Lupin III VS Cat's Eye (ルパン三世VSキャッツ・アイ Rupan Sansei VS Kattsu Ai?) is a 2023 crossover 3DCG film between Monkey Punch's Lupin III franchise and Tsukasa Hojo's Cat's Eye franchise, prior to the latter series' 40th anniversary and after their return to animation in 2019 with City Hunter: Shinjuku Private Eyes.
Lupin III, the great phantom thief—the man who loves freedom and lives in romance—never fails to steal his prey. The Cat's Eye are the ladies who run the night splendidly and create commotion in the world. They are sometimes phantom thieves, other times three beautiful sisters who run a café.
The mutual target is "Three Paintings"—which were left behind by the three sisters' father, leading to the dream showdown between Lupin and the Cats. Amidst the mix-up of the charming characters, the story eventually leads to the amazing "secret" hidden in the picture... A retro and stylish exhilarating crime action unfolds!
The crossover film released worldwide exclusively on Prime Video on January 27, 2023.
Contains examples of:
- Absurdly Sharp Blade: Goemon's Zantetsuken, as usual. Played With in that it does ultimately break until it's the size of a dagger from Goemon fending off so many bullets.
- Accidental Pervert: During his attempt to (unknowingly) capture Hitomi in the opening heist, Toshio accidentally falls on top of her and briefly gropes her while trying to get up.
- Adaptational Modesty: The Cat's Eye uniforms no longer have exposed cleavage, and do come with masks (even if the girls don't use them half the time).
- Adaptational Wimp: A unique example. Zantetsuken never had a problem with any type of bullets before. Here it actually breaks when up against Gatling gun ammunition.
- Fujiko supplies the most fanservice, though she too is somewhat restrained.
- Always Someone Better: The Cat's Eye sisters are highly competent professionals, but when it comes to thieving, the Lupin Gang is just on a whole other level.
- Anachronism Stew:
- Cat's Eye is shown using 70-80s era brick cell phones on occasion. But if Heinz painted the three Macguffin paintings in WWII before high-school age Ai was born (the third portrait is of her mother a few months before the birth), the story has to be taking place in the mid 60s at the latest. Of course, the three paintings might also have been painted later (during the 60s) with the stones hidden in them at that time.
- On Lupin's side: Lupin claims here to have been a rookie thief during WWII, but other Lupin works have him starting out much later (to the point where he'd be younger than Ai). Lupin has always had a loose continuity though.
- Art Shift: This feature is rendered in Tsukasa Hojo's semi-realistic art style. Thus, Lupin and his supporting cast - generally rendered in a cartoonish style - come off as more noirish and restrained than their traditional depictions. It's especially noticeable with Zenigata, who's not nearly as manic as usual.
- Ascended Fanboy: Toshio pulls a familiar handcuff-on-rope trick on Hitomi which he practiced out of admiration of a certain detective, which hints at this being Inspector Zenigata. He's thrilled to work with him on trying to bust Lupin's gang and Cat's Eye as well as whatever else they got caught up in, and both end up getting one branch of Faden taken down.
- Call-Back: The "Girl and the Flower" painting has the girl resemble Clarisse de Cagliostro. Lupin's protectiveness of Ai during the latter half also heavily resembles his stance on protecting Clarisse from no matter what.
- One callback that easily could have been done from the Cat's Eye side conspicuously wasn't used: one of their rivals was a woman calling herself "Lupin's Bride", but she is never brought up at all, much less in the presence of confirmed bachelor Lupin.
- The Cameo: Ryo Saeba of City Hunter appears in the background at the beginning of the film when the Cat's Eye sisters make their leave from a successful heist.
- Chekhov's Skill: Lupin comments to Ai that part of being a good thief is memorising every "nook and cranny", from a location's layout to how many people there are and the amount of weapons they're holding. Ai later uses this in tandem with her sisters when Dennis and his Faden soldiers outnumber them to gain the upper hand.
- Cool Versus Awesome: The two most iconic Phantom Thief franchises of manga and anime are pitted against each other.
- Darker and Edgier: Blood is shed more than usual and threats of terrorism is very serious. Lupin himself had his usual comedic self dialed back and isn’t fooling around; he WILL use force if necessary.
- Dressing as the Enemy: As expected of the Cat's Eye sisters.
- In the opening tower heist, Rui is disguised as a cop to make Toshio and the building's owner go down the elevator (which they then turn off) with a false story of an employee begging to be let inside.
- During the train heist, Ai dresses as a Faden soldier and briefly runs around with the other guards as her sisters send them on a wild goose chase.
- Dude, Where's My Reward?: In the end, Cat's Eye gets their family portraits back, Fujiko loots some of Faden's stash of stolen artwork, Zenigata and Toshio get the credit for exposing a major black market operation, but the Lupin gang doesn't appear to get anything.
- Fakeout Escape: At the end of the Cat's Eye heist in the intro, the sisters send the police on a wild goose chase after Hitomi's paraglider leaving the scene with a red blinking light, which is actually being remote-controlled by Ai while they leave the crime scene through the front door in formalwear.
- Five-Second Foreshadowing: After the events of the intro heist, Toshio is seen moping at the Cat's Eye café as usual, but not only is he suddenly wearing a conspicuous tie clip which he nearly shoves Hitomi's face into, his face lacks the slap mark she gave him the previous night. It's shortly revealed that this is Lupin in disguise who hid a scanner in his tie clip to spoof Hitomi's eye so he can sneak into their underground storage, and the real Toshio shows up soon after, with a bandage on his face.
- Honor Among Thieves:
- Fujiko's still in it for herself as usual but she's still kind enough to tell Jigen, Hitomi and Rui that Faden has taken Lupin and Ai as hostages. Likewise, she also helps the Cat's Eye sisters escape before the ritual room collapses on them in the climax.
- Jigen and Goemon go back for Lupin when they see an explosion on the train from a distance, despite wanting little to do with Lupin's plans.
- Iconic Outfit:
- Latex Perfection: As expected from Lupin, he uses it to steal 2 of the "Girl and the Flower" paintings, first time as Faden member Dennis Kirchmann during the opening boat heist and then later as Toshio to sneak into the Cat's Eye's underground base.
- Let's You and Him Fight: Cat's Eye are led to believe that Lupin III is a dangerous thief that would even murder his targets and betrayed their father, who he was working with to take back artwork the Nazis stole. Of course this is a lie by the real Big Bad of the story, Berger, to get their help.
- MacGuffin: The three "Girl and the Flower" paintings by Michael Heinz. Or rather the 3 "Stones of Fortuna" that Michael hid inside them.
- Nazi Gold: Or rather artwork once stolen by the Nazis, now being used as informal currency in the black market. Lupin apparently got his start in the thieving business by stealing them back, with Cat's Eye's father helping to hide them until the war ended.
- No Hugging, No Kissing: The closest thing to the traditional Girl of the Week in a Lupin film is Ai, who Lupin plays more of a Big Brother Mentor role to without attempting to seduce (likely because he's old enough to be her father).
- Open Secret: The casual ease with which Lupin and the Faden organization figure out the Hisugi girls' secret can leave the audience with the impression that Toshio may be the only person out there who doesn't know who Cat's Eye is.
- Running Gag: Inspector Zenigata mistakes Toshio's surname as "Atami" instead of "Utsumi" and calls him that for the entire film, with Toshio giving up halfway through the movie on correcting him.
- Screw This, I'm Outta Here: Jigen and Goemon attempt this before the train heist when they realize Lupin hasn't given them the full story of his plans or that Fujiko's involved to their frustration. Though as Lupin predicts, they come back to try and rescue him.
