Lupin the IIIrd: Chikemuri no Ishikawa Goemon

Let's get the first thing out of the way: this movie truly lives up to its title It's gory. It's bloody. It's something that Lupin III is offering for pretty much the first time. Yeah, there's been blood and some mild gore, but there's some fairly disturbing scenes thrown in.

Art direction is fantastic as usual. I really like the more mature view of Lupin III that this movie has. It's something Lupin needed to a degree, almost as if it's a homage to the original manga. It's mature enough to be appealing to older audiences, but doesn't take itself too seriously. It has the ... same "air" as all the other Takeshi Koike films. It's dark and disturbing. Sexual at times. But that's something I don't mind. It's really startling how Lupin can either be fun and light, or can be the complete opposite and sometimes disturb its viewers.

It felt much more enjoyable than Takeshi Koike's first Lupin special, that being Jigen Daisuke's Gravestone. I feel like this special was more "tight" - now that they've worked with their interpretation of blue jacket Lupin once, they've now gotten it right. I'm excited to see what they might have in store next.

I watched this without subtitles and my understanding of spoken Japanese isn't the greatest, so I can't say much about the story, unfortunately. The main villain was interesting and creepy, despite not really looking like it.

As for characterization, the special mainly focuses on Goemon and his view of his honour from what I could understand. I felt like his characterization was similar to that of The Mystery of Mamo - he becomes a brooding samurai, faced with defeat, unsure of what to make of himself. He's not really a punchline at all. He's very serious in this special, almost to a terrifying degree (as Lupin puts it in the original green jacket series, he's a "scary man"). The antics between Lupin, Jigen, and Fujiko were quite entertaining. Their silliness was a lot more adult-oriented. I got the feeling from this film that Goemon wasn't very close to them at all, but I think it fit for his character. Zenigata's characterization of a more hardened detective is also starting to grow on me, and I liked his interactions with the gang.

Regardless, if you're a fan of the more violent and serious Lupin, this is a special that you need to watch. I'll definitely be rewatching it once subtitles come out so I can fully understand it. Visually, this is the most appealing thing. The animation is incredibly smooth and the characters are always so nicely drawn. The way they draw each character has really been refined in this special. It's definitely a treat, so I highly recommend you check it out.

Lupin the Third: Goemon Ishikawa's Spray of Blood lives up to its name by havings lots of blood in it, which is a good thing since it didn't meet most of my other expectations. What I wanted from this movie was a look at Goemon as a character because he has typically been sidelined in many of the other titles in the franchise. If that's what you're looking for, you'll have more luck watching The Fuma Conspiracy, Dragon of Doom, or certain episodes in any of the TV series because this says very little about Goemon.

If you've already seen the movie, then you might be ... disagreeing with me on this. Goemon has a lot of screen time, he struggles with a conflict unlike we've ever seen before, and the final scenes are his time to show off. But I have two major problems with how this was executed. One, we never learn anything about how Goemon is feeling, what he's thinking, or why he does anything directly from him. He barely talks to the other regular characters or interacts with them. Every insight into him is provided by Lupin's narration, even when there's zero logical reason for him to know the things he explains. As a result, Goemon comes off as very distant, barely a character. My second problem is that Goemon having such a crisis in the movie makes no sense. The fight that breaks his spirit is nothing out of the ordinary, but if it has such an effect on him, it makes you wonder if this is the first time in his life that he loses. I don't think they wanted to make the title character come off as a spoiled brat who's never had to face disappointment before, but that's what it looked like to me. If they'd presented this as Goemon being an arrogant upstart who learns a lesson, it would have had the potential to be great, but due to the emotional distance, it just doesn't work.

The plot is fairly incoherent as well. It starts off promisingly enough, with Goemon having been hired as a bodyguard for a mob boss whose casino Lupin, Jigen and Fujiko have decided to rob. The three are being targeted by a new character called Bermuda Ghost, a terrifying giant of a man who seems inhumanly unstoppable. Meanwhile, Zenigata is searching for Bermuda Ghost as part of an investigation.

Circumstances get all these characters mixed with each other, and soon it looks like we'll be following Goemon on a path of personal revenge and reclaiming his honour. But, due to the reasons mentioned above, it's not a very engaging path. The movie fails to wrap up most of its plot threads. We never learn who hired Bermuda Triangle and why. Zenigata's investigation goes nowhere and we never find out why the chief was trying to stop him, creating the feeling that his plot line existed only so that we could have some exposition on who Bermuda Ghost is. Goemon gets over his crisis due to a deus ex machina plot point that comes out nowhere and makes so little sense that Lupin has to explain it to the viewer. The revenge angle has no proper climax for anyone involved. Fujiko just walks out of the movie.

In short, I feel that the people who made this movie had lots of really cool ideas they wanted to include, but they didn't manage to create a story where the events follow each other logically. I think it might have benefitted from being longer so that it could have given some depth to its characters and tied up the plot more neatly. One of the elements I like best about the Lupin franchise is how the regular characters play off each other, and that is almost entirely missing here. We get a few amusing scenes with Lupin, Fujiko, and Jigen, but other than that it feels like the characters only exist to make the plot move onwards.

All that said, there were also elements that I enjoyed. The animation and colour design are great and make the movie beautiful to look at, the soundtrack is smooth, and there were a bunch of cool and entertaining scenes. The first half in particular worked and raised my expectations pretty high. The fight scenes were as brutal as the title promises, so if you like that kind of thing, this is definitely worth a watch just to see Goemon get beaten that badly. Since this is a direct continuation of Jigen's Gravestone, I assume there will be more movies taking place in the same timeline. Hopefully they'll do a better job of wrapping things up.

Before I explain why the worst score possible, I want to say a few things. I've watched the entire Lupin III's collection: every episode, every movie, every OVA and every special. Lupin III is a franchise that exists for over 50 years and every time a new adventure is announced, I get excited about it and hope that this legendary series continues to get more attention and love in the future.

A 1/10 is the worst score possible on this website and I'll now explain why in my opinion is a fai score for this film.


Animation: the visuals are my least favourite from all ... the different animation styles that Lupin III has seen over 50 years. I like the detailed backgrounds but I don't like the "rough, dark" appearance of the main cast.


Sound:
1) the soundtrack does not include jazz or "samurai" songs that are part of the musical legacy of Lupin III.
2) the iconic Lupin III theme song is nowhere to be found. You may argue that because this special is more focused on Goemon, it's something that made sense to leave out of the film but I don't agree with that at all. The movie is titled "Lupin III" and is part of the franchise. Goemon himself is a main character in the franchise. It only makes sense for the trademark instrumental to be there.


Story and characters:
1) the only characters that act as themselves are Jigen and Fujiko. The rest of the cast seems to have either nothing or very little with the versions of themselves that have existed for 50 years. Lupin doesn't act as his "happy-totsan-love-me-Fujiko" ways once throughout the film; Zenigata is overly-serious and shows no emotion whatsoever about the possibility of chasing/arresting Lupin and his buddies. Goemon does the unthinkable and this will be a SPOILER!!!!! - Goemon dismantled his Zantetsuken to get a new guard and handle. There's no way in flipping hell that Goemon would do this. Every single individual that has watched Goemon for at least 5 minutes understands how Goemon feels about his sword. This sword is sacred and is more important to him than his own safety. And then of course Goemon gets stupidly injured by bullets that he's been able to easily dodge or cut for 50 years and of course at the end Zenigata doesn't acknowledge him as part of the Lupin III gang and warns him not to trouble his police work. It's been 50 years worth of thefts and other shenanigans for Goemon with Lupin and the rest but for some stupid reason, someone thought it would make sense for Zenigata to have a case of sudden memory loss about Goemon's involvement in those events.
2) SPOILER: I don't know where to put this but to have Goemon challenge a baby Megalodon was ridiculous and absurd.


Regardless if you read the spoilers above or not, the main reason why I gave a 1/10 to this movie is because of this: I sat down and chose to watch this movie because it's part of the Lupin III franchise. That's what I expected. It doesn't sound like Lupin III (soundtrack) and the characters don't act like the characters from Lupin III. If something takes the name of Lupin III and/or its characters I demand to get the same enjoyment and experience and unfortunately this was a waste of 1 hour of my time that just made me feel that Monkey Punch's creation was disgraced by this rubbish.