2018 saw Discotek return to releasing some Toho titles, with both this and Urusei Yatsura: Beautiful Dreamer hitting Blu-ray. For the third Lupin film, the company issues a good release. It boasts some nice video quality, although the audio side features some more notable complaints. This is book ended by a decent selection of extras.
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Video quality on this release is good, although not remarkable. Condition wise, the source has some minor issues. There is some faint grain through out, but it feels more natural and not enough to become distracting. There are specs and other signs of source damage, but most of it isn't overly noticeable save for some points where the frame isn't stable and shakes a bit. On the plus side the movie looks sharp, without any signs of overt compression. There is also no discoloring as well, although the colors themselves could be more vibrant. The black levels also feel low and overall the movie seems a bit too bright.
Lupin the 3rd: The Legend of the Gold of Babylon is presented in its original aspect ratio of 1.85:1, or widescreen.
Audio: |
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There are three audio tracks found on the disc. Two are in Japanese: a PCM 2.0 Dual Mono, although noted as 1.0 on the disc, and a 5.1 surround offering. For the mono track, the quality is okay. There is a very slight hiss to the track, which is notable during silent moments if one really listens. A prime example is when the Toho logo appears at the start, and the hiss can be heard in contrast to the transition to the movie's start. Clarity is also a little lacking in the dialogue on the aduio, while also sounding distorted at times. For the 5.1 track it exhibits most of these same problems, although the hiss feels like it's amplified.
In addition to these two Japanese tracks is an English dub, presented in PCM 2.0 stereo. This is a dub that is new for this release. The vocal performances are good for this new track. It's not even close to the pedigree of what Disney was doing for the Studio Ghibli films, but still is worth a listen and features a lot of the "current" voice actors for the Lupin series. Audio quality wise it's a huge leap up from the Japanese sources on this disc. The hiss in the track is gone, and even the Japanese songs sound better on this track.
The Japanese tracks can be accompanied by removable English subtitles. This comes in two flavors, one for subtitling the dialogue and the other for dialogue and on screen texts plus the songs.
Extras: |
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By number, there is a decent selection of extras here although nothing that really stands out.
The star attraction on this release is a collection of seven trailers. Three of these are the Japanese teaser trailers. Sadly the video quality is a little low on these teasers, as they are not as sharp as they could be and are discolored with a yellow hue. They are interesting none the same, especially with how much they try and leverage Lupin the 3rd: The Castle of Cagliostro (1979) footage. This is followed by two main Japanese trailers. The quality is better on these, but they still have a slight yellow tint to the colors. After this are two US trailers created by Discotek. As one can guess, they used the same source used to create this Blu-ray, so the video quality looks solid. The audio uses the new dub as well, and overall the main trailer is well edited together.
Also on the disc is a lengthy art gallery. This starts by looking at the posters for the movie, both zoomed out and in views. It then goes to cell animation segments for the character before going into concept art. There is a LOT of concept art too, including for characters, outfits and machines in the film.
On the lame side is a "Creditless Opening Animation" feature. The concept is nice, the opening sequence without credits. However, the video is badly window boxed with a large amount of black area around the image. It's also very compressed, looking like a sub par standard definition source was used. Finally there are also burned in English subtitles that translate the main song.
After this we come to 13 screens of linear notes. There is some nice background information in here. In particular some explanation on how director Mamoru Oshii was nearly attached to the film. However, he parted was on the project when his concept wasn't agreed upon, and at least according to the linear notes some of the surreal qualities he wanted ended up in Urusei Yatsura 2: Beautiful Dreamer (1984) which actually got its theatrical release before this third Lupin film. The linear notes also describe some deleted scenes as well.
Finally, although not on the disc, this release also features a reversible cover. The reversed cover is actually what's found on the paper slip case, and both covers are based on the poster artwork created for the movie.
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This is a good release, with its main downfall being that the Japanese audio quality could have been better. Fans of the character, though, will likely enjoy being able to add this quirky entry in the franchise into their blu-ray collection.
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