Urusei Yatsura – 38 – SisTerminator: Dark Futility

A date between Shuutarou and his androphobic betrothed Asuka was never going to stay normal for long, but it’s impressive just how quickly things go off the rails. While making Shuu tea, Asuka’s whisking turns the cup into a pile of clay dust, to which she adds hot tea and fashions a new cup. Shuu’s incredibly forced-polite reaction is perfect.

When one of his bodyguards interrupts, a frightened Asuka gloms onto Shuutarou tight and like the teacup, his ribs are turned to dust. Ataru, disguised as one of Ryouko’s ninjas, uses this as an opportunity to get closer to Asuka by manipulating the KO’d Shuu in a Weekend at Bernie’s-type situation. The puppet sound effects are exquisite.

Once Lum reveals Ataru’s disguise, Asuka sends him and Shuu flying, and Shuu regains consciousness (and his ribs miraculously reconstitue) in mid-air. They watch in the distance as Asuka, essentially trapped on an island, launches every bodyguard she encounters into the air.

Lum lends another helping hand, showing Asuka a tank in the Mendou family’s possession. Rather than hop in, she tears the tank to pieces with her bare hands and fashions a new suit of armor to protect her from scary men. Ataru and Shuu secretly watch this quirky, steampunk twist on the “changing scene” with disappointment.

Ryouko, who is determined to keep her brother away from Asuka, lures her to her room and prepares to fill her head with nonsense, which is Ryouko’s specialty. When Shuu comes in with Ataru still attached to his back, Asuka smashes them both into a wall, but then her mother arrives, and despite her face locked in a placid smile, she’s not happy.

Convinced Asuka isn’t taking this date seriously, her mom (who, again, is one of anime’s all-time worst moms for what she did to Asuka) decides that Asuka will go on a date with Ataru. If she can survive such a repellant man, she can survive any man. The logic is sound, and of course Ataru is game.

When Asuka resists and threatens to fight her mom, we see where she got her superhuman strength. She’s no match for her mom, who effortlessly places her in a hold, chains her to Ataru, and then brings in her brother Tobimaro as a hostage: if she breaks the chain, Ton dies. This family sucks!

Even if Asuka wanted to obey her mother, her instincts and body act all on their own. Despite being connected to Ataru, she still tries to run from him, and nothing—not wood, bricks, mortar, or ballistic steel—can stop her. She cuts through all of them like butter, causing untold millions in damage to the Mendou household.

Asuka’s mom meets them on a bridge with a final warning, but Asuka still isn’t willing to relent, repurposing Ataru as a chain weapon and attacking her mom, who uses the bound Ton as a shield. Yes, a mother and daughter are fighting using her son and forced date, respectively, as weapons.

Just when you thought we’d reached the height of resourceful absurdity, Asuka starts spinning Ataru around so fast he becomes a helicopter rotor, then nabs Ton and starts to float away. Asuka’s mom asks Lum, who doesn’t want her darling taken away, to intervene, so she flies up and cuts the chain.

Asuka falls in the drink, and when she emerges, all she can do is prostrate herself before her awful, victorious mother and beg forgiveness. But of course, all of this was for naught. Asuka is no less afraid of men than she was at the beginning of this fiasco of a “date”, and the next morning she’s right back in Ton’s bed. No progress was made, and no lessons were learned. In other words, it was classic Urusei Yatsura!

Urusei Yatsura – 37 – SisTerminator 2: Misjudgment Day

Mizunokouji Asuka’s parents deserve jail time for the abject neglect they’ve subjected to their daughter Asuka. At the same time, Asuka has quickly risen to become one of my favorite Urusei Yatsura characters. That’s simply because she’s such a chaotic force of nature, even more so than anyone else, due to her superhuman strength and obsession with her “Big Brothers.”

Because she fundamentally misunderstands what “big brother” is, she believes it’s okay to bathe and sleep with Ton. When his nose spurts two-thirds of his blood, her solution is to embrace him so tightly she crushes his ribs. Eventually their mother realizes that it’s not Ton luring Asuka to his bed, but Asuka inviting herself.

Deciding that now is the time for her to meet other men unrelated by blood, she sends Asuka on an errand to deliver a letter to Shuu at his school. This goes about as well as you’d expect, as every time the fully-armored (though in a smaller suit than her first appearance) Asuka encounters a man she lashes out and causes generous amounts of collateral damage.

When she ends up in Ryuu’s lap, she assumes she’s a man like most people, but Ryuu isn’t about to let her get away with misgendering her. Ryuu chases her around the school until Asuka ends up in a tree, where her mother and Ton urge her to try to open up to the strange man who “seems different.” But once Ryuu watches Asuka snap a medium-sized tree like a toothpick, she ends up running from Asuka.

The bit is completed when Asuka finally lays her head on Ryuu’s chest, but when she notices that Ryuu’s chest is bound, she doesn’t realize she’s a woman, but another big brother, like the similarly bandaged Ton. Asuka is so sheltered she has no idea what anything is. On the one hand, this is deeply tragic. On the other, it’s freakin’ hilarious.

Asuka’s mother isn’t about to keep letting Asuka get away with glomming onto her blood brother, so she beseeches Shuu to go on a date with her. Ataru happens to be there too, but not because he invited himself: Ryouko invited him, because she’s just as obsessed with her brother as Asuka is with hers, and won’t allow him to date or marry the likes of Asuka.

Nevertheless, Asuka arrives in a grand procession led by her mother, and is dolled up in traditional garb very similar to FFX’s Yuna. Shuu is initially excited to go on a date with such a cutie, but when she charges at him like a locomotive, his survival instinct causes him to dodge her, and she shatters a giant stone piece of decorative Mendou art instead.

Since Asuka has absolutely no concept of letting off the accelerator or lessoning the force with which she does things, Shuu is in for a world of pain. But he won’t be alone. Ryouko is watching nearby, Ataru has disguised himself as one of Ryouko’s bodyguards, and Lum has disguised herself as one of Asuka’s bodyguards (the ladies in safari garb). I’m greatly looking forward to a chaotic, action-packed date!

Urusei Yatsura – 28 – The SisTerminator

Mendou is having a lovely dream where he’s about to marry Lum, Shinobu, Benten, Ran, Ryuu, Kurama, Oyuki, and Sakura (phew) when suddenly a giant suit of armor crashes the ceremony, turning all the ladies into SD versions of themselves and running back and forth. It’s a hilarious and absurd dream, and just a small a taste of the madness that’s to come.

When Mendou learns this isn’t just a casual meeting but the actual engagement ceremony, he tries to flee, but his servants catch him and deposit him at the Mizunokouji manor. Ataru, Lum, and Shinobu rescue him—Shinobu because she likes him, Ataru because he likes the girl in the armor—but their plan fails when Ataru’s half-assed disguise fails and Shinobu is caught.

The ceremony proceeds as schedule, and when Mizunokouji Asuka is wheeled in behind a curtained cage and wearing her suit of armor, Mendou’s dad starts with the dad jokes. Ataru manages to enter disguised as a tea server, but when he pounces on the armored Asuka she smashes through the cage and walls and flees outside. Her commando maids try to eliminate Ataru with suppressive fire, but his speed and agility is comparable to Asuka’s.

When Lum sees him clinging to the armor, she zaps him, but the zapping affects Asuka as well, and her suit of armor shatters, revealing a normal-sized girl with a ponytail wearing a yellow leotard, black tee, and fuchsia leggings, looking every bit like the 80s workout enthusiast, but with strength that would put all-time Olympic Gold Medalists to shame.

She’s able to elude Ataru, who returns to the manor with Lum and Shinobu, both of whom mention to Mendou that under the suit of armor there’s a cute girl. Now he knows why Ataru was helping. Turns out Mizunokouji women aren’t allowed to see any men—not even their father or brothers—until the age of fifteen. Her mother went through the same thing, all in the name of “family custom.”

Asuka’s flight from Ataru leads her to land in the same tree as Tobimaro, and when she sees he has the same eyes as her, her first thought is that he must be a girl like her. In fact, it’s because they’re brother and sister. Remember, Asuka was only recently given a rushed and inadequate explanation for what a “man” is, but since her maids said a “brother” is a special type of man who won’t attack her, she’s immediately smitten with him.

When Mendou and Ataru start chasing her and she starts pulling fully-grown trees out of the earth like they’re popsicle sticks, her maids shoot her with an elephant tranq dart. When she comes to she’s chained to the wall, but so are Mendou and Ataru. The dads let the kids sort things out, with Lum and Shinobu trying to demonstrate that boys aren’t scary, but that fact is dubious considering the scary faces they’re being made to make.

The group tries to explain to Asuka that she can’t marry her brother, but she doesn’t know what marriage is. Then Ryouko, who heard her brother had been captured, launches a guerilla operation (love her combat gear) that results in heavy damage to the manor. When Asuka overhears Ryouko calling Mendou “onii-sama”, her whole attitude towards him changes, because she thinks brothers aren’t men.

The strength of this episode lies in the attention to detail with regards to Asuka’s feats of strength, the similar feats Ataru and Mendou pull off trying to keep up with her, and a commentary on blind arranged marriage, extreme family customs, and other rich people nonsense. Also, it’s true: Asuka is cute as all-get-out, and voiced just as cutely by M · A · O in her triumphant Urusei debut.

Urusei Yatsura – 27 – Fullmetal Cutiemist

It’s been a while since we’ve seen Princess Kurama and her murder of crow attendants, but there’s not much to catch up on: she’s still single. She scolds the crows for just lazing around eating and sleeping, but they assure her they’ve developed a computer program that is searching the universe for the ultimate studmuffin.

Of course, they’re talking out of their bird-asses. They’ve been lazing around eating and sleeping and there is no such computer, but they do their best to build one that can scan for her ideal mate. The hastily slapped-together computer’s choice is … well, it’s a choice.

Make no mistake, Rei is a handsome young man. But he has more letters in his name than brain cells, will always want food more than the heart of any woman at any given waking moment, and is not always a young man, but a giant tiger-bill thing.

In any case, Kurama’s ship abducts him while he’s having a date with Ran on the branch of a very spooky tree, and ends up abducting her too. It’s great having legends Mizuki Nana and Hanazawa Kana in the same episode, playing two women claiming Rei’s heart while Rei only seeks to claim his next meal.

When Ran is tossed off Kurama’s ship, her fall is arrested by Lum. Lum would rather not get entangled in a relationship drama with Rei, Ran, and Kurama, but Ran is able to convince her to tag along and help her get Rei back. At the same time, Ataru spots the crows buying more rice and insists on paying a visit to Kurama-chan.

Lum was right to dread this scenario. Ran comes to save her man, only for Rei to embrace Kurama when she offers more food. When he spots Lum, he embraces her. Ataru tries to get with Kurama, then Ran. It’s a big ol’ mess, full of wooden mallets.

Thanks to a trap door from the main hall to Kurama’s bedroom, Rei’s version of the Trolley Problem comes to bear on this chaos. He must choose between a Ran, and giant bindle of onigiri Ran made to lure him to her, before slipping and falling down the shaft.

Surprising everyone, Rei chooses Ran over the food, and for a moment seems to exhibit signs of human (or rather Oni) sentience. But then he notices the pile of onigiri and starts stuffing his face. Kurama finally sees him in his tiger-bull form, gives up her pursuit of him, and goes to bed cranky. Ran may not be able to claim Rei, but she can take comfort in knowing neither will the Crow Princess.

All that could have been a fine episode in and of itself, but wait, there’s more: the obscenely ultra-wealthy Mendou clan has chosen a wife for their firstborn son, something he’s not interested in … until his otherwise serious and traditionally-dressed pops starts going on about the “nudie lewdie.”

Ryouko sends one of her ninjas to clobber her brother with a hammer while delivering a message of her displeasure with his impending nuptials. However, Mendou is even less enthused with the idea than she is when he learns the family name of his fiancée: Mizunokouji, as in the chief rival of the Mendous and Tobimaru’s sister.

Mendou visits Tobimaru at his family’s estate (with Ataru tagging along) and both accuse him of keeping all knowledge of his sister from them. They demand to be told everything about her. The thing is, Tobimaru didn’t even know he had a sister either. Mendou learned of her existence before him.

Their bickering is interrupted by the arrival of three women in olive green safari gear and another one of Mendou’s spies sent to investigate the Mizunokouji girl. They’re soon approached by a giganic suit of armor with “MAIDEN” painted in red on the chestplate. This must be Tobimaru’s sister.

When she trundles off with her tough-but-beautiful bodyguards, Mendou laments having to marry a suit of armor, while Tobimaru laments finding out his only sister is made of metal. Ataru, meanwhile, is smart enough to know there’s a girl under all that metal, and he wants to know what she looks like.

He happens upon an Olympic-style track and field center where he watches the armored girl sprinting ridiculous speeds and performing ridiculous jumps while wearing 200 kilos of armor. Ataru manages to catch up to her and catches a quick glimpse of her delicate face and starry eyes.

The girl then freaks out and shot puts him so far he ends up landing in the pond with the other boys. It looks like the Mizunokouji girl has an all-female staff and was terrified of Ataru because she’s never seen a man before. That should make her first meeting with Mendou interesting!

Urusei Yatsura – 14 – Pinch Hitter

Another week, another new Urusei Yatsura character. This time it’s Mizunokouji Tobimaro, AKA Ton-chan, a childhood friend of Mendou and Ryouko. Once defeated by Mendou in baseball, he went to the mountains for training, only to return just as uncoordinated and accident-prone as ever.

What makes Ton interesting is that unlike the other guys, he has absolutely no interest in girls, only in beating Mendou. One could even take it a step further and call his obsession with Mendou a crush. But it’s Ryouko who has always loved Ton, whose fear and hatred of women may be due to him being the recipient of her elaborate and often violent pranks over the years.

A ridiculous ballgame ensues in which Ton is complete rubbish but Ryouko deploys her ninja manservants to manipulate the baseball (i.e. hold it and run with it like they’re invisible). Despite Ton being on his team Ataru intervenes, resulting in a duel. But Ton is determined for a rematch with Mendou.

He hadn’t counted on Ryouko encasing Mendou in cement from the neck down, which means she is the one walking the octopi on the bridge when he tosses his challenge letter to her. Only it doesn’t look or read like a challenge letter, but a love letter.

Mendou, who is as firmly against a Ton-Ryouko union as Ton himself, forbids Ryouko from leaving the family compound. But she’s not only able to escape in her litter, but rope Ataru into assisting her with keeping Mendou away from her plans to see Ton at the athletic center. As usual, Ryouko’s methods for communication show no regard for other people’s peace or property.

As Ataru gloms onto Ryouko, Lum follows and electricutes and chastises him for straying yet again, especially since Ryouko has no real interest in him beyond him keeping Mendou at bay. Mendou, meanwhile, reveals he’d disguised himself as one of her manservants in order to come between her and Ryouko.

Ton’s one-on-one challenge with Mendou ends up being a five-way fracas between him, Ataru, Lum, Mendou, and Ryouko. Ton takes the lion’s share of the punishment, demonstrating that he’d actually make a perfect match for Ryouko and her violent pranks since he is able to take a great deal of physical punishment.

Mendou eventually even concedes the battle and allows him to date Ryouko, even though that’s the last thing he wants. It’s an episode packed with manic chaos and slapstick, with the only one you could call satisfied in the end being Ryouko. Which is all that matters to her!