Urusei Yatsura: The Alien Delight that conquered a nation

Let's you and me rap for a bit about anime...

Being that I'm a crusty old nerd and we're facing a crisis where breast-feeding in combat is totally okay(Seikon no Qwaser) and there's a Dragonball Z equivalent that the ladies are into (Inuyasha) and the same creative bankruptcy infesting hollywood today has devoured most of Japan, I feel it is only fair to point out to those poor young folks that the GOOD shit is already here.

It's weird, weird, WEIRD, but it is so worth watching for everything from a sudden outbreaks of girly-eyes measles, attacks by birds made of ice cream, zombie-like infectious toothache epidemics, aggravated and drunken space-fish, robot-erasers hellbent on revenge, rampaging tiger-cows, epic culinary disasters, goat-hauntings, parent-forced cross-dressing, willful perverts happily cross dressing (Ataru & Co.), suicide prone goblins, etc.

But this is the distinctive incentive that makes this series legend and keeps people coming back for more. Additionally, this makes it a constant reference in anime like in Project A-ko, Bubblegum Crisis, Otaku no Video, etc.

Friends, I invite you to consider Urusei Yatsura, my favorite anime of all time.






Urusei Yatsura is easily the greatest anime ever created. Period. The Manga was awesome, but few manga take to tv the way UY did. In fact, now that I've pulled out my cup o' smug I should note that UY is quite literally the blueprint for televised anime series kicking things off at the front end of the 80's and then dominating the hearts, minds, airwaves and theaters of Japan for years (the last OAV was released in 2008, so the 'effing thing is pretty long lived as well). It's been awarded, praised and worshiped, as it should with a fanbase on par with the American fervor for the animated works of Matt Groening.

Why is it awesome? What makes it so great? For anyone with even marginal interest in anime, this should be the first trivia question to study followed by "Why the big eyes, anime?"




First of all, there's LUM!

Lum is iconic image people imagine when "Those Obnoxious Aliens" (English translated title of Urusei Yatsura) is referenced. Lum Invader is the animated hottie dancing around in the tiger skin bikini above, she is synonymous with the concept of an Otaku's dream girl and her charm transcends Japan's borders as UY has ensnared many a nerd's heartstrings initially because of her alone. Yours truly included.

(insert nerdy stammering here)

Even random douchebag artist, Mathew Sweet, was propped up as her prophet in the USA for about the 15 minutes his career lasted because he frequently flaunted his Lum tattoo in public and his video features footage of Lum primarily from a few of the movies and OAVs as seen below:



I say "douchebag" for a simple reason, I hate his music and I hate this video. I also don't care for him on a personal level, obviously. What you say?! Tekyu hates something?? No!!! Lies!!! Well, fun and implied sarcasm aside the issue then becomes how I could hate a video featuring Lum and the answer is easy: None of the footage shown demonstrates what makes nerds freak out over Lum, period.
They picked weird points to show aside from Lum (The fucking mushrooms??? Seriously??? And the door rabbits??? Fuck you! Poser fucktard!), but when they DO show Lum they try to show her sulking or brooding, but mostly she's shown in an "Action Hero" style taken from the latter points in the films. They even throw in a snippet from the 1st movie where Rose, the overly muscled and totally inept mistress of 7 disguises, dresses up as Lum and grotesquely tears open a bulkhead barehanded to escape with Lum's unconscious husband, Ataru. IE: That's NOT Lum and she's part of a Lum montage...? Are you retarded? Yes, Matthew Sweet is apparently retarded.

Let's be frank, there's nothing worth watching in this video ESPECIALLY if you're already a fan of UY. The rat bastard's video shows nothing of the daily Palpatine-esque lightning massages that Lum dispenses to Ataru daily, her cute voice when she says "Darling" to her beloved while literally sparking over and gurgling with rage or any of the insanely sexy art of her shown in the almost 200 episodes or any appropriate clips of the OAVs/movies that made people show interest in her to begin with. SON OF A BITCH, I hate this guy. It's like he made a music video featuring Batman and you only see Batman do two things: Sit in a chair and do the Batdance. Sort of misrepresents the character a little.

Oh, right, and of course he and his grimey associates are frequently appearing with stupid, nonsensical snippets of stuff from UY floating around them. He's basically a poser nerd with bad music, IE: the worst KIND of nerd. A FAKE ONE. And probably an asshole.

Where was I? Anyway, the amusing thing about UY is that from an outside observation you'd assume the entire thing was about Lum when that couldn't be further from the truth! Granted, she became the object of the fandom's affection, but per the author's own words the main character is Ataru Moroboshi, the most lecherous, unlucky and perverse man in the world. In his horrible luck, he is chosen at random to compete against Lum (Mr. Invader's daughter) in a game of tag wherein if he can touch her horns in a matter of days then he will have saved Earth from their impending alien invasion. Immediately after being introduced Ataru is quite literally drooling and is more than eager to "tag" Lum until he realizes she can fly, but after he wins he is shocked after he accidentally proposes to Lum by mistake. The biggest "shock" being her gift of electric punishment when she zaps him with a warning that should she ever catch him cheating on her that he would enjoy more of the same.

From that point on, he enjoys frequent electric lynchings as Ataru's lechery runs so deep, his sleaze so mighty that magic spells actually summon him (or point him out), demons are drawn to HIM, monsters DREAD him, tools of high-tech alien technology register him as some horribly ominous presence and attempts to exorcise him of evil always go horribly wrong unleashing hell upon all involved. He's also immortal apparently; between cheating death on a daily basis, walking away from bursts of electricity powerful enough to topple buildings and rip the very ground asunder, explosion after explosion, brutal beatings, alien diseases, lycanthropy, etc. he takes a nap and recovers assuming a woman doesn't happen to walk by to revive his pervert's-heart causing an instant recovery.

When you hear Ataru's disgusting sounding little giggle that precedes every dirty thought you will begin to understand why his own mother's tagline is "I should never have had him" and why his classmates view him with a weird mix of loathing and fear. He's kind of like if Bender & Fry from Futurama had a lovechild that was vastly stupider than Fry (although, in some ways, Ataru is actually quite eloquent and very intelligent, he is simply WILLING to do incredibly stupid/self-destructive things) and sleazier than Bender, but it is hard to appreciate it fully because in the series Ataru is only 16 years old and has yet to achieve his full potential.


(The above video is a "Rumic World" intro, an orgy of Rumiko Takahashi's works. The biggest novelty of which is seeing Ataru attacked on all sides after he molests Ranma in girl form and hits on Kagome. Also, Inuyasha's shock at seeing Lum and thinking she a demon "Oni" as opposed to an alien is kind of funny too.)

Rumiko Takahashi is Japan’s most disturbing pervert because she has the devastating ability to weaponize perverse adolescent behavior into the most hilarious substance imaginable. For those who caught on with Ranma 1/2, you'll pick right up on that kind of humor, but UY is frankly MUCH more perverted at its core than Ranma and in many ways, much funnier.

See when fans (or in my case extreme nerds classified by hazard levels) think of the series we/they look to the definitive anime hottie Lum and THEN the school girls, the tiger cow, the fire-breathing baby, etc; and disturbingly enough Takahashi makes it abundantly clear that Ataru (the definitive anime horndog pervert AKA the reason pepper-spray exists today) is her main character and if I read the translations right it sounds like he’s her alter-ego given fictional form. When you watch Ataru in his legendary lechery, you begin to understand the horror behind her pen and just how deeply twisted she is.

Trust me, it takes one to know one.



Anyway, the TV series went on for almost 200 episodes not counting the movies and direct to video episodes. The messed up premise and original spirit of the manga seem to come out mostly intact, but take a unique life of their own after an almost organic fashion much in the same way Ranma took off with its own personality that spawned an equally perverse cult following. But despite my choice of language it’s really so much more than a parade of dirty jokes (though I will admit.. there's quite a few), it’s mostly a collection of absolutely batshit wacky Japanese puns and probably the best single concentrated application of Japanese culture shock that a weaboo/otaku/nerd can hope to experience!

When I took my Japanese classes this series alone upped my immersion by years, but that was in the days of VHS and sadly the ONLY company in the USA with dibs on this amazing series is anime shitbox, AnimEigo. Now, you may sense hostility flowing from me with regards to AnimEigo and you would be correct in presuming I had some bone of sorts to pick with them because I do. They have the rights to some of the most epic pieces of anime lore in existence including the rights to Urusei Yatsura (in its entirety, pretty much) and their ability to generate subtitled stuff is without compare, but their distribution and their dubs are pure dogshit as opposed to batshit, which is how one can conceive that they’re still above water at this point. It's batshit crazy, yo!

Anyway, back when I got into Urusei Yatsura like… 15 years ago, I was this impossible-to-not-hate anime snob (because I'm so likable now, right?) who ONLY wanted subtitled material in order to retain its Japanese purity and was unwilling to submit to dubs unless there was no other choice. Granted, dub scripts were terrible back then, but Animeigo’s poop was pooptastic. They ruined Bubblegum Crisis by making ear-splitting English versions of the songs and their ability to write a dub script, much less hire decent actors or dub directors is almost hilariously pathetic. Case in point, they dubbed three episodes of Urusei Yatsura (remeber there's almost 200 eps in the series) and the dubs are so terrible that they actually decided to quit while they were ahead.

I don’t know how well the tapes sold because I only got ahold of like five of them (roughly 20 of the almost 200 episodes at $30 a tape) before I gave up hope of being that much of a nerd to purchase the series for the insane prices they were demanding. Given the advent of DVD the fuckers still have the nerve to sit on the property and not be bothered to do even the simplest of things to protect their investment:

A) Utilize a decent fucking distribution method properly!!! The only DVD from the show I could EVER rely on finding was the 2nd movie, Beautiful Dreamer, and that's because it was in the hands of Central Park Media/Manga U.S. Corps. and NOT AnimeEigo. Really, you can still find it today in some places and to date only THIS film has made it onto to American Television meaning that AnimeEigo's sitting on the rest of the series/movies/oavs has been the most damaging thing to the series because they have no chance of getting their product notice outside japanese popularity and word of mouth.

B) Make the extra effort and expense to adequately dub and localize the damn show!!!
It isn’t that hard anymore because before ADV Films went belly-up due to their ambitious over-expansion (they got tired of licensing anime so they MADE their own and began funding things like the the Live action Evangelion film) they fucking mastered the art of localizing japanese culture to perfection using amazing dubs that can even fix crap anime. So imagine what they could do for something like Urusei Yatsura? Imagine what anyone else could do for Urusei Yatsura?

C) Make an effort to cross-market advertising with the guys holding the licenses for all the other UY crap!!!
Viz Communications, the half-assed printers of the manga for instance. Any US distributors of UY swag could obviously use the help since AnimEigo is still doing more harm than good by clinging to the franchise. There's a huge commercial opportunity that is, again, being crushed by their ineptitude. Why don't you know about the 30 years worth of great anime swag you could have bought? Thank AnimEigo!

D) Price the damn show which is over THIRTY FUCKING YEARS OLD appropriately in order to make people want to spend money on it!!!
It costs roughly $400 to get just the TV show NOW. TODAY. Same show they were selling poorly out of their garage in the 90's and that is NOT including all the movies and OAVs that they also sell.
Seriously, no one’ll buy it if there’s no sensible accessibility to the ENTIRE VIDEO MOTHERFUCKIN’ FRANCHISE. They re-released the Bubblegum Crisis in at least four different DVD sets as I recall as I bought the first buggy one for about $100, I can’t even imagine why they wouldn’t at least consider doing the same thing for Urusei Yatsura (sans bugs, hopefully), maybe even getting together with Viz to make a dub that the youthful nerds of today can appreciate, which isn’t hard because it communicates to them in all kinds of messed up ways.

But then, what the hell do I know, right?! I mean, I only lusted… er, I mean, obsessed over this series for close to 20 years now and I see how the Japanese market ADORES it (think of how we treat the Simpsons in the USA, UY is THAT endearingly popular) and how every other single Rumiko Takahashi joint is a pure fucking gold mine (Ranma or Inuyasha anyone?!?!) because they take the time to make a DECENT fucking English dub with good localization and decent dub actors. Animeigo is the biggest disappointment in anime for me next the loss of ADV Films.



What makes me an eternally vigilant Urusei-nerd is primarily my appreciation for the genius utilized in the way they blend bizarre humor in with their surprisingly organic humanity that they sneak in as they actually flesh out the romance between Lum & Ataru balancing a sweet teenage romance with certifiably insane Japanese comedy.

The most epic points of the series are naturally in the movies, which range from incredibly deep and complex to pointlessly stupid and simply fun excuses to throw a huge budget and weird situations into the mix. The OAVs are just the fun stuff they couldn't squeeze into the TV show and the Show itself is the icing AND the Cake. Even if subtitles aren't usually your thing, this will change your view on anime (and possibly humanity, but without a doubt you'll look at Japan differently) I can't emphatically recommend UY enough.

With that said... You should be watching this! Do it. Now.