Jigen himself is soon marked for death, and it becomes a race against time to discover the true secret behind Okuzaki’s supernatural prowess and defeat him.
The film follows master thief Lupin and his fedora-wearing gunslinger partner as they set out to avenge the death of one of Jigen’s clients, an opera singer whose life is taken by a mysterious sharpshooter named Yael Okuzaki.
2010 anime movies series#
Koike’s work on the series was so well-received, he was approached to direct a series of spin-off films created in the style of Fujiko Mine, and thus, Daisuke Jigen’s Gravestone was born. It didn’t take long though for this talented animator to find work though, eventually securing a role as character designer and animation director for Sayo Yamamoto’s 2012 Lupin the Third series, The Woman Called Fujiko Mine. However, technical achievements aside, the film had no chance at making back its budget and Koike would leave Madhouse, the studio where he had worked under his mentor Yoshiaki Kawajiri ( Ninja Scroll) for over two decades, soon after. Takeshi Koike created one of the best anime films of the early aughts with 2009’s Redline, a drag race space odyssey over seven years in the making whose premise on paper reads like Hannah Barbera’s Wacky Races on way too much mescaline. Lupin the Third: Daisuke Jigen’s Gravestone (2014) Who knows, we might finally get to watch Atsuya Uki’s Cencoroll 2 or Takahide Hori’s Junk Head outside of the festival circuit. It’s anyone’s guess what exciting new films might come out in the next year, let alone the next few years. A decade is a long time, and the medium of anime itself only just celebrated its centennial three years ago. While no one list could encompass every great film by every great director made in the last ten years, ours attempts to bring some of the very best of those works to the forefront while breaking down just what exactly makes them so special. Still, like I said, a lot can happen in the decade, and as is the case so often during any such long stretch of time, the creative peaks in anime’s continued global ascension can tend to blur into one another with the passage of time. At the same time, the profile of anime as a cultural export has only grown more ubiquitous since it first made landfall in the West during the era of “Cool Japan.” It’s arguably never been a better time to get into anime than right now, with so many shows, films and the means to watch them at one’s fingertips. The advent of simulcasting and licensed theatrical releases has radically shifted the ways in which Japanese animation is distributed and consumed, while simultaneously advances in computer graphic imagery and post-production technology has given animators and directors far more creative possibilities and freedom than ever before. A lot can happen in a decade, especially in the world of anime.