LUPIN III: THE ELUSIVENESS OF THE FOG (2007)

 

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *poor*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *comedy*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTION: *sociological*

One good thing about ELUSIVENESS OF THE FOG is that this TV special proves that LUPIN III just doesn't belong in pure science-fiction situations.

All four members of the Lupin Gang are engrossed in another heist when once more Zenigata shows up with Interpol forces. Fujiko goes off in one direction while the three males take off in another, with Zenigata in hot pursuit. Then a new player, name of Kyousuke Mamoh, opens a time portal that sends Lupin, Goemon and Jigen back to medieval Japan, with Zenigata accidentally pulled along for the ride.

Zenigata ends up having little to do with the story, spending most of his time in a feudal-era lockup. The three super-thieves are greatly confused, not least because they get dropped into a city under siege by a rival city. The respective rulers, Queen Iseka and Prince Ethica, are really decent types, but Iseka's land possesses a magical flame-tower that gives her people heat in winter, and Ethica's people want that power. 

Fortunately Mamoh, a time traveler from a far future era, provides the gentleman crooks with exposition, telling that he's doomed them to perish in an era not their own. His motive is perhaps overly comical: in his own time Mamoh lost his best girlfriend to a descendant of Lupin, so the time-traveler quixotically decided to take vengeance on 21st-century Lupin. 

Or is that the only reason? Mamoh ought to just boogie back to his future world, but he keeps monitoring the Lupin Gang for reasons that the script doesn't explain adequately. Thanks to making some feudal-era allies-- Takaya, a young kid seeking revenge, and Ofumi, a dead ringer/ancestress of Fujiko-- the crooks learn of a prophecy about a treasure that might have the power to return them to their own time. So the quest for this treasure tasks the cleverness of Lupin, the gun-skills of Jigen and the uncanny sword-skill of Goemon. And there's some suggestion that Mamoh wants the treasure too, though it's not clear if he knew about the prophecy when he sent his foes back to this particular time.

The revelations about the treasure involve some sizable time-paradoxes, which depend in part on Mamoh continuing to hang around. So the fittingly named FOG devolves into a morass of meandering coincidences, all of which will of course lead the crooks and their cop-enemy back to the 21st century in the end. The stunts and the comic bits are ordinary at best, though I liked Ofumi, who's more kick-ass than Fujiko usually is (albeit not as amply endowed). So this FOG would be easy to dispel from one's list of good Lupin movies.