S3E4 - When Lupin III met Hayao Miyazaki: The Castle of Cagliostro & Greatest Capers Review

“Believe in the power of the thief.”

Before he left the world of Lupin behind and went off to change the course of anime history forever with Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Hayao Miyazaki returned to TMS for a final set of Lupin the 3rd projects that have become iconic anime classics: The 1979 feature film The Castle of Cagliostro, and episodes 145 and 155 of Part II, “Albatross – Wings of Death” and “Farewell, O Dearest Lupin!”, distributed in the US in the 1990s as Lupin III’s Greatest Capers. These were the first pieces of Lupin media commercially available in America, and Cagliostro in particular is the most frequent entry point for Lupin newcomers. While Miyazaki’s more heroic, chivalric vision of the character is a bit of an outlier, there’s a reason Cagliostro has such magnetic appeal, as it’s one of the single greatest animated films ever made, a perfectly paced action adventure fueled by some of the most virtuosic animation to ever grace the silver screen. An influence for all sorts of movies all around the world, it’s a true classic, and so are Miyazaki’s two episodes of Part II, with “Albatross” in particular taking the director’s love of airplanes to astonishing new heights, and setting an impossibly high bar for how good TV animation can be.

Enjoy, and come back next week as we enter the Pink Jacket era and review Lupin the 3rd Part III and the 1985 film The Legend of the Gold of Babylon!

Time Chart:

Theme Song: 0:00:00 – 0:01:20

Intro: 0:01:20 – 0:11:32

Eyecatch Break 1: 0:11:32 – 0:12:03

The Castle of Cagliostro: 0:12:03 – 2:27:07

Eyecatch Break 2: 2:27:07 – 2:27:39

Greatest Capers Episodes: 2:27:39 – 3:16:35

End Theme: 3:16:35 – 3:17:50

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