems a lot more believable. Call this Ancient Aliens, y'know. The action I found to be really fun. Arguably, the first one with Lupin and Zenigata is the most pointless, but there's just so much energy bursting into the whole time I can't complain. Lupin's had stronger plots, for sure. I only changed my rating of this from a 6 to a 7 out of 10, but I can thoroughly say I enjoyed it. This is a nice change because before, I had basically decided I'd never watch this movie again.


This is a fairly safe plot for Lupin, but there's not a ton I can say for our main guys. They do cool stuff, and I love them just as always.

While small, I want to talk about the weird mini-relationship they tried to force with Chinjao and Goemon. I just think it's pointless. She's good at martial arts and he's good with the blade, and then it's love at first sight, it's just a weird premise. They never even share a sentence with each other after their initial meeting. And yet the second Goemon exists in the scene, Chinjao is calling for him. If you're going to do that, commit or just not at all. Which I would prefer, they had no chemistry.

Speaking of the ICPO girls, I had the most issues with them for fairly obvious reasons. As I already stated, they are just really stereotypical caricatures of different cultures. Wearing stereotypical clothes and all. It made me cringe that the ones meant to seduce Lupin were the two white blonds, and the server is Saranda, in a freaking maid outfit on top of that. It's really bad. This could have served as a fun opportunity for Zenigata to be a bigger force and not just with nameless officers but a real fun cast he could work off of. But no, while they do some honestly important things, they're usually just there and often as comedic relief.

Outside of that, the new characters for this movie are honestly pretty fun and well-written.


I decided not to just throw in every time there was a sakuga moment because duh, it's a movie they'll have the higher budget to do it more consistently, and I don't feel like recording a ton of clips and converting them into gifs. This movie has a lot of great sequences though, like driving into the ear, the gold crumbling, or the ruin being destroyed.

I liked that this movie was a compromise of the new and old Lupin styles. Combining Part 3 with a bit of the past. The pink on grey-blue, on light-blue really works for me, I think it looks great. The other guys are colored more traditionally, but I found it interesting that Jigen seems to constantly change art styles, sometimes looking like Mamo or Caglisotro. However, you'll notice the movie has fairly inconsistent designs. This movie was the reason they decided to get looser with the art style of Part 3, so it makes a lot of sense. I really like the designs here. They really polished the latter half of part 3 designs, so they're way nicer looking. It's honestly not that hard to tell all the individual art styles at play here.

That being said, the amount of black face and just racial incentive depictions of black people are so bad and a major reason why i dislike this movie as much as I do. It's really hard to justify when they race on a giant racist depiction of a black man for the first 10 minutes. I don't know why they decided to do this, but Christ, I'm glad we've all grown out of this and Japan, even if they are unfortunately way later to that realization.




Gay little guys sleeping together



The number of direct monkey connections to Lupin in this movie is beautiful.



Oh, nah, I'm not vibing with this hair at all. Please just give me a slick back, not these poofy bangs. Bro looking like a Beetles member rn 😭




Love these scenes, they remind of something you'd seen from Ghibli. Unrelated, but that water is also colored really pretty.




PLEASE APPRECIATE THESE BACKGROUND PLEEEEASE. DO YOU GUYS SEE HOW MUCH EFFORT HAD TO GO INTO THEM, THEY ARE BEAUTIFUL



Part 2 reference: they are so cute



This is a rather bold interpretation of God, but uh mad respect to Japan that their population of those that believe in this god is like 1% of their population., so we can get stuff like this.



IS THIS REAL CHAT?!? Please, bro, this scares me. If Lupin is actually bald, I don't know how I'll be able to go on knowing I've lived a lie.



I love this scene so much. Seeing Lupin and Fujiko just genuinely love each other is so sweet. And the way the gold leaves these strong beautiful highlights UGH, yeah, this is a good way to end their movie out.


MANHATTAN JOKE, MANHATTAN JOKE. OH YEAAAH BABY!!! One of the absolute best songs to ever come out of Lupin, I love it so much. The entire soundtrack bops. It's certainly found a nicer balance of 70s and 80s, clearly Yuji Ohno has found a bit more of that balance which is great, I very much prefer. They even managed to sneak in Zenigata March and Lupin's theme. They're both great versions, and it's nice to hear Lupin's theme in a Part 3 property. It only takes up one scene, so it's not overbearing as it can often be. The music is just all great!


So again, there are a lot of serious flaws with this movie. The racism and stereotypes are awful and make it hard to watch this movies at parts. But I did find a lot more value this time around in the movie, I genuinely had a good time and would happily rewatch it. Certainly not a movie to start off with because it'll turn most people off, but if you're checking out Lupin give this a watch, I think there's plenty left to still enjoy.