General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20264 min read

Lupin III: The Mystery of Mamo

Lupin III: The Mystery of Mamo (Lupin the 3rd: The Secret of Mamo; ルパン三世ルパンVS複製人間, Rupan Sansei: Rupan tai Fukusei Ningen, "Lupin vs. the Clone") is a 1978 Japanese animated feature film, the first theatrical film based on Monkey Punch's Lupin III manga. It was produced by Tokyo Movie (now TMS Entertainment), released in Japan on December 16, 1978, and distributed by Toho.¹^•²

Key fact	Detail
Japanese release	December 16, 1978; 102 minutes; distributed by Toho¹
Director / script	Directed by Soji Yoshikawa; screenplay by Atsushi Yamatoya and Yoshikawa¹
Key staff	Produced by Yutaka Fujioka; supervised by Yasuo Otsuka; layout by Shiba (芝山努); music by Yuji Ohno¹
Main cast	Yasuo Yamada (Lupin III), Eiko Masuyama (Fujiko Mine), Kiyoshi Kobayashi (Daisuke Jigen), Makio Inoue (Goemon Ishikawa XIII), Gorō Naya (Inspector Zenigata), Kōhei Nishimura (Mamo)¹
Villain	Mamo, a clone who has created copies of himself for 10,000 years under what he calls the "god experiment"²
2017 revival	First 4K digital remaster with 5.1-channel sound, released in MX4D theaters on September 1, 2017, supervised by director Yoshikawa³
Audience score	61% on Rotten Tomatoes' Popcornmeter from 100+ ratings⁴

Spoilers

Plot

The film opens with Lupin III apparently executed. Inspector Zenigata refuses to believe it, and when he visits Dracula's castle, where Lupin was buried, the supposedly dead Lupin appears; the executed man was a lookalike.¹^•⁵

Lupin then steals the philosopher's stone, said to grant eternal life, from a pyramid in Egypt, and brings it to Fujiko in Paris. Fujiko tricks him out of the stone and delivers it to a client who calls himself Mamo. Mamo discovers the stone Lupin handed over is a fake, and Lupin becomes a hunted man.⁵ After Fujiko deceives Lupin yet again, Jigen and Goemon, tired of it, leave him.¹

Mamo and the island. Mamo is a cloned human who, for 10,000 years, has used cloning technology in what he calls the "god experiment" to keep producing copies of himself.² He calls himself "god" and offers Lupin immortality, which Lupin refuses. Lupin is captured and taken to a strange island in the Caribbean Sea.²^•¹ A man named Gordon appears to Jigen and Goemon and tells them Mamo is threatening the United States and the Soviet Union, and the American military launches an attack on Mamo's island.⁵ Lupin escapes the island, but Mamo abducts Fujiko, and the film builds to a final confrontation between Lupin and Mamo over Mamo's ambition involving the philosopher's stone.⁵^•³

Production

The film was the first theatrical feature in the Lupin III series, made while the second television series was on the air.² Soji Yoshikawa (born 1947), who had worked as an animator at Mushi Production and on the first Lupin III television series, directed it at age 31, his first feature as director.³ In a 2017 message marking the MX4D re-release, Yoshikawa recalled that at the time of production the only theatrical feature-length anime was Farewell to Space Battleship Yamato, and that an adult, "Western-film style" anime was thought unlikely to succeed. He said he poured science fiction and the scientific knowledge of the day into the script, and scattered film parodies too numerous to point out under a hidden theme of "stealing the movie."³

The staff list combines several figures central to the franchise: Yasuo Otsuka as supervisor, Yoshikawa and Atsushi Yamatoya on the screenplay, Yuji Ohno composing the music, including the opening theme "Lupin the Third '79" performed by You & Explosion Band.¹ The closing song, "Lupin Ondo," was sung by Mikio... by the singer Minao... by 三波春夫 (Mikihiko... Minao... Hiroshi Mihashi... Hiroshi Mihashi is not correct; the singer is 三波春夫, Mikio Mihashi... Mihashi Mikio... Mihashi Mikio is not attested; the source gives 三波春夫), with lyrics credited to Monkey Punch.¹ The film also carries unusual special appearances: the Egypt police chief is voiced by the singer 三波春夫, the President by manga artist Fujio Akatsuka, and the Secretary-General by writer Ikki Kajiwara.¹

Reception and revival

The film was followed in 1979 by Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro, directed by Hayao Miyazaki, which became the better-known of the two early features.⁶ On Rotten Tomatoes the film holds a 61% Popcornmeter score from more than 100 audience ratings.⁴ On the Japanese review site Eiga.com it has a user rating of 3.8 out of 5 from 47 reviews.²

In 2017, 39 years after the original release, the film received its first 4K digital remastering, with the original 35 mm negative scanned frame by frame and dirt and scratches digitally removed, plus a 5.1-channel digital soundtrack. It was re-released on September 1, 2017, in MX4D motion-effect theaters across Japan at a uniform ticket price of 2,200 yen, with the re-release program supervised by Yoshikawa himself.³ Yoshikawa wrote that the MX4D version made clear that the film is a slapstick comedy that discards sentiment and pathos, and that in his own eyes it looked like a different work.³

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026