This is my first review on this site and just in general, so excuse me if some of my points don't come over all that well.
Lupin III! After hearing about the animated movie it has gotten, I've gotten very interested in the series and genuinely enjoyed what I saw of it. Watched First Contact, and absolutely loved it, so I looked for something else in the series that might give me about the same level of enjoyment. Eventually I settled on Prison Of The Past after some site recommended it. It came out last year too, so surely it must have at least the same amount of quality, if not more?
Yeah, that hope died down very quick.
Story: 3/10
This movie's story starts rather interesting. Breaking into a prison known for being impossible to break? So you can save an infamous thief inside it so that he might lead the main cast to his treasure? This premise sounded like something genuinely appealing to me, but the way they handled it just really rubs me the wrong way. Instead of them going on an Indiana-style treasure hunt after stylishly breaking the criminal out, they made this movie take place in the same location for almost the entirety of the film. The adventure-packed chaos that had me so hooked to First Contact was entirely removed, and it just saddens me how they made such a fun concept into the snore-fest that was this movie in general. And there are a lot of things that don't make sense taking the context behind them. A supposedly unbreakable prison with only 3-4 security measures, one of which kills everyone inside? Inspector Zenigata abandoning his obsession with catching Lupin because this prison is "unbreakable"? This is just horribly executed in my opinion.
Art: 4/10
While it's not absolutely the worst, it definitely ain't the best. The art in some parts of this film is visually confusing, and it definitely dragged down my enjoyment. Nothing outstanding.
Sound: 6/10
I've noticed that other people dislike the trademark Lupin III theme in this movie, but I am one of the seemingly few people who liked it. Could be better admittedly.
Character: 3/10
Man, they did Lupin dirty.
All the main characters were just watered-down versions of the ones I liked in First Contact. Lupin in particular just felt so... Wrong. Instead of the master thief who tricked the opposition in hilarious ways, he just... Did that once. That's it. He gets to do basically nothing like "him" for the rest of the movie except maybe some funny dialogue here and there, and even those moments are not as enjoyable as the ones I knew and loved. However, I did like the clash between Goemon and the masked man halfway through the movie. However, that's really the only moment that concerns character that didn't bore me halfway to death.
Enjoyment: 3/10
But hey, not all the previous things would matter all that much if the movie was at least enjoyable right? You can enjoy a movie if it has a bad story or bad art, right? But Prison Of The Past hasn't accomplished that in the slightest. As I have said in the previous sections, the way everything was done horribly just dragged down it's quality and my overall enjoyment of the movie. It's absolutely boring, it's terribly obvious at some times what exactly is going to happen, and the fact that I watched First Contact, another Lupin III movie that I absolutely loved FROM MORE THAN 10 YEARS AGO, before watching this movie really didn't do it any favors. You shouldn't watch this movie for enjoyment, even ironically.
Overall: 3/10
As someone who believes a series or movie needs to be most of all enjoyable in order to be called a good piece of media, this film sticks out as an incredibly sore thumb. It bored me out of my mind for a good 5/6th of the movie's duration and really shouldn't be called a Lupin III movie in my opinion. The character were so bland, especially in the case of the main cast, which really sucks because I love Lupin and the gang. Probably the only thing to really sit through this movie through is the IMO stellar edition of the Lupin III theme, but who wants to waste more than an hour of their time just for that?
TLDR; Prison Of The Past sucks, go watch First Contact instead.
