Lupin III: The Secret of Mamo

After watching my first Lupin III film about a week ago I was really excited to watch another. I have a number of Lupin II films and the series in my possession so it was more an issue at this point of deciding which one to watch. After about 30 minutes of deliberating I finally settle on Lupin III: The Secret of Mamo. To say the least, I was a little taken aback by this film. Having watched Lupin III: The Castle of Cogliostro first, my expectations were high. This film seemed very different from the other. The only thing that was really consistent was the fact that the characters had the same names and similar look.

Much of the animation style had changed between the two films. I found that the bright colors, bubbly drawing style, and special effects in this film made it more of a comical based film than a serious one. I couldn't help but feel that Lupin was being portrayed as a complete idiot through the whole film. The story line very different in the sense that it was a little more science fictional than Caslte of Cogliostro.

One of the strong points to this film though was that it raised a lot of interesting questions about the ideas of immortality and the importance of clones relative to the real thing. Ideas about superhuman powers, extreme intellect, and death were all brought up and touched upon. The best thing about this was that the writers were able to keep the comical nature of the film in tact without glazing over or making light of some of the serious themes that they had presented.

Although I was expecting something similar to Castle of Cogliostro when I chose to watch this film, I can say I was not disappointed with its differences. I will point out though that it was more of a film that you had to be in the mood to watch as it had a very different style of animation and theme development.