Urusei Yatsura

It just never runs out of energy, does it? No one has successfully tapped that vein of gleeful insanity since and managed to refine it into anything half as good, and I'm not sure they ever will. I have my suspicions that it all went into making UY. Perhaps all that's left for those who have come after is to pick through the mine tailings and cobble what they find into (funny, but really stupid and random) things like Excel Saga. Or grind it down and sprinkle it into things like AzuDai.

Damn it, every time you post in this thread I want to start re-watching.
 
What surprises me is that despite UY's influence, nobody has managed (or even really tried) to create a character with Ataru's roguish charm. The thing with UY is that while every character is certifiably insane, you never feel the writers are being random for the sake of it.

Two shows that come close to successfully replicating UY's brand of inspired insanity are Seto No Hanayome (My Bride is a Mermaid) and School Rumble.

Seto no Hanayome wears its influence on its sleeve, and even has a blatant Mendou reference in the character Kai, a rich kid who makes a grand entrance, wears white, carries a sword, and fears open spaces. It's plenty random but has enough plot to set it apart from Excel Saga, Paniponi Dash, and the like.

School Rumble has more plot (which never gets very serious) and less randomness, and like UY also packs in a ton of references to other anime and film. And it's hilarious.
 
fabricatedlunatic said:
Just when I thought UY couldn't possibly get any more 1980s, along comes episode 150 and...
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That was quite epic. I'm only disappointed that Mio was not the vocalist. And that I said a year ago that I'd start UY and still haven't done it :(
 
fabricatedlunatic said:
Just when I thought UY couldn't possibly get any more 1980s, along comes episode 150 and...

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150 episodes and to me the show still feels remarkably fresh, if not quite as sharp as during the Oshii/Ito heyday. I'd like to do an episode-by-episode write-up, but I'm just too lazy. I've no idea how bloggers manage to find the time and inclination to watch multiple ongoing series AND write about them.
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That was amazing on so many different levels! I really have to start watching this.
 
Professor Irony said:
That was quite epic. I'm only disappointed that Mio was not the vocalist. And that I said a year ago that I'd start UY and still haven't done it :(
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Mio?

In case you chaps do get around to watching the series, I recommend pilfering Animeigo's excellent liner notes before they lose the license at the end of September. Through a combination of copy & paste and downloading PDFs, you can have the notes for the first 98 episodes (the rest I think you can only get on the DVDs as extras). Without them I would never have known that Ataru Moroboshi means "to be hit by a star", and that would have made the part at the end of OP5 where Ataru gets hit by a star appear more random than it actually is.
 
Mio was the vocalist for a lot of mecha series around that time, doing burning-passion type themes and insert songs. She was kind of like a one-woman Jam project. :D

Cheers for the heads-up on the liner notes though - it's very decent of Animego to just post them up like that (even if they can't put up the ones for Scramble Wars :( ).
 
I have fond memories of buying the first volume of UY on vhs from Tower Records way back in the day,i remember that day i also bought Ushio and Tora,to this this day there still is not a show i can watch over and over like i do with UY,as the old saying goes a volume of UY a day keeps the doctor away lol,ah great days. :D
 
Max Takeshi said:
The first VHS of the British release has just poped up on Amazon. How spooky.

Rated 15? Brief nudity, yes, but come on!
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It'd be a PG now. It probably would've been 12 then but that certificate wasn't introduced until late 1994. You know, the first episode might have been the first and only time we got to see Lum's nips. It was but a brief glimpse, so the pause button was handy indeed. Ahem.

I've noticed that some of the Animeigo DVD prices are already going through the roof. Scalping bastards.
 
fabricatedlunatic said:
I've noticed that some of the Animeigo DVD prices are already going through the roof. Scalping bastards.
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That's not Animeigo's fault, they've lost the licnece (same reason they could only get half of Yawara), so it's now OOP.
Expect them to keep rising unless it gets somehow rescued from whatever Japanese holding company now has the rights.
 
Who's blaming Animeigo? My ire is directed towards those ********s who buy up DVDs that are going out of print just to sell them at a vastly inflated price. And also stores like Robert's Anime Corner Store who cut out the middle man and directly ream the customers they claim to value so much by charging up to $500 for a bundle of ten TV discs.

And Robert has the gall to make snidey comments about Right Stuf on his blog. lolz.
 
I'M DONE! 16 YEARS AND 8 MONTHS AND I'M FINALLY DONE!

I thought the series had started to go off the boil around the 170 mark, which may have been due to the production of the fourth movie, but there were some fantastic episodes towards the end. None better than the very last episode, which started out with the Tomobiki High students performing a play and descended into classic UY melee anarchy featuring just about every character--human, alien, animal, demon, spirit, machine--to ever appear in the show, along with some special guests.

Some of the art and animation in the later episodes is outstanding, with the likes of Atsuko Nakajima and Tsukasa Dokite directing the animation, and I could spend the rest of my life screencapping Lum for avatars.

It's all over ;_;



D'awwww.
 
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