This may be up in my top 10 UY episodes. In terms of writing it’s definitely the best so far.

It is one of those “escalate a single idea” episodes that I consider to be some kind of ideal in animation. The idea in question is – earmuffs that swap the mind of the wearer with another wearer.

Ataru buys 2 pairs from a mysterious salesman, and then convinces Ten that if he buys the second off him women will be interested in him (this is the start of Ten as a mirror to Ataru in the same way Mendou is). Then, when Ten puts his pair on they swap minds.

 

Ataru escapes Ten’s clutches and decides to put his new body to use, namely being hugged by women so he can shove his, or rather Ten’s, face in their chest. This works well (he gets women queueing up to hug him!) until he tries hugging Sakura. Sakura sensing something is up beats up “Ten” before he gets a chance to fly into her chest. A struggle ensues which leads to Ataru AND Ten being stuck in Sakura’s body, Sakura in Ten’s body, and Ataru’s body, empty, in the back of a gravel truck.

Meanwhile Cherry has conned the salesman into selling him TEN earmuffs and we finally see that the salesman is an alien. Tired of cheapskate Earthlings he heads to his spaceship – hidden in the same gravel pit Ataru’s body is being taken to.

Lum, Sakura and Ten have by now got everyone back in their correct bodies, so Ataru gives the aliens an earful and they give him 3 bags of earmuffs as damages. Thinking no one is wearing a pair he puts on one and swaps places with Cherry.

Inevitably, everyone ends up at the Moroboshi house, there’s eating, fighting, an explosion and everyone ends up wearing earmuffs!

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This is the second of Masaki Tsuji’s scripted episodes (the next & last is episode 28).

Kozima Tamiko storyboarded and directed, Asami Endo was animation director.

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An odd one this, it feels a little like an earlier episode. While it has one title, it’s definitely two stories, and Mendou is completely absent from the first half. An unused script perhaps?

Both stories involve Ataru, Shinobu, Lum and the Stormtroopers on a school picnic.

In the first half Ataru rescues a dehydrated Kappa and is taken to an underwater palace for a reward. It plays out like Urashima Taro but with out the time slip. And more electrocution.

In the second Mendou appears and suggests that they go exploring a limestone cavern. Ataru plans to use it to get alone with Shinobu, Mendou plans to use it to get alone with Lum, Shinobu plans to use it to get alone with Mendou and Lum plans to use it to get alone with Ataru.

This being UY, first the girls manage to get their plan to work. And in their second attempt Mendou and Ataru end up in an embrace, lost and separated from the girls.

This situation gives us insight into Mendou’s fatal flaws! For he is both claustrophobic and scotophobic (fear of the dark), however his incredible pride allows him to overcome them when women are watching him. Soon they meet up with the girls again, and they realise they are all lost.

When they find a trail of empty cans they follow them and find a space ship with an alien in a cryogenic asleep. And a load of full cans of food. However they can’t find a can opener. There’s some malarkey with them getting the cans open, but once they eat the alien food they become too fat to get out the ship, and without a way out of the ship and indeed the script, they end the episode on a terrible pun.

Phew, this episode is rather weak, particularly coming of the last episode. Outside of the business involving Mendou’s fears, the stories just feel flimsy and aimless. I suspect these were quite close adaptations of actual manga stories as they feel like they’d work better in that format.

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Yu Yamamoto wrote the episode, storyboards were by Mamoru Oshii, direction by Masuji Harada, and animation direction by both Hayao Nobe and Yuji Yatabe.

I stated on episode 17 that I thought Harada and/or Yatabe were weak, and the good news is this was the last UY episode either would work on (though some of their work would appear in flashbacks/clip episodes). This further suggests that this was a hold over from the last production batch.

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The second production batch begins!

Visually the changes are slightly different character and background designs. The differences are subtle but definitely there. For instance the proportions of Ataru have changed slightly, as has the size of his bedroom.

Mr Invader plans a matchmaking party to find Lum a more suitable husband than Ataru. He swears Ten to secrecy, but Ten almost immediately gives it away to Sakura, Cherry and Ataru. Ataru mulls over losing Lum, and as we are now in the series proper and deep down he loves her, decides to put a stop to the party.

Ataru and Ten decide to travel to the party in Ten’s spaceship, a duck shaped affair that Ataru struggles to fit into (he spends the rest of episode stuck in a crouching position). During their trip we get a preview of the new ending theme, “Kokorobosoi na”.

Meanwhile Lum arrives at her party unaware of her father’s intentions. Various weirdos then begin to try to court her such as Rei and the Prince of the Underground (his talent is digging holes!). Despairing at the weirdos gathered, Mr Invader tries to push Yuni, a chap who looks a lot like Ataru with a unicorn horn, onto her. But Yuni is in love with Diana.

Seeing Diana’s distress at seeing Lum with Yuni, Ataru, Ten and a mystery man recruit her into their Anti-Matchmaking Operation. When Mr Invader announces Yuni and Lum’s engagement, the Anti-Matchmaking Operation attack, rescuing Yuni and Lum. We then begin, with assistance of the Prince of the Underworld, that UY standby, THE CHASE.

It turns out the Mystery Man is acually Prim, the Prince of the Underworld’s fiancée. Unfortunately the Prince has no direction sense and they end up back with Mr Invader. Lum is able to talk sense into her father and by the end all the couples are back together!

Writing-wise the big advantage of the full length story is that there’s more time for the story to breath. Which means you get better execution of gags. Ten accidentally giving the party away is fantastically written, staged and acted, with a pacing I don’t see them being able to do in the half-episode stories.

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And talking of the writing, this episode has a big name writer on it – Masaki Tsuji. Tsuji is a mystery novelist and TV writer. He was awarded a Special Award last year in Animation Kobe for his writing career in animation. I suspect had he not won the Mystery Writers of Japan Award in 1982, we may have seen more episodes of UY from him than the three he wrote.

Unsurprisingly this first episode of the new batch was a Mamoru Oshii and Asami Endo episode. Compared to their last episode, let alone the very first one, this episode is far ahead in terms of animation quality.

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The change in ending made me realise I’d not actually talked about the opening and ending themes (and related animation).

The animation for the UY openings and endings are supplied by Koji Nanke (he also did the Maison Ikkoku and Ranma 1/2 ones). And Koji Nanke is great, more in the mould of a independant animator like a Bill Plympton than your usual anime staffer. He produces both personal and commerical material, but both very much has the same touch to it. The opening and ending played a big part in getting me hooked on the series to begin with.

The opening, “Lum no Love Song” by Hiroko Matsuya will run for 77 episodes. And it goes a little something like this:

The ending for the last 21 episodes has been the slightly demented “Uchuu wa Taihen da!” also by Hiroko Matsuya:

And with this episode the ending theme becomes “Kokorobosoi na” by Helen Sasano:

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This double episode aired during the fortnight gap between Episode 21 & 22 (2nd April 1982).

The first half, Urusei Yatsura All-Star Bash, is a recap episode. ‘Nuff said!

The second, Grade School Excursion! Run For It! though is a brand new story.

Class 2-4 are on a school excursion to some temples, when they run into Kaede, a kunoichi delivering a scroll to her ninja master. However the scroll falls into Ataru’s hands and the first half of the episode involves Kaede’s attempts to retrieve it.

First she tries to ineptly seduce Ataru, and then when Lum interferes, she uses her ultimate ninja  technique (summoning a stampede of pigs!) to retrieve it.

When she’s chastised by her master for ruining the scroll with muddy piggy footprints, she runs away from ninja camp. Leading us to the second half of the story…

Which involves a race between her fellow ninjas (Mukade, Kumade and their ninja army of tiny little ninja followers) and Ataru to find Kaede. They both find her early on, but lose her quickly. Then it’s a series of gags as they race from part time job to part time job, only to find she’s just left the role.

It ends with her seemingly lost forever and 2-4 having a class photo in front of a temple, but it turns out that Kaede is the photographer!

Animation is variable, a few nice scenes, but just as many rushed ones. The script however is great. Some nice verbal gags – Ataru thinks the scroll is “tissue paper marked confidential” and some great visual ones – the tiny ninjas’ arms being too small to unsheath their own swords.

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Grade School Excursion! Run For It! is written by Yu Yamamoto (who we’ve seen a lot of so far) and a newcomer to the series – Kazunori Ito. Ito would take over Yamamoto’s role of series composition for Oshii’s run on the series. Not sure on where this hand over takes place – wikipedia also lists Shiyou Hisakazu (sp?) in that role between Yamamoto and Ito, but they only actually wrote 2 episodes. For more on Ito see this entry in the ground work for my still abortive Urusei Yatsura family tree panel. I suspect I’ll get back to it once I’ve done this exercise as I’m essentially doing all the research for it during this.

Keiji Hayakawa directed and storyboarded, Hayao Nobe was the animation director. Which definitely makes me think this was rushed or made from the dregs of their original budget, as both have produced better animation earlier in the episode.

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via PCL LinkDump

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The wonder that is Go Nagai character design!

Spaghetti Jane from Shameless School Vol. 9

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Shameless School is fucking insane. I can’t read a word of it, but Nagai’s strength as a cartoonist gets over what is happening fairly well. It’s a prototype for a vast swath of his career, possibly every non-robot series. Even Devilman and it’s apocalyptic ending gets its first run through in vol 5-6 when the PTA declare war on the school.

I’ll probably stick some sequences up from it soon, there’s a section during the war involving Spaghetti Jane’s predecessor (& husband/boyfriend??), Macaroni, that is a fantastic parody of Spaghetti Westerns (Django in particular).

And who else but Nagai would work in panty shots as schoolgirls are blown up by tank fire.

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The last episode in what can be seen as the first era of the series. It marks the last two-story episode in the series, and the following episode (a special) brings an important figure to the production team. More on that tomorrow!

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When Ataru has a bad reaction to some alien candy Lum gives him, he washes the flavour away by eating a manju Cherry has.

This being UY, the manju is, of course, one that Cherry had sealed all the evil in the world into.  Needless to say, this doesn’t bode well for Ataru… he gets hiccups and splits into two!

One is polite and well mannered, the other is rough and ill-mannered. The polite one offers to stay on Earth with Shinobu and the rough one offers to go to space with Lum. While the four are happy with the situation, Mrs Moroboshi wants Cherry to fix it. Particularly after Mr Moroboshi comes home and accuses her of having a secret child.

Cherry gives her a potion to mix into their food and so she offers them a meal before Lum leaves Earth. Soon the pair get hiccups and start to merge, much to Lum and Shinobu’s dismay. The pair pull the two Atarus apart, but it has the effect of creating two now truly identical Atarus. And as neither of them now want to leave Earth they have a fight to decide who goes.

Who goes? Who knows? Because that’s the end of the story!

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Another notable story now, in that it introduces two characters who will reappear in “Beautiful Dreamer”.

Ataru is asleep in class dreaming of:

and

as well as

until he runs into these two characters in this dream:

These are Baku and Mujaki. Baku eats nightmares and that’s what he’s just done to Ataru’s. Ataru demands a good dream in return, and Mujaki tries to offer Ataru dream eggs that will create specific dreams. However each one starts off good, but soon turns into a nightmare.

Eventually Ataru bullies him into giving him good dream – this being Ataru this is naturally owning a harem and having Mendou as his butler. However Ataru talks in his sleep and insults Mendou who swears to unseal his sword and use it on the sleeping Ataru.

As Lum and the Stormtroopers try to awaken him his harem dream starts going awry and Baku eats it. This gives Baku indigestion, and when Ataru awakens Baku and Mujaki are pulled into the waking world through Ataru’s open eyelid!

We leave the episode with Ataur back to sleep, Mujaki begging for a new job, and Baku eating Mendou sword…

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Once more, both stories were written by Akira Nakahara. Kozima Tamiko storyboarded and directed the pair of them. Hayao Nobe was the animation director on the first story, Asami Endo on the second.

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A couple of stories that highlight the strength of UY’s colour design. They’re both Spring themed and the colours do a great job of getting that over.

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On a spring day almost all of class 2-4 have fallen asleep. All but Mendou and Ataru. Mendou resists the lure of sleep via vitamins. Ataru by intense concentration (while reading girlie mags).

We soon see this sleepiness is due to a spirit “Shunmin”, who is chastised by her superior for not making all the class fall asleep. Lum shows up to visit Ataru and discovers the pair. It turns out that Shunmin is having to do a spirit resit exam and making the class fall asleep is it.

They offer an “apology party” to the three of them, but Mendou suspects they are going to drug them. This leads to the line of the episode when Lum produces a chemical test for sleeping potions – “My, you keep the strangest things in your bra.“

However the sake appears safe, and instead of tiring Ataru and Mendou out it makes them very energetic and lusty. It turns out that Shunmin had accidentally mixed a stimulant instead. She blackmails her teacher into passing her and they run off.

We then cut to the Headmaster leading the PTA on a special investigation into class 2-4. Much to the Head’s horror when the door is opened he finds the class asleep, and Ataru and Mendou chasing Lum and Shinobu round the room…

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Ataru, Lum, Ten, Mendou, Shinobu, Ran, Cherry and Sakura go on a poetry reciting picnic among the peach blossom. Ataru is more interested in stuffing his face than devouring culture.

Cherry starts reciting and they see a ghostly maiden appear. This suddenly sparks an interest in poetry from Ataru. However Cherry struggles to complete his poem and she disappears.

Mendou then has a go, and is successful. At which point Ataru grabs her and runs off with her. There’s a wonderful moment where the others just stare off in amazement at Ataru’s lust, before Lum leads them in chase.

However something else finds Ataru first, a giant wizard, the Wizard of Poetry. He demands a poetry contents and if they lose, he will eat the loser. Cherry is chosen as the judge, as he’s the least appetising.

Ataru goes first with a poem to praise the Peach Spirit, and it goes down surprisingly well, despite Mendou’s possibly correct claim it makes no sense.

The Wizard of Poetry then has a go, but it turns out he has writers block having never had to recite poetry for 500 years…

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Izumi Itirou wrote the episode (last seen on episode 3).

Asami Endo was animation director on both stories.

Mamoru Oshii storyboarded and directed the first story and Keiji Hayakawa the second one.

And as such it’s one of the better looking episodes so far.

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When Lum plucks Ataru’s diary from the future, she tries to use it to make his day go better. However when Ataru gets hold of it he then uses it to live out the day as he will write it instead of trying to avoid the perils that will befall him. This is due to the cryptic way in which he writes his diary entries which can usually be read in more than one way. During all this, Mendou finds the very idea that Ataru is writing a diary hilarious.

We also get to meet the female equivalent of Lum’s Stormtroopers, the Shutaro Mendou Secret Fan Club, a gang of schoolgirl delinquents who beat Ataru up. Eventually Lum tries to get back the diary, leading to Ataru treading on the time machine and falling into the gap between today and tomorrow…

A nice simple gag episode, that hinges on Ataru misreading his own future diary. The animation is terrible early on, but the sequence where he falls between the days is well executed.

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And now another good example of what Mendou brings to the show, he can occasionally take the role of the tormented character instead of Ataru.

In this story, Mendou finds an alien baby in his locker. He first tries to hide it in Ataru’s locker, but it follows him to his chemistry class. He shoves it up his lab coat and pretends to be ill to sneak out the class. Lum and Ten find him and begin to tease him, such as suggesting Cherry is the mother!

He calls his company to deliver milk and nappies, but they do it as an airdrop, alerting the whole class to his situation. This causes all the girls to faint as they imagine Mendou’s secret alien wife.

Meanwhile Ataru finds a strange vending machine that deposits a dummy when he places a 100Yen coin in it. This turns out to be the “baby”‘s translator. The baby is actually an adult, the vending machine his spaceship and he needs 100Yen coins to power it! Mendou is more than happy to pay up to get rid of “his” baby.

The final payoff is that almost immediately more vending machines start falling from the sky as more of the “babies” arrive to refuel!

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Both stories were written by Akira Nakahara. The first was Kozima Tamiko on storyboard and directing duties, with Hayao Nobe on animation direction.

Keiji Hayakawa was on the second story, with Asami Endo again as the animation director.

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Another recurring cast introduction!

This time it’s the final of Lum’s school friends, Ran. Ran is a “burikko“, which is something I’ve not actually heard since this episode and the Scottish band Urusei Yatsura’s song “Burikko Girl”. She deliberately acts cute and girlish to appeal to men, but that is all it is – an act.

Her true personality is vengeful and vindictive, and here she interrupts the Moroboshi’s Girls Day celebrations to lure Ataru away and seduce him. This is in revenge for what she sees as Lum’s stealing of Rei from her (though we shall see in future episodes that Ran has a lot to be mad at Lum for).

Not only does she intend to seduce Ataru, she also plans to drain his youth with her kiss (this being her ET power). Both Lum and the Stormtroopers try to stop this, culminating with Megane receiving a kiss from Ran, and ageing terribly.

This, of course, doesn’t dampen Ataru’s libido one bit…

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In the second story, Ran claims she is leaving Earth and wants to spend her last night on Earth with Lum and Ataru at her “house” (actually an UFO).

The interior of Ran’s “house” is a little unusual – everything appears to be alive, from the vase to the stairs. Ran bakes some cookies, which Lum is suspicious of. Rightly so as when Ran leaves to fetch the cake, Lum feeds the vase the cookies and it falls asleep…

Lum volunteers to do the dishes so she can catch Ran trying to seduce Ataru, but it all appears to be Ataru doing the seducing. Soon however Ataru falls face first in the cake and Ran kidnaps him while Lum’s back is turned.

Lum and Ran start reminiscing together, but it turns sour when Ran remembers Lum “stealing” Rei from her. She then reveals that she has Ataru and shall beat him up as revenge. She sends Lum into some weird space full of moons, where Ataru is also. Then she pulls a fake Ataru out of the oven to trick Lum with…

Which leads us into a nice musical number where the four float around on moons chasing one another.

Ran then sends Lum home with an Ataru. However, when Ran kisses the remaining one, it turns out she got mixed up too, and the baked Ataru deflates…

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Ran was voiced by You Inoue. Other famous roles included Sayla Mass in Gundam and Kanuka Clancy in Patlabor.

Yu Yamamoto writes both stories. Mamoru Oshii directs and storyboards the first. Hayao Nobe was the animation director on that one.

Keiji Hayakawa was the storyboard/director on the second story with Asami Endo on animation director duties.

Both these were very good stories from an animation POV. These are arguably the four strongest creators in terms of animation of this first batch of episodes.

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