We start with a parody of the opening to “Alfred Hitchcock Presents” with Cherry in the Alfred Hitchcock role of presenter and narrator. He introduces us to the tale of Tsuyuko, a girl in Ataru’s class, cursed to be followed by rain wherever she goes.

Ataru agrees to go on a date with her, despite her protests that the rain that follows her will make him gloomy. Ataru knows better though and even when he gets continuously soaked during their date, his libido remains undampened.

Cherry meanwhile believes Tsuyuko to be an Amefurashi, and along with Lum confronts her with his evidence. However he turns out to be incorrect, and Tsuyuko’s father explains the situation in flashback.

As a young boy he befriended an Amefurashi, and when his family moved away the Amefurashi cursed him for breaking his promise to stay friends forever. The only way to break the curse is for Tsuyuko to make a close friend, so the Amefurashi steps up its efforts to torment Ataru.

After a week Ataru is looking very sickly so Cherry suggests they go confront the Amefurashi. The follow her to her camp (which turned out to be right next Cherry’s tent!), but before they get the chance to confront her Tsuyuko’s dad bursts in and apologises. Then the pair of them play in the rain for 7 days and nights, until the Amefurashi is placated and the curse lifted.

But now Tsuyuko’s dad is left in the same position the Amefurashi was, and he is left wailing and demanding that she come back and play some more!

Another great script, the ending is genuinely touching in a slightly demented way and there’s some really nicely written misdirection gags in here.

Tsuyuko’s dad strikes me as being some kind of caricature, but I’m not sure of who.

Animation-wise, it’s not great. Generally it’s fair, but there’s a scene or two where proportions seem to slip.

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Another Kazunori Ito script, and the weird mystery nature of story seems something he’s interested in given his later works like Twilight Q & .hack. There’s a number of these “mystery” episodes in UY, and it’ll be interesting to see if he’s writing them.

Kozima Tamiko directs & storyboards, and Asami Endo is the animation director.

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Ten’s in love again. This time with a flower shop owner. Making the mistake of asking Ataru for money to buy a flower from her, he finds himself competing for her affections. The pair buy a gardenia to raise in order to impress her and on the way home are harassed by Cherry who proclaims that the flower is bad luck.

Ataru’s warped plan is to overfeed the plant so it will wilt and he and the flower shop owner can heal it together. However, he doesn’t bank on Ten giving it some alien fertiliser and making it far more healthy than is sane.

When they take the giant gardenia to show the flower shop owner, the plant starts talking and moving, proclaiming it’s love for the shop owner. However, she rejects him, for she is in love with the Japanese quince! This all plays out as another melodrama parody that UY often goes for. We end the episode with the gardenia living on the Moroboshi’s roof, apparently now in love with Lum…

Animation-wise this is the wildest episode so far, there’s a vast amount of running involved and even when characters are standing still there’s a lot of extreme angles and poses involved. Unsurprisingly this is in no small part due to the animation of Masahito Yamashita once again. Here’s a particularly frantic sequence from the second half of the episode.

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Kazunori Ito wrote this episode, and we’re now getting to the point where he’s going to become the main voice of the show in terms of the writing.

Keiji Hayakawa storyboards and directs, and Asami Endo is the animation director.

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The last Masaki Tsuji scripted episode is another belter.

Fed up with Ataru’s girl chasing, Lum decides to travel back in time and use Pavlovian training to mould him into a better human being. It’s probably worth mentioning that she travels through time via a cup of tea, just in case you wanted to replicate the experiment at some future date.

She first meets a younger Cherry (looking exactly the same) and Sakura as a schoolgirl. Then she finds the 7 year old Ataru coming out of school. She follows him as he follows some older schoolgirls around and meets up with Shinobu to play house. Lum then attaches a doll to Ataru’s head, which electrocutes him whenever he touches another woman.

Meanwhile in the present day, Ataru finds the time tea and follows Lum to the past. Ataru overhears Lum explaining her plan to the young Ataru and plans to put a stop to it. However Lum’s pland doesn’t seem to have much effect on the young Ataru as he still persistantly chases women. Ataru meets the pair on the roof the shopping centre and swaps the doll with one he stole from the young Shinobu. And then promptly gets the electocuting doll stuck to his own head.

Ataru chases Lum to get the doll off his head, running right through the photo his parents are having taken in front of their new home. They then swear to never have children like Ataru and Lum.

Occasionally stiff early on in the animation, once we get to the time travel it loosens up and there’s a lot of fun character stuff seeing the younger versions of a lot of the cast (the Stormtroopers also show up during it), not to mention the conditioned reflex-based silliness.

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Motosuke Takahashi returns to storyboarding UY with this episode (last seen on ep. 16).

Kozima Tamiko directs and Asami Endo returns to the animation director chair for the first of three straight episodes.

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More crisp talk!

Fish and Chips

This tastes a lot like the old fish and chips “crisps” that used to be available in the UK. And as such doesn’t really taste like Fish and Chips.

Not a keeper.

Builders Breakfast

They’d done something similar in the past, but this has one distinct difference to just tasting like sausage and/or bacon.

FRIED EGG

Yes, fried egg flavoured crisps. And they are weirding me out.

And the taste still hadn’t gone away 3 hours later. If you like the flavour of a McDonald’s Egg McMuffin in crisp form, then this is for you. It’s not for me, though.

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After sitting on the first two series for at least 2 years, I’ve watched all four series since I got back from Xmas. On the whole I like it, it’s very much a scummier version of Seinfeld. However there’s a few things that struck me in watching it in such a condensed manner.

Like most series the first season feels like it’s feeling it’s way, and it’s the one that’s closest to Seinfeld. The strange thing is, with the addition of Danny DeVito to the cast in season two, it’s almost like it has another first season. The addition of a fifth lead throws off whatever balance it had found in the first season and it has to find it all over again.

The third season, for me, is the peak so far. It’s found the balance in the characters and every episode I thought was gold.

The fourth felt like it was resting on it’s laurels a bit. There’s some good episodes (“Mac & Charlie Die” is just as good as anything in season 3), but too often it felt like it fell into rhythms that felt too familiar or resorted to making the characters a bit too cartoonish.

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Dracula shows up, and he’s not quite as Bram Stoker imagined him.

His bat assistant Koomori has found him a new victim in Tomobiki, namely Lum. However when he tries to get in the house he is thwarted by the garlic laced meal the Moroboshi family had for dinner.

So instead he writes, in incredibly poor Japanese, a love letter to lead Lum to where he is waiting. On the Moroboshi’s roof. When he moves in for the bite however, Ten gets in the way and he bites Ten’s bottom. Naturally this leads to a incineration from Ten and he falls off the roof.

The next day, Dracula tries again to ask Lum out “on a date and drink her fresh blood”. Of course Lum refuses and so Koomori asks Ataru to find Dracula a different victim, in return for introducing Ataru to a girl. The girl in question turns out to be Koomori himself who transforms himself into a girl, much to his own disgust.

After exhausting all the names in Ataru’s “little black book”, they run into Ran. Ataru tries to discourage it, but Koomori presses ahead. Ran agrees to date Dracula if Ataru will chaperone.

They then go to Dracula’s underground mansion (entered via a doghouse). Once there Ataru leaves Ran with Dracula’s coffin so he can make his move on the “girl” Koomori has set him up with. Dracula tries to impress Ran, but as an alien she is unaware of his legend. Before Dracula can drink her blood Ran kisses him, trying to drain his youth. Much to her disappointment he has none to drain.

Ataru manages to kiss the “girl” who promptly turns into a very disgusted bat, much to Lum’s amusement. Ran meanwhile takes Dracula to a blood bank, where he expects to be able to get a drink of blood, but instead we leave him being manhandled by nurses attempting to draw his blood.

Nothing super special, but a good example of the one-shot weirdo episode style that UY relies on a lot. Dracula and Koomori are fun characters and there’s plenty of nice lines in the script. The device of weirdos congregating on the Moroboshi’s roof is one that we’ll see plenty of in later episodes, I don’t think we’ve seen it as a regular piece of the set until now.

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Another Shiyou Hisakazu (sp?) and Kazunori Ito scripted episode.

Keiji Hayakawa directs, storyboards are from Kazufumi Nomura (JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure OAV) in another one-shot deal.

Noboru Furuse (JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure OAV, New Dominion Tank Police, lots of Lupin III character designs) is the animation director. They’d be back on episode 62 and throughout the remaining Oshii episodes.

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So those new Walker’s Crisps flavours finally made it to Didcot, and I’ve picked up 2 bags of each to try.

Cajun Squirrel Flavour

These taste familiar at first bite. It reminded me of either their Roast Chicken or possibly some variant they’ve done in the past. However it has a strong hot after-taste and checking the ingredients list it’s loaded with spices and herbs in the flavouring.

Of course having never tasted Squirrel I can’t say if the flavour’s particularly accurate. It is however, suitable for vegetarians.

Not as exciting as the name suggests, I felt a bit let down by this crisp.

Chilli & Chocolate

This however, was great.

First off – yes, the flavourings contain cocoa powder! In fact it’s the main ingredient. The second is Chilli. It’s a straight forward flavouring that works surprisingly well. You first get the hit of chocolate flavour, then the chilli heat afterwards.

Two flavours in, and I’m not sure I can see anything beating this one. There’s definitely something to be said for flavours being what they are rather than trying to fake something.

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X-Nebula has fansubbed the first episode of Galaxy Cyclone Braiger, the first of the J9 series. How’s that make me feel?

It’s not without it’s flaws – outside of the OP, the animation here doesn’t compare with the episodes of UY that I’ve talked about recently, even though they were out at the same time.

And the mecha designs are bit too “toyetic” for my tastes.

The writing is very good though. The theme is that of colonising space, with particular focus given to terraforming in the solar system. One big difference to other mecha shows of the era is that the heroes are very pulpy. It definitely feels like the Monkey Punch influence is deeper than the character design in that respect.

Rather than eager or reluctant youths, these heroes are fully formed professionals, the best in their fields. Also, like a lot of early 20th century pulp sci-fi, the leader is a scientist who works outside the law for the betterment of mankind.

It’s not great art, but, if giant robots are your thing, it’s sufficiently different from better known 80s mecha shows to make it worth your time checking out.

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Ten has fallen in love!

With Sakura, of all people. Ataru offers him advice, but Kintaro warns Ten against it. Instead Kintaro pays Sakura a visit to tell her of Ten’s feelings. Or rather, demand that she goes on a date with Ten. She calls him an imbecile and Kentaro returns to tell Ten the bad news.

Next Lum goes to talk with Sakura, and soon Sakura rings Ten up to ask him on a date! However Ataru and Lum follow to keep an eye on him. Ataru deduces that Lum asked Sakura to take Ten out for Children’s Day, however he points out that Lum doesn’t realise that Ten’s as bad as him, and won’t accept the date for the innocent idea that Lum and Sakura think it is.

This proves to be correct a wise assessment as, after a visit to an amusement park, Ten has Kintaro kidnap Sakura to high rise construction site so that Ten can propose to her! Naturally, she rejects him, breaking his heart.

And then it goes all trippy, as Ten has Kintaro’s ET kidergarten class put on a light show of Sakura’s face in the sky, as something of an apology for how he behaved.

A fairly light episode in terms of actual story, but there’s lots of nice pieces of business throughout. The highlight is a sequence where Ataru is leaning back on a chair to eavesdrop on Ten and Sakura, and he loses his balance. Then for about 30 seconds we have him desperately trying to stop himself and the chair from falling over. Other neat gags are Ten not being able to open an automatic door because he’s flying and Ataru trying to ride Lum as if she was a horse to pursue Kintaro when Sakura is kidnapped.

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The episode is written by Shiyou Hisakazu (sp?) and Kazunori Ito. Hisakazu I’m stumped on as their career outside UY.

Storyboards are by frequent Oshii collaborator Mizuho Nishikubo, though this is the only UY storyboard he’s credited with.

Directing, unsurprisingly, is Mamoru Oshii.

And debuting as animation director is Yuichi Endo. They’d not do that much credited animation direction on the series until Oshii left, but they did work on the first UY movie in that role.

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This episode starts off about a very hungry caterpillar, Imo, who is eating all the food meant for The Stormtroopers’ biology experiment. They want to get rid of it, but Ataru takes a liking to it. Shockingly for no ulterior motive!

Soon Imo has run amok eating the entire class’ lunch and growing to an unnatural size. Ataru and Lum then try to prevent the rest of the class from killing Imo, leading to THE CHASE!

After a close run in with Mendou and the Stormtroopers they make it to the medical room, where Sakura points out the obvious and tells them the caterpillar is not a real caterpillar. She performs a ritual to reveal its true form but is interrupted by the pursuers and THE CHASE is on again.

They manage to lose them in the biology lab when Ataru hides in an anatomical doll (which he can’t get out of again). When he scares a schoolgirl, the alarm is raised and soon, yes, back to THE CHASE!

Cornered on a balcony, Imo begins to glow and on the horizon a great swarm of butterflies appears. Only, we find out, as Imo metamorphoses, they are, in fact, fairies. Finally Imo thanks Ataru (calling him Papa, and Lum, Mama) for making her able to become a fairy before flying off with the other fairies.

This is another episode where Megane gets to act the villain and so allows Ataru to take on a wholly heroic role. Megane is on fine form here, fascism just bubbling under his surface as he convinces the other Stormtroopers to continue their pursuit halfway through the episode. Then having his jaw lock on him as he overextends on a demented cackle.

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Yu Yamamoto wrote the episode.

Storyboards were from Shunji Oga (Anpanman, Golgo 13 TV). He’s only on one more episode. In fact the next 2 episodes feature storyboards from people who’d only do the one episode. The production teams seem a little in flux for a while here, not sure if they were trying people out or calling in favours to help spread the load. We’ll also get two new animation directors in those episodes too.

Meanwhile this episode was in the old hands of director Keiji Hayakawa, and animation director Hayao Nobe.

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