he newly released Lupin movie, The Secret of Twilight Gemini, begins abruptly, as an ancient-looking man hooked up to a variety of tubes hands Lupin a strangely shaped pinkish diamond, supposedly the key to the hidden treasure of a tribe that was wiped out a century ago. At first, this seems highly suspicious—Lupin is a famous international thief, a quick-moving con artist who has few reliable allies, apart from laconic weapons expert Jigen Daisuke and the samurai Goemon. It's certainly rare for people to just hand him valuables, let alone valuables that supposedly lead to unimaginable riches. When the film later reveals that Lupin's decrepit benefactor is an infamous European syndicate boss, the situation seems even more unlikely.
But as it turns out, the boss has personal ties to the treasure, and personal reasons for wanting Lupin to find it. In fact, a lot of people have personal ties to the treasure. For a supposedly dead tribe, the Geltic people seem to have an incredible number of heirs. After escaping a trap set by his archnemesis, Inspector Zenigata, thanks to the timely interference of a group of armor-clad terrorists, Lupin sets out for Morocco. Immediately upon his arrival, he sees a truck full of masked, robed entertainers performing a puppet show about how the Geltic tribe was cruelly slaughtered. The local police show up to arrest the "guerillas," and one of them tosses aside her mask to reveal that she's a
pretty, young woman. Intrigued, Lupin casually helps her escape.
Later, he learns that the guerilla group is composed of Geltic descendents trying to restore their lost tribe. The members of a secret desert society also claim to be the rightful descendents of the Gelts, and their terrorists are still after Lupin, determined to reclaim the diamond, which is known as the Twilight. Meanwhile, Zenigata has arrived in Morocco, and is trying to whip the seemingly indifferent local police into a Lupin-focused frenzy. To top things off, Lupin's part-time ally, Fujiko, shows up in Morocco and tries to seduce him into admitting what he's after, so she can cut herself in on the action.
A welcome installment in a historic series
The Secret of Twilight Gemini is a solid example of the dozens of Lupin movies and TV episodes out there: It features all the hallmarks that make the series great. As ever, Lupin's mixture of panache and hapless luck is the center of the show. Whether caught naked in bed with Fujiko when the terrorist battalion arrives, or cornered on a high rooftop with a feeble grandmother perched on his back, he's quick-witted and quick-footed enough to stay a few steps ahead of everyone else. Unlike most heroes, he's thoroughly flawed: He's sentimental, cocky, lecherous, mischievous, image-conscious and greedy, and the mere presence of an attractive woman can easily sway him into dramatic theatrical gestures or utter reversals of intent. That's all part of his reckless charm.
Twilight Gemini offers plenty of Lupin, but it's slightly weak on subsidiary characters. Jigen in particular seems to exist only when Lupin needs a sudden, dramatic rescue, and Zenigata is almost too clownish; where in other Lupin features he seems to have a razor-keen, almost magical
Lupin-detecting ability, here he wastes time on procedure, follows other people's leads, and completely misses a disguised Lupin who shows up both to talk to him and to tease him. Fujiko gets more screen time here than in some installments, but she'd seem a bit less gratuitous if she spent a bit less time topless.
But these are minor quibbles, mostly predicated on the fact that there's so much great Lupin material out there; practically nothing could live up to Hayao Miyazaki's stellar The Castle of Cagliostro, for instance. But Twilight Gemini is a more-than-worthy addition to the pantheon. The animation itself is fairly TV-standard, but the familiar lanky character designs compensate by deliberately going for iconic cartoonishness rather than realism. And the movie's betrayal-upon-betrayal plot twists, slapdash caper-film sense of humor and relentlessly enjoyable characters make it a thoroughly enjoyable diversion from anime's dominant cool-kids-with-big-bots vibe.
Recent anime fans who love Cowboy Bebop shouldn't miss out on the Lupin phenomenon. The Lupin movies are much less visually stylish, but Spike and Jet are very much a futuristic update of Lupin and Jigen, from the attitude down to the moves.
— Tasha
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