A couple of bits of nonsense that take place at the seaside.

In the first half, the gang have run into Sakura once again, much to her displeasure. When Ten shows off his “core” device that turns his sandcastle as hard as rock, Ataru gets a perverted idea. Which of course Ten and Mendou go along with. The three of them make sand sculptures of Sakura, that they bring to life so that they can date them. Beatings and electrocutions ensue.

In the second half, Lum meets a lovesick dolphin (who looks and sounds a lot like the sad sack goblins of previous episodes). In order to get her own back on Ataru’s womanising, Lum uses her own ET tech to turn him into a handsome man, that she promanades along the beach with. However the Dolphin soon tires of being a man, what with the fact they get beaten up by jealous boyfriends and are expected to buy women gifts.

So he decides to be a human woman instead…

A couple of good stories, but with average animation. Nothing dazzling here.

—

Odd one this, Asami Endo is credited as co-animation director and Tameo Kohanawa returns as director for the first time since episode 14. The other animation director, Katsuhiko Nishijima would go onto to create Project A-Ko, before increasingly basing the remainder of his career around his obsession with women’s underwear (Agent Aika, Najica Blitz Tactics, Lingeries Office).

Screenplay: Kazunori Ito
Storyboard: Tameo Kohanawa
Director: Tameo Kohanawa
Animation Director: Katsuhiko Nishijima / Asami Endo

Ryuunosuke continues to provide fresh material for the show.

In this we get hints about Ryuunosuke’s mother, who we, like her, have been told is deceased. When Ryuu has a meal with the Moroboshis, she starts to feel sad that she can’t remember her mother. This is made much worse by Mrs Moroboshi doting on Ryuu because she actually appreciates her cooking rather than inhaling it like Ataru does, or sit reading the newspaper at the table like her husband.

When she returns home, she demands that her father tell her about her mother, which he agrees to.

However, his tale is incredibly inaccurate. The name of his wife changes three times during the telling, not to mention her job, and the location that they lived in (Florida, Chile and Japan!). In fact he manages to get the entire history of the 20th century mangled during the telling of the story. Nicely the actual appearance of his wife changes throughout the story too.

When she calls him on all this nonsense they get into a fight, then after blaming Ryuu for making him remember his dead wife, he goes on TV asking her to come home. It turns out the memory that was so distressing to him was that she wasn’t dead, but had left him!

After the break, we find Ryuu’s dad calling his wife’s name, Masako, in his sleep. The next day Ataru and Lum convince Ryuu that her dad might have a photo album with a photo of her mother in it. They search the school shop and eventually find such an album.

However, it is filled with a variety of women photographed with a young Ryuu (including a few from Maison Ikkoku!). And her father’s skills at excising bad memories means that he’s forgotten which of the women was his wife!

We end with Ryuu’s dad on the missing persons show once again, though this time he’s begging Ryuu to come home (who we see staying at the Moroboshi house for a few days).

The issue of Ryuu’s mother certainly comes again the manga, if it’s in the anime too I’ve not seen it before. A good episode, though you can begin to see the effect of Asami Endo leaving. The character designs are really beginning to shift more towards the sort of proportions we’d see in later Takahashi adaptations. It’s particularly noticable in some faces, where the mouths are smaller, less expressive, with more emotion put into the eyes. There’s also a subtle change in the shape of some character’s heads too. It’s not quite as obviously the work of Moriyama as episode 76, but his influence can definitely be seen here.

Oh and there was this neat shout out to Xabungle too.

—

Screenplay: Kazunori Ito
Storyboard: Mamoru Oshii
Director: Osamu Uemura
Animation Director: Yuji Moriyama

There’s not much to write about here as there is very little in the way of plot, more just a sequence of surreal events and imagery.

The jist of it is that Ran makes some cakes and drops them on the ground. Ataru eats one, falls ill, and Lum thinks Ran has poisoned him. So she tries to find Ran, and discovers she has entered a space-time distortion. Lum follows, and cue the Alice In Wonderland parodies (albeit twisted even further, with an appearance from Ogami Ittō amongst others).

Eventually she finds Ran, and it turns out the cake was meant for Rei. The cake expands 100x it’s normal size to fill Rei’s ravenous appetite, and that’s what had made Ataru ill.

Like I said, not much to summarise really. This story did actually appear in the manga, but the levels of weirdness have been greatly heightened here and sequences added in. The production crew are really pushing the characters and setting to the boundaries of the original manga now.

And tomorrow they will roll over those boundaries into unknown territory!

—

This may be the last full episode from Asami Endo. She’s credited on a few more, but they are alongside other names so it may be reused footage. Not to mention this is the final episode in this production batch. The fact that she worked on so many episodes provided a strong visual consistency in the series so far. It will be interesting to see if that continues with some of the new animation directors.

Screenplay: Kazunori Ito
Storyboard: Makoto Moriwaki
Director: Mamoru Oshii
Animation Director: Asami Endo

Oh my, this has some excellent animation in it.

When Lum asks Onsen-Mark what a ghost story is he tells a tale of a cursed willow tree that claimed the life of a former student. Ataru doesn’t believe it and draws graffiti of the Mendou seal with “Jerk” under it on the tree.

This angers the spirit of the tree, and disguised as an old man gives Ataru, Lum and Megane a treasure map to teach them a lesson, telling them to come to the school at midnight. When Mendou spies the old man, with the rude mark on the back of his coat, he thinks he is insulting the Mendou family and chases after him. The old man then tells him to come to the school at midnight if he wants vengence for the insult.

Later we find Onsen-Mark, working as a night warden at the school, getting scared stupid by his own tales. He finally encounters a real spirit however when he bumps into Kotatsu Neko in the dark, then later on, the willow tree spirit.

However, none of them ever get to where the spirit awaits. When Mendou shows up looking for a duel, Onsen-Mark thinks Ataru has tricked them both and stops the berserk Mendou from going further. Then when the three treasure hunters show, they help him subdue Mendou by bopping him on the head with shovel. So rather than end up with the spirit, they find themselves stuck with Onsen-Mark for the night, getting drunk on his plum wine.

Angered that the youth of today can’t even keep appointments, the spirit dawbs the school in anti-Mendou graffiti while they sleep. And we end with Mendou trying to kill Ataru, thinking that he is behind it all.

I’m curious as to who animated the sequence of Onsen-Mark in the dark school, as it’s a real doozy. There’s some other fantastic work earlier when the spirit gives the gang the treasure map, lots of crazy angles and reactions. Another in a run of great episodes.

—

Naoyuki Yoshinaga (Maison Ikkoku, Patlabor) shows up as director/storyboarder this episode.

Screenplay: Hiroyuki Hoshiyama
Storyboard: Naoyuki Yoshinaga
Director: Naoyuki Yoshinaga
Animation Director: Asami Endo

I’d forgotten how much I love this episode.

The gang are making a film at school, but after two days filming producer/director Ataru has spent all the money. Mostly on food for the crew. So they go to Mendou and promise him a role opposite Lum. When he asks what the film is about, Ataru replies, “What are all films about? Love!”. Leading Mendou to get the following scene in his head:

However the reality is somewhat different, for the film is about a young woman’s descent into delinquency and how she drags those around her into her world. Shinobu and Ryuu are similarly roped in. Shinobu turns out to be a terrible actress until she veers off script and gets into a fight with Lum. Ryuu at first doesn’t want to take part, because her father forbade her from watching movies, and told her that people who appear in them are arrested by the police. However Ataru promises her that she can be feminine if she acts in it. However, she gets carried away in her scene and ends up beating up the entire cast and crew.

Finally the film is complete and the cast and crew have a screening. They are appalled to see that Ataru has edited it so that he is the hero, a Mr Hanawa-style teacher who convinces them to leave their delinquent lives behind and embrace their youth. The rest of the gang are appalled, partly at the film, partly at their own inability to have seen what was happening during the filming. Shinobu destroys the projector and they forbid Ataru to show the film to the class.

However, the class want to know what happened to the money they gave Ataru to make the film, so he blames Mendou for not letting them see the film. They hold Mendou back, and Lum brings in a new projector. However the projector is an alien one, not exactly compatible with Earth films or electric sockets. Lum attempts to correct it with a mallet, and after promising Ataru that it won’t blow up, it blows up.

Soon the characters from the film are running around in the corridors of the school. When the bullies of Sanrinboo School (see episode 66) appear at the school gates, the delinquent versions of Lum, Shinobu, Mendou, Ryuu and Perm go to deal with them. Then the teacher Ataru appears, and pleased that they love their school they all ride bicycles to the mountain!

Getting a group of familiar to film something is a reliable comedy stand-by, and this is a fine execution of the idea, spiced up by the UY gag of alien technology not working correctly on Earth. It’s helped by strong animation across the board on the episode. Outside of some of the Oshii episodes, this may have the highest average in terms of animation consistency throughout an episode.

—

No shiny hair for Mendou this episode, so I’m thinking it’s an individual animator’s choice, rather than a director or animation director’s choice.

Screenplay: Kazunori Ito
Storyboard: Kozima Tamiko
Director: Osamu Sekita
Animation Director: Asami Endo

Another episode where they play with the expected genre. Shinobu gets involved with a hoary detective story plot involving a deceased businessman and his offspring who are fighting over the inheritance. The adopted son, Makoto, believes his siblings are trying to kill him and hides at Shinobu’s house overnight.

When Ataru visits her the following night, he gets dragged into the plot too when he finds assassins waiting there for her and Makoto. They try to hide out at school, but are followed by another hitman. However they are saved by the Stormtroopers who had been alerted by Lum after she went to look for Ataru.

The next day at the reading of the will, when Makoto is about to be made CEO, Shinobu arrives and objects to the appointment. She had deduced that Makoto was planning on murdering her to frame his siblings, and confronts him with this, before having him arrested.

A near completely humourless episode, with little to recommend it, outside of the animation. Had the plot been not so cliche that Scooby Doo would have discounted it, this foray into straight drama might have worked. But it’s neither an effective parody nor an effective diversion.

—

Screenplay: Kazunori Ito
Storyboard: Mamoru Oshii
Director: Junji Nishimura
Animation Direction: Asami Endo

Here’s one of those episodes I like more now than when I first saw it. Partly because I appreciate what it’s parodying more, and partly because I can see what a great job it does with the animation (even with shiny hair Mendou!).

It introduces Tobimaru Mizunokoji, yet another recurring character. Mizunokoji, is based on Hyuma Hoshi from Star of the Giants, right down to the sparkling eyes. He’s the baseball obsessed, woman-hating heir of the Mizunokoji family and rival to Shutaro Mendou.

He shows up at Tomobiki High to challenge Mendou to their annual baseball match. As children they had knocked each other out in a game and since then had duelled each year to prove who was best. So far they have tied 11 times.

When Mendou’s team is take ill with food poisoning he is forced to hire his classmates as a team, promising a month of beef bowl if they win. However it turns out that Mendou’s sister Ryouko is in love with Mizunokoji, and she offers them two months if they help Mizunokoji win. Well, I say in love, as we see in a flashback, he’s simply the first boy who wasn’t her brother that she was incredibly cruel to.

So it ends up with half the class on Mendou’s side and half on Mizunokoji’s, naturally heading into a draw once more. When it looks like Mizunokoji could win, Lum flies and stops any home runs. And when Mendou looks like he could win, Ryouko’s kuroko servants interfere.

Finally it ends when Mizunokoji and Ataru hit the fourth base plate… only to fall into the pit trap that Ryouko had dug there, and thus the game ends in another draw.

Some great gags, and some even better animation here. They go all out in their parody of Star of the Giants, with pin-point parodies of the famous gruelling training sequences and super dynamic, if loose animation in the actual baseball scenes. Good stuff.

—

Second directing outing from Sekita on the show, and the second to feature the shiny hair design for Mendou extensively. A third, and I’m going to blame him for it.

Screenplay: Hiroyuki Hoshiyama
Storyboards: Motosuke Takahashi
Director: Osamu Sekita
Animation Director: Asami Endo

Here’s one of the first episodes where they kind of forgot they were writing a comedy.

We’ve had a few episodes before where the focus was more on the romance between Lum and Ataru, but they wisely let Megane shoulder the gags in the past. In theory they go for that formula again here, but it all kind of falls flat. Not to mention they reign in their wildest animator too.

Lum forgets Ataru’s birthday, they have a tiff. Ataru gets a strop on. Lum gets a strop on. Megane thinks Lum’s leaving so he decides to torture Ataru in a beat that never pays off. Sakura tries to sort it all out as school counsellor. And in the end Lum and Ataru make up. THE END.

Oddly they have Masahito Yamashita animate some talking head scenes rather than the hyper-kinetic, extreme angled scenes typical of his work on the series so far. So by the end he’s drawing a telephone booth with same aesthetic he would a jet fighter. It’s not terrible, but it seems a waste of his talents.

More Takahashi cross-over abounds in this episode. There’s lots of references to the first Urusei Yatsura movie, “Only You” in the background, but more notably Lum goes to the cinema to see a film based on Takahashi’s story “Laughing Target” (4 years before the OAV). We actually see some sections of the story animated.

—

First Norio Kashima episode. Kashima’s notable for working the Dirty Pair TV series.

Screenplay: Kazunori Ito
Storyboard: Kozima Tamiko
Director: Norio Kashima
Animation Director: Asami Endo

With this episode we get what are arguably the last two major characters introduced. There are other recurring characters still to come, but the two introduced here get the most mileage. They notably get featured in Beautiful Dreamer, whereas longer established characters like Ran, Benten and Oyuki do not.

We’re at the seaside again, this time on a cold, out of season day. Frustrated at no shops being open, Ataru, Lum, Mendou and Shinobu spy a teenage boy their age, and his father running from the sea and calling it an idiot. The pair then start fighting one another.

It turns out the warring pair run the Hamajaya beachside cafe. The son, Ryunosuke Fujinami, disagrees with his dad that they should keep the cafe open all year. Shinobu and Lum want to help the pair resolve their differences, but Ataru and Mendou want nothing to do with it…

Until Ryunosuke reveals “he” is actually a girl, and that her father raised her as a boy.

After the pair cross counter each other unconscious, the gang chain them to the opposite ends of the cafe, hoping that, prevented from fighting, they will settle their differences. However they simply end up pulling the restaurant down so they can fight each other some more.

After the break, the pair arrive at Tomobiki High. Ryu to enrol, her dad to run the school snack shop. He first tries to enrol her as a boy, then he offers her a girls uniform only if she can defeat him. She fails when Ataru interferes, and so finds herself wearing the boy’s uniform. Which infuriates the boys of 2-4, because the girls in the class find her more attractive than them. Except Megane, who is uncharacteristically cool, declaring it matters not what other girls think, he only has eyes for Lum.

So restore the balance in class, the boys beat up Ryu’s dad and take the sailor suit, however she refuses to wear it until she has defeated her father herself. And when they boys press the issue, she threatens to the beat them up…

Oshii seems to do a lot of these key episodes himself, and I’m thankful for that. Ryu and her father are two of the better characters in the show, and this is a very strong introduction to them. Lots of the faux-melodrama the show does so well, and as Ryu and her dad are brawlers, there’s a lot of cool fighting scenes too.

—

Ryunosuke is voiced by Mayumi Tanaka. Which is perfect casting. Such a large portion of her career has been voicing teenage boys, that playing a teenage girl raised as a boy was a great fit for her. Currently she is best known as the voice of Monkey D. Luffy in One Piece. But other notable roles include Pazu in Laputa – Castle In The Sky, Krillin in Dragonball, Kirimaru in Nintama Rantarou and Wataru in Mashin Eiyuden Wataru.

Mr Fujinami, Ryu’s dad is voiced by Masahiro Anazai. He was Prince Phil in Slayers and I’m not sure I can find much more interesting things to say about his career, partly because it’s been curtailed somewhat due to complications from diabetes in 1997 and partly because there’s not much in English about him.

Screenplay: Kazunori Ito
Storyboards: Motosuke Takahashi
Director: Mamoru Oshii
Animation Director: Asami Endo

A fine, fine episode.

We open with Ten and Torajima (the neighbourhood tough cat from episode 43) training to fight the Stormtroopers and Ataru, when a Godzilla appears on the roof. It turns out to be two Kuroko sent by Ryouko Mendou (see episode 50) to invite Ataru to a masked ball. The invitation is naturally overly dramatic – this time in the form of a puppet show. Additionally they reveal the winner of the ball will get a kiss from Ryouko.

Annoyed at his sister inviting Ataru, Mendou goes on TV and invites everyone. Particularly those who have grudges with Ataru. Which for this episodes purposes are The Stormtroopers and Onsen-Mark.

The reasons for this become clear when Ataru, Lum, Ten and Torajima arrive at the Mendou mansion. They are given masks and, more surprisingly, a crate full of weapons. You see there is a terrible pun at work, and one way of saying Masked Ball could also be read as Combat Party!

This gives the animators licence to go wild, and do the sort of combat animation that rarely crops up in the show. First Onsen-Mark takes a shot at Ataru, then the Stormtroopers. Once he gets past them he faces the elite warriors Mendou has picked from his army. Finally he makes it to Ryouko (after a short diversion for an Enter The Dragon parody), only to get bonked on the head by Lum.

Oshii and Endo hit it out of the park again here, one of the best episodes so far. I particularly like the facial expressions Lum has throughout, rather than get angry or throw tantrums, she just has this resigned manner about her, where she’s going to let Ataru do this nonsense up to a point, but she knows in the end she’s going to get the last word.

—

Screenplay: Kazunori Ito
Storyboard: Mamoru Oshii
Director: Mamoru Oshii
Animation Director: Asami Endo