What went wrong?

Although nowhere to the level of Streamline's production guffaws, such as the "Now we're cooking with gas" and "Should've worn an asbestos suit" lines, the producers of this dub apparently couldn't stay entirely free from some 'creative additions'.

In the opening scene post-credits, Lupin & Jigen are in disguise as they pass through the border guard. In the original the scene is played silent, while in the Manga dub, Lupin is heard telling the guard that Jigen 'he's my dad', followed by a lame joke about Jigen 'hey I don't look that old'... blahblahblah...

After Lupin falls into the castle dungeon, as the camera pans around the cavernous rooms while Lupin walks around. Manga thought it'd be cute to insert some nice home decorating jokes, much to my disdain. Things like this p.o. me to no end. I can understand it if is being used to replace an untranslatable reference or pun, but to just simply insert of their own damn volition, that deserves at least a newspaper smack over the back of the neck with a nice 'bad boy!'.

The print of the movie, while quite good, wasn't quite as good as it could have been. There was all sorts of communications and supply problems, as practically all of the delay in producing the dvd (originally supposed to be released last September), was because they hadn't been able to obtain a good master from japan. The sound on the japanese track was ok but nothing special for dvd, although leagues better than on tape.

Generalized DVD Bitch

Nothing ticks me off more than things like 'interactive menus' as 'features' of a DVD, it's as if someone tries to market the Table of Contents as the selling point of a novel. Granted this is a gripe about just about the entire DVD industry, but very few anime discs even plan 'features' besides carrying both languages and boring trailers. At least Manga will be bucking that trend with the upcoming Wings of Honneamise DVD, which will contain a commentary track by Hiroyuki Yamaga & Takami Akai. I hope it starts a trend in US anime DVD relesaes.

Conclusion

I wholeheartedly endorse this fine 'merican product and give it Gavv's Seal of Approval™. In fact, I'd suggest dragging random people off the street and show them this classic. To do otherwise would be a crime against man, nay, a crime against the universe itself! You guys in college, make that extra trip to the plasma clinic for that extra change. In other words, buy it, it's well worth the dough.