Well $#!T. (not to you, to the guy who put up that false info)
This just pisses me off, cause I've been carrying on with promoting the same damn information for a while now. And I thought it was awesome to think that the Speed Racer group just got hired up again to voice the first English dub of Lupin. I mean it's doesn't sound too unbelievable, getting the right's to dub Mamo in English and not having to look far for the cast to dub it with. Hey, why not the bunch that did Speed Racer?
So if they didn't dub Mamo, then who did? Cause it's a totally different guy than the other 6 Lupin actors, including the rest of the cast. And it was recorded in 1980 wasn't it?
So what cast worked on the first dub of "The Mystery/Secret of Mamo"?
Sadly, nobody knows. The dubbed prints have no credits for the voice cast, only for key creative staff, like Animation Directors and such. No one knows what studio they recorded in, nothing. It's all guesswork.
Peter Fernandez and company were actually not a BAD guess, because they were pretty prolific during the 60s and 70s as a localization team, but these Lupin voices don't sound like them, really. The recording date is pretty vague, too, but IIRC it was probably sometime in 1979, because it came to the States before "Cagliostro," which was shown at a major US Sci-Fi convention in 1980.
Well whoever they were, they managed to get a few things right compared to other dubs.
For one, they pronounced Lupin correctly; and for a first time with the character in English, that's 10 points for accuracy. Two, they casted a crazy Zenigata, as well they should have; I was pleasantly surprised when I heard Zenigata compared to everyone else, he sounded like the only one having any fun with his character. Three, they casted a decent feminine voice for Fujiko, though it could have been much better; downside however, they gave her a terrible new name...m m mm Margo. EW! It just doesn't fit at all.
Fourth, they kept the ending theme song intact, which is a weird yet light-hearted goofy song, that I thought helped end an otherwise creepy and disturbing film. I actually would have preferred it if Geneon/Pioneer had left that song in, instead of ending the movie with another play through of the '79 theme.
Fifth, granted this Lupin actor may not sound great all the time, but sometimes he's spot on with how other actors have or might have portrayed his lines. So I have to give him credit in a few places.
And finally, #Six: unlike the Streamline dub of Cagliostro, they didn't shove in any more dialogue than was pretty much there in the first place. I mean we as Americans always put grunt and moaning noises during scenes of falling, fighting, running and so on, even though the Japanese never seem to put sounds in those places. But as for the rest of the script, they didn't add dialogue for characters when they are off screen, and thereby NOT cramming up the silent parts with more noise. I know they changed many lines to have more pop-culture references, but I can deal with that since we have the two other dubs.
As for the problems with this dub, I think that lands on two things: the poor acting and lack of emotional engagement on the part of the voice-actors, and the renaming of everyone but Lupin and Mamo. I don't know why they had to rename characters that are Japanese, when Lupin is obviously also a foreign name, as well as Mamo. Why did they single out the other characters? American audiences I'm sure were used to foreign names what with all of the James Bond films up to that point. Jigen, Fujiko, and Goemon are not hard names to remember or pronounce, and neither is Zenigata. I've heard and read much harder names that even I would probably rename. But Lupin and Co. are really no biggie.
I guess we might never know who did this dub, but until we do; as Goemon said in this dub..."Ladies and gentlemen...The End."
...for now.
