Once again Ryoko is portrayed as a having an interest in the supernatural. Not sure if this is a permanent shift in how she’s presented or if she returns to a straight mischievous portrayal later. This time round she makes a voodoo doll of her brother, and not trusting herself with it she decides to give it to someone she can trust to look after it (after using it to throw Mendou around a bit first).

That person is Ataru Moroboshi.

The twist that Takahashi throws in is that Ryoko doesn’t tell Ataru what it is, merely that he’s to look after it. As it’s Ryoko who’s asked him to do something, he actually does it, tying it round his neck and wearing it under his shirt. This leads to Mendou suffering all the ignominies that Ataru befalls the next day, such as being hit by Shinobu and electrocuted by Lum. Oh and being kissed by Ataru when Ataru kisses the doll thinking it’s a good luck charm.

Realising the situation and what Ataru would do if he learnt that he had a voodoo doll of him, Mendou dedicates himself to acting as Ataru’s protector the rest of the school day. Here the animation really comes into its own, escalating the tasks Mendou has to do to crazy levels not seen in the manga. And inserting all sorts scenes of the pair gazing longingly into one another’s eyes. It’s not until he’s been trampled by elephants that Mendou snaps and demands the doll.

Which of course leads to Ataru, who up to this point had been admiring Mendou for his heroism in saving him, nailing the doll to a tree!

Another solid episode, and Toshiki Inoue continues to show their skill at expanding a manga chapter to TV episode length. There’s also some flashy animation filling those gaps too. An sci-fi film parody that Mendou is watching on TV early in the episode and a baseball game both have some fun stuff in them.

—

Screenplay: Toshiki Inoue
Storyboard: Kazuo Yamazaki
Director: Naoyuki Yoshinaga
Animation Director: Yuichi Endo

Ten becomes a superhero!

Ten helps a superhero he finds dehydrated on the roof of a building. This man is Super Delicious Planet Golden Special Reserve Gorgeous Aftercare Kit #28.

Yes, that is his name. Super Delicious Planet Golden Special Reserve Gorgeous Aftercare Kit #28 gives Ten a superhero outfit, a cape, a mask and power belt so that Ten can be a superhero just like Super Delicious Planet Golden Special Reserve Gorgeous Aftercare Kit #28. These items should give Ten protection against attacks, superspeed flight and superstrength. These, Super Delicious Planet Golden Special Reserve Gorgeous Aftercare Kit #28 explains, will help him fight evil. Evil in Ten’s eyes is, of course, Ataru.

However these items aren’t all that useful and so Super Delicious Planet Golden Special Reserve Gorgeous Aftercare Kit #28 has to keep giving Ten more and more items with which to assist Ten in using them.

When Lum and Ran hear that Super Delicious Planet Golden Special Reserve Gorgeous Aftercare Kit #28 is in town they suddenly get mad and try to find Super Delicious Planet Golden Special Reserve Gorgeous Aftercare Kit #28. It turns out that Super Delicious Planet Golden Special Reserve Gorgeous Aftercare Kit #28 isn’t a superhero at all, but is in fact a salesman. Back when Lum and Ran were kids, one of his colleagues (either Super Delicious Planet Golden Special Reserve Gorgeous Aftercare Kit #3 or Super Delicious Planet Golden Special Reserve Gorgeous Aftercare Kit #5) had given them similar superhero equipment and then billed their parents.

Eventually they find Super Delicious Planet Golden Special Reserve Gorgeous Aftercare Kit #28 and confront him. Super Delicious Planet Golden Special Reserve Gorgeous Aftercare Kit #28 claims that all the items he’s giving Ten are free. BUT there is a charge for the recharging kit! However he can give a 1% discount!

And so it is that Lum and Ran beat up Super Delicious Planet Golden Special Reserve Gorgeous Aftercare Kit #28 and he leaves Earth saddened at his life as a Salesman of Righteousness.

Funny stuff, with a nice line in escalation with Ten’s constantly failing superhero suit. And also the repetition of the name Super Delicious Planet Golden Special Reserve Gorgeous Aftercare Kit #28. The Sake volume of Oishinbo that Viz put out this year clarified the joke that’s being made here, as one of the many rants Shirou Yamaoka makes is about the Japanese consumer’s blind acceptance of superlatives added to product names.

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Screenwriter: Toshiki Inoue
Storyboard: Junji Nishimura
Director: Junji Nishimura
Animation Director: Takafumi Hayashi

—

And it’s new OP/ED time!

OP: “Chance on Love” by Cindy

ED: “Open Invitation” by Cindy

I like Open Invitation a lot as pop music can always use more steel drums. Also worth noting that the lyrics to this are credited to Ralph Mccarthy, who I believe is the same person as translator/author Ralph F Mccarthy AND the Ralph Mccarthy who has written for Ace of Base, Celine Dion and Paris Hilton.

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

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.

—

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