That title up above really gets to the immense variety inherent in Urusei Yatsura. Part of the joy of watching is having no idea what’s coming. The giant cat hasn’t had a focus segment for a while, but gets one this week as he buys a suspiciously cheap but well-made kotatsu that refuses to be covered with a blanket, ruining Lum’s 121st Othello win over Ataru.
When they see the Mendou family crest carved into the side, Ataru summons Shuutarou with an insult, and he tells them that because the table is made from the wood of the only cedar tree in the South Pole, it hates heat of any kind. That said if a kotatsu connoisseur like Neko can’t tame it, nobody can.
For several days and nights their cat-and-table chase disrupts the Moroboshi household. Finally, the two shake on a truce, and rather than use the kotatsu in the normal way, he uses it to pull a sled instead. It gets to stretch its legs, and Neko and Lum have a blast riding the sled. Everybody wins!
If a feral kotatsu that hates blankets isn’t random enough for you, how a bout a cow at the local pet store? This cow has a tendency to glomp hands; it glomps Ataru’s hand, then Lum’s hand. She shocks the cow, but is left with a wound on her hand that she goes up into her orbiting spaceship to treat.
After kicking back with some trashy space TV with Ten, including a program about a Dracula that turns an alien into a human girl (which is terrifying to said aliens), Lum has a nightmare about being transformed into a cow. When she gets up to brush her teeth, she notices her horns are a lot bigger, and very cow-like in shape.
Lum takes the next few days off, such that when a morose Ten shows up at school, Ataru and Shuutarou are eager to know what’s become of her. Then she shows up with a new hairdo hiding the larger horns, and Sakura can’t do much for her, since she has no knowledge of Oni anatomy. Ataru isn’t his usual selfish self here; he seems genuinely concerned for Lum and her somber mood.
He follows her out onto the beautifully rendered city streets in the rain (all the 70s and 80s-era cars driving by are a nice touch), and she starts saying weird stuff about if she should go missing and a cow show up at his door, she wants him to name it Lum and take good care of it. With that, she says goodbye and prepares to fly off, but in a very nifty bit of 3D animation, he catches her, and undoes her buns to reveal her horns.
She tells him she’s turning into a cow, but he tenderly takes her horns into his hands and pleads with her not to go anywhere, saying “I’m gonna take good care of you.” Sure, he means it in the context of the expectation she’ll turn into a full-on cow, but setting that aside, its one of his more romantic gestures in the whole run of the show, and the two end up crying in each others’ arms. It’s a very moooo-ving scene (I’m so sorry…)
It’s one of those times you realize why Lum loves Ataru so much. Most episodes he’s chasing some other girl who has no interest in him, but every once in a while he shows he cares … and in this case, starts building a cow pen in the backyard when Lum learns via Ten that her horns growing are a natural Oni function when one gets an infection, and they’ll eventually return to normal. So, there will be no LumCow! Got it? Good!
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