Well, this was a Lupin movie all right, through and through. The same copy paste formula with the same predictable twists. But this time there is CGI animation, and not the good CGI like in Lupin the 3rd: The First. But like on the level of an average Polygon Pictures anime, and perhaps not even as good as that. It was randomly very bloody compared to the average Lupin movie, and I think the gore looked very ugly and out of place in CG.
The best part about this movie is that now Cat's Eye has its first own official entry with a dub, and it has a nice vocal cast, especially Ai's voice. Hitomi's voice though didn't quite match her appearance, but that may just be a nitpick. Rui sounded just as I imagined her. (The only previous dub for the Cat's Eye members was in City Hunter Movie: Shinjuku Private Eyes where they had some cameos, but that wasn't an official Cat's Eye anime like this one was. Plus, now Toshi has his first dubbed performance)
This crossover made for some nice fan-service and was some nice "turn off your brain" entertainment, but the stunts pulled in this movie were a little too much even with that in mind.
It was interesting how they created a past for Lupin and the girls' father, but it seems like a major oversight to not add a similar story for Fujiko and the girls, as they actually met in the original Cat's Eye series (though Fujiko was then only called "Lupin's bride"). So much could have been done with that past connection, but oh well.
Zenigata and Toshi didn't do much in this film (though I found it really funny that Toshi was a huge Zenigata fan. His failures make so much more sense now, haha), and the rest of Lupin's gang did only slightly more. Even Lupin didn't feel so essential in this movie. It was kind of a Cat's Eye movie, but with the plot points and characters of a Lupin film set around them. It was kind of weird.
There weren't any new Yuji Ohno vocal tracks, which was also a downer. Though the new Cat's Eye theme by Anri was very nice.
It's called Lupin vs Cat's Eye, but even more so than the Conan crossover, it's kind of false advertisement. I wish it was more of a vs movie, but any time they faced off, it wasn't much of a match. Lupin beat them easily. It would have been nice to actually see some back and forth of who were the better thieves. That's why the movie was actually pretty interesting when it first started as it seemed like that was what it was gonna be, but instead it very quickly became less of a vs and more of a team up. The teaming up wasn't bad, and it led to some great character moments with Lupin and Ai, but perhaps there could have been more heist antics between the two throughout the film and less crazy syndicate trying to do some weird ritual.
All in all, I had fun but I don't see myself watching this again anytime soon. |