Urusei Yatsura begins its second season by hewing to its tried-and-true formula of blending situational skits of absurd escalation with genuinely touching romantic or character work. First up, the absurdity: Ataru learns Ten has bubble gum that gives your fantasies form. He steals it and immediately creates Benten and Oyuki, but they don’t speak and don’t seem that interested in him.
Ataru is ready to keep experimenting with the Gum when Lum arrives to put a stop to it. A chase ensues, with Ataru using gum to make clones of himself to throw her off the trail. When he drops some gum, she uses it to make sexy versions of Sakura, Ryuunosuke and Shinobu as bait, but they end up.
The real girls discover their doubles first, and assume someone’s up to no good. Lum hides from them, both both she and they eventually find Ataru on the roof, blowing the biggest bubble yet in order to conjure all of the girls in his network. But when the bubble bursts, he’s trapped under the gum while Lum pops the fake girls one by one.
While sparring with Ten after dinner, a rice cooker thrown by Ataru (and meant for Ten) hits Lum square in the forehead. When asking if she’s okay, Lum responds in gibberish, or at least sounds like it to Ataru. As Ten later explains, she’s forgotten how to speak Japanese. Sakura says it’s temporary memory loss and she’ll eventually turn to normal.
At first Ataru sees this as an opportunity to hit on whatever girls he wants in full view of Lum, but she’s just as angered as she was when she spoke his language, and flies off. When she doesn’t return for days, Ataru eventually grows forlorn, as he tends to do when he worries he’s finally chased Lum off for good.
These are the Ataru moments I like and relate to most, because this is when he’s being most honest with himself about how much Lum means to him. When she does suddenly return, he’s relieved beyond belief, but he still can’t understand her.
Wondering if it would help, he finally does what he should have at the start: prostrate himself, apologize, beg forgiveness, and give Lum a caring hug. These gestures speak louder than words, and Ataru’s feelings reach her as she smiles once in his arms.
Of course, the reason she was gone wasn’t to teach him a lesson, but to construct a translator headpiece for Ataru. IT allows him to understand her, speak Oni to her, and has the additional benefit of making him look extremely unattractive, thus keeping him from hitting on other girls. I assume Lum will be back to normal next week.
Sumippe really outdoes herself speaking Oni with the same patterns and inflections as Lum’s Japanese. She, Kamiya Hiroshi, and the rest of the all-star cast continue to elevate a lovingly retro production with throwback comic hijinks. Throw in the occasional compelling relationship drama, and Urusei Yatsura is back in fine form, marching to the beat of its own drummer.
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