Lupin III: The Pilot
In 1969, Gisaburō Sugii and Yutaka Fujioka of Tokyo Movie (now known as TMS Entertainment) came up with the idea of adapting Kazuhiko Katō's (Monkey Punch’s) popular manga series Lupin III into an animated feature for the big screen.
The film was to retain the same characters, premise and spirit of Katō's illustrated series. Lupin would be presented in a way that would attract older audiences to a 2D animated film, mostly due to its high quality visuals, intense action scenes and adult themes.
Despite their solid idea and receiving blessing from Katō himself, Sugii, Fujioka and Tokyo Movie lacked the budget to create the film. TMS has come a long way since 1969 in terms of their financial situation - and a big budget animated film intended for a primarily adult audience sounds like a risky move, even in 2020.
Rather than heading into full production, the team started work on a CinemaScope short. Tokyo Movie hoped to use said short as a form of marketing - a way of selling their film idea. This type of short movie is commonly referred to in the industry as a pilot. As such, the pilot films twelve minute run-time serves as an introduction to the characters and premise above anything else.
Taichirō Hirokawa plays the role of Lupin III in the original theatrical version of the pilot, also narrating the film. His commentary, as Lupin, gives an overview of who everyone is, what they do and how they relate to one another. It is, as mentioned, an extravagant way of marketing Tokyo Movie's idea, but at the same time still works as a decent introduction into the world of Lupin III - especially that of the original mangas, as the original source material was used as a strong foundation for the pilot film.
Kiyoshi Kobayashi played (and still plays) Daisuke Jigen. Eiko Masuyama took on the role of Fujiko Mine, with Gorō Naya as Goemon Ishikawa XIII (who later played Inspector Zenigata). Shinsuke Chikaishi voices Inspector Zenigata for the pilot while Hitoshi Takagi plays the original mangas take on fictional detective, Kogoro Akechi.
The production of the film was handled by a relatively small team, but with some big names attached. It was scripted and animated by Gisaburō Sugii, Tsutomu Shibayama, Osamu Kobayashi and Yasuo Otsuka (who quit his previous job at Toei Animation to work on this project, mostly due to the temptation of animating guns and cars). Background art was handled by Reiji Koyama, with Masaaki Ōsumi overseeing and directing the project.
The narration and dialogue was written by both Jiro Saito and Toshiaki Imaizumi, while Norio Maeda handled the score. Maeda was a relatively known jazz composer and pianist at the time - he had a large influence on the franchise going forwards, helping to set the style and tone for the background music in the first TV series.
Keen to press on, the staff started drafting up ideas for the feature length production. Talented as they were, they were not short of these ideas. One saw the film acting as an origin story, with Lupin first appearing on screen as a hippie living in Shinjuku. The plot involved him discovering his origins, becoming tangled up in crime and beginning his career as a professional thief - a potentially great way of re-establishing the franchise for the big screen.
If you're familiar with Lupin III, you are likely at this point in the article wondering why there was no feature film until The Mystery of Mamo in 1978. A stellar animation team creating a theatrical version of an already well established franchise - what could go wrong? The answer to that is lots, because that's exactly what happened next.
Kazuhiko Katō was involved directly in the pilot films production, and he felt the project was becoming too demanding. He dropped out, only for history to repeat itself again in 1995 - 1996 with the fifth feature length Lupin III film, Dead or Alive. This was no doubt a blow to the production teams spirits, however they continued on and completed the film.
Unfortunately, despite having an impressive looking (for the time) pilot, not a single potential buyer showed any interest in funding the film. It was just too risky. Who would want to watch an animated film with violence and sexual themes? In 1969, animation was not considered a viable option for this type of material, and the idea remained unsold for over a year after the initial pitch.
Rethinking their approach, the pilot film was re factored for TV. This involved changing the original CinemaScope aspect ratio to instead be 4:3, and re-recording the majority of the audio. Nachi Nozawa now played Lupin and the narrator, with Osamu Kobayashi as Ishikawa Goemon and Chikao Ōtsuka as Inspector Zenigata.
Tokyo Movie staff came and went, until eventually Yomiuri Television expressed interest in adapting the idea for Japanese TV in 1971. Only Yasuo Otsuka and Masaaki Ōsumi from the pilots original production team remained at the company. They were soon slotted into the roles of head character designer and series director.
The rest, is history. Lupin III: Part I was to become the first animated series in Japan to primarily target a more mature audience. Despite a rocky production and eventually being cut short to twenty-three episodes rather than the originally planned twenty-six, it found cult success during re-runs and spurred on the creation of the Part II series.
Select clips from the pilot film were featured briefly in the opening titles of the 1971 Part I series, only now with Lupins jacket colour adjusted. The production staff decided to go with green rather than the red seen in the pilot and original mangas - a decision made to help give it a unique identity, separating it from previous works.
The TV version of the pilot film was broadcast publicly in Japan for the first time on Yomiuri Television on August 17, 1988. It was later released on VHS in 1989, and both versions were bundled with the first run edition of Discotek Media's Part I box set, released in the U.S. on DVD in 2012.
The history of Lupin III is fascinating.
After much misfortune and lack of interest, the earlier developed projects seemed doomed from the get-go. Fifty years on, the franchise is stronger now than ever - with a 3DCG feature length film recently topping box offices in Japan, and raking in over a billion yen.
If it wasn't for the original production team and the long awaited sale to Yomiuri Television, who knows what, if anything, would have awaited Lupin III. It is also interesting to think about what that original film would have been like, had a company picked up the idea.
One thing is for sure - a feature length film starring a Shinjuku based hippie would have been an interesting, unique origin story for our favourite thief!
If you are eager to learn more about the 1969 Pilot Film, be sure to give the first episode of the Sideburns and Cigarettes podcast a listen. In the first episode, the gang speak about the film in detail, sharing their own opinions on its production and the final animated result. Check it out by clicking here!
If you are interested in reading up on another Lupin related pilot film, check out our deep dive into the history of the sci-fi spin-off Lupin VIII by clicking here!
