Post by Jean-Luc Lemur on Nov 27, 2015 1:13:48 GMT -5
Voyage to Danger
![](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/DQEgNn6aucp7jS3gChMEoLV5WWal0y4eOq1lw1Z5S4AwzWrq-UlEvxC8oOSFtnBeuX4MSzScPTyhyMCyYc85aFlsOfA_iNXKNFwCyChdzBwPDOO9Pn-OyRBHEHWhEVdbuLGxMvEW0ctfjKbe-5jKcbOeKvgdjhfDj-AKCJQ-NQAPltEKosiDrZP3AcF9ycidm8Xqw_9VgouqO-qJYe1yUZZ7pUHUpAFetSRlLW4kLvnzW8B7obMjVnMExCClqgjMu95qABQ8BtT_F7gHkH3mzx2KF79WZCksa5X3IK9lT5-h3cWmrBOkGU3tq8W9SialDu6rzen89mch_-VRf-DkHdMylHfcqI0O_CaQqX_9Cp6lJ7dpUQN4dput9rkCLEzlvUJm4NiSqjW6hgtvsiarPjzSx8MGThNVyf11k7txUoj2p-jqmJvkllWqfUuD3tPBolGcI9K_PTLivnwwJwV-JWh1dt404oFlwcaWRbMQw685DiWd41HoXJFECx9VTeqJXHwdI2q2YjrmmECcy2JoZmNnoftLAcPEz0FeR5AQLkw=w516-h345-no)
Although it would seem as if Dezaki Osamu had hit a winning formula with Bye Bye Liberty Crisis, the television specials quickly hit the point of diminishing returns (both visually and narratively), and by the fifth special Dezaki was sacked and replaced by the man who helped originate television Lupin: Ōsumi Masaaki. Over twenty years after being sacked for pushing the series in too adult a direction, he was brought back to restore some maturity to the franchise with Voyage to Danger.
Although currently in video limbo, Voyage to Danger was enough of a success to spawn another twenty years’ worth of specials; it also has a slightly more international reach, having been exported to Europe to be aired as a short prime-time series (my first results in looking for the DVD were in German). Yet Ōsumi did not return to Lupin again, and in many ways Voyage to Danger stands alone among the Lupin television specials. There’s no real caper here and no fantastic mystery. Voyage to Danger is more deliberate and more grounded, with a pulpy emotional core. Much like the original series, the aim was to bring Lupin into something like the real world, keeping the flexibility of animation but dialing back the cartoonishness.
The world of Voyage to Danger is rendered with care, less of a cartoon and more of an illustration. It’s not a great film for car or train spotting, but the ocean-going hulks that make up the bulk of this film’s machinery look convincing to my untrained eye. The guests are understated but expressive. The arms merchant Jean Claude, the film’s villain, has a boyish face that erupts into wrinkles whenever he smiles, effectively demonstrating his moral stuntedness. Karen Korinsky, the film’s leading (non-Fujiko) lady, is often depicted with deep shadows across her longish face, allowing her to look young and weary at once (I’m generally not one to make direct links between faces, emotional states, and nationalities, but something about Karen really does seem very Russian).
Accordingly the leads have been redesigned again, bringing them closer to the Green Jacket models without going quite all the way (Lupin’s still a bit bow-legged, still a bit bow-legged, for instance, and of course the jacket remains red). Yet the somewhat smoother, more naturalistic character design also cuts against the direction of the story—Lupin doesn’t necessarily look the experienced thief that he is in the story, and Jigen looks just like someone with sharp cheekbones, not a grizzled assassin. Yet the sense that Lupin and company have been doing this for a long time—perhaps too long—seeps through the story, fittingly given Ōsumi’s long absence from the franchise, Indeed, it opens with a raid by Zenigata, but rather than arresting Lupin he announces he’s been taken off the case, proceeding to get sauced. They’ve been at this for years, and at least in the ICPO’s eyes Zenigata’s time ran out (and it’s Zenigata’s new orders to get Claude that spark the plot into motion).
![](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/AFF2daReXV9F53qOazm5u7_ebQ-EucMqIYQAc7lnAagXUhddplTwOZOJF2hayVvbVyyT5pSYhL5u4zHGPDiVzrg4UQy77p0jHNWOU1ZwYf_RnzZl7o8x5JXtzCyFXy-lBFDEHtRjvNmuly_PGMGzz23Vhhg8FSy_r4BePmhj1r-QMmsndtXMSY7ZN9xg7d44l1AmqRsfIC1vQmbXSOG8aMWxVVpa6_Aq4UOYq1Uv62qPiQYkqK6NqcUf46hvYcqmR11tDR5vl5Jm8Rs5Ww7eP_SVcJZqbw_pkSqVd6Bd-cvALXFRPlaVFPIaJ6gblAcTAANlhP9o4QJTnUAZKJHUnpHZz6geReVfYqKIVRUZvaP1PsKalyk4d-AFwqcvdbHHZykKDJp_QRHycmK9yUyWpYsPmmuj_0Y_Se26xWMAAW-RLRgHTLziXb-gxZFxwOM954aku721He7o48qoPICiYzl0uqD78hL0wAHvZghZG9a7TY2V1aff4Pb1s1SKPuTYkcFsGrPzZdXwB03DT1b_7plI6pVnJDUb7zhPAXDGpdk=w982-h651-no)
Jigen’s past also comes back to haunt him—although it initially seems as if Jigen’s getting a budding romance, it turns out that Karen’s the daughter of one of Jigen’s kills. It not only makes the interaction between the two characters more ambiguous and interesting, but also serves as a reminder that this is a dangerous business in which people—bystanders—come to harm, physically or emotionally. It’s the heaviest Lupin’s gotten since “An Assassin Sings the Blues,” and it’s a welcome change of pace from yet another light, humorous adventure.
Lupin also starts work for Claude under the pretense that he needs to build up a nest egg for retirement. Once again this installment of Lupin has no treasure—he follows Monkey Punch’s description almost to the letter, telling Claude, “That for us thievery is an art.” Yet in Voyage to Danger they’ve refined it to such a degree that they can steal Russian submarine after Russian submarine. These thefts—and the theft of Claude’s cash—aren’t really the driving forces of the story. The main aim is to bring Claude down. It’s a return to those early episodes of Lupin III, where Lupin served mainly as a challenger or revenger to other underworld figures. And, like those early episodes, we get a pyrotechnic finale.
Taking down an evil outside organization, spending much of his time sneaking around, Russian subs…this is certainly the most Bondian of all the Lupin films. In its depiction of post-Soviet decay and arms trade it anticipates the Brosnan films (with Karen being a far more convincing nuclear physicist than Denise Richards’s nucular one). To some degree this Bond-ness is Voyage to Danger’s Achilles heel: aside from some jokiness it’s more a straightforward pulp thriller, which may be why the film has comparatively low standing among Anglophone fans.
Lupin’s far more comfortable in the post-Soviet world than Bond. For one thing Lupin’s always dealt more with groups in the shadows than nation-states. While he served as a counterpoint to Cold War military and economic conflicts in The Mystery of Mamo and The Castle of Cagliostro, respectively, Lupin also tackled what we’d now call “the democratization of violence” multiple times throughout the series, most notably by preventing drone warfare from spreading through the underworld in “Farewell, My Beloved Lupin.” Bringing Lupin into the nineties, with its decentralized political power, globalization of risk, and increased number of niches out of law’s way, proved easier than bringing him into the eighties.
Recommended?
Yes, definitely—Voyage to Danger (mostly) effectively brought Lupin into the nineties and is a nice send-off for Ōsumi Masaaki. It never quire captures the energy of those early episodes, but it’s good pulp.
Stray Observations
![](https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/ULSPE9Y68eTNFGDAZh4Bjhdt2_24Re38g7dEJQC2P2nZBQ_ucr4eNKv3CnunWSiQwcbzB6IkSRK98_rWDL52IdLm7QHq3prn-wPUFONDYB4K0_rP2G8kltenWLNb0k07gjl96HXziuTXH7TgfWPI_eH3jCHY0YG6YlAIPjfUOtTcYqlumXjbwwObe6i0iu-hoy4YKGJ15Pg2Cq7ssiCrd61vE7fZHSG03bVGk3GyJZvUWSP2168Qnm4UfEpWRF4pokN1239vSn5eEYa2-ZYvk7BzlHogJy0KQez6Dd_MmqJPZoDZjUbczCnCWSmluoul4Ki0Prowk-lscrSM0pRJ7YmvrAh-ng_-cLs5RuYYdBfOwjzMdZ96z-dQpXVwnid1c_CFsGIyXch2-6li68AK6_1V7KRUNXze5zHqJBM7wbvlWAD6aFcuTvVk5rEsrApDwAwxboAc0OoJ5CKfUmqplLQxDDQOoCh7CTnLEBk-YjmBdjsoeH_jF8p8ZPLM87a_qxSniK9xdJ4AdxHCLgKUFDVjzMt4LJ4IhnfOhZl8v0Y=w968-h651-no)
• We get some odd sartorial choices here—Lupin wears a one-piece swimsuit and Fujiko spends a portion of the film dressed like Daisy Duke (and not as part of some kind of ruse).
• Much criticism’s been made over how Zenigata’s role in the plot—he ends up, essentially, part of the Lupin gang for the episode. I think this was more a result of the yearly specials having to include everyone than anything else—were this an episode or arc I’m fairly certain Zenigata and Goemon would have been left out entirely (as often happened in the original show, and—aside from cameos—was done by the last of the special [depending on how you count], Jigen’s Gravestone).
• Ohno Yuji provides good work, as usual—who else could make score an exploding ship with smooth jazz and make it work?
Next week I will not be adding my own screencaps to The Mystery of Mamo and appending a quick review of its soundtrack, which I recently stumbled upon by accident.
Although it would seem as if Dezaki Osamu had hit a winning formula with Bye Bye Liberty Crisis, the television specials quickly hit the point of diminishing returns (both visually and narratively), and by the fifth special Dezaki was sacked and replaced by the man who helped originate television Lupin: Ōsumi Masaaki. Over twenty years after being sacked for pushing the series in too adult a direction, he was brought back to restore some maturity to the franchise with Voyage to Danger.
Although currently in video limbo, Voyage to Danger was enough of a success to spawn another twenty years’ worth of specials; it also has a slightly more international reach, having been exported to Europe to be aired as a short prime-time series (my first results in looking for the DVD were in German). Yet Ōsumi did not return to Lupin again, and in many ways Voyage to Danger stands alone among the Lupin television specials. There’s no real caper here and no fantastic mystery. Voyage to Danger is more deliberate and more grounded, with a pulpy emotional core. Much like the original series, the aim was to bring Lupin into something like the real world, keeping the flexibility of animation but dialing back the cartoonishness.
The world of Voyage to Danger is rendered with care, less of a cartoon and more of an illustration. It’s not a great film for car or train spotting, but the ocean-going hulks that make up the bulk of this film’s machinery look convincing to my untrained eye. The guests are understated but expressive. The arms merchant Jean Claude, the film’s villain, has a boyish face that erupts into wrinkles whenever he smiles, effectively demonstrating his moral stuntedness. Karen Korinsky, the film’s leading (non-Fujiko) lady, is often depicted with deep shadows across her longish face, allowing her to look young and weary at once (I’m generally not one to make direct links between faces, emotional states, and nationalities, but something about Karen really does seem very Russian).
Accordingly the leads have been redesigned again, bringing them closer to the Green Jacket models without going quite all the way (Lupin’s still a bit bow-legged, still a bit bow-legged, for instance, and of course the jacket remains red). Yet the somewhat smoother, more naturalistic character design also cuts against the direction of the story—Lupin doesn’t necessarily look the experienced thief that he is in the story, and Jigen looks just like someone with sharp cheekbones, not a grizzled assassin. Yet the sense that Lupin and company have been doing this for a long time—perhaps too long—seeps through the story, fittingly given Ōsumi’s long absence from the franchise, Indeed, it opens with a raid by Zenigata, but rather than arresting Lupin he announces he’s been taken off the case, proceeding to get sauced. They’ve been at this for years, and at least in the ICPO’s eyes Zenigata’s time ran out (and it’s Zenigata’s new orders to get Claude that spark the plot into motion).
Jigen’s past also comes back to haunt him—although it initially seems as if Jigen’s getting a budding romance, it turns out that Karen’s the daughter of one of Jigen’s kills. It not only makes the interaction between the two characters more ambiguous and interesting, but also serves as a reminder that this is a dangerous business in which people—bystanders—come to harm, physically or emotionally. It’s the heaviest Lupin’s gotten since “An Assassin Sings the Blues,” and it’s a welcome change of pace from yet another light, humorous adventure.
Lupin also starts work for Claude under the pretense that he needs to build up a nest egg for retirement. Once again this installment of Lupin has no treasure—he follows Monkey Punch’s description almost to the letter, telling Claude, “That for us thievery is an art.” Yet in Voyage to Danger they’ve refined it to such a degree that they can steal Russian submarine after Russian submarine. These thefts—and the theft of Claude’s cash—aren’t really the driving forces of the story. The main aim is to bring Claude down. It’s a return to those early episodes of Lupin III, where Lupin served mainly as a challenger or revenger to other underworld figures. And, like those early episodes, we get a pyrotechnic finale.
Taking down an evil outside organization, spending much of his time sneaking around, Russian subs…this is certainly the most Bondian of all the Lupin films. In its depiction of post-Soviet decay and arms trade it anticipates the Brosnan films (with Karen being a far more convincing nuclear physicist than Denise Richards’s nucular one). To some degree this Bond-ness is Voyage to Danger’s Achilles heel: aside from some jokiness it’s more a straightforward pulp thriller, which may be why the film has comparatively low standing among Anglophone fans.
Lupin’s far more comfortable in the post-Soviet world than Bond. For one thing Lupin’s always dealt more with groups in the shadows than nation-states. While he served as a counterpoint to Cold War military and economic conflicts in The Mystery of Mamo and The Castle of Cagliostro, respectively, Lupin also tackled what we’d now call “the democratization of violence” multiple times throughout the series, most notably by preventing drone warfare from spreading through the underworld in “Farewell, My Beloved Lupin.” Bringing Lupin into the nineties, with its decentralized political power, globalization of risk, and increased number of niches out of law’s way, proved easier than bringing him into the eighties.
Recommended?
Yes, definitely—Voyage to Danger (mostly) effectively brought Lupin into the nineties and is a nice send-off for Ōsumi Masaaki. It never quire captures the energy of those early episodes, but it’s good pulp.
Stray Observations
• We get some odd sartorial choices here—Lupin wears a one-piece swimsuit and Fujiko spends a portion of the film dressed like Daisy Duke (and not as part of some kind of ruse).
• Much criticism’s been made over how Zenigata’s role in the plot—he ends up, essentially, part of the Lupin gang for the episode. I think this was more a result of the yearly specials having to include everyone than anything else—were this an episode or arc I’m fairly certain Zenigata and Goemon would have been left out entirely (as often happened in the original show, and—aside from cameos—was done by the last of the special [depending on how you count], Jigen’s Gravestone).
• Ohno Yuji provides good work, as usual—who else could make score an exploding ship with smooth jazz and make it work?
Next week I will not be adding my own screencaps to The Mystery of Mamo and appending a quick review of its soundtrack, which I recently stumbled upon by accident.