Nearly a year ago now, out of sheer boredom, I decided to watch Urusei Yatsura. I really don’t have any specific reason why I started this show like I wanted to see why this was so big back in the 80s. Nope. I genuinely just did it cause I was bored and had little to nothing better to do. But at the start of the new year, after only watching the first 17 episodes in 3 months I decided to make it my New Year's Resolution to finish this show before the years end. Little more than 6 months later I’ve seen all 195* episodes of the TV series, 2 specials, 6 movies, and the 11 episode OVA series.
So how was it? What about the show made me want to watch everything the series had available at the moment? Easy. Stockholm Syndrome. Plus I’m a moron and refuse to drop a show once I’ve started them. But why did I watch everything else the show had available, I didn’t have to watch it all? Well, it’s not like there’s a S2 that was 150 episodes long. What was left to watch, outside of the TV series, wasn’t a hell of a lot more and I enjoyed the show enough that I thought, sure why not?
The series is extremely influential and is seen as the original harem anime. But instead of all the girls loving the main character, Ataru, for little to no reason, most of them can’t stand him, as he’s nothing but a lecherous, perverted, little shit with a libido high enough to penetrate earth’s atmosphere. That’s also the only thing he’s penetrating. The one girl who actually does like him is of course from another planet cause no girl on earth wants him in their pants. That space alien being, Lum. Likely the only character most of you even know from the show with her tiger-striped two-piece and go-go boots. She’s usually pretty chill but can be quick to anger, especially when her darling starts flirting with another girl, and she can also fly and shoot lightning cause she’s an alien so why not? The entire series is built on a misunderstanding between Lum and Ataru in the very first episode, Lum claims Ataru as her darling and refuses to leave him alone from that point on, determined to get this dumbass to fall for her as she has for him. Crazy and wacky hijinks ensue for the next 194 episodes. Roll credits.
Part of your enjoyment of the show will hinge on if you like the show's wacky cast of characters. From Lum’s alien friends, two of which are unarguably better than Lum, this isn’t debatable. Ataru’s class and his school’s faculty, and basically everyone else who resides in this town, terrorized by Ataru’s sexual assaults on women and Lum’s electric blasts destroying city blocks. If you don’t enjoy at least a decent amount of the cast after say 20 episodes then I wouldn’t blame you for stopping there, because aside from a few exceptions where Ataru shows his true feeling for Lum, most of the characters are the same as they were when they first showed up. The rich kid, Mendou, the childhood friend, Shinobu, the tomboy with a shitty father, Ryuunosuke, Lum’s annoying af little cousin Ten, the old Munk, Cherry and his exorcist niece who’s also a school nurse cause why not, etc etc etc. if you don’t like a decent chunk of this cast of wacky characters, then you will not enjoy the vast majority of this show. Personally I liked Ran, Benten, Ryuunosuke, Sakura, Ryouko, and Lum. Did you notice how every character I mentioned wasn’t a guy? Yea cause about every guy in this show can be seriously annoying and unlikable and god it shows that Rumiko can create some great female characters but she makes male characters that are just kinda there or flat-out annoying. The only one I’d say I kinda like is Cherry but god he was really annoying at the start of the show for me. The most annoying character for me had to be Ryuunosuke’s dad. Erase that shit stain from my memory, please.
Ok moving away from that, and onto the soundtrack, which in my opinion is the best part of this show. I’m serious. I’ve been listening to it while writing this fucking essay. The show has a lot of great music from start to end and that’s something that followed the series through its movies, specials, and OVA series. Hopefully, the new show doesn’t fuck it up. Most of the OP’s and ED’s are really good too, my personal favorite OP & ED being OP2 - Dancing Star and ED2 - Kokoro Bosoi na. The series has really good music basically the entire way through in nearly everything the series has to offer.
The show's comedy is incredibly reliant on if you enjoy slapstick. Ataru gropes Sakura, Sakura hits him with a comedically large hammer. Laugh. It’s not all the show has to offer but man, it sure is the majority. At least there’s always a slight feeling of gratification when Ataru gets the shit kicked out of him for being a perv. But like, little shit doesn’t learn and yea that’s part of the joke but still, that one joke is used an ungodly amount of times and I can only laugh at someone being hit with a hammer that looks like it belongs in a Kirby game so many times before it’s not funny anymore. Some of the dialogue is actually pretty funny though, with Ran and Cherry being some who would regularly get a laugh out of me when they show up and some of the shit they’d say.
The art of the show improves throughout the show's run, starting off as close to something like some more grown-up Peanuts characters' designs to actually being recognizable as anime. I don’t entirely know why but episode 129 is the best the show looked to me. Something about the characters in the episode just looked really great to me and I wish more episodes used this style. There are times in the show where it genuinely looks really good and the animation and some of the shots. From episode 107 onwards the show was made by Studio Deen, replacing Studio Pierrot, and I think the show once it made that shift to Studio Deen was for the better animation-wise. They lost the director, Mamoru Oshii, in the process but I think Oshii was happy to not be tied down to this series anymore. Losing him as the director on the show is hardly noticeable most of the time anyways, he was rarely able to do shit he wanted to in his 106 episode run as the director, only being able to spread his wings in a couple of episodes sporadically and in the second movie, Beautiful Dreamer.
If you are curious enough to want to start this but don’t know if it’ll be worth the time, here’s my suggestion. Watch episode 1 of the TV series, then watch the OVA series and maybe Beautiful Dreamer while you are at it. If all that doesn’t sell you on wanting to watch more, then well you’ll have your answer. I have my fair share of gripes with the show but I think I enjoyed it more than I didn’t. Ya, some episodes aren’t good and drag on for what feels like forever but hey, god made a 1.25x speed button for a reason. I’d say I’m happy to be done with this franchise but David Production’s decided to fuck with me for not watching JoJo’s and are making a new UY later this year so…. Yeah… Someone end me.
Little over 10 months in total is what it took for me to finish this show. It's far from perfect but had enough charm to it too keep me chugging along. Literally did the math for how many episodes a month I needed to watch to finish it in December and fuck me I enjoyed it enough to finish it in the Summer. Now I wait for the new one.... great.
