Reviews for Lupin III: Prison of the Past

I've watched all Lupin III's seasons and a lot of the movies. This film felt like a parody of Lupin's 50 year legacy and I'll explain why in this review. Animation: clean, colourful and with the old school charm that is part of Lupin III's iconic visuals. However, at the end of the movie, it was quite inconsistent. Sound: 1) Lupin III's iconic theme song was ruined by some dodgy lyrics and vocals. For 50 years, the instrumental has been a constant presence in every episode, movie, OVA, special. Yet, for some odd reason, this movie wanted it to be different and it was justawful. There's a saying that goes "if it ain't broken, don't fix it" and it fits perfectly here.

2) "Super Hero"'s version for this movie had terrible vocals. Again. if it ain't broken, don't fix it.

Story and characters:

1) this film is more cartoon-like in terms of comedy and action and I feel that this new approach didn't help the level of enjoyment at all because it's just not Lupin III's style.

2) Lupin's gang and Zenigata and his assistant felt like parodies of themselves: Zenigata is never really focused on arresting Lupin, Lupin doesn't act as expected towards Fujiko, ... just to give a few examples.

3) the story feels rushed and many events make no sense whatsoever.

4) SPOILER: in every Lupin's story there's always a girl/woman that happens to pretty and they need help. I would love to see some creativy story-wise because it just gets old and too predictable for it to be enjoyable.

Overall, because the story is poorly executed and the characters don't feel like their real selves and also because the iconic soundtrack got butchered, I have to rate this film a 3/10.

I LOVE Lupin III and I really appreciate that they used red Jacket Lupin! This special is really fun and nostalgic. Within the first opening scene they used the Lupin III theme with vocals and it was truly music to my ears. ART 10/10 I think the art style is really crisp and clean for 2019. Although I’ll always love the classic Lupin artstyle I quite like this new modern art style too! I guess it’s important to realise that anime is changing and so will old art styles. It’s good to appreciate both! MUSIC 10/10 I always love Lupin III soundtrack. Love going on a driveand putting the OSTS on. I definitely downloaded the remastered vocal version and played it a couple of times and many of the other tracks from this special.

STORY 8/10

It’s quite a good story but there definitely has been some more outstanding storylines within the Lupin III series. I really enjoyed that they maintained the personalities of the characters especially Goemon when he is a bit moody haha. I guess I am quite open minded and mostly appreciate the overall of the special but it’s quite enjoyable and worth a watch!

CHARACTER 10/10

What can I say? I love all the characters and they were well maintained! I love how they were shown

Overall

I loved this special and I look forward to more in the future. Lupin III is a series getting recognised more world widely instead of just Japan and I hope it continues. The special was very enjoyable and nostalgic. Give it a watch!

WARNING: WILL TALK ABOUT SPOILERS 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 haveat 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.

There once was a man named Hector Finnegan, who was a legendary thief. He is sentenced to death. But before they can hang him from the gallows, thieves from all over the world set a course to the prison. In hopes of saving Finnegan so he can lead them to his treasure. Makes you think of Gold Roger doesn’t it? 🤔 But there is much more going on here. Twist and turns. Its another one of those Lupin has to save a kingdom type movies. I like Fujiko in this. Greedy as always. Fujiko is a character who can be made as very likeable or detestable depending on thewriter.

Zenigata also gets to show just how skillful he actually is. And how much he actually adores Lupin. He might not be able to catch Lupin. But he may be the world’s greatest cop.

[THIS WAS WRITTEN RIGHT AFTER WATCHING IT AND ON MY SOCIAL MEDIA ACC. KEEPING THIS HERE FOR AN ARCHIVE] PRISON OF THE PAST DONE 🤩🤩🤩 IT WAS SO GOOOOOD OMG The plot was kinda lame and been there done that but had some small slivers of something that could’ve been much deeper but like usual w this kinda shit they never actually MAKE ANY USE OF ANYTHING HANDED TO THEM. THEY SPRINKLE IT AND GIVE HINTS AT IF AND JUST LEAVE IT LIKE THAT. PLEASE GUYS JUST FUCKING. USE THE MATERIAL. But other than that the character moments were so good and funny and the dub cast soundedlike they had a good time recording it :D in terms of the dub script I’m still miffed modern lupin dubs never do anything fun anymore, but this one really had that bang zoom way too true to the source material vibe like anyone who wasn’t in the main loop gang sounded so stilted and stiff which was sad. The bang zoom curse has poisoned lupin now too 💔 hopefully whatever they dub next will be more loose and goofy

I now realize everything I’ve said so far has been negatives. BUT THE MOVIE WAS SO MUCH FUN I WAS SMILING THE WHOLE TIME. I ALSO noticed the character designer for part 6 also did the designs for this movie which was fun to see!!!! I like how they make lupin look a lot older w the wrinkles, makes it feel like he’s actually aging in some way. Also his mouth is constantly going :3 which is obviously another big plus. Soundtrack wise this movie has to be like one of my favorites ever omg yuji ohno fuckinv does it again!!! This time most of the ost was remixes of old songs which was really fun given that the name of the movie is “prison of the past”. I heard Manhattan joke, superhero, gift, and there’s probably a lot more I just never noticed was playing. In terms of remixes this one is definitely the best hands down.

Anyway prison of the past was so much fun I loved it a lot even if parts of it were a little bit on the blander side

I give it B/C rating