Kaede, the lady ninja from the spring special makes a belated return, as she once again flees the life of a ninja in search of a new job. She’s afraid that if she keeps up the ninja lifestyle it will make her as ugly as her ninja leader.

Of course she is pursued by her leader and the clan of tiny Bomberman-looking ninjas, and after a brief stint as a drive-thru rollerskating waitress (did/do these actually exist? It seems like a piece of Americana I’ve only ever seen in fiction), she ends up in Tomobiki.

Starving and homeless, she is found by Mendou and taken in. After she saves him from one of Ryoko’s attempts to blow him up, he offers her the job of his bodyguard. Ryoko however demands a test, Kaede must run from the Mendou Estate to the school and launch a rocket by a specific time. Ryoko booby traps the route and tips of the ninja clan in an attempt to prevent it.

This leads to a great second half of the episode where we get two comedic devices that Urusei Yatsura does repeatedly well.

The first is the chase. I’ve discussed before how the use of the chase scene is lacking in modern anime. Admittedly, these later UY episodes have a ridiculous budget for their time, but even the lower budget Oshii episodes frequently made use of the device too. I don’t think it’s just down to animation talent and budget though, the nature of the material being adapted has also changed. A lot of recent comedy manga have a stage-y feel that is absent from Takahashi’s work, likely a reflection of the boom in variety comedy Japan has experienced. Just look at Astro Fighter Sunred, that uses a number of stage comedy troupes in its voice cast.

The second device is the reversal of expectations. This does still get used a lot in anime comedy. Here, we have the ninja leader call on the help of sleeper agents who lead normal lives in Tomobiki, but are secret ninjas. The whole sequence is played totally straight, as a parody of serious ninja fiction. That is until the sleeper ninja’s actually try to do something. The first’s sword has rusted into his sheath, the second’s certain death technique is just the ability to climb trees really well and the final one has the special ability of falling.

Despite Ryoko’s and the ninja’s best efforts, it is Lum who accidentally thwarts Kaede at the last second, when she catches Kaede in a lightning bolt meant for Ataru. And so she must disappear from the show once more, in search of a new job.

A great episode, particularly in terms of animation. It pretty much feels they are showing off how great they are for much of the episode, something else that is all too rare nowadays. And despite that sense of showing off it avoids being too self-indulgent, the showing off is in service of the story, rather than an attempt to do a segment that feels like a completely different show (see Episode 130).

—

Screenplay: Shigeru Yanagawa
Storyboard: Junji Nishimura
Director: Junji Nishimura
Animation Director: Takafumi Hayashi

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.

—

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

Boy, Rumiko Takahashi really likes stories where things get attached to peoples bodies.

A space duck is making a delivery, when he is distracted by a lady space duck and bumps into a space sign. This causes him to drop his load of strange green eggs over Earth. One of which flies past Ten and attaches itself to his stomach.

For most the first half of the episode Ten is moping around with this egg, worried it’ll take over a month to hatch. It’s full of the faux melodrama and melancholy you’ve come to expect from the show by now, but not many laughs. Once it does hatch, and out comes a bee with Ten’s face and personality, the episode gets going.

The bee torments Ten, much like Ten torments Ataru, eventually leading Ten to flee to Tomobiki High School to get Lum to help him. Of course all the girls are charmed by the bee in the same way first Ten charmed them, and the boys similarly see through the bee’s personality. The duck finally catches up with his eggs, and is shocked to see one has hatched.

The eggs, it turns out, contained “Mirror Bee” larvae. These take on the personality of the men they attach to, hence the name. This is, of course, the cue for the punchline and we learn that not only Ten has had an egg attach itself to him, but so have Ataru, Mendou, Megane, Onsen-Mark, Ryu’s dad and Cherry.

Cut back to outer space and we see a disgruntled delivery duck now “bee-ing” harassed by bee doppelgängers of the male cast.

Perfectly acceptable episode, though not as good as the same team’s work on episode 125. Definitely could have used more laughs in the first half and coming straight after the talking flower episode didn’t help either.

—

Screenplay: Tokio Tsuchiya
Storyboard: Tomokazu Kougo
Director: Tomokazu Kougo
Animation Director: Kyoko Kato

We’re back, after a long hiatus, to reviewing every episode of Urusei Yatsura. Real life took the sheen off writing about Urusei Yatsura day in day out, plus the reason I started it (sitting at home with a foot injury) eased off. But now it’s back, back, back! Once a week this time, so I don’t burn myself out again.

What a shame that I came back to such an annoying episode.

The animation is fine, continuing the high budget Studio Deen episodes. But good grief, this contains one of the all time annoying vocal performances.

Ran has purchased some flowers that mimic people repeating what they say, but Cherry ends up blowing the blooms all over town after they have recorded Lum and Ran talking.  The blooms then latch onto various members of the cast, repeating fragments of the earlier dialogue. It drives everyone mad, including the viewer, as not only is the dialogue repetitious, it’s in this annoying, demented, effect laden voice. Horrible. I can’t even force myself to re-watch the ending to see how it wrapped up.

Screenplay: Yumi Asano
Storyboard: Junji Nishimura
Director: Junji Nishimura
Animation Director: Takafumi Hayashi

Love-sick shapeshifting fox Kitsune returns, with another plan to woo Shinobu.

This time the diminutive critter views a film (at the fox cinema) in which a fox turns a human woman into a fox for a night when she eats a magic nut. So Kitsune sets out to feed Shinobu the very same nut. However he’s forgotten where she lives. So he turns into Sakura to get Onsen-Mark to tell him the way to her house. Onsen-Mark is very drunk and very love-sick himself and actually thinks the tiny, fox-eared Sakura he sees before him is Sakura. He soon passes out though, and fter burying the unconscious Onsen-Mark under a pile of leaves, the dogs appear that were attacking him when Sakura saved him, and chase Kitsune. This time though, it is Kotatsu Neko makes the save, but Kitsune accidentally leaves his magic nuts behind.

TROUBLE.

As you may have guessed, if you’ve been following these episode write ups, these nuts are going end up eaten by everyone… Cunningly “disguised” as Shinobu, Kitsune gets Lum and Ataru to take him to Shinobu’s house claiming “I’ve forgotten where I live”. Shinobu is pleased to see Kitsune, but discovers he’s lost he nuts. It also becomes clear at this point that Kitsune can only talk to humans when disguised as one, as he turns into Lum and Ataru to tell them the fox as lost his nuts.

To Ataru’s surprise, even after learning that the nuts will turn her into a fox, Shinobu agrees to help look for them. However their search is in vain, until they run across Kotatsu Neko and Cherry making a stew… Everyone tucks in and soon, Shinobu, Lum, Ataru, Cherry and Kotatsu Neko have all turned into foxes and start floating away. Then as the smell of the stew spreads across Tomobiki everyone starts to grow fox ears & tails and start to frolic under the full moon.

Then we see Kitsune waking up in front of the cinema screen. Was it all a dream???

Another fantastic script from Michiru Shimada, who had also written Kitsune’s last appearance. Yuichi Endo also brings the same strong visuals, and what seems like the first time in ages the dream-like quality associated with the peak of the Oshii years.

—

Screenplay: Michiru Shimada
Storyboard: Naoyuki Yoshinaga
Director: Naoyuki Yoshinaga
Animation Director: Yuichi Endo

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.

—

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

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.

—

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

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

Class 2-4 show off their special talents in a talent show. Didn’t we do this one already?

Well not quite, but is a little similar. After a slightly surreal dance opening with Lum, we get a lengthy nostalgia insert with the Headmaster contemplating his youth. Specifically his times spent at both the cinema and attending Rakugo performances. This burst of nostalgia leads to the organising of a talent show in Class 2-4 with a friend of Lum’s called Gei Hitosuji acting as judge.  He’s little red blob of an alien with a rather harsh line in judgement. All the acts he doesn’t like he makes disappear. It soon becomes clear that he gives the women a free pass, no matter how pathetic their act is, and only makes the men disappear. So one by one, the Stormtroopers, Mendou and Ryuu’s dad are vanished. He’s about to vanish Ryuu, until Ataru pulls open her shirt to reveal that she’s female.

Eventually the missing people return (after some appalling singing from Lum), but refuse to discuss the horrors they saw. However Gei tells them they have to come up with some good acts or he’ll send them back. They don’t, and he does. Meanwhile Ataru has dressed as a schoolgirl to avoid being vanished. But when he tries to do his “act”, Ryuu reveals that he’s a man, by lifting up his skirt. Ataru demands that Gei shows off his talent rather than force everyone else to, so Gei obliges. His talent is making people dissappear!

Ataru then finds himself backstage with the others, it turns out that Get has teleported them to his home planet to perform in a music hall, and we end with the Stormtroopers being pelted with rubbish by an audience of weird red aliens…

A perfectly fine episode. The second half is stronger than the first, with the wistful nostalgia being short on laughs. Though that segment is interesting historically, the Rakugo performance as translated had some similarities with some (particularly British) music hall/vaudeville storytelling in terms of subject matter and innuendo, but differences in broadness of delivery. I suspect some of the wordplay is lost in translation though.

—

Screenplay: Hirohisa Soda
Storyboard: Yumiko Suda
Director: Yumiko Suda
Animation Director: Kyoko Kato

This is an interesting precursor to the Dirty Pair anime. Norio Kashima & Tsukasa Dokite would go on to pretty much establish the anime look of Haruka Takachiho’s creations in the Eighties and their work here has lots of resonance with that later series. There is little more here than just destruction, but Kashima and Dokite make it look great.

The gang of three, Sugar, Ginger and Pepper, are once again aiming on beating Lum, Benten and Oyuki (no Ran this time). In flashback we see them fail in attacking Benten and Oyuki, before they head to Earth to beat Lum. Meanwhile on Earth, Ataru has agreed to go on a date with Lum if she will control her temper for three days.

What we end up with is Sugar, Ginger and Pepper essentially trying to kill Lum, while Lum keeps getting mad at Ataru for flirting, then running somewhere and venting her anger by launching electrical attacks at the environment around her. And of course her three would be assailants along with them. Lum in fact remains ignorant of their attempts for most of the episode, with the three getting electrocuted/bonked on the head/crushed, behind her back each time.

It kind of fizzles out at the end as the script doesn’t seem to know what to do when Lum wins the bet, beyond the three confronting Lum face to face and getting electrocuted again.

However that’s fine as there’s a couple really good aspects to the episode. Firstly the destruction Lum wreaks on Tomobiki is at a scale never seen before in the show, and I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s what got Kashima & Dokite the Dirty Pair gig. Secondly the three girls really come across as actually being younger than the rest of the cast. This is in the script, the voice acting and the animation. Here they really are the equivalent of the St Trinian’s Fourth Form, bloodthirsty, murderous terrors of girls, whereas in their first appearance the animation didn’t get that across. Here though they’ve definitely got a distinct body language that sets them apart from the other female characters.

—
Notable for having both Kashima and Dokite on it as they’d both be mainstays on the Dirty Pair series.

Screenplay: Tokio Tsuchiya
Storyboard: Norio Kashima
Director: Norio Kashima
Animation Director: Tsukasa Dokite