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Rumiko Takahashi

One of Japan's major industries is Rumiko Takahashi. She's a prolific manga artist, and her stories have been the basis of some of the most popular anime. I took a look at a couple of series based on her work.

Urusei Yatsura (TV)

 About 200 episodes
Viewed: 1-8, 61-80

Earth is about to be invaded by aliens. The planet's only hope is that its champion can defeat the alien princess, Lum, in a game of tag. Unfortunately, Earth's champion is the lazy, lecherous and unlucky student Ataru Moroboshi. Things look grim, but when Ataru's girlfriend Shinobu promises to marry him if he succeeds, he finds a slightly indecent winning strategy. Lum interprets his triumphant exclamation, "Now I can marry her!" as a proposal of marriage, and thereafter views Ataru as her husband, to his consternation.

A&L
Lum and her father

While Ataru is a jerk, Lum is a certified babe. She has lovely green hair, cute little gold horns, a tiger-skin bikini and a spaceship of her own, and she can fly. She can also deliver electric shocks to Ataru when she catches him misbehaving. One of the mysteries of the show is what she sees in her "darling," but she really does love her loser.
Urusei Yatsura is more like a situation comedy rather than a typical anime. Each episode is self-contained. Although various characters are added over the course of the show, there is no overall story arc. The most important of the later characters is the anti-Ataru, the very rich and very serious Mendou, who changes the Ataru/Lum/Shinobu triangle to a quadrilateral. Also worth noting is Ryuunosuke, a pugnacious girl raised as a boy.
Urusei Yatsura, the first of many anime based on Rumiko Takahashi's manga, debuted in 1981 and had a phenonenal run. About 200 episodes were broadcast, and there were also six movies and some OVAs as well. To the best of my not-very-extensive knowledge, it probably was the outstanding animated television show between George of the Jungle and The Simpsons. It's been called the Japanese counterpart of The Simpsons, establishing animation as entertainment for adults as well as children.

ataru
Earth's champion

The show is mainly of historical interest, I'm afraid. Most episodes I've seen are just average sitcom quality, though the better ones approach the Simpsons' level. There are occasional surprises. Mamoru Oshii, who later directed Ghost in the Shell, honed his skills writing and directing many episodes and some of the movies, and occasionally in Urusei Yatsura he abandons comedy for other purposes. Episode #80, for instance, focusing on Ataru's mother, modulates from a dream-within-a-dream-within-a-dream motif to an apocalyptic nightmare. It was possibly a dry run for the second Urusei Yatsura movie, Beautiful Dreamer, which merits a separate review.
Urusei Yatsura sometimes gets mildy off-color, but there's nothing really offensive. Ataru may be a compulsive lech, but he's unlucky, and Lum keeps him on a short leash.

A&L

bd

Urusei Yatsura: Beautiful Dreamer

It's the day before the school festival. Ataru and his classmates have been busy transforming their classroom into a "Third Reich Decadent Teashop" for a long time. Somehow, the day of the festival never quite arrives. When a frazzled teacher goes home to rest, he finds that his apartment is filled with dust and mold, as though it had been abandoned for years. Apparently, the town of Tomobiki has been re-living the same day over and over for a very long time indeed.
Although Beautiful Dreamer begins with a premise similar to Groundhog Day, writer/director Oshii takes the story in a very different direction. Initially it's spooky as the characters discover various anomalies, such as trains and buses that don't actually go anywhere, or musicians performing in the street in the middle of the night for no apparent audience. Later it becomes a sort of post-apocalypse tale, albeit with lots of partying and roller skating in the ruins. Toward the end dream succeeds dream and reality seems to be forever out of reach.

bd
School's out

Those hoping for 100 minutes of classic Urusei Yatsura zaniness will be disappointed in Beautiful Dreamer. There is a lot that's funny throughout the movie, but humor is not the emphasis. Oshii is more interested in playing Dickian games with dream and reality. For much of the movie, Ataru and Lum are secondary characters while Mendou and nurse/priestess Sakura puzzle out the situation. Possibly because it isn't just humor, Beautiful Dreamer is more satisfying than most of the Urusei Yatsura television series and is worth seeing by anyone interested in complex anime. M.C. Escher fans will also find something to enjoy.
It is helpful to watch a few episodes of the TV version before seeing Beautiful Dreamer. Oshii assumed that everyone who saw the movie would be familiar with the characters, and newcomers to Tomobiki might be confused by them all the first time through the movie.
I could have done without the Nazi nonsense in the first part of the film; it adds nothing to the story and is pointlessly offensive. There's also a brief visit to Ataru's ideal world, which is as trashy as you would expect. Beyond that, though, there is little that's objectionable. Youngsters and people with short attention spans might find the movie hard to follow.

ranma
Father and son

Ranma 1/2 (TV)

 Episodes: lots. Viewed: 1-9

Ranma Saotome is a young man trained to be a superior martial artist by his father Genma. He's been betrothed to one of the three daughters of Genma's friend and colleague Soun Tendou. Unfortunately, there's a bit of a problem. While training in China, Gemna and Ranma fall into cursed springs, with the result that when they are splashed with cold water, Genma turns into a giant panda and Ranma into nicely-built red-haired girl. (Hot water reverses the transformation.) The youngest of the Tendou girls, Akane, doesn't like boys, so the rest figure that she and Ranma are a natural match because he's a boy only half the time. Akane and Ranma aren't so sure about that.
Like Urusei Yatsura, Ranma 1/2 feels more like a sitcom than a typical anime. Although the nine episodes I've seen are not enough to let me draw firm conclusions, it does seem that there is little emphasis on an overall narrative arc. Apparently, instead of developing the main characters in increasing depth, the writers constantly invent new characters of varying degrees of silliness (a look at a Ranma fan site reveals that there are literally dozens of characters introduced over the course of the series).
Ranma 1/2 is not a waste of time. It's often very funny. Part of the humor lies in clash of the feisty Ranma and the equally feisty Akane (they'll never admit it, but they are well-suited for each other). The comic possibilites of Ranma's peculiar situation are fully exploited: one of the secondary characters hates the male Ramna but is madly infatuated with the mysterious red-haired girl. Ramna himself is always a very much a boy, even when he is a pretty girl. Neverthless, while I enjoyed watching the first two discs of this nearly infinite series, I have no urge to see more.
There's quite a bit of nudity in the first few episodes. It's essential to the story, though, and it shouldn't offend anyone. What I've seen is suitable for all but the youngest audiences, I think; nevertheless, parents might want to preview the show first. (I gather that later episodes may be more problematic.)

ranma
Ranma, left, and Ranma



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Text copyright © 2005 by Don McClane