PHENOMENALITY: *uncanny*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*
This movie-length TV special probably has too many irons in the fire to be anyone's favorite Lupin story, but at least there's always some subplot keeping things interesting. The comedic nature of the narrative is not as goony as in many other Lupins, but it is one of the few tales I've seen where Inspector Zenigata is obliged to team up with the Lupin Gang from start to finish-- and that alone provides a sizeable comic reversal.
Lupin and Jigen encounter a drunken Zenigata, who complains that after twenty years of his failures to catch the rascally robbers, Zenigata has been dismissed from the Lupin Task Force. The inspector's place has been taken by the presumably American "maverick cop" Keith Hayden, and Jigen opines that Hayden has a rep for not bringing his quarries back alive. Lupin sympathizes with his old foe, but sees criminal opportunity when Zenigata mentions his new assignment, to take down a major weapons-smuggling operation. Lupin decides to destroy the weapons-group both to burnish Zenigata's reputation and to rip off the organization's cache of money. Goemon and Fujiko join Lupin's new gambit, and the script-- allegedly based on a TV-show episode-- totally misses the comic opportunities inherent in having Zenigata interact with the four heist-artists he's so long pursued. In addition, Zenigata doesn't seem too worried as to what might befall his reputation if anyone saw him palling around with four major wanted criminals.
Lupin decides to hijack a warhead-equipped nuclear submarine, for which he needs some outside help. He kidnaps Russian nuclear physicist Karen Korinsky-- though, to be sure, he also liberates her from other kidnappers first. These rival criminals will turn out to be allies of the weapons-smugglers, whose boss had intended to use Karen for the same purpose as Lupin: to pilot the nuclear sub.
Karen is swept along in the Lupin Gang's daredevil heist, but she seems less concerned with her abduction and more with Jigen. Is it love in bloom? Ah. no, it's vengeance, for ten years ago, Karen saw Jigen kill her father, and though Jigen saw Karen she was still a kid back then, which is why he didn't recognize her as an adult. There is of course A Big Explanation, and I'm not giving away anything to say that naturally gentleman-thief Jigen isn't guilty of literal murder. But Karen's ambivalence toward the master gunman supplies the best conflict in the story.
One John Clause, boss of the weapons-smugglers, invites Lupin to bring his nuclear sub to a rendezvous-point, and the Gang begins its machinations to steal Clause's riches. Fujiko works her seduction-magic on Clause, but the ruthless arms-dealer is never really fooled by Lupin, but wants the whole gang to work for him. Lupin of course doesn't have any interest in profiting from the sale of arms, only from ripping off arms-dealers, and so there are assorted back-and-forth struggles. One of the weakest involves Keith Hayden overtaking the Lupin Gang, at which point he's revealed to be a corrupt cop working for Clause. (This indirectly implicates the official who assigns Hayden to chase Lupin with the interests of the arms-smuggler-- an occasional theme in various LUPIN stories, where such high officials are often more corrupt than honest crooks.)
The biggest dramatic wastes-of-space are two distinct incidents in which members of the Lupin Gang-- specifically Goemon and Jigen-- appear to get killed. I doubt any viewer of DANGER believed that either popular character would die at all, much less in a TV special, so these are the least interesting incidents in the story. There's not much humor, the action-scenes are efficient but unmemorable, and both Clause and Hayden are picayune opponents. Probably the most eyebrow-raising sequence involves Goemon facing the oncoming car of Karen's other kidnappers and using his trusty sword to split the automobile into four equal sections. Fujiko then gets her only battle-moment, motorcycling up to nab Karen while using a machine-pistol to fend off the crooks. In addition to Goemon's sword-tricks, Lupin uses a few low-tech gadgets like exploding bubble gum and a sleep-spray, while the theft of the nuclear submarine certainly qualifies for an uncanny form of "bizarre crime."
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