Chasing Cagliostro: Putting the specials to rest

How nice is Lupin? It depends on the incarnation, but even in the harder-edged start of the animated series the soundtrack intoned, “He’s a nice man…but he gets angry, sometimes.” He’s definitely gotten nicer over the years, to the point where recent series make him out to be a born hero, with a selflessness not always comporting with his profession. However nice Lupin may naturally be it’s always good to give him some motivation.

Although The Castle of Cagliostro is sometimes knocked by more hardcore Lupin fans for its tone, Lupin’s still motivated by, in part, by his respect and sense of debt for Clarisse. Lupin’s characterized as pretty easygoing and ethical in Operation Return the Treasure but he still has a motivation for his various good deeds: respect for the memory of his older, now-deceased colleague, Mark Williams (the Lupin franchise loves its generic Anglophone names).

Williams was the sort of thief that would drive “nice guy” Lupin’s detractors insane. The monetary value of his loot was of little importance. Rather he mostly was after items based on their entertainment value: seats from Babe Ruth-era Yankee Stadium, the Bocca della Verità featured in Roman Holiday, Donald Trump’s toilet paper (joke hits kind of different now), etc. Mark’s will states that Lupin will get a valuable diamond, called the Trick Diamond, if he successfully returns Mark’s loot to their rightful places (toilet paper not among them, thankfully).

Lupin returns these with varying degrees of ingenuity, with Zenigata and Russian mobsters in pursuit. It’s a good special for Zenigata. Despite tendency towards the emotional he’s still super-competent, able to anticipate Lupin’s moves; the slapstick is of a higher, literally Keatonesque caliber too.

Around the halfway point Lupin ultimately does get the Trick Diamond (as if there were ever any doubt) and we find its Trick—it stores light in its crystal rather than transmitting it through. This is one to return as well, but with a more highbrow pedigree—it belongs at the apex of Antoni Gaudí’s Sagrada Família in Madrid. Williams had some highbrow tastes, too.

The second half succeeds due to its specificity. It’s some of the most thorough Lupin tourism, with the requisite one-shot ingénue luckily minimized to essentially a tour. In fact when the second half drags it’s when we’re not on the guided tour. The action-filled finale is fine, using the cranes and ornaments effectively (Fujiko spiking the diamond from the floor of the cathedral to the apex is a bit much, though) and provides a nice, if un-foreshadowd, character moment for our otherwise generic villains.

As befits Mark’s approach—now expressing a more sophisticated sentimentality—placing the diamond in the tower leads to a treasure that’s both beautiful and ephemeral. The public-spirited, architecturally-driven payoff in some resembles Cagliostro’s, a gift for human heritage beyond what one thief can take

Recommended, just
This is somewhat to my own surprise. I and went in with low expectations, and it does share many of the specials’ typical clichés and pacing problems (particularly in the second half), particularly in the second half. Still, I ended up liking it. Someone on the creative team’s personality and interests make this above a cut above the typical assembly-line specials.

Stray observation
• The implications of this Trick Diamond’s role in the finale are wisely ignored—they just raise questions (big ones) this special isn’t equipped to handle.
• The special implies that classical—and particularly baroque—has a special, literally universal appeal. This is not a special for David Byrne, a vocal opponent of this sort of treatment of classical music, and baroque in particular.


Prison of the Past
As far as I know, this is the end of the line for the Lupin III TV specials: 27 over thirty years, from Bye Bye Lady Liberty in 1989 to this special, Prison of the Past, in 2019. While they kept the franchise alive during periods unable to support a TV show—and during the Lupin TV renaissance beginning with The Woman Named Fujiko Mine provided a product for more conservative fans—there’s just enough going on with Lupin for them to not be necessary anymore. Lupin finally put away red jacket.

Despite the jacket color, though, Prison of the Past seems to owe the most to The Castle of Cagliostro, itself intended to be a capstone for the franchise. We get a bright, Mediterranean setting with a big architectural feature on the water. Admittedly these sorts of settings aren’t unique to Cagliostro, and the prison is a unique structure, a massive stone goblet with slabs of solid rock jutting out. These jut inside when the villain enacts his scheme, trapping and disorienting our heroes.

The big central action scene, roughly at the halfway point, is exciting-our heroes are placed on opposite ends of the open cavern of a prison yard, finding themselves variously in unique pairings or on their own, having to coordinate cross-yard in a three-dimensional fight. It’s exciting and new. In that it stands alone in the special

For all the spatial ingenuity of our antagonists their business is a villainy Lupin’s faced countless times before, international arms dealing. Who’s going to take a stand against it? The prison’s chief of security, Lorensa, makes a sudden turn for the good as it’s revealed she’s the fiance of the missing rightful prince. This all seems quite familiar.

Prison of the Past doesn’t feel like a variation on the theme but the same melody on different instruments. The effect is different but we get some of the mammoth antique gear-and-pulley dynamic Miyazaki did so well. We get a fan-driven version of his autogyro. It’s most blatant with the automobiles: rather than his yellow Mercedes Lupin drives a yellow Lotus Seven; instead of Fiat 500s we get Heinkel Kabines, obscure German minicars from the same time period. Granted, we do get an unusual chase as the Heinkel travel on rails over water, but the so odd that it feels like they were really straining for something new—damned when they try for novelty, damned when they don’t.

What truly sinks Prison is the lack of internal or thematic drive. The newest English subtitles reveal Cagliostro goes hard. Clarisse is the descendent of the barbarians that destroyed the Roman Empire; her blood is described as tainted. Lupin’s more immediate aims—getting back at a counterfeiter and some mix of paternal obligation and sexual competition—set a machine in motion (ultimately in a literal sense) that leads to her atonement with Roman civilization. However bucolic the setting Cagliostro is not a fairy tale.

Prison of the Past is, though. There’s nothing to it beyond “the prince and princess belong together,” no reason why they have legitimacy besides they’re kind of nice, and no reason for Lupin to be involved beyond liking to help pretty girls. Who cares?

The unintentional double meaning of the title is so obvious it’s barely worth noting. I have no idea whether they knew this was going to be the final (to my knowledge) special, but Prison of the Past drowns in nostalgia. It’s also a nostalgia without feeling.

Not recommended.
While it’s still crafted well, paced better than many of the specials, keeps one’s attention, and has a lot of good moments, the end just can’t outpace its trite and derivative attempt at nostalgia. In terms of runtime it’s half a good, maybe even superior, special. That other half is atrocious, though, and by the end you’re just left with a weary feeling.

Stray observation
• Although he has his fans Detective Yata, Zenigata’s junior partner/minder, is just a complete nonentity to me. I thought he was introduced in Part VI, only to see that they also gave Zenigata a junior partner in Part V, who was in fact Yata. He shows up here and I wondered when he first appeared again and saw it was, again, Part V. He appears often enough to essentially be a sixth member of the main case and I just can’t remember he exists!

but

He is used well here. Though he appears a bit younger can be a bit overeager relative to his other appearances (or maybe he wasn’t and I’m mistaking my blank memory for a more subdued personality) he’s useful not just as another body in acting sequences but as a sounding board for Zenigata, especially since he’s become a more serious character over the past decade. By having someone to talk to Zenigata’s able to demonstrate more of his intelligence; having someone to mentor gives Zenigata’s experience a value that’s missing when he’s played the buffoon.