What’s old is new again in Lupin III: The First

Though only offered a lim­it­ed glance at what the film has in store (about 15 min­utes of it, via the now online Annecy Fes­ti­val), the first ful­ly 3DCG Lupin III fea­ture is look­ing incred­i­bly slick. The lat­est in a 50-year his­to­ry of ani­mé based on the man­ga from Mon­key Punch (who has since passed away), Lupin III: The First looks to hon­our the past and present of the icon­ic gen­tle­man thief.

Its embrace of new ani­ma­tion tech­nolo­gies is well-cou­pled with a return to the character’s roots, tak­ing the gang to France (the birth­place of Lupin III’s grand­fa­ther, Arsene) in pur­suit of the diary of Pro­fes­sor Bres­son (no rela­tion to the film­mak­er), a sup­posed guide to an immense treasure.

Despite its move into new ter­ri­to­ry with this method of ani­ma­tion, Lupin III: The First, direct­ed by Takashi Yamaza­ki, still feels like a clas­sic Lupin III tale, tak­ing the sto­ry back to the 1960s (the decade of the character’s cre­ation), and plac­ing the epony­mous gen­tle­man thief in his clas­sic red suit.

Those who have kept up with the many iter­a­tions of the show will be delight­ed at the film’s rev­er­ence towards it, includ­ing every­thing from Yuji Ohno’s clas­sic open­ing theme to the music sting that accom­pa­nied the title card for each episode. It’s a con­fi­dent reminder of one of the series’ great­est strengths: to rein­vent itself with time and again with­out los­ing its orig­i­nal charms.

The ultra-real­is­tic light­ing and tex­tures, plus obses­sion with his­tor­i­cal trea­sure might imme­di­ate­ly remind West­ern view­ers of Steven Spielberg’s The Adven­tures of Tintin. Unlike that film, how­ev­er, Lupin III: The First hand­i­ly side­steps the uncan­ny val­ley sim­ply by lean­ing into the exag­ger­at­ed art style of the orig­i­nal man­ga, con­tin­u­ing to high­light things such as Lupin’s mon­key-like features.

Each char­ac­ter design trans­lates sur­pris­ing­ly well to this mode of ani­ma­tion, as Lupin’s com­pa­tri­ots – the anachro­nis­tic samu­rai Goe­mon, the duplic­i­tous Fujiko and stead­fast, snarky Jigen – all feel com­fort­able in the third dimen­sion, that move assist­ed by the return of their con­tem­po­rary voice actors.

Fur­ther­more, Lupin him­self moves just as he did in the 2D ani­ma­tions (and as if to empha­sise this, repli­cates an absurd­ly long jump across rooftops as in Miyazaki’s The Cas­tle of Cagliostro, even with the same sound effect). Even with the near pho­to­re­al­is­tic detail of the envi­ron­ments that fun, vibrant car­toon­ish­ness is, at a glance, per­haps the animation’s great­est strength, defy­ing the steril­i­ty and life­less­ness that can all-too-often accom­pa­ny CG.

It can be all too easy to fall into snob­bish­ness when dis­cussing com­put­er ani­ma­tion, but even to skep­tics like myself, frankly, it looks incred­i­ble. There’s per­haps a small peri­od of adjust­ment for those who are already famil­iar with the series, but it won’t last long, as the film con­fi­dent­ly sweeps into a daz­zling, bravu­ra open­ing title sequence that shows off the new­found dimen­sion­al free­dom of CG imagery, swoop­ing through clock­work puz­zles and even a hole in a cig­a­rette lighter.

Where the lat­est series (Lupin III: Part V) has Lupin reck­on­ing with mod­ern tech­nol­o­gy and the advent of the inter­net, Lupin III: The First is har­ness­ing mod­ern styles of ani­ma­tion to tell a flashy yet old-school caper, pay­ing homage to the franchise’s past and present.