The section on two Lupin III films was all I ever actually wrote before abandoning it, and I want to preserve those thoughts somewhere (The top 4 would have been the Gundam 00 movie, The K-On movie, The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya, and Pokemon The 3rd Movie Spell of The Unown.) The fact that I consider those two the best Lupin movies is possibly still dependent on me having not seen many, I recently saw Gold of Babylon which came no where near surpassing these, I may comment on it more in the future. The biggest out of date detail is saying it's the only Miyazaki film I'd seen. As you'd know if you're following this blog, I saw Nausuca and The Valley of the Wind at the start of June.
So, enjoy.
Number five is…. A tie between two Lupin III films, The Mystery of Mamo and The Castle of Cagliostro. This will be the only tie on the list, but still it means I’m technically discussing 6 movies. These are also the only Lupin films on the list, so they are also the best Lupin movies in my opinion.
My interest in Lupin III overlaps with my interest in the original Arsene Lupin and in French Pulp Fiction in general. And now I shall reveal that these are not traditional objective consumer reviews, but my being analytical about why these films appeal to me.
Both are perfectly stand alone stories. But Mystery of Mamo may make a better entry point into the Lupin III mythos, since it was the first Lupin III movie and so definitely felt designed to be an entry point on many levels. And Castle of Cagliostro has odd qualities that resulted in a fan theory that it may be the chronologically last Lupin III story.
If you’re into the Lupin III saga mainly for Fujiko Mine then that would also make Mamo the preferred choice for you, she is very important to that story. She is in Castle of Cagliostro, but is not the main love interest. I do however quite like the fact that she never shows any jealousy towards Clarisse.
Mystery of Mamo’s other big advantage is having a more interesting main villain. I can’t help but compare him to the character of Colonel Bozzo-Corona from Paul Feval’s Les Habits Noirs (The Blackcoats) series. But that is probably just me.
Castle of Cagliostro is also currently the only Hayao Miyazaki film I’ve seen. I have several of them on DVD but haven’t gotten around to watching them yet.
Castle of Cagliostro draws on specific classic Lupin stories more than most Lupin III stories do, a fact probably owed to how well read Miyazaki is. The connections to La Comtesse de Cagliostro (available in English from BlackCoatPress as Arsene Lupin Vs Countess Cagliostro) are largely in name only. The Lupin novel that fans of this movie really need to read, is unfortunately not easy to find legally in English. It’s original French title which I’ll probably mispronounce is La Demoiselle aux yeux verts, the literal English translation of that title would be “The Damsel with The Green Eyes”, but the existing English translation is a volume titled Arsene Lupin Super Sleuth. If you know Japanese or Korean it’s interestingly easier to find in those languages, if you know French it shouldn’t be a problem at all, everything LeBlanc directly wrote is Public Domain now. The Clarisse of this film may be named after the Clarisse of the Cagliostro novel, but her personality and situation is more like the title character of the latter novel. And there are other parallels too.
There is good reason this is often considered the best Lupin film, I might be the only person who thinks the Mamo film is equal to it. It is a very well directed and beautifully drawn film. It’s also been very influential in both Japan and the west. The climactic final confrontation inside the top of a Clock Tower would be homaged in Disney’s The Great Mouse Detective, and in the first Clock King episode of Batman: The Animated Series. I could have mentioned this in my The Mysteries of Gotham blog post, where I talked about how the roots of Batman directly or indirectly often go back to French Pulp Fiction.
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