Lupin III: $1 Money Wars

Missed by a Dollar, from 2000, starts off another fun decade of Lupin in style.

Lupin wants a ring that can lead him to yet another legendary treasure, and so does an evil corporation. Meanwhile, we have a subplot where Lupin tries to help the career of an aspiring jazz singer. And, without giving it away, there's a pretty cool twist later on.

That's the basic outline, but like usual it's all the wackiness that ensues that makes this such a great show. Lupin and partner Jigen have some very snappy dialogue in this one. They talk about their guns as metaphors for women, a lot of ... great exchanges like that.

Fujiko is fantastic as always, she gets to kill a lot more people with machine guns in this than she often does. In general this one is pretty violent, which is a nice change of pace from some of the more lighthearted specials. Crazy people with guns are out to kill the Lupin gang, and this time around it really does feel urgent.

Inspector Zenigata is great in this, as always he's awesomely hilarious when he gets emotional about Lupin. Goemon is solid as ever, though he doesn't have a particularly stand out role here.

This is the last Lupin feature made with traditional cel animation before they switched to digital I believe, and it has a dark gritty look to it. Very cool soundtrack by Yuji Ohno, a bit more suspenseful sounding than usual here.

All in all, this is some very good Lupin action. If you like Lupin III, you should give this one a watch or two.

[THIS WAS WRITTEN RIGHT AFTER WATCHING IT AND ON MY SOCIAL MEDIA ACC. KEEPING THIS HERE FOR AN ARCHIVE]
I think this must be like. The fucking third or fourth movie in this franchise set in New York/America and like honestly??? I love the NYC parts a lot. Probably more than any of the other attempts at capturing the city this franchise has tried.
Aside from that this movie was actually pretty fun on its own!!
Story dragged after they left NYC, but the last quarter was definitely where things got fun again. The plot (ignoring the main one abt the Hitler brooch lupin wanted to steal bc ... that was just flat out stupid) was really unique and fun as hell. Lupin fighting with a literal business tycoon bank ceo owner girlboss was not one I expected but a welcome surprise.
The dub was fucking hilarious too with the zenigata nonsense. FUNIMATION ALWAYS KNOWS HOW TO WRITE A FUNNY ZENIGATA I LOVE IT
Tired so I don’t feel like going on much longer but fun movie!! Not the best but not the worst at all!!! I dock points for the slow middle part and the ugly character designs. Solid B