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

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

Yuji Moriyama is great. He really hits his stride here, to the extent I wanted to go and watch more of his work right away.

In this episode, Sakura has given her purification wand to Cherry to purify, leaving her with a lot more unwanted attention than usual. For not only does she have her usual problem of the boys of class 2-4 fawning over her, she’s being followed by wandering spirits who have a similar stalkerish interest in her.

Seeing a chance to get a date with Sakura, Ataru fetches the wand from Cherry, but gets into a ruckus with Ten and Torajima. This leads to the setting up of the B-plot, where Torajima ties Ten to a haunted flask. Lum and Ten hear a voice inside wanting out, so they drop it on the school, crashing into Mr Fujinami and Onsen-Mark’s afternoon drinking session. Unfortunately inside the flask is a drunken ghost, sealed for 200 years and looking to make mischief.

Meanwhile, back in the A-plot, Ataru tries to bribe Sakura into having a date with him in return for the wand, but she declares she’d rather continue to be haunted than do that. He sides with the spirits, until Cherry appears and shouts some sense into the situation. He’s more concerned about the drunken ghost, who was quite the handful it seems and so they seek it out. The ghost is quite small, until Mr Fujinama gives it a bottle of sake, and then it gets out of contol.

So Sakura has to exorcise it, taking the spirits following her, Ataru, Onsen-Mark and Mr Fujinama with them. Lum is distressed to see her “Darling” disappear, but Sakura reassures her he’s safe.

Cut to the Moroboshi household where we see the spirits (and humans) have have all been sent to, much to Mrs Moroboshi’s annoyance.

Great stuff, the only quibble I have with episode is how under cooked the B plot is early on. While that would be fine usually, it essentially forms the climax. Had the threat of the drunken ghost been established earlier, it would have felt a little more even.

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Tokio Tsuchiya joins the screenwriting team, they’d go onto to work on series composition on Maison Ikkoku, as well as working on live action adaptations of Sukeban Deka and Oishinbo.

Screenplay: Tokio Tsuchiya
Storyboard: Naoyuki Yoshinaga
Director: Naoyuki Yoshinaga
Animation Director: Yuji Moriyama