icememory moooooooonpiiiiiiiiiiig (there is no escape).

awesome_engine@icememory There must be some kind of moonpig.com / swine flu joke that can be constructed.

icememory@awesome_engine I was kind of hoping that I’d inspire one!

awesome_engine@icememory once they have a swine flu vaccine they can sell it on immunepig.com

And, yes, another episode that introduces some recurring characters. This time we meet the Gang of Three – Pepper, Sugar and Ginger.

The Gang of Three are three girls who attend the Galactic School that Lum, Oyuki and Benten attended. With their hearts set on being juvenile delinquents they are unfortunately outshone by their predecessors. So they decide to goad them into a fight to prove that they are tougher.

Using Ginger’s power of pretending to be dead, they trick Benten and steal her biker chain. Pissed off about it, Benten’s mood gets no better when the Gang send Oyuki and video ransom message, telling them if Benten wants her chain back to meet them at Space Vector A-H-O. Which turns out to be the roof of Tomobiki High!

Ginger challenges them to a verbal fight, but her insults cut a little deep and soon Benten et al are ready to physically attack them. Using their powers, the Gang manage to hang onto the chain until they can break out their super computer SALT (Ginger can turn invisble and Pepper can shed her skin) to execute their master plan.

Which is the production of a load of duplicate chains.

Oyuki freezes them and Benten smashes them leaving only the real chain behind. Safely recovered, Benten returns home and Oyuki and Lum learn why it’s so valuable to Benten. It’s her front door key and she’s been locked out.

When they get inside however, they find the Gang of Three waiting inside. You see Benten had left her back door open…

I liked this episode a fair bit, at least for this production batch. There’s some nice animation here and there (though no great sequences) and the story clips along at a fair pace. As good as the more Earth-bound episodes have been, this one pretty much cuts out Ataru from the story all together and it feels refreshing.

—

Ginger is played by Chika Sakamoto. She’d play Kentaro Ichinose in Maison Ikkoku and Mei in My Neighbour Totoro.
Sugar is played by TARAKO. She’d been part of the ensemble cast of UY from the early days (I think episode 4). Her most famous role is that of Chibi Maruko-chan in the massively successful adaptation of the manga of the same name.
Pepper is played by Rumiko Ukai. Her most famous role is probably Frau Bow in the Gundam franchise.

Screenplay: Kazunori Ito
Storyboards: Osamu Uemura
Director: Osamu Uemura
Animation Director: Takeshi Oosaka

It’s been a while but here’s another episode introducing a recurring character. This time it’s Soban, the grotesque gang leader from a neighbouring school who has a massive crush on Shinobu.

Ryuu believes she’s finally saved up enough money to buy what she’s been dreaming of for years – a bra! However her concept of money has been warped by her upbringing and she doesn’t actually have enough money for one. As she discusses it with Shinobu, they are spied upon by members of Soban’s gang, who mistake Ryuu for Shinobu’s boyfriend. First they try to get them to split up, which just ends with Ryuu beating on them for thinking they are a couple.

Then they think if they can convince Soban that Shinobu is taken, he’ll stop being so lovelorn and start being a proper gang leader again. So they want to take photos of Shinobu out on a date with Ryuu to convince that Soban that they are a couple. They bribe Ryuu into it by promising her a bra. However it turns out that they still think she’s a man, and is simply a pervert.

So they go out on the town, and Ryuu is single-mindedly thinking “Bra! Bra! Bra!”. In fact so determined to win the bra is she, that she tries to kiss Shinobu for a photo, much to Shinobu’s displeasure. Ryuu has to protest that she’s not a pervert, then they carry on with the fake date. However it’s not long before Ataru appears, offering his own bra in return for Ryuu to end the date, so he can take her place. Lum puts a stop to that, but then Ryuu’s dad shows up with a photo of Ryuu’s “mother” (well one of the possible candidates) so she can meet Ryuu’s future bride.

And so the episode can end in chaos, Soban then shows up and gets beaten up by Shinobu. His gang give him the bra, telling him it’s Shinobu’s in order to calm him down. Ryuu tries to take it back but it get’s ripped in half. Before she can get Ataru’s her dad takes it and burns it so he can send it to his wife in the “afterlife”.

Then it gets a little creepy when Ryuu has a breakdown and tries to rip off Shinobu’s bra, before having to protest once more that she’s not a pervert. Just seems a little of character, as she’s normally just attacked men up to this point. Obviously that teaching from Kazuo Koike that Rumiko Takahashi had was at work here!

Despite the slightly creepy ending it’s a fun script. The best gag being the shrine Ryuu’s father has to his “dead” wife which pans out to show that he has photos of all the possible women he might have been married to. Animation-wise, still a little ropey as I’ve come to expect from this batch.

—

Michiru Shimada’s first appearance as screenwriter on UY. He’s pretty much worked constantly since 1980, currently writing the adapation of Before Green Gables.

Iku Suzuki’s first appearance as episode director on UY. He makes a lot of future appearances in that slot, and judging by some of the drek he’s made, that might not be something I’m looking forward too. Most recently in charge of the infamous Training with Hinako…

Screenplay: Michiru Shimada
Storyboard: Kozima Tamiko
Director: Iku Suzuki
Animation Director: Noboru Furuse

Not wanting Ten to accompany Lum and himself to their New Year’s celebrations, Ataru gets Cherry to babysit him. Which means it’s time for the traditional anime New Year’s retelling of folk tales with the regular cast in the appropriate roles.

We get The Tongue Cut Sparrow retold with Lum and Ataru as the old couple and Ten as the sparrow, however it soon becomes clear that Cherry is getting his folklore scrambled as the elderly Lum finds a peach which contains another Ten! And now they are recast as the old couple from Momotaro.

Kintaro shows up in a cameo, then Cherry appears as an traditional Christian angel (!) who tries to convince Ten to carry out the remainder of the Momotaro tale (by conveniently leaving out the whole Oni-killing element). Ten accepts and heads off, but after hearing that the messenger of god had told Ten that the capital was full of babes rather than Oni, old man Ataru soon follows.

Worn out Ataru gets diverted into another tale, the search for the fountain of youth. Which turns out to be a lot easy than you’d imagine. After picking up Kotatsu Neko as a henchman, Ten arrives in the capital, just as the now youthful Ataru arrives.

The tale then turns into The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter by way of King Kong, with Lum now cast as Kaguya-hime and Rei as the heavenly being sent to return her to the moon.

Everyone ends up randomly fighting on the moon, before we cut back to reality to discover that Cherry’s tale has put everyone to sleep!

The animation isn’t terrible here, but the character designs seem to lack a lot of the charm of earlier episodes. It’s all very basic, with little emotion in the acting on screen. Probably the weakest of these historical episodes so far, lacking much of the anachronism that made them so fun.

—

Tetsuro Amino makes the first of three appearances as an episode director here. Probably best known as the director of Macross 7, he also directed a number of SD Gundam OAVs which is probably what this episode is closest to in feel.

Screenplay: Keiji Hayakawa
Storyboard: Keiji Hayakawa
Director: Tetsuro Amino
Animation Director: Takeshi Oosaka

With another year’s worth of Urusei Yatsura watched, it’s time for another selection of the anime shows that started airing in 1983. Another year packed with classic material.

Aesop’s Fables

Aishite Night

Aku Dai-Sakusen Srungle

Alice’s Adventures In Wonderland

Weird mix of Alice’s typical Nippon Animation heroine look and the attempts at wacky in the designs of the Wonderland characters.

Armoured Troopers VOTOMS

Captain

Captain Tsubasa

Cat’s Eye OP

Dorvack

Galactic Whirlwind Sasuraiger

Georgie

Ginga Hyoryu Vifam

Iga no Kabamaru

Warped tape alert! Trying to find a clip of this that isn’t dubbed into Greek is hard! Big in Greece it seems.

Mospeada

Kinnikuman

Surely a candidate for a Dragonball Kai style re-edit?

Kousoku Denjin Albegus

Crikey, there were a lot of Giant Robot shows this year. This is another one of those whose design seems inexplicably familiar. I see Matchbox released toys expecting it to be a third Voltron series, so that might be it. Also it got screened in Spain, so the toys from there may have made their way over here to the UK too.

Creamy Mami

Mimu, the Traveller of Many Dreams

Future Police Urashiman

Miyuki

Nanako SOS

Pa-man

Plawres Sanshiro

Is this the first “battling toys” anime/manga? I’m talking of the genre where the hero is clearly a stand in for the viewer/reader rather than something like Transformers.

Psycho Armor Govarian

Aura Battler Dunbine

Spoon Oba-san ala Mrs Pepperpot

Another sister show to Urusei Yatsura, based on the novels you may have read as a kid. I know I did. Another utterly charming Kohji Nantsuka animated opening.

Stop!! Hibari kun!

Super Dimension Century Orguss

The Alps Story: My Annette

Itadakiman

Whoever the crew where that were on the excellent episode 83 appear to be back with this episode, as indicated by the exaggerated mouths on Ten and Cherry.

In the middle of winter, an alien snowman arrives on Earth. When it lands on terra firma, it squashes Ten, igniting his wrath. However when Ten tries to melt it with his fire breath, it ducks behind Ataru, using him as a shield. When Ten swears that it moved Ataru doesn’t believe him.

The next day the snowman is outside the Moroboshi’s house, where once again Ten tries to breathe on it, and once again it ducks behind Ataru. It then follows Ataru to school, where it waits outside the school gates (and two little kids give it arms).

When Onsen-Mark makes the class go on a cross country run, it follows them, much to Mendou and the Stormtroopers’ bewilderment. When they stop for a rest, Ten finds the snowman again and for the third time Ataru takes the brunt of the attack.

That night Ten, Lum and Cherry try to convince Ataru the snowman is alive, but he’s having none of it, declaring if he was going ot be haunted, he’d rather be haunted by a beautiful babe. The snowman overhears this and after the break, a beautiful babe presents herself at Ataru’s window. She tells him that she’s made a banquet in his honour for saving her life three times.

This, however, is what Lum and Ten see:

It turns out that all the food and entertainment that the “babe” presents Ataru is actually snow and snow sculptures. And when Ataru tries to kiss the “babe”, he’s actually kissing a snowman.

Now that’s where the manga chapter ends, but their are still 10 minutes to fill so… No, not an alien disco, it’s time for a surreal montage of first Ataru hitting on the various female characters from the series as the snowman turns into them, then the various male characters quoting deep and meaningless nonsense.

It’s all very odd, and all very Urusei Yatsura.

Definitely one of the top episodes from this batch, an almost archetypal Urusei Yatsura episode.

—

Screenplay: Takashi Anno
Storyboards: Osamu Uemura
Director: Osamu Uemura
Animation Director: Takafumi Hayashi

And that’s the last episode of 1983! Which, if you’ve been following these posts you’ll know what happens next…

A short one this time as frankly, outside of fighting there isn’t a whole lot going on here.

Remember how Mondo and Tatsuma got gruesomely killed in the last arc? Well we open with them alive and well and wandering through the wilderness once more, as they glimpse a great dragon cleave through the land.

Way, way back, early on we had Violence Jack superimposed with a lion over him, well this dragon is actually the Slum King’s cavalry that is charging across Japan murdering and a pillaging as they go. We see a unit of them terrorise a village, before Jack appears and starts laying waste to them (of course not before the villains have beheaded a few innocent civilians themselves!). Seeing this the leader of the charge decides to break out the heavy weapons and they managed to slow Jack down with a barrage of missile fire before fleeing.

The injured Jack is rescued by Jun Hono, who luckily now has a sidecar attached to her motorcycle that will accomodate a 10 foot tall killing machine!

However they are followed and Jun ends up gunned down, which leads to another strange sequence similiar to the one that Mondo and Tatsuma went through, however here it appears the same powers that were used to make those hoodlums relive the Earthquake, heal Jun and she’s reborn in a peaceful park surrounded by a sheer cliff face.

Having managed to really get on Jack’s bad side, Jack proceeds to kill the remaining members of the cavalry charge. When the full force of the cavalry attacks hits Jack, the art shifts to show a giant Jack fighting a giant dragon. This shift in visuals is something that happens again and again when the series restarts in the 80s, eventually becoming a plot point one of the arcs. But more on that in later posts!

This is an odd ending to the 70s run, especially after an arc that feels more like a finality. It’s more upbeat that Golden City, in that Jun gets to live in some kind of paradise (heaven?) after her death as opposed to the ignoble ends Mondo and Tatsuma met. At the same time there’s still lot of dangling threads.

NEXT: Violence Jack returns in the 1980s. Guest starring Terrence Stamp!

Clip show time.

Wisely it uses a lot of Yamashita animated sequences, which just shows this production batch up for the inconsistent mess it’s been overall. The framing sequence is Cherry and Mendou discussing how Mendou might defeat Ataru.

Well, that was easy to cover. See you tomorrow!

Continuing directly from the previous arc, we find Mondo and Tatsuma wandering the wasteland until they find a village. Unfortunately it’s the source of the gangsters they beat previously and they get beaten up for their troubles. The gangsters’ boss ends up recruiting them and when the village is attacked by tanks, they all flee to their gangster’s HQ/bath house.

For those watching Shin Mazinger, you may find the combination of gangsters + bath house rather familiar. Well that’ll be because Imagawa has borrowed them from Violence Jack. The leader, Tsubasa Nishikori, the bath house and her henchmen all come straight out of the Golden City arc of Violence Jack.
Read the rest of this entry »

Cherry creates a potion to remove a person’s Earthly Desires, but rather than try it himself he puts it in a taiyaki and gives it to Kotatsu Neko. The ghost cat is too wily to fall for this and passes it onto Ataru. Who, of course, eats it. That night his astral form leaves his body and sets off spying on various women around town. Suspicious after enduring visits from this astral pervert, Sakura and Shinobu visit the Moroboshi’s house along with Cherry. There they determine that this astral body is Ataru’s Earthly Desires given form and exorcise them from the house, leaving them with a healthy, normal Ataru…

The episode has pretty much used up all the content from the content from the manga chapter (bar the punchline) and it still has 10 minutes to fill. So it goes with the time honoured tradition of…

ALIENS HAVING A DISCO~!

Lum says they can live in the sky now, under the moon and organises a party. Ataru’s not keen, until she tells him there will be various women coming. However the gulf between his imagination and is rather large. And unlike most women in Urusei Yatsura, they are all attracted to him!

So Ataru returns home only to get exorcised again. The next day though they discover Ataru won’t awake, as his Earthly Desires are in fact the entirety of his personality…

This episode felt a lot more consistent compared to the last few, possibly due to there being less characters on screen for much of it they could focus more on individual performances rather than crowd control.

—

Takeshi Oosaka makes one of two appearances as animation director here.

Screenplay: Keiji Hayakawa
Storyboard: Keiji Hayakawa
Director: Osamu Uemura
Animation Director: Takeshi Oosaka