Lupin III: Voyage To Danger Funimation 90 minutes English/Japanese English Subtitles 05/20/2003

I think I've led you guys on, dear audience. Though I guess I've never explicitly said anything on the matter, I feel it's my time to come clean about certain things. Although I am a fan of the exploits of Monkey Punch's wonderful quartet of eccentric thieves, I'm not as familiar with the Lupin canon as I possible could be. Everyone and their mother has seen Cagliostro and I've caught more than my fair share of the TV show's episodes through various sources, I've flipped through the manga at Barnes and Nobles or Borders** and I've pawed lustily over the Tales of the Wolf VHS that's been sitting in my local video store for about ten years now. I've done all these things, sure, but I don't think that really gives me the right to call myself a fan in any sense of the word. So here I am, begging for penance from you for a crime I only peripherally committed.

I know. I'm all crazy like that, but there's a reason for everything, right? Voyage to Danger features a very different Fujiko than I'm used to seeing. Consider that I haven't seen many of the movies and you'll understand my trepidation. Does she always look like this? I'd doubt it... but I just can't know for sure. All I know is this isn't the 70s style Fujiko I'm used to seeing in the TV show et al. While all the characters have gotten a bit of a tune up in regards to animation, Fujiko has underwent an total overhaul. That's okay, I guess, but I think she kind of loses a lot of her charm when she's transmogrified into just another normal looking anime bimbo. It doesn't help me much either her name is run through the dub-mangle-o-matic and comes out the other side pronounced as Fujiko "Mine" (like the bomb you bury underground). Whomever Funimation outsourced this to needs to get their head on straight, because we're not in 1989 anymore and you really don't need to keep doing things like that. Don't get me wrong, I'm totally grateful to the company for bringing out this movie, and all, but when you sitting in a room packed to the gills with the more mundane aspects of anime fandom, all chowing on a chicken/mushroom/sour cream concoction you whipped up in about thirty seconds when you realized the original dinner plan has went horribly awry, I mean... really... subtitles are just something you don't want to deal with.

 

The rest of the dub is pretty plausible. While I'd gotten used to Tony Oliver as Lupin and Richard Epcar as Jigen, I managed to slog my way through and get to the other side. It's weird to hear Lupin talk without that snide, weasely voice behind him... but we all have to make sacrifices! Lupin and crew, this time, get themselves wrapped up in an attempt to destroy the Shot Shell terrorist group while stealing the nuclear sub Ivanov from, what, the UN or something? All I know is that it comes free with a pretty sweet Russian babe. If all things were to work like that, then I think you'd see me stealing a lot more submarines in my spare time. People who have only seen Cagliostro (a pretty reasonable amount, I'd imagine, I'm practically one of them) might be a little surprised, as this movie really has nothing in common with it. This is the "in your face" kind of Lupin, which is evidenced by his sporting of the red jacket. Voyage to Danger sports all the general lascivious desires and outrageous stunts that those amicable to the TV show will recognize. You know, the kind that would send "reality experts" like Andrew screaming off into the night. How can I man survive five or six bullets to the chest? I couldn't tell ya!

But I'll try to concisely detail what makes the story so great. The "Let the Bitch Die" theorem comes into pretty full effect here in a multitude of cases. Unfortunately, it also does NOT come true in a multitude of cases. That sucks, but if a whole bunch of main characters died then we probably wouldn't have any more of this stuff to enjoy. Still, I made the comment that it would really be an amazing end to the series to see Lupin and his temporary ally Zenigata teaming up to avenge the deaths of companions whole have fallen in the line of duty. So, yeah, I think it really could've been a great way to end it, Lupin and Zenigata charging off to avenge the deaths of Jigen and Goemon at the hands of the "evil American", but the way I figure... it's probably better that it didn't end that way.   Aside from a dub that can be spotty at times, there's nothing in Voyage to Danger that would stop you from enjoying it. Maybe it's just that I've never seen anything post-1980 where Lupin is concerned, but it's really clear that the animation quality has taken the extreme surge that a decade or so would basically require and the story is pretty classic Lupin fare, expanded for ass-kicking on the big screen. What starts out as your pretty basic Lupin caper involving a Russian sub to be stolen soon blossoms into probably one of the cooler TV-to-movie animes I've ever seen, and from what I hear they've made more than one of these "Lupin movies"! Fancy that!

**But never bought, because real men don't buy manga (that doesn't contain some form of robot).