Lupin the 3rd: The Mystery of Mamo

Mystery of Mamo
Directed by	Sōji Yoshikawa
Written by	Atsushi Yamatoya Sōji Yoshikawa
Produced by	Yutaka Fujioka
Starring	See Full Cast
Edited by	Yoshiaki Aihara
Music by	Yuji Ohno
Production company	TMS Entertainment
Distributed by	Toho
Release date	December 16, 1978 (1978-12-16)
Running time	102 min.
Language	Japanese

The Mystery of Mamo was the first animated movie of the Lupin III franchise created by manga author Monkey Punch. The movie was originally released in Japanese theatres on December 16, 1978 as Lupin III (ルパン三世, Rupan Sansei) but was later retitled to Lupin III: Lupin vs. the Clones (ルパン三世 ルパンVS複製人間(クローン), Rupan Sansei: Rupan tai Kurōn) to differentiate it from other elements of the franchise. The movie was produced by TMS Entertainment, directed by Sōji Yoshikawa and written by Yoshikawa and cult pink film screenwriter Atsushi Yamatoya.

The movie has been criticised for it's story, particularly towards the end. Several companies have released the movie in North America and Europe, and three different english dubs have been produced. In 2013, North Americasn publisher Discotek Media released the movie on a DVD containing all three english dubs as well as extensive liner notes.

Plot

Inspector Zenigata investigates the execution of Arsene Lupin III, but discovers Lupin has used the dead body as a decoy. Lupin flees from the castle via hang glider. In an Egyptian pyramid, Lupin finds Philosopher's Stone with Daisuke Jigen, but they are discovered by Zenigata and the Egyptian police. Lupin escapes the pyramid corridors and Goemon Ishikawa XIII incapacitates the officers surrounding the pyramid. The three use Lupin's Mercedes-Benz SSK to flee from the pyramid.

After Lupin delivers the stone to his lover Fujiko Mine, Fujiko turns on Lupin and steals the stone. Lupin listens in on Fujiko to find out who asked for the Stone, only to discover that the Stone was a fake. Dissatisfied that Lupin had given him a fake, the contractor dispatches two of his henchmen to kill the thief. After Lupin and his gang defeat the henchmen, Frenchy destroys Lupin's car and his headquarters. Jigen and Goemon berate Lupin for being faithful to Fujiko until Lupin decides to leave Fujiko out. They travel toward the ocean to the desert where Lupin accidentally sets off one of Frenchy's booby traps before the group finds a house stocked with food and water. A seriously wounded Fujiko comes for Lupin and alienates Jigen and Goemon in the process. Fujiko inadvertently drugs Lupin to sleep and they are captured by Frenchy in his plane. Jigen and Goemon travel to Rome and discover a clue of Lupin's whereabouts, reading "WATER".

Jigen gets pursued by Agent Gordon. Surprised at first by Jigen's quick move to threaten him, Gordon manages to bring him and Goemon to Area 64 to be interviewed by Starky, an important government official from America. After listening to a tape of an interfered-with conversation between the secretary general and U.S. president Jimmy Carter, Starky asks for info on the man who broke into the conversation. Jigen hands Gordon the note and angers him by saying that if they knew what the note meant, they wouldn't be where they were. Starky decides that Jigen and Goemon knew nothing, releasing them for the sole purpose of using them to find the mystery man. The two know immediately because of spilled water, and the invisible ink is revealed to be "CARIB".

Meanwhile, on a Caribbean island, Lupin manages to find the mystery man, who reveals himself to be a dwarf named Howard Lockewood who refers to himself as Mamo. He offers Lupin eternal life, but Lupin refuses, saying that all he wants is the Philosopher's Stone. He then manages to find it as Jigen and Goemon head for the Caribbean island. Fujiko plays with Lupin awhile, but they are soon chased by thugs led by Frenchy, Lupin having discovered what Mamo's staff was planning to do with the Stone. Lupin and Fujiko end up in Mamo's lair, where he reveals that the island is inhabited by clones.

After Mamo deems Lupin unworthy of eternal life, Fujiko refuses to abandon Lupin even after Mamo reveals to her his dirty secrets. When Mamo tries to kill him, Lupin is rescued by Jigen, who puts a bullet in Mamo's head, and Goemon. They and Fujiko then get the hell out of Dodge, but not before Goemon engages in a final confrontation against Frenchy. When Goemon learns that even his Zantetsuken couldn't penetrate Frenchy's armor unless it had the intensity of a laser, he instead proceeds to cut Frenchy's face, much to the latter's shock. As Frenchy drops dead into the waters, Zantetsuken is detipped, much to Goemon's sorrow. As Lupin and his gang leave the island, they are chased by Zenigata, who chooses the wrong boat to go after them in.

Finding Zenigata on a beach, the Commissioner reveals that Zenigata has been removed from the Lupin case due to circumstances beyond their control. He encourages Zenigata to think of it as an opportunity to take a vacation, but Zenigata instead resigns from the police force and goes after Lupin on his own, deciding that the endgame will be in Colombia.

Meanwhile, Lupin and his gang (sans Goemon, who decided to train harder) are thrust into a vision by Mamo after tasting coffee laced with sedatives. Mamo reveals his hand in the history of the world and puts the gang back where he had left them after rearranging the room a bit, as Lupin correctly deduces. When Mamo shows up to reclaim Fujiko, Lupin dares him to prove himself a God by performing some kind of miracle and not one of those Las Vegas-style parlor tricks. Mamo responds by setting off several charges to simulate an earthquake, which registers on the Richter scale and alerts Gordon and Starky to where Mamo is located.

Lupin figures out what was behind that earthquake and sets off for the source, where he believes Mamo to be hiding. As Mamo convinces Fujiko to push a button to launch missiles, Lupin shows up as the snake to their Adam and Eve, revealing he rigged the missiles to blow up before they could launch. Frustrated, Mamo takes Fujiko with him to a rocket launching pad and tries fending Lupin off with lasers. Lupin uses the tip of Goemon's Zantetsuken to deflect the lasers onto Mamo and incinerate him, but not before Lupin learns from Mamo that he is the original Lupin and that it was the clone that swung in Transylvania. Lupin is sure that was the real Mamo until he discovers a chip hidden among the ashes.

The rocket emerges, containing a brain that reveals itself to be the original Mamo. Lupin figures out that Mamo had controlled the clones resembling his old body right before the rocket launches into space as Mamo declares he is setting off into space and eventually plans to return to Earth as its one true God. Lupin and Fujiko escape the rocket's trajectory, but not before Lupin puts an explosive onto the rocket. The glass shatters, and Mamo's gigantic brain drifts toward the sun as Lupin reminds Mamo that time does everyone in and that he should be grateful Lupin put him to death when he did. Fujiko reveals that Zenigata had threatened her into luring his quarry for the catch, and Lupin is unable to convince Zenigata that he is a clone and that the real Lupin was the one that was hanged. Fujiko offers to help Lupin after they kiss, but Gordon launches his missiles on Mamo's Colombian base, and Jigen picks up Fujiko in a plane while Zenigata and Lupin escape together on foot.

Production

The movie was produced while the second Lupin III series was broadcast. Due to an increased popularity of the first series, staff who worked on that series were assembled to work on the movie. Yasuo Otsuka, who was animation director and character designer on that series Supervised the movie. Soji Yoshikawa, who storyboarded the first and last episode of the first series was director. Tsutomu Shibayama, who had worked on the pilot film was responsible for layout. The music was composed by Yuji Ohno, who was the composer for the second series. The movie was given a budget of 500 million yen, comparable to major Live Action movies at the time. Production lasted for 15 months and involved 1,315 members of staff. The storyboard was 575 pages. 62,000 cel sheets were used in the animation, compared to 5,000 cels used in an average 30minute TV animation. Oversized cels were used in a process known as "Anime Vision" which allowed for a brighter and sharper picture for projection in theaters compared to TV orientated production. 18,000 reference images were used for background and mechanical research and 196 character drawings were created.

Mamo's name is taken from the villain Kyousuke Mamoh who had appeared in the manga and first tv series. Mamo's physical design was inspired by Paul Williams character in the 1974 Musical horror film Phantom of the Paradise and represents a monster who is both a boy and an old man at the same time.

Release

The movie was originally released in Japan on December 16, 1978 as Lupin III.

An English dubbed version of the film, commissioned by Toho, was produced by Frontier Enterprises around the same time. This dub, also titled Lupin III, was shown on JAL flights. It was also available from the Los Angeles branch of Toho for booking to play at local theatres. Notably, University of California, Berkeley was host to several showings. This dub has no credits for the voice cast and as such, the full cast is unknown. Many of the character's names were changed in the process. Anime Historian Carl Horn provided Yasuo Otsuka with a VHS copy of the dub in 1987.

In the mid 1980s, TMS re-titled the film in Japan to Lupin III: Lupin vs. the Clones. By this time, English-speaking fans had been referring to the film as The Mystery of Mamo, to distinguish it from the two TV series and The Castle of Cagliostro. When Streamline Pictures released the film on VHS in North America in 1995, they kept the title, despite discovering that the character's name was meant to be spelled Mamoux. The decision to keep the Mamo spelling was based on fan familiarity and a desire to avoid upsetting the fans by changing it. Image Entertainment later reissued the film on DVD in America, using the same dub and title, but without the original Japanese audio track.

The following year, the film was released on VHS in Britain and Australia by Manga Video as Secret of Mamo with a new dub adapted and directed by actor-director George Roubicek, the script of which was based on the Toho dub. Madman Entertainment later released the film on DVD in Australia in 2006, while Manga released a similar disc in Britain two years later. Both releases are modeled on the American DVD release by Geneon Entertainment, which will be discussed in the following paragraph.

On July 29, 2003, Geneon re-released the film on DVD in North America using a new Anamorphic print taken from the Japanese DVD. Another English dub was produced by Phuuz Entertainment, using the cast from the then-recent dub of the second TV series. In 2012, TMS Entertainment began streaming this dub on Hulu.

On February 26, 2013, Discotek Media released a new edition of the film on DVD in America. The release includes all four English dubs in addition to the original Japanese audio, as well as several essays and notes on the film.

A TV broadcast of the movie on March 28, 2014 on NTV attained an audience share of 11.2% in the Kantō region of Japan. It was the second highest share for a movie broadcast during that week.

Full cast

The cast for the Toho dub is still unknown, due to a lack of localisation credits on any known prints. It has been confirmed that Goemon and Zenigata were voiced by William Ross and Greg Starr, respectively, however.

Character	Original Japanese	English (Streamline)	English (Manga UK)	English (Geneon)
Arsène Lupin III/Wolf III	Yasuo Yamada	Bob Bergen	Bill Dufris	Tony Oliver
Fujiko Mine/Margot	Eiko Masuyama	Edie Mirman	Toni Barry	Michelle Ruff
Howard Lockewood/Foward Fughes (Mamo/Mameaux)	Kō Nishimura	Robert Axelrod	Allan Wenger	Paul St. Peter
Daisuke Jigen/Dan Dunn	Kiyoshi Kobayashi	Steve Bulen	Eric Meyers	Richard Epcar
Goemon Ishikawa XIII/Samurai	Makio Inoue	Kirk Thornton	Garrick Hagon	Lex Lang
Inspector Koichi Zenigata/Detective Ed Scott	Gorō Naya	David Povall	Sean Barrett	Dan Martin
Heinrich "Starky/Stuckey" Gissinger	Tōru Ōhira	Steve Kramer	unknown	Osgood W. Glick
Special Agent Gordon	Hidekatsu Shibata	Michael Forest	unknown	Michael McConnohie
Police commissioner	Kōsei Tomita	Jeff Winkless	unknown	Richard Cansino
Flinch/Frenchy	Shōzō Iizuka	unknown	unknown	Bob Papenbrook
Scientist	Ichirō Murakoshi	unknown	unknown	Richard Cansino
Dietman/Premier	Shunsuke Shima	unknown	unknown	Richard Cansino
Officer	Yūji Mikimoto	unknown	unknown	unknown
Egyptian police chief	Haruo Minami (Special Guest Voice)	Steve Kramer	unknown	Richard Cansino
President	Fujio Akatsuka (Special Guest Voice)	Steve Kramer	unknown	Richard Cansino
Boris (Chief secretary)	Ikki Kajiwara (Special Guest Voice)	Jeff Winkless	unknown	Richard Cansino

Reception

In his review for Mania.com, Chris Beverdige enjoyed the movie despite having previously disliked it on a previous viewing several years before. He attributes this to being more familiar with the characters through other entries in the Lupin III franchise. However, he criticised the final third of the movie for it's science fiction development as opposed to the good action and character development of the first two thirds of the movie. This criticism was shared in another review for Mania.com by John Erini except he felt the movie became unwatchable due to the development of the Mamo character.

Rob Lineberger writing for DVD Verdict also agrees with the criticism of the final third and despite repeated viewings felt no closer to understanding the events. Additionally he criticised the "lack of cohesion" and "an unbroken string of jump cuts and deux ex machinas". Reflecting on the positives of the movie, Lineberger highlights the characters of Jigen, Goemon and Fujiko as being more interesting than either Lupin or Mamo. He also credits the movie for tackling interesting concepts such as cloning, personal identity, love and honour despite the way they are presented. In summary he suggests that Lupin fans will find a more ambitious story than the Television episodes if they can accept some flaws. He recommends people who are not Lupin fans watch Castle of Cagliostro instead.

Darius Washington of The Fandom Post reviews the Discotek edition of the movie. He called the story "haphazard" due to a shifting focus and labelled the film as "a bit hard to get into". He praises the collection of "educational" extras and different english dubs on the Discotek release of the film. In conclusion Washington feels the release is more suited for learning about anime history than the entertainment value of the film itself. He gave the movie content a B rating and the extras an A+ rating.

External links

• Lupin III: The Secret of Mamo at IMDb
• LEP Lupin European Page
• Lupin III Encyclopedia