Anime Movie Rewind: Lupin the Third: Mystery of Mamo
Rewinding into the 1970s constrained what anime films I had ready to hand once more, but in being willing to watch something again I was able to open another Blu-Ray. It had been a while since I’d seen the first Lupin the Third movie to be animated, Mystery of Mamo, via Discotek’s previous DVD. I did, though, have the impression my reactions back then had been muted and polite; looking back I found the comment I’d made in a “quarterly review” had been rather brief. However, having dared to watch an anime title with its old dub a week ago did have me contemplating shaking things up the same way.
Discotek had made a point of including four different English dubs on its Blu-Ray. Just a little while ago I’d managed to read an old issue of a publication offering “English-translated manga news” from the early 1990s (a time of manga being mirrored to “read the way we do here” and metered out in black-and-white comic books) that had included comments on anime near the back. The reviewer had disliked every dub on the videotapes he’d mentioned (a sentiment familiar enough when I joined my university’s anime club a few years later, which helped set my preferences in an unfortunate way), but in complaining about Carl Macek’s Castle of Cagliostro dub he’d happened to be a bit more positive about a Mystery of Mamo dub. Checking the audio menu on the Blu-Ray I’d supposed the dub referred to had to be the one from the 1970s itself, well preceding those early anime-releasing companies with what I’ve supposed were shoestring budgets.
I’d understood some early English-language versions of Lupin the Third didn’t use the titular superthief’s real name out of uncertainty about the original Arsène Lupin stories not being in the public domain yet. This dub kept “Lupin,” but changed the Japanese names of his companions to Westernized ones, peculiar in an almost antique way. Inspector Zenigata becoming “Ed Scott” at least seemed almost consistent with the early subtitles Discotek had transcribed as an option on their Castle of Cagliostro Blu-Ray. I was willing to be positive about the voices myself despite some variance in that positivity; Lupin’s voice being one of the most impressive helped there. As for the movie itself, since seeing it for the first time I’d watched my way through the lengthy “Part Two” TV series produced around it; recognizing the theme and other musical cues perked me up in a small way. The theatrical character designs had more character to them than the TV designs, perhaps, and yet sometimes they didn’t look quite as appealing to me for some reason hard to articulate. There was more energy and impressiveness to the story starting off than I might have quite expected. My old feelings of uncertainty could have come from a lull in the plot after the first confrontation with Mamo. By the end of the movie, though, things did seem “big” in a way “fitting for the big screen.”
Discotek had made a point of including four different English dubs on its Blu-Ray. Just a little while ago I’d managed to read an old issue of a publication offering “English-translated manga news” from the early 1990s (a time of manga being mirrored to “read the way we do here” and metered out in black-and-white comic books) that had included comments on anime near the back. The reviewer had disliked every dub on the videotapes he’d mentioned (a sentiment familiar enough when I joined my university’s anime club a few years later, which helped set my preferences in an unfortunate way), but in complaining about Carl Macek’s Castle of Cagliostro dub he’d happened to be a bit more positive about a Mystery of Mamo dub. Checking the audio menu on the Blu-Ray I’d supposed the dub referred to had to be the one from the 1970s itself, well preceding those early anime-releasing companies with what I’ve supposed were shoestring budgets.
I’d understood some early English-language versions of Lupin the Third didn’t use the titular superthief’s real name out of uncertainty about the original Arsène Lupin stories not being in the public domain yet. This dub kept “Lupin,” but changed the Japanese names of his companions to Westernized ones, peculiar in an almost antique way. Inspector Zenigata becoming “Ed Scott” at least seemed almost consistent with the early subtitles Discotek had transcribed as an option on their Castle of Cagliostro Blu-Ray. I was willing to be positive about the voices myself despite some variance in that positivity; Lupin’s voice being one of the most impressive helped there. As for the movie itself, since seeing it for the first time I’d watched my way through the lengthy “Part Two” TV series produced around it; recognizing the theme and other musical cues perked me up in a small way. The theatrical character designs had more character to them than the TV designs, perhaps, and yet sometimes they didn’t look quite as appealing to me for some reason hard to articulate. There was more energy and impressiveness to the story starting off than I might have quite expected. My old feelings of uncertainty could have come from a lull in the plot after the first confrontation with Mamo. By the end of the movie, though, things did seem “big” in a way “fitting for the big screen.”