Urusei Yatsura

MaxonTreik

MaxonTreik

Chuunibyou
I'm interested in watching this series. It looks to be fun and stuff, but I am worried about the time needed to invest in it. There's a rather large number of episodes, just like any adaptation of a Takahashi manga, and I get the feeling that it doesn't have a conclusive ending, like Ranma 1/2 (which, for the record, really became a stinker from season 4-7 despite a strong start).

Should I go into this series expecting a satisfying ending in the TV series or even the movies? Also, what are people's feelings about the series as a whole?
 
The series does have an official ending with the fifth movie, "The Final Chapter", though unsurprisingly it's far from conclusive. It wasn't, of couse, the last UY animation: more OVAs followed, and a (terrible) tenth anniversary movie was broadcast on TV in 1991. The upside is that you don't need to watch all of it. I recommend at least some of the TV series and movies 1, 2, and 5.

Urusei Yatsura, more than most anime, is not going to be for everyone. Takahashi's manga was a bit nutty; the TV series, at least Mamoru Oshii's take on it, is clinically insane. Every character in Tomobiki Town is off their rocker, and you either find that hugely entertaining or hugely irritating. There's probably not a lot of middle ground. Occasionally the anime suffers the same affliction as a lot of anime comedy: some episodes are adapted from short manga stories and the source material is too thin for 25 minutes of animation. Oshii attempts to get around this issue by cranking the insanity level up as far as it can possibly go, sometimes successfully and sometimes not.

Tomobiki-cho is an excellent resource. Also, the series is full of puns and references, many of which are explained in Animeigo's liner notes, though they gave up long before the end.
 
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