A return to a common theme in Urusei Yatsura and a return to a better class of episode.

Something that comes up a lot in Urusei Yatsura is the idea that any woman who is acting overtly “girly” is doing just that, acting. Ran, the obvious example, being a direct parody of the Burriko girls of the time, but other characters indulge in it too – Shinobu often acts weak to try attract Mendou, even though she’s clearly the toughest character in the series, Ryu hangs onto to a warped, overly romanticised, view of femininity, rather than being herself.

In this episode we meet Katsuragi Anna, a Tomobiki High School student from the year below Lum, Ataru et al. She admits early in the episode that she feels like she’s acting like a girl rather than actually feeling like one. And she appears to be a parody of female manga/anime leads, in that she’s excessively girly and has excessively sparkly eyes.

She gets mugged by Soban and Lum comes to her rescue. She asks if Lum could beat him without her powers, and Lum says yes. This is all done in a way that comes across as a parody of the schoolgirl romantic friendship genre, though not as obvious and all-out as Project A-Ko would do it. However, Anna then goes and challenges Soban to a fight on Lum’s behalf, so that she can see Lum beat him and Anna can become really brave.

Lum, foolishly accepts, only to discover that without her powers she is really weak. There’s an hilarious line at this point from Shinobu who claims that “It’s too much for a girl. We just don’t have the strength” that leads to a fun visual gag.

We then get a training montage, and for once it shows great restraint in not doing a Star of the Giants or Tomorrow’s Joe homage. We do however get an Ultraman homage with Ryu and her dad, and a Rocky homage with Lum. There’s some fun physical comedy in this sequence and some very Eighties keep fit outfits.

Lum realises she can’t get stronger naturally in the three days Anna had given her, so uses some power boosting alien bracelets and strength boosting pills.

We then get the fight and the resolution, and this is probably where it comes undone a little. Soban eats Lums bracelets and she has to rely on the pills which only last 3 minutes and get less effective each time. Eventually everything descends in chaos, but as well the Oshii era episodes did. Could have used one really strong punchline to end everything on.

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Screenplay: Shigeru Yanagawa
Storyboard: Iku Suzuki
Director: Iku Suzuki
Animation Director: Yuichi Endo

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Rumiko Takahashi amps up the confusion and Yuji Moriyama amps up the carnage.

This episode hinges around two main points. But first there is a manic chase.

What comedy anime shows nowadays are putting in such kinetic chase scenes? At least what I’m watching seems to depend more on dialogue and stage timing, rather than comedy that could only work as cartoons. Keroro? Shin-Chan? Is that it? Certainly doesn’t seem to be the shows that get talked about.

Anyway, once the chase is done, Asuka, Ataru and Mendou are put in chains for their own safety and we can get on with the episode’s plot.

The first point is Asuka’s confusion about men in general. While she eventually learns to not be afraid of her brother, that in turn leads to Ataru, Mendou and Lum worrying that she has a brother-complex. Which she sort of does, but it’s borne more out of ignorance than actual love. Her entire understanding of relationships and gender are reliant on what other people tell her. Which is hard when her initial reference point for men is Ataru Moroboshi.

The second point is that Ryoko decides to declare war on the Mizunokoji estate in order to end her brother’s engagment (in the hope she’ll be engaged to Ton-chan), bringing with her the deadly secret weapon – Octopussy (this is something added to the anime). This leads to a massive battle, and lots of stuff blowing up real good. Finally Ryoko unleashes Octopussy, which turns out to be a BGC-style power armour. Without the bonus of actually working well.

This all ends with everything blowing up, and Ryoko pulling her brother from the rubble. The punchline is that when Asuka hears Ryoko call Mendou “big brother”, she suddenly stops being afraid of him – after all he’s a big brother just like Tobimaro!

While I’m preferring Toshiki Inoue’s scripts, both this and the previous episode benefit from the strong visuals of Moriyama and Dokite.

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Screenplay: Shigeru Yanagawa
Storyboard: Yuji Moriyama
Director: Iku Suzuki
Animation Director: Yuji Moriyama

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This is perhaps the first plot that really approaches the complexities of some of the Ranma 1/2 plots. I don’t mean complex as in deep, I mean in the terms of comically unnecessary twists and turns. Which is why it takes two episodes to handle.

In this episode we are introduced to  Tobimaro’s sister, Asuka Mizunokoji.

Here’s the complexities:

1) Mendou’s dad wants him to get engaged to Asuka
2) Ryoko wants to get engaged to Tobimaro instead.
3) Ataru is perfectly willing to take Mendou’s place.
4) Tobimaro was completely unaware he had a sister.
5) This is because Asuka has been raised away from men since birth, with the intent of getting her engaged when she turned 16.
6) She is also super strong.

Unfortunately for Asuka, the first man she lays eyes on is Ataru Moroboshi, which gives her a dismal view of men and mortally afraid of them. This leads her to want to wear her armour all the time to protect herself from men. Despite Ataru, Lum and Shinobu’s attempts to prevent the engagement, Mendou is dragged by his father to meet Asuka. And then Ataru shows up in drag, leading to Asuka going on the rampage and a manic chase through the Mizunokoji’s estate (makes a change from the Mendou estate). At the end of the episode Asuka’s armour flies off when Lum inadvertantly electrocutes her…

TO BE CONTINUED!

Lots and lots of running and destruction, two things that Tsukasa Dokite does excellently.

Asuka is voiced by Sumi Shimamoto, whose more famous roles include Nausicaa in Nausicaa, Kyoko Otonashi in Maison Ikkoku, Ginrei in Giant Robo. She was also the Japanese dub voice for Carrie Fisher in the Star Wars films.

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Screenplay: Shigeru Yanagawa
Storyboard: Iku Suzuki
Director: Iku Suzuki
Animation Director: Tsukasa Dokite

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An odd combination of characters to focus on, but it works. That combo? Ran & Kotatsu Neko.

Ran buys a supernova star fragment from a Lovecraftian store (owned by the Al Hazard guild), intending to put it in a pendant to give to Rei. However she literally bumps into Kotatsu Neko and drops it. Kotatsu Neko then spends the episode trying to return it, while Tomobiki goes insane.

Firstly Ran accuses Lum of stealing it, so the Stormtroopers and Mendou try to find it (despite not knowing what it is) to prove Lum innocence. Meanwhile Ran explains what it is to Lum and Ataru, and we learn that she forgot to shield the fragment, and if they don’t find it by nightfall, the fragment will turn into a real supernova and vaporise Tomobiki (question for the sci-fi nerds – is there a common source for this and the very similar Warp star that Sarah Jane had in Doctor Who?). So they start searching too.

This all escalates into the entire town thinking that Lum & Ataru are planning on firing a supernova missile at Tomobiki, and there’s a mass evacuation/lynch mob formed and a chase out of town.

All while this is going on Kotatsu Neko is trying to find Ran, often missing her by seconds, and meeting lots of the other characters such as the Headmaster, Sakura, and Ten. Finally just as dusk is about to begin, Kotatsu Neko finds Ran, gives her the supernova and the town is saved.

The animation here isn’t as strong as the last two episodes, except perhaps for Kotatsu Neko himself. It’s clear that the animators love the character, he’s gotten far more screen time in Yamazaki-era than he did in the Oshii-era, and he is the centre of attention here, even if the mechanics of the plot is with the other characters. The manic nature of the humans (and aliens) and the slow, calm, but persistant nature of this giant ghost cat works wonders here. As you can guess from the screenshot of Ryuu and her dad cross-countering, I only scratched the surface of how the hunt for the star plays out, there’s lots of comedic sequences crammed in there, not only do they get an Ashita no Joe gag, there’s a Star of the Giants sequence that is entirely in service one appalling pun. And for that I salute it!

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This episode marks the sole appearance of Naoko Yamamoto as Animation Director (though I think they were key animators on other episodes).

Screenplay: Yumi Asano
Storyboards: Motosuke Takahashi
Director: Iku Suzuki
Animation Director: Naoko Yamamoto

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After Ataru terrifies Lum and Ten by telling them the story of Botan Doro, he appears to become the target of a similar ghost. Every night the ghost arrives, dispatches Lum and Ten (and eventually Cherry) and carries off Ataru to who knows where? Mendou has been observing the situation and when Ataru comes back covered him lipstick kisses, he thinks Ataru is being taken to some harem and jealously wants in on the action.

And so it is that Lum, Ten, Cherry and Mendou follow Ataru and this time find where he’s being taken…. The Girls Dormatory at Ryouko Mendou’s school. At which point the episode wisely abandons any pretence of actual supernatural events and we see Ataru being taken down the school corridor by a wire attached to a digger driven by a kuroko.

It turns out that Ryoko and her schoolmates have hypnotised Ataru into believing he’s their dog. However when she tries to make her brother behave like a chicken, it fails and Cherry points out she missed an ingredient in her hypnosis powder. Which of course means Ataru wasn’t hypnotised, he was just pretending in order to get close to the girls!

Electrocute and end!

A great episode, and probably the best use of retelling folklore so far. With this and Episode 115, I’m realling liking Keiko Maruo’s scripts and Yuji Moriyama’s presence means it looks great too.

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Yuji Moriyama using the other spelling of his name again!

Screenplay: Keiko Maruo
Storyboard: Iku Suzuki
Director: Iku Suzuki
Animation Director: Yuji Moriyama

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More fuel for 1984′s boys love dojinshi market!

Class 2-4 are cleaning out the school swimming pool, with the boys given the job of scrubbing the inside of the pool. Bored, Ten shows up and continually aggravates them. Eventually they have enough and try to attack him, leading to him using his flame breath on them. To teach Ten a lesson, Lum fills the pool with water. Unfortunately, Ten had some alien candy with him, and if you remember episode 2, this has a strange effect on Earth creatures. Sure enough the class are soon under attack by giant protozoa!

Ataru grabs Ten and uses him as a flamethrower to burn the attackers. This appears to defeat them, but he ends up fusing three into a mega-protozoa that eats Ataru and Mendou. The pair find them falling through a vortex and into the past (the protozoa’s ancestral memory we are told). There they meet dinosaurs, Adam and Eve (hitting on Eve of course), and fall through a freezer into the Ice Age.

Meanwhile Lum continually feeds the protozoa sake to try and get it to throw Ataru up. It eventually has the desired effect, only instead of throwing up Ataru and Mendou, it throws up Adam and Eve. The boys and girls of 2-4 are instantly smitten by their beauty and drop to their knees in worship. Meanwhile, Mendou and Ataru are sucked back out the Ice Age and back into Paradise. With Adam and Eve gone, they are taking their place, with Mendou turning into a woman. The episode ends with a lascivious Ataru leaping at Mendou telling him he’s always loved him.

Lots of great animation again (particularly facial expressions) with a plot that ceases to make any sense after the commercial break. I appreciated the return to a story that has no neat ending and ends on a gag that will have to be completely ignored continuity wise next episode. I’m also getting the feeling I should find out more about Takafumi Hayashi as they seem to be a common element in lots of the recent episodes I’ve liked.

I am curious if the fandom at the time had created some sort of Ataru x Mendou romantic relationship in their heads, because in the last 20 episodes or so, the series has been deliberately throwing gags in that direction, with this episode having the pair both tell each other they’ve always been in love with them.

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Screenwriter: Toshiki Inoue
Storyboard: Iku Suzuki
Director: Iku Suzuki
Animation Director: Takafumi Hayashi

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Kinda entered into a little bit a doldrum with this production batch, so lets see if I can channel my old job where I’d have to write film synopses in 200 words or less.

Lum gets bitten by a cow while visiting a pet shop (there by a Takahashi leap of logic). When she falls asleep while watching a (space) vampire film and wakes up with longer horns on her head, she thinks she’s turning into a cow. While she hides and worries about this, Ten tries not to tell Ataru, Mendou and Megane. When Ataru finally learns her fate, he shows some rare caring feelings for her. Meanwhile Ten learns from his uncle that this horn growth is actually their race’s immune system at work. We leave Lum embarrassed at her mistake, while the still unaware Ataru builds a cow shed in the garden.

I’ve left a lot of what’s wrong with this episode out of that synopsis. Namely thick, thick layers of melodrama and Lum drawn as a cow-woman. This is all padding to bulk the manga chapter out to the length of an anime episode, and it is dreadful.

Also the character design here looks very soft and slack, like the effort of drawing Lum slightly out of character made them forget how to draw everyone else properly too. The direction is fine, as are the layouts. Just the actual character animation disappoints.

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Screenwriter: Toshiki Inoue
Storyboard: Kozima Tamiko
Director: Iku Suzuki
Animation Director: Setsuko Shibuichi

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