Urusei Yatsura – 40 – The Young Man Dressed Like a Woman and the Sea

When the newly-resurrected Nagisa has no place else to go, Ryuunosuke and her dad invite him into their house, but he proves to be an annoying freeloader who sleeps in and eats more than his fair share. When Ryuu complains, Nagisa pretends to get upset and cry. Meanwhile, Ryuu’s dad considers Nagisa his “son’s” precious fiancée, and so offers Ryuu no relief.

Things take a turn when Nagisa invades Ryuu’s school life. Lum helpfully informs him that the crying schtick won’t work on Ryuu and a more aggressive approach is needed. When Ryuu evades Ataru’s advances and throws him into a wall, Nagisa does the same to her, displaying strength equal to hers. Everyone is shocked.

As the school day ends, Ryuu has had her fill, and decides to settle her little Nagisa problem with violence. Alas, beneath her girlish appearance, Nagisa is a man of the sea, and thus strong as a mule. Not only that, even the formidable Ryuu can’t land a single punch on him. She’s saved when Sakura uses a ghost-warding talisman on Nagisa, but doesn’t believe their fight to be over.

When Ryuu comes at Nagisa again and Nagisa makes use of her champion sumo skills to artfully dodge every blow, then bear-hugs Ryuu into submission, Sakura (who along with Lum and Ataru are enjoying the match while scarfing concessions) has no choice but to declare Nagisa the winner. Ryuu cries in frustration, telling Nagisa how little he thinks of her and saying she hates him.

In his defense, Nagisa tells Ryuu he could never hit a girl, especially one he has feelings for. He held back because he likes her, not because he doesn’t consider her a worthy adversary. Watching Nagisa sulk away, Ryuu softens her stance and agrees to let Nagisa stay with her. She then proceeds to immediately regret her decision when Nagisa can’t seem to stay in his own futon.

The second segment is all about Onsen threatening to prescribe supplementary lessons to Class 2-4 on account of their constant chatter during lessons. They collectively decide they won’t make a sound, not even when he calls upon them to read from the textbooks, deeming that a trap.

It’s an extremely rare instance of the characters of Urusei Yatsura actually being silent. Onsen is loving that silence at first, but soon it starts to feel mocking, and becomes a different kind of annoying, equally intolerable to their usual chattering.

When Ten shows up in a floating space Yankee bike to exact revenge on Ataru and his friends for ignoring him earlier, the students are put to the ultimate test. Can they maintain their vow of silence as they come under increasingly violent attacks from the tiny alien? The answer is yes.

They outlast both Onsen’s threats and Ten’s assault, and the bell rings announcing that class has ended. I must note that the scenes of the injured students slumped over their desks are a bit too evocative for my tastes, but as with the cute segment with the little fox who loves Shinobu a few weeks back, Urusei Yatsura proves it can still deliver the goods even when its characters aren’t constantly shouting at each other.

Urusei Yatsura – 39 – Ghost Fiancée

Ryuunosuke invites Lum, Shinobu, Ataru, and Shuutarou to an island her father bought for 300 yen and where they now run their beach café. After a shift Ryuu takes a bath and senses someone snooping, but when she tosses a bucket, it’s at a girl she’s never seen holding a bunch of sea urchins. The bucket goes right through her and she vanishes into thin air.

This girl turns out to be Shiowatari Nagisa (voiced by Murase Ayumu), the only child of Ryuu’s dad’s best friend. They both became ghosts after eating too much sea urchin shaved ice. Before that, both her father and Ryuu’s promised to marry them together, making Nagisa Ryuu’s fiancée. Ryuu, being straight, doesn’t want to marry a girl, but every time she tries to tell Nagisa she’s actually a woman she’s interrupted.

Eventually Ryuu’s dad knocks her out and lets Nagisa kiss her, only for Nagisa’s ghost head to go right through Ryuu’s. It looks like Nagisa will remain a ghost forever, but her dad brings up an oddly convenient legend of a giant sea urchin laying its eggs by the light of the full moon and tearing up due to the pain. When Nagisa touches that urchin’s tears, she assumes physical form.

Nagisa uses her new solidity to chase Ryuu down and wall slam, her, leading Ryuu to finally lift up her shirt to show her that she’s a woman. But that doesn’t matter to Nagisa, and when she leans in for a kiss, Ryuu feels her chest, and … it’s the chest of man. Just as Ryuu is a girl raised as a boy, Nagisa is a boy raised as a girl! Not only that, he maintains his solid form even when morning comes, so another appearance down the road is likely.

Having an opposite of Ryuu makes me wonder: what if there was an opposite Shuutarou, who was afraid of light and wide open spaces? An opposite of Ataru, who was a perfect gentleman? That aside, the slighter second part of the episode involves Ten meeting a fairy who will make his dream come true if he finds his magic parasol.

After quite a bit of flying around, Ten ends up with the parasol, but the fairy was speaking literally, and ends up making Ten’s most recent dream—a chaotic nightmare involving dragons, a city aflame and a giant leg—a reality, trashing the Moroboshi home for the umpteenth time. The moral is, be careful which magical creatures you help!