YMMV / The Mystery of Mamo

• Awesome Music: The third opening song to the Red Jacket TV series is also used as the theme song for this movie.
• Alternative Character Interpretation: Is Mamo really a near-immortal being that influenced mankind through history like he claims to be, or is he just a megalomaniac who went too far with his cloning tech and he made up that whole backstory to feel superior and give himself a greater goal after losing his humanity?
• Better on DVD: Specifically Discotek Media's DVD and Blu-Ray releases. Being able to watch and compare all four English dubs produced for the movie over the years (as well as the Japanese version with subtitles) makes for a rather fun experience.
  • On top of that the Blu-Ray also contains liner notes of the many different dubs, trailers and ads, reconstructions of the opening and ending credits for each dub, as well as new audio mixes for the Japanese and Geneon dub.
• Complete Monster: Mamo himself is an ancient being out to recreate the world in his image as a god. Thousands of years old, Mamo has sown all sorts of horrors through human history, claiming credit for its worst tragedies, from wars to plagues, all in his quest for immortality and godhood. Mamo plans to unleash a nuclear holocaust onto the Earth and wipe out all life except himself and Fujiko, hoping to use the unwilling woman to start a new breed of humankind in his name, with clones of "brilliant" minds such as Adolf Hitler and Mao Zedong populating his new world. Along the way, Mamo has an entire street of people shot dead, subjects Arsene Lupin to Mind Rape, and casually tries to murder Fujiko when she rejects his horrid advances.
• Fan Nickname: Interestingly, the "Mystery of Mamo" title was a fan nickname created by Fred Patten, which was later adopted by the Streamline dub, if only for Added Alliterative Appeal and to mirror The Castle of Cagliostro. TMS originally wanted the official English title as "The Secret of Mamo", which is used in the initial Geneon dub and the Manga UK dub. It seems to have become an Ascended Fanon as it has been adopted by Discotek for their DVD and Blu-Ray releases. On the Japanese side, it has often been called "Mamo-hen", meaning "Mamo Chapter" in Japanese, mirroring what was going on with the English title in order to avoid spoilers.
• Fridge Brilliance: Jigen's offended reaction to being called a "Democrat" in the Pioneer dub makes even more sense when you consider that the Democratic Party's pro-gun control platform wouldn't sit too well with him.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff: Strangely enough, the Geneon dub has gotten this from the Japanese fanbase, most notably praising the performance of Richard Epcar as Jigen for capturing the same sort of energy that Kiyoshi Kobayashi did.
• Going Cosmic: Along with being the Big Damn Movie, Mystery of Mamo is the first to use blatant science fiction elements that were not parlor tricks. Clones, Immortals, and a Brain in a Jar just to name a few. Mamo is very convincing in his claim of being Julius Beethoven da Vinci and there's nothing onscreen that can conclusively dispute it. Also, at the very end, Mamo suggests that he has confirmed the existence a planet of Ancient Astronauts that can give him true godhood, thus his attempted leaving in a rocketship. Again, given who and what he was, nobody can say otherwise.
• Harsher in Hindsight: It's become increasingly clear that the President in the Streamline dub is based heavily on Bill Clinton. Towards the end of the top-secret recording, before it ventures into classified material, Mamo threatens to reveal to the world that there's a "floozy" in the President's steno pool. It ended up becoming a lot more salacious after it came out that Clinton had had an inappropriate relationship with a White House intern, one Monica Lewinsky, and lied about it. Even worse, the dub was made mere months before the Lewinsky Affair took place.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Lupin accusing Fujiko of rejecting his overt advances because he's "not Alain Delon" becomes this when you realize that Monkey Punch based his relationship with Jigen on Delon's relationship with Charles Bronson in the 1968 film Adieu l'ami.
  • The truck that is colored red and blue? Wonder if that's not predicting something famous...
  • Someone made a clone of Hitler. Unfortunately, there weren't two of them.
  • When Lupin struggles to reach Mamo's brain dome to place his bomb, the strong lighting makes his red suit appear pink.
  • Regarding the above bullet point of Mamo's claim of Ancient Astronauts and his origins in Babylon, the third movie would prove him to be correct.
  • And then there's the Streamline and Manga dubs making use of Bill Clinton as president, with the aforementioned Harsher in Hindsight moment that Streamline provides. Come 2019, his wife would become President in Lupin III: Goodbye Partner.
• Moral Event Horizon: Crossed by Starky when he mentions that everyone involved in the operation against Mamo will be eliminated as soon as the operation is complete. What drives it home is his statement on Gordon's fate. As the Streamline dub translates it: "Agent Gordon? He'll be no exception."
• Nightmare Fuel:
  • The opening scene of the Lupin clone being hanged is extremely chilling, especially out of context. Made even worse is that it was used as Cliff Hanger's Game Over sequence.
  • Crossing over with Nothing Is Scarier, Lupin follows the shadowy form of a girl playing with a hoop before his surreal chase over Mamo's island hideout. We never learn about who the girl is or what she was doing, only adding more mystery if she is a clone or one of the scientists.
  • And then there's Mamo's death throes, which also provides a bit of it in-universe from Fujiko's point of view. The evil mastermind is burning alive and slowly making his way to Fujiko, reaching out one final time and calling out to her, before his skeleton collapses and leaving him as nothing more than a pile of ashes. The Geneon dub even goes so far as to have Mamo screech out in agony after he is hit by the laser beam.
  • Let's face it, Mamo is a walking can of Nightmare Fuel. He's not only insanely rich enough to threaten to start Word War III between both the US and Russia, but he can easily track you down and have you eliminated just for brushing past him or Flinch. He even has his own army of dictators and bloodthirsty conquerors that he cloned back to life in order to repopulate the world after he nukes all of humanity.
• So Bad, It's Good: Depending on your point of view in regards to the quality of the dubs. The Streamline dub is almost never considered to be this, and is frequently lauded as one of Streamline Pictures' best dubs for its "excellent" voice acting and scripting.
  • The 1979 Toho dub has some stilted voice acting and script-work here and there, but it's faithful to the Japanese version, frequently acted with energy and humor, and is overall decent for an English dub produced in the 70's.
  • The Manga UK dub counts as this. It's often well-acted, but the uneven quality of the sound recording, Lupin's Dub Name Change and writing tweaks that subtly change Fujiko's motivation land it here.
  • The Pioneer/Geneon dub using the "Red Jacket" cast counts... for those who have a low tolerance for gag dubs. Otherwise it's just plain good. Not even critics of that cast (most prominently Reed Nelson, who wrote the liner notes for the Discotek release and slipped in some jabs against it – not the first time he's done that either) can deny that the voice acting is excellent.
• Superlative Dubbing: For all its faults and sporadic rewrites, the Streamline dub at least tries to be more faithful to the original Japanese than did their earlier dub of The Castle of Cagliostro. Plus, the scene between Lupin and Fujiko in Paris is hilarious.
  • The Pioneer/Geneon dub oftentimes doesn't even try to adhere to the subtitles, although the gist and spirit of a scene is usually retained. Despite that (or because of it), it can be argued that it sound even more natural and believable than the Streamline dub. Helps that the cast had been working on "Red Jacket" for at least a few months at that point.
• Woolseyism: In the all dubs up to the Pioneer/Geneon dub, Presidential Aide Starkey (spelled "Stuckey" in the subtitles) is renamed as Heinrich Gissinger. In the Streamline dub, the moments leading up to his appearance before Jigen and Goemon have them state that the Cold War has been over for a while, suggesting that the film is set in the 90's. Adding to this, the President's contact in this dub is not the Chief Secretary, but rather Boris Yeltsin.
  • The Streamline dub also has an exclusive audio mix, replacing some of the older sound effects with newer ones in order to make it pop out. This is most notable with Flinch dropping a bomb on the Cooper that Lupin, Jigen, and Goemon were using. In the original Japanese and the other three dubs, it remains silent, while here it uses a Bomb Whistle to denote it dropping.
  • The three-way phonecall that Starkey presents to Jigen and Goemon varies with how Mamo threatens the President and the Russian diplomat.
  Mamo: [Geneon subtitles] Request? This is an order. You would both understand if you knew how the world was made.
  Mamo: [Toho dub] Requests? This is an order. If you really know what is going on in the world right now, you should know better than this.
  Mamo: [Streamline dub] You have no choice! I know every move you make before you know it yourselves. Why, I even know about that little floozy you keep in the steno pool, Mr. President! How would you like the world to find out about her?
  Mamo: [Manga UK dub] Request? I'm giving you an order! And if you care about mainstream, cherry pie, and Dynasty as you always say, you'll jump to it!
  Mamo: [Geneon dub] I heard you weren't much of a student in your school days, Mr. President... but apparently, even the Bible you thump so shamelessly is the Reader's Digest edition.

---