Tenten Kakumei – 12 (Fin) – In Rainbows

Last week ended with the promise of an unprecedented duel between Anis and Euphie, to decide who will become queen by being made to suffer in one form or another: Anis having to give up everything she is, or Euphie losing everything she has. Both want the other to be happy, neither wants to hurt the other. The duel, while only occupying five minutes, is nevertheless epic in is presentation (like a great boss battle, only between two bosses!) and in the catharsis it provides.

The duel ends quickly because, well, Euphylia Magenta is the titular Genius Young Lady: even with her Dragon Power, Anis’ magicology is simply no match for its power or beauty. And as Euphie repeats when Anis comes to in her lap (a nice callback to a simpler time), she’s only this way because Anis is the one who helped unlock who she is today; someone who won’t hesitate to claim the throne.

And Anis admits, she’s not okay with being queen. She was mostly doing it out of obligation to her parents, to whom she felt she was a “useless daughter”. After the duel, Anis father is holding back tears and her mother isn’t, drawing Anis into a warm embrace and insisting that no, it’s she who is unworthy of having such a splendid daughter.

That night, Anis visits Euphie in her bedroom, and decides the time is right to tell her, and no one else, her deep dark secret. No, it’s not that she’s gay; that’s quite established. Rather, it’s the fact she recalls having a previous life in another world. When she found herself in a world of magic, it felt like a dream, but then she became consumed with fear that she’d somehow replaced the real Princess Anisphia, and was a fake.

Euphie vehemently dispels that notion in no uncertain terms. There is simply no way in her mind that an Anisphia that delivered her from the depths of despair, and showed her what true freedom and happiness looked like, could ever be called a “fake”. She then takes the initiative and kisses Anis, surprising her. Anis insists that’s only something someone should do to someone they love, and Euphie says she does love her.

When Anis tries to qualify that, Euphie says she can be her friend and confidante and comrade, but she’d also like Anis to accept her feelings for what they really are. Before Anis knows it, she’s being thrown on the bed, and the camera tastefully withdraws out of focus.

However far these two lovebirds get that night, or what nature of pillow talk they engage in thereafter, by morning they’re ready to chart the course of the future of their kingdom. Euphie has successfully contracted with the spirit, so the king adopts her and then announces his intent to step back. Euphie will be queen, and Anis will support her as her “older sister”.

For some reason I envisioned undergoing to contract to immediately cause Euphie to not only forget everyone she ever knew but forget that she forgot, but that only happens after a number of lifetimes. With that fear allayed, my original plan for them to basically rule together while keeping their romance private seems to be the one they’ve adopted.

Euphie states in no uncertain terms she’ll be the last monarch chosen by traditional means, as she intends to end the nobility’s monopoly on magic and help Anis realize the dream of magic for everyone, everywhere. That said, Queen Euphie wishes to gently disassemble those old walls, not tear them down, so she and Anis prepare a gaudy, upbeat public demonstration of both the new flying machines and dresses that can enable the wearer to fly.

This is made possible after intense negotiations with the spirit faithful (who by their own precepts must grudgingly follow the will the monarch the spirits chose) and collaboration with Anis’ commoner craftsmen. But they manage to pull off one hell of a show.

As they take flight hand in hand, strike Magical Girl poses, and conjure a literal rainbow, we can see the immediate effect it has on the children of commoners. They run along the ground pretending to fly, but when they’re old enough, they’ll be able to fly too.

Now that the promise and possibility and potential of magicology is now out in the world and Euphie is firmly installed and accepted and celebrated as the new queen, her and Anis’ magical revolution can begin in earnest. It likely won’t be quite the instant success the demonstration indicated, but after that strong a start they can take their time making the world a place where freedom and happiness are available to anyone.

They can also take their time with their romance, as illustrated when Anis looks across the breakfast table at Euphie, Alia, and Lainie, the very picture of bliss. And as they run out for their next appointments, Anis gives Euphie a chaste peck on the cheek, to which Euphie responds with another kiss on the mouth.

Led by the love in their hearts for the kingdom, for magic, and above all for each other, Queen Euphylia and Princess Anisphia a poised to create a new and better world. And if we never see them in anime form again, I could’ve scarcely asked for a better way to close the book on their story. I just hope Anis’s research into immortality doesn’t take any macabre turns!

RABUJOI WORLD HERITAGE LIST

Tomo-chan Is a Girl! – 07 – The End of Gamer Boy

This week takes us back ten years to the meeting of Jun and Tomo. Having moved from Tokyo, Jun is content to play his handheld game until Tomo hops over the fence to introduce herself (at this point he thinks she’s a boy). Within seconds, his video game is broken.

He learns what a decent person Tomo is when she and her dad stop by to formally apologize (having told on herself) and she asks to be his friend. From that point on the two are inseparable, with Jun doing his best just to keep up with Tomo as she runs, leaps, and climbs all over the place.

Before long, Tomo introduces her even older friend Misuzu, who is hilariously exactly the same as she is in the present, making her quite the precocious kid and future shit-stirrer. When the three go on a bug-hunting trip atop a 200-step shrine stair, Tomo carries Mizuzu on her back and looks smug.

This propels Jun to run up the steps to beat them, and he later smiles one of his first smiles in front of Tomo when he finds a stag beetle. When Tomo embraces Jun, Misuzu grabs her by the shirt, and we witness the origins of her and Jun’s long-standing mutual antagonism.

Jun notes how just being with Tomo made him feel stronger, until one day he learned that was just an illusion when some bullies beat him up and took his (replaced) video game. Tomo is concerned about the mark on his cheek, and even Misuzu derides no joy in making fun of it when clearly something’s amiss.

Then, totally unbidden, Tomo shows up at Jun’s front gate with his video game in hand and a face full of bruises. Jun is furious that she went and took it back alone, but she says she’ll always help him when he’s in trouble, because they’re friends. But Jun is frustrated to the point of tears, because he knows he can’t do the same for Tomo…not until he gets stronger.

That’s how he ended up joining the Aizawa dojo and becoming the impressive physical specimen on display in the beach trip half of the episode—all to become stronger than Tomo so he could take back the video game with his own hands.

Of course, present-day Tomo still plays the game, wondering when he’ll take it, assuming he’s stronger than her by now. But if there’s anything that makes his strength waste away to nothing and cause him to freeze in his tracks, it’s large breasts. Carol has them, but more importantly, Tomo has them too.

Misuzu and Carol are all too aware of this, and accompany Tomo and Jun to the beach trip specifically to see his face when he sees Tomo in her new itty bitty green-striped bikini top, which leaves Jun absolutely zero room to keep thinking of her as a dude.

He zips her up and hangs out under the umbrella with the modestly-endowed Misuzu, who seriously wants to hit him for what his proximity implies. But Tomo is so jazzed up about the beach that she completely forgets she’s in a revealing bikini top and treats Jun like she usually does, with a lot of physical contact.

In this way, Tomo is simply unconsciously demonstrating to Jun how far he still has to go to be stronger than her. He doesn’t simply want to match her in physical strength or prowess in the dojo; he wants to be strong enough not to freeze up every time Tomo touches him.

These thoughts provide more much-appreciated insight into how Jun actually feels about Tomo. The problem isn’t that he sees her as a guy, it’s that he sees her as a girl, and is still wrestling with that. The one thing he fears more than never getting stronger than her is losing what they have.

On the train home, Tomo is initially leaning on Jun but then leans over to Misuzu, already being glommed on by Carol. Her smug look is fantastic, and she asks Jun “what happened” to make him not enjoy the beach trip. For all their adversarial exchanges and glares, Misuzu and Jun go way back to those carefree days catching bugs with their mutual best friend Tomo.

This trip confirmed for Misuzu that Jun sees Tomo only as a girl, and is struggling with how to act around her. This is progress! Misuzu’s goal is to get Tomo and Jun together, but at the end of the day, Jun will need to do his part. This is considerably tougher than his handheld video games, but the rewards of victory will be just as considerable.

Urusei Yatsura – 17 – If Wishes Were Bras

This week’s outing is evenly split between two stories, the first chronicling Ryuunosuke’s quest to obtain her first bra and cast away her chest binding. It all starts with Shinobu being stalked and photographed by three delinquents from a neighboring highschool whose boss is infatuated with her. Ryuunosuke is walking by, so Shinobu gloms onto her, and the hoodlums assume she’s Shinobu’s guy.

When Ryuunosuke informs them she’s a girl (with her fists), the delinquents work out a deal with her: a 5,000-yen gift certificate (enough to buy a bra) if they can snap a bunch of photos of her on a date with Shinobu so their boss will stop barking up the wrong tree.

Ryuunosuke, with just a scant 400 yen to her name and no concept of inflation, grudgingly agrees, even though she could simply borrow a bra for free from any of the girls in her class.

These photos must be convincing, so Ryuunosuke and Shinobu dress up for their date. When Ryuunosuke applies the same passion she has for fighting to date with Shinobu, she’s rewarded with a slap for being too forward and Shinobu’s concern she may actually have the hots for her.

Adding to the complexity of the situation is that Ataru is not okay with Ryuunosuke dating Shinobu, whom he is still pining after, and Lum keeping Ataru honest.

At the end of the day, we know Shinobu’s prime criterion for dating is good looks, so when the grotesque abomination of a bossman shows up in the mood for-a-smoochin’, we know he has zero chance. Ryuunosuke, torn between chasing after the airborne gift cert and protecting Shinobu, leaves her vulnerable to attack.

But Shinobu is ready to repel the bossman with her fist. He then contents himself with eating what he believes to be Shinobu’s bra, which is actually Ataru’s mom’s bra, with which he tried to bribe Ryuunosuke earlier.

From there, we move on to something completely different: The Moroboshi family settling in for a meager dinner of three shumai and one bowl of miso soup each. When Ataru predictably eats more than his fill and starts bickering with his parents, Lum ducks and covers, as she hears something descending from the sky with great speed. It turns out to be a sentient Wishing Star.

The star will grant the family three wishes—anything they want. Ataru’s folks are skeptical, but the first wish—cleaning up the room the star ruined with its arrival—they realize it’s the real deal. Sakuranbou (who shows up out of nowhere) uses the second wish for yakisoba.

Then Ataru, his parents, and Lum begin arguing ad nauseum about how to use the remaining wish. Ataru’s mom wants cash. His dad wants to “redo his life”. Ataru wants a harem, and Lum wants his cheating to be cured.

When the Wishing Star asks for something to drink and is directed to the fridge, it locates Ataru’s dad’s beer, and ends up passing out drunk. Since its wishes are only good until dawn, everyone tries in vain to wake it up. Sakuranbou ends up using the final wish to simply wake the Star up, at which time it says all three wishes have been fulfilled, and departs by flying through the kitchen window.

A shame; it would have been nice if one of the wishes could have been spent to put a little more cash in the Moroboshis’ pockets…or to cure Ataru of his lecherousness for Lum’s sake.

Tomo-chan Is a Girl! – 06 – That Big Back

Tomo doesn’t realize it’s her birthday until Jun gets her some Kamina some new sporty shades, and then it’s off to the races, with Tomo urging both him and Misuzu, who are younger, to respect their elder or call her onee-san. But Misuzu’s reference books and Carol’s solid gold brick aren’t her real birthday gift: a complete girly makeover with wig, makeup, dress, and heels.

Misuzu sends Tomo out to the kobini like this, and she immediately draws the gaze of every guy in the store. Also, Jun is there, and while he acts to her like he doesn’t recognize her, he does, and spends the rest of their time together on the fence about whether it’s actually her or not.

It’s kind of left ambiguous if he’s convinced it’s Tomo when they see a younger guy-girl pair excelling at soccer and wonder what their future will hold, while saying he has a similar situation where a girl is his best friend. He hasn’t thought about their future, but he does say he wants to beat her (competitively, obviously!)

The next morning Jun cradles Tomo’s face and inspects her, which leads to her slugging him, which I see as him being glad his Tomo is “back”, if indeed he thought the girl in the dress was Tomo as well. Tomo’s strength and ferocity gets her sent to the boy’s dodgeball team with Jun for the school ball sports tournament.

They easily coast to the finals, where they’re pitted against a third-year behemoth, Goma, who Jun isn’t sure he can beat, but is confident Tomo can. When Goma calls Tomo a “fragile-looking little lady”, Tomo is actually delighted!

Jun ends up sacrificing himself to keep Tomo from getting hit by Goma’s shot, and in retribution, Tomo sends a screamer between Goma’s legs. It’s a pass that’s caught by Tanabe, who easily hits Goma for the team win.

But the pass was meant for Jun, and he missed it, because he thought Tomo would defeat Goma on her own. After school, Goma challenges Jun to a series of judo matches, and is impressed Jun is able to hang in there without resorting to karate.

When Goma asks why Jun trains so hard yet doesn’t enter any tournaments, Jun simply says he’s trying to catch up to “that big back” from his earlier days, referring to Tomo. For a while, he was the weakling gamer and she was his strong, dependable friend and protector.

He may be bigger and technically stronger than her now, but he still feels like he has a long way to go. We don’t yet know if what Jun feels for Tomo is love, but we can still be certain of two things: he admires her, and he wants to be like her. So whatever becomes of their romantic prospects, Tomo can rest assured Jun won’t be leaving her side anytime soon.

Tomo-chan Is a Girl! – 05 – Gamer Boy

Carol invites her first two friends Tomo and Misuzu to her house—or should I say sprawling compound—and they meet her mother, who totally explains why the way she is. For one thing, she’s a hugger. For another, she’s actually sharper and more perceptive than she looks, as she sees right through Misuzu pretending to be a “bad girl” who is only friends with Carol “for the money.”

In preparation for a math exam, Misuzu deigns to serve as Tomo and Carol’s tutor in a study group, during which Tomo makes clear she wants to follow Misuzu to college since they’re best friend.. It’s here where Tomo and Misuzu learn that Carol is actually a damn math savant! She even ranks #1 over Misuzu’s #2! Tomo gets #70, which is an all-time best.

When Jun invites Tomo over to play a new video game he got, Tomo agrees without thinking about the ramifications of spending the night at Jun’s. She wants to tell him she can’t go, but Misuzu and Carol are united to their insistence that she can’t do that. Tomo only has to go next door to Jun’s, and they get through a curry dinner without any incident.

But during and after Tomo showers, things are quiet and a little awkward. Jun re-breaks the ice by suggesting they play video games, but after Tomo loses and teases Jun for being a “former gamer boy”, they roughhouse like they always did…and end up in a compromising position.

It’s clear in several moments that this is as weird and exciting for Jun as it is for Tomo, as he has to steel himself by slapping his cheeks and seems to take great joy getting smacked by Tomo’s controller. The two are adorable in their complete inability to stay up past 10 PM. As Tomo takes Jun’s bed and Jun takes the futon on the floor, they agree that they had fun.

When Jun asks if they’ll always be able to be “like this”, Tomo is poised to reaffirm her feelings for him, only for him to nod of before she can. She then notices his face and its details for the first time when he’s asleep and motionless. When she starts holding his nose for fun, he puts her in a lock in his sleep, so they’re essentially cuddling all night.

The next morning, Jun wakes up first, sees Tomo beside him, and does a backflip out of bed and straight into his desk, waking her. They say their goodbyes, and presumably reunite at the dojo later that day. The next day at school, they’re awkward, but still together, and not at all bothered by that fact. Misuzu and Carol watch the couple with great satisfaction.

With Tomo finally sort of noticing that Jun may be feeling the same things she’s feeling, only he’s doing a better job of hiding it, our athletic couple is gradually growing a little closer together. Jun’s sticking point seems to be a general worry that they might lose the good thing they have going now, but that is a common and not unreasonable worry.

The bottom line is, becoming a couple could well be a much better thing. It will take a leap of faith and a willingness to put themselves out there and risk getting hurt in order to evolve beyond platonic childhood chumminess.

Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War – 12 – Tears of the Sun

After finishing the first of this week’s two-episode finale, I maintain that an entire arc devoted to how Ichigo’s parents met and fell in love would have been just fine with me. And indeed, the two-part flashback feels a bit rushed at times. But I’m still grateful for what we got, which is nothing less than the most beautiful and heartrending story Bleach has ever told.

Due to the fact no one has harmed and minimal damage done, Isshin is not punished by Old Man Yama for his unsanctioned excursion to the World of the Living. However, Isshin lies when he says there was “nothing else of note” to report … like, say, he discovered that some Quincy were still alive.

Both he and Masaki don’t want to be done with one another, but Masaki is feeling the ill effects of being bitten by that weird hollow, and even bumps into none other than Urahara Kisuke when she momentarily faints.

Masaki comes home and is read the riot act by Ryuuken’s mother, who found out from Katagiri that she got in a hollow battle and was injured, all to save a hated soul reaper. Ryuu first rushes to Katagiri to castigate her for snitching, but Katagiri only did what thought she needed to to prevent the tainting of the Ishida bloodline.

Indeed, if it wasn’t for Katagiri informing Mrs. Ishida, Masaki may have well collapsed somewhere other than the entrance to the house, and it would be too late by the time someone found her. Because as a result of being bitten by the hollow, she’s undergoing the process of hollowification.

Ryuuken carries her out and flies through the sky, unsure where to go or what to do. A giant hollow sneaks up from behind, but is bisected by a returning Isshin. Ryuu exchanges some harsh words, but ultimately, the two men want the same thing: to save Masaki. Unfortunately, neither of them know quite how the hell to do that.

But Urahara does, and he introduces himself to both Isshin and Ryuuken as the only person who can save Masaki. He was banned from Soul Society for the very research he’ll draw upon to do so, warning that while he can save Masaki’s life, she’ll never be the same again. Meanwhile, Masaki is lost deep within her mind, descending into the mouth of a giant hollow.

Urahara describes what must be done to save Masaki—bind her now half Quincy, half Hollow soul with that of a half-Soul Reaper, half- human. Isshin is full Soul Reaper, but if he uses a special gigai developed by Urahara, he can become half-human, but will have to say goodbye to his life in Soul Society forever.

Both Urahara and Ryuu are amazed how quickly Isshin says he’ll do it, but I’m not. This is Ichigo’s dad we’re talking about, and even if Masaki isn’t his family yet, he can’t deny the two of them already shared a sense of justice and altruism that transcends their opposing factions.

He also admits that he’s not sure he really wants to throw his current life away, but he also knows that his future self will laugh at him or worse if he refused to save the person who saved him. The procedure commences, visualized by Isshin saving Masaki and getsuga tenshou-ing the giant mind hollow to hell. Masaki comes to giggling, wanting to know Isshin’s name.

Ryuuken heads home in the rain, knowing that while his potential future bride Masaki did not outright reject him, in a way fate and the universe did. He regrets not stepping in sooner before Masaki was injured, which turned out to be the beginning of the end of her being a suitable wife. Now her soul is literally bound to that of his historical mortal enemy of the Quincy.

Back home, Katagiri is waiting for him in the rain, and he tells her to inform his mother that he is no longer worthy or able to protect the Quincy anymore. But Katagiri, who met Ryuu when she was a small girl and has grown not just to dutifully serve him, but love and care for him, tells him that’s not true. She sheds tears that mingle with the rain; I’m sure she’d long hoped to be his wife one day, but probably not like this.

Isshin starts to wrap up the tale of his wife to Ichigo, their son, by saying she left the Ishida family when she graduated high school and would visit him as a college student when he opened up his medical clinic. He told her he’d been banished, but always assumed she immediately saw through the lie. The two soon fell in love, became inseparable, and she had Ichigo.

Again, I wish we could have watched more episodes of Isshin and Masaki getting to know each other both before the attack that would bind their souls and afterwards when he began his human life. The two are such compelling, rootable characters. Isshin is absolutely right that Masaki radiates light and warmth like the sun.

But there’s also a romantic quality to just how goshdarned fast everything happened to these young people, how they rolled with the punches, and came out of it living different but probably better lives than the ones they would have led had they never met. A life neither in the Quincy or Soul Reaper way, but in the middle way.

But that too had its cost, as Isshin wraps up this epic tale to Ichigo. The day Masaki died protecting a 9-year-old Ichigo, she shouldn’t have died. She was still part Quincy, and her Blut Vene should have been able to not only defend against Grand Fisher, but defeat him easily.

But she didn’t, and died instead, because her powers failed her. Rather, they were taken, by the awakening King of the Quincy, Yhwach. Uryuu’s mother Katagiri met the same fate, becoming frail and dying too soon as, like Masaki’s, she was deemed unworthy of keeping her powers by Yhwach.

That Yhwach is the father of all Quincy, and his blood runs through all their veins, means he was Masaki’s progenitor, and thus Ichigo’s as well. There may be no ecaping that. And like her mother, he inherited the part of her soul that had become Hollowified.

As if Ichigo needed any further motivation to defeat the guy, he can add “ultimately responsible for his mom’s death” to the list. When an uncharacteristically docile Ikumi stops by to give him his Soul Reaper talisman, Ichigo takes it, thanks her, then tells his father he’s headed off.

Now that he knows more about who he is and where he came from, there’s much work to be done … I just wish he’d at least said hi to his sisters!

Bleach: Thousand-Year Blood War – 11 – Meet the Parents

I gave up on Bleach twelve or thirteen seasons or so into its run because it kept stalling on anime-only filler arcs, most of which were hot garbage and almost never masked the fact that they were meant to stall for time while the source material developed. Now that Bleach is back, it feels fresh, and something new happens in every episode.

Take this episode, one that finally begins to explore Ichigo’s parents’ past in detail. From the moment Isshin showed up at Ichigo’s boss Ikumi’s place in his shinigami garb and told his son the time has finally come to talk about this stuff, I was riveted. my only beef with Ichigo’s return is that we don’t get to see any Karin or Yuzu.

In the not-too-distant past, Shiba Isshin was the captain of the 10th Squad, with a short-haired Matsumoto as his lieutenant and Hitsugaya as his third seat (and heir apparent to the captaincy). Toshio delivers a report on soul eater deaths during patrols in Naruki City in the human world. Those deaths are part of hollowification experiments being run by Aizen, Ichimaru and Kaname, who are in the early stages of planning their takeover.

Kurosaki Masaki is a kind, capable, and somewhat lonely young woman. She’s lonely because she is the last surviving member of her Quincy clan, and has been taken in by the Ishidas. Uryuu’s father Ryuuken’s mom is not that crazy about this, no doubt being obsessed with maintaining a pure a bloodline as possible, while Ryuuken himself is a lot nicer to Masaki (probably because he sees himself one day marrying her).

Tying in Aizen & Co.’s slow-burn scheme with the origin story of how Masaki and Isshin met is a brilliant bit of retroactive continuity. Isshin comes to Naruki to investigate the source of the deaths, and meets Aizen & Co.’s eldritch abomination: a hollow whose hole has been filled, adn who fights like a soul reaper…a powerful one. Aizen even slashes Isshin in the back to give him a handicap.

As a Quincy, Masaki is extremely attuned to spiritual pressure, and knows something is wrong when she senses Isshin and the Hollow fighting. But she’s also an empathetic and caring person with a strong belief in noblesse oblige. When she starts to run towards the trouble, Ryuuken tries to stop her, saying the lower-level Quincy can put themselves in danger.

But Masaki tells Ryuuken something I could easily hear Ichigo saying: it’s one thing to stay safe so one has a future. But if she stands by while someone dies, she won’t be able to forgive her future self. She runs into town under the pelting rain and finds a soul reaper locked in mortal combat with a strange hollow, Isshin’s fire-based zanpakuto lighting up the night.

To his warm flames, Masaki adds her icy Quincy arrows in order to save Isshin’s life. When the hollow charges her, she disarms and allows it to bit her shoulder, which allows her to kill it from point-blank range. So not only is Masaki a Quincy, but comparable in skill and power to a Gotei 13 Captain, and even possesses a sense of style to her fighting.

When the hollow prepares to self destruct, Isshin sees Masaki is in trouble and uses his body and spiritual pressure to shield her. On the ground, battered and bloody, Isshin thanks Masaki for saving her. She in turn thanks him for saving her, and he laughs, saying that must make them even.

When Isshin asks her who she is, Masaki considers how a soul reaper would react to learning that she’s a Quincy. Perhaps since he just saved her, Masaki isn’t in the mood to lie or deflect, and comes right out and tells him she’s a quincy. Isshin’s reaction of casual amusement is definitely not what she expected, and it puts a big Kurosaki smile on her face.

So there you have it: a shinigami captain and the last surviving member of a Quincy clan have a meet cute, all thanks to the series’ big bad’s machinations. Forget flashbacks; I could honestly watch an entire separate season of Bleach centered on these two (and the ensuing love triangle with Ryuuken). You can plainly see how Ichigo became such an honorable and upstanding young scamp from watching these two.

Urusei Yatsura – 09 – Dine and Dash

Cherry senses doom in the air (and in his stew)—and it arrives while Ataru is cleaning his room for Shinobu while Lum is bored out of her mind and simply wants to cuddle. Shinobu is accosted on her way to Ataru’s, and ends up arriving through the window, leaving Lum and Ataru to mistake her as a ghost.

Turns out she’s on the shoulders or Rei, Lum’s fiancé who takes the form of a giant tiger-ox-thing when he’s mad. When he’s not mad, he’s a ridiculously good-looking young man, which is all Shinobu cares about. In this regard, she’s basically a male Ataru!

Love is more than looks for Lum, who won’t give Rei the time of day. Every time she clings to Ataru, Rei gets upset and transforms into the beast. He’s only quelled by the arrival of Ataru’s mom, who is immediately smitten and dolls herself up to bring roasted potatoes for the handsome new guest.

In addition to being a Jekyll-and-Hyde menace who won’t leave Lum alone, he’s also an unrepentant glutton, eating all of the potatoes meant for everyone and at least breifly forgetting that he originally came there for Lum.

When Lum reasserts her prefrence for Ataru, Rei chases them out of the house (blasting a hole in the wall) and into a park full of lovey-dovey couples. Only every time he calls out to Lum to marry him, each on of the women in the park fall for him and accept his proposal.

After running around the park winning the hearts of the gals and the ire of the guys and eating all of the food vendor’s wares, the chase comes back to Ataru’s house, and all the people from the park follow them there. Basically, thanks to being Lum’s main squeeze Ataru now has the most chaotic and troublesome alien yet all up in his space.

It isn’t long until school and free study time is infected by a toxically persistent Rei. Mendou vows to protect Lum and the other girls in the class from Beast!Rei, which Lum is fine with, but then she runs into Ran in the hall.

An enraged Ran demands that Lum help hook her up with Rei, as she’s painfully shy around him. Meanwhile Rei transforms and all the girls flock to him, leaving Mendou with all the other dudes and pathetically trying to flaunt his wealth to get the girls back.

When Lum comes back in the classroom, Rei has already eaten most of the other girls’ lunches, so he prepares to pounce on her. But she’s only a decoy to allow an opening for Ran to swoop in with her lovingly-made bento just for Rei.

He slowly, politely eats the lunch, which makes Ran think her feelings are getting through to him, but then Cherry arrives with an even bigger bento and Rei eats it the exact same way, igniting Ran’s demon mode. Then, just as quickly as he arrived, Rei announces he’s hungry and rockets home.

Rei hopes he’ll come back soon. Lum and Ataru hope he never comes back, something they can share in as a couple. Alas, when Rei said “home”, he didn’t mean the Oni homeworld, but Ataru’s house, where he is eating when Lum and Ataru arrive … and then promptly faceplant in exasperation.

Rei may not technically be a one-note character, but his two notes (raging beast and hunky yet remorseless eating machine) played ad nauseum throughout the episode grew quite exhausting … which I guess is the point! I truly empathized with Ataru and Lum (and Ataru’s dad!) enduring Rei’s foolishness.

Even if I can’t always understand Lum’s love and loyalty to Ataru, I totally get how whatever fleeting feelings she may have once had for Ataru in the past have long since dissipated, and now she wants nothing to do with him. I hate to say it, but really does makes Ataru look like the more desirable man!

Bocchi the Rock! – 08 – Everything Is In Reach

The sky is dark, the rain falls hard, and the lone and level sands of the empty STARRY stretch far away. P.A. hopes Kessoku Band aren’t too heartbroken by the small crowd. Seika says “real” bands get “screwed over by life” all the time, so it’s a teachable moment. But form the way Seika is hiding her face, P.A. can tell she’s hiding tears, and offers a hanky.

Seika’s little sister Nijika, whom she wanted to shine so badly tonight, tells her bandmates they just need to take this in stride. Her cheerful exhortations inspire Bocchi to be her best self for this concert. In turn, Bocchi’s goofiness with her star sunglasses and fake mustache lighten the otherwise somber, almost funereal mood.

Then we hear the door to the club open, and what do you know, the first person to arrive is our favorite bass chaos gremlin, Hiroi Kikuri, who as it turns out was Seika’s kohai at college, and at least to her has somehow become an even larger pain in the ass. But when Kikuri showed up, my spirits soared; she’s so awesome, it would be fine if it was just her, Seika and P.A.

But the door to the club opens again, and my dopamine levels rose still higher as the two yukata girls kept their promise to watch Bocchi play again. Of the twenty tickets Kessoku Band sold, the only three who show are the ones who heard Bocchi play. The other seven who show for a total crowd compliment of ten came for the band that plays after them. They’ve never heard of Kessoku Band, and dismiss it as “a waste of time.”

Sadly, Kessoku Band plays down to those expectations in their first song. It’s an unmitigated disaster, and Bocchi points out all of the ways they utterly fail, from Nijika being a beat too slow with the drums, and her and Ryou oddly being out of synch, to Ikuyo playing far worse than she did in practice.

It’s as clear as the day is dark that the band is letting the typhoon and the mostly disinterested crowd get to them, shifting them out of the good vibes and camaraderie they’d built up to that point. After their first song, they look and sound lost and defeated, and not a single person claps when the song mercifully comes to an end.

It’s at this point in the concert, with the first song over and the second yet to begin, where for once Bocchi doesn’t fear and expect the worst case scenario and descends into a pit of despair with the others. Instead, she recalls how amazing it felt to play in front of people on the street with Kikuri and watch their faces become laced with joy.

She decides, on her own, that she won’t let this concert stay the way it’s been so far, and opens up a defiantly wicked string of riffs that zap her bandmates back into coherence. At first Ikuyo, Nijika, and even Ryou simply watch their guitarist shred epically, but then they see the wave she’s built up and jump on and ride it.

Bocchi’s abject refusal to let their concert bomb lifts the rest of the band, and their second song lifts every face in the audience from their phones. The most introverted and neurotic member of the band is the one who forces these ten people to pay attention, because there is fucking rocking going on.

The ensuing progression of the song to its completion comprises some of the very best minutes of anime I have ever seen in terms of pure emotional resonance and intensity. Bocchi rages against the dying of the light, drags the others with her, and they pull out their best performance ever. Polite and thoroughly surprised applause ensues.

While I would have been fine hearing their third song, we really didn’t need to; the second song, in which Bocchi got everyone back on track, was the crucial one, and it ruled, hard. Instead the episode skips to the afterparty at an izakaya, where Hiroi Kikuri’s name is finally uttered on camera as she introduces herself as a genius bassist and unparalleled bass lover.

Not surprisngly, fellow bassist Ryou has been to some of Kikuri’s shows, which tend to be what she calls “blind-drunk concerts” where at one point Kikuri stepped on Ryou’s face. What’s more cot-damn rock-and-roll than that?! Seika asks Ikuyo why she Instagrams so much, and Ikuyo actually gives a very apt reason: “it’s like giving people a piece of the fun” she’s having.

This is Bocchi’s very first time in an izakaya. She’s surprised to find they’re quite fun, and when she wonders if they’ll be more fun when she’s old enough to drink, she notices a pair of salarymen at the bar (in a very different and more severe art style), one of whom suspects his wife is cheating because he works such long hours. In an episode full of great lines, Bocchi’s reaction to this scene—“Is life just an unrelenting hell?” might just take the karaage.

She then slips into Bocchi Time, complete with a stop-motion Game of Life analog and another peek into a bad future where she lives in her dark closet and chugs shochu. This busts Bocchi, but her friends are able to pull her back to reality. Ikuyo’s name is also finally uttered—by Ryou of all people—exposing her complex about her name sounding like a pun: “I’m here! Let’s go!” The afterparty is a brilliant collection of character moments and interactions.

Kikuri actually heard Bocchi’s ramblings about supporting herself with a guitar and becoming a NEET, and encourages her to simply chill out and enjoy herself. P.A. and Seika add their voices to this approach, as keeping the “weight of success” on one’s shoulders constantly will only cause misery. It’s important to enjoy the process; the ride.

When Bocchi notices Nijika isn’t around, she steps outside and finds her standing alone, getting some fresh air. This felt like another big step forward for Bocchi, who is able to take enough of a break from all the shit going on in her head to notice that someone might be up with one of her friends.

When Bocchi started righteously shredding earlier, Nijika says she realized Bocchi was “guitarhero” from YouTube. Cornered, Bocchi admits she is, even if she considers herself far from a hero, and wanted to wait to tell Nijika and the others until she “fixed” herself.

Nijika then opens up to Bocchi like she never has before, saying how her mom died when she was little and her dad was never around, so her sister was her family. Her love of music sprouted form attending Seika’s concerts out of necessity, and she believes she inspired Seika to quit her band and opened the club in part for her sake.

Nijika then tells Bocchi her dream isn’t just to play at the Budokan, but to create a band popular enough to make STARRY famous. And since she’s started that venture, every time things seem like they’re at their worst, Bocchi is the one who “breaks through it” for them. Nijika tells Bocchi that she was unassailably a hero to her today.

This sharing leads to Bocchi sharing back: her dream is to make Kessoku Band the best band it can be…and become successful enough that she can quit school. Nijika appreciates Bocchi’s honestly, giving her a sun-bright smile as she heads back to the party, telling her she hopes Bocchi will keep showing them more of “Bocchi’s Rock”—or “Bocchi the Rock!”

Following that titular line is a cut to black and a vertical crawl of credits over a new ending theme. And honestly? This could have been a fitting end to the series. But I’m glad it’s not. I want to see more of Bocchi’s Rock too! I don’t know if what follows will ever be as good as this, but I sure am looking forward to finding out!

RABUJOI WORLD HERITAGE LIST

Bocchi the Rock! – 07 – Meet the Gotous

Summer has hit its stride as Nijika and Ikuyo make their way to Bocchi’s with the ostensible mission of designing a band t-shirt. Ryou isn’t with them; she said her gran took a turn for the worse, but Nijika knows that’s a lie, and we see that Ryou is just vibeing on her own.

I like how the show acknowledges that the four bandmates don’t do everything together, and that’s okay. It’s also that much less stressful for Bocchi to have her first two guests instead of her first three. She may know and interact with Nijika and Ikuyo all the time, but not in her home. Every new scenario comes with a new set of anxieties.

Bocchi is terrified and excited at the same time to be hosting her bandmates, and her inexperience with the practice clearly shows, from the giant banner outside the house and the elaborate welcoming getup and ceremony, to her maximalist disco bedroom decor.

Nijika and Ikuyo are exceedingly nice people who are excited to see Bocchi in a new setting, but find she’s the same ol’ Bocchi at home. From the giant stack of copies of their ProPho, to the seals and talismans put up by their parents from when she was “possessed”, it’s quite a trip.

It’s even more whiplash-inducing to meet Bocchi’s extremely well-adjusted little sister Futari, who introduces herself and the family dog. By the time Bocchi returns to the room with barley tea (worrying it’s not trendy enough while en route), she sees everyone having so much fun she worries there’s no place for her.

After shooing Futari away with an ice pop bribe, the three bandmates get to work on t-shirt designs. Ikuyo’s first attempt looks like the kind of shirts worn at sports festivals, but hearing those two words sends Bocchi careening headlong into “Bocchi Time”, complete with frikkin’ stop motion.

To Bocchi, sports festivals are accurséd rituals designed to condemn ostracize the uncoordinated and introverted. She imagines being hunted down and burned at the stake for the crime of nonconformity by a post-apocalyptic horde of sports festival participants.

Her reverie is interrupted when her parents peek their heads in to confirm that Bocchi’s friends are indeed real and not imaginary (or rentals). While I don’t doubt they adore their daughter, there are times in this episode when I feel like they’re being a bit harsh on her. Call it overcompensation for the shock of her actually bringing people over, I suppose.

Everyone gathers in the living room to partake of the feast Bocchi’s parents prepared. Bocchi heads to the bathroom, probably both because she had to go and because she needed a breather. While she’s gone, her folks describe how she put up and took down the decorations multiple times, and even practices Twister just in case.

When Bocchi comes back, there’s a repeat of the sinking feeling she got when she saw her bandmates interacting with Futari and Jimihen. They then watch the seishun movie Ikuyo brought, play a little Twister and Tycoon, and finally get back to designing T-shirts.

Ryou sending texts of t-shirts with different photos of food because she wanted them to decide for her is extremely Ryou. Bocchi’s valiant attempt at a edgy design, festooned as it is with indecipherable grundgy fonts and ample zippers, sparks conversation regarding Bocchi’s wardrobe,

She was doomed the minute she mentioned her mom buys her clothes she never wears. Nijika and Ikuyo insist she try some of them on, and they discover, as they had suspected, that Bocchi is indeed a certified cutie. Ikuyo makes sure to take some pics, and considering the running gag of the ProPho, I imagine they’ll turn up again someday!

Nijika then gets a little too into glowing up Bocchi, and when she attempts to pull back Bocchi’s bangs, she inadvertently causes her to turn to ash and blow away. This marks at least the third time Bocchi has died in just seven episodes, and this time it’s accompanied by Nausicaa-style singing child music. Bocchi-dust motes dispersed throughout the room, and Nijika and Ikuyo eventually breathe them in and collapse.

Nijika only barely able to text Ryou that she’ll have to play the concert on her own, because everyone else is dead. This heightened reality knocks on the fourth wall, though considering it was busted through when Nijika mentioned a commercial break, I’m fine with such occasional liberties.

In the end, Nijika designs a simple but fun design for their t-shirts, and Bocchi is over the moon when she slips one on, constantly looking down at it and smiling. All they need now is for the weather to cooperate for their concert. Reports indicate a typhoon will miss the Kanto region, but Bocchi, ever prepared for the worst, insists they make a bunch of teru teru bouzu … just in case.

They don’t work, and Bocchi exits her house on the day of the concert to find herself in the middle of a frikking typhoon. The once bright and cheerful summer sky is now as dark and brooding as the inside of her closet. But the closet is where Bocchi learned how to play a kickass guitar, and where she’s done some of her best work and earned her thousands of subscribers. If anyone can make lemonade out of this, it’s her.

Urusei Yatsura – 06 – Earth, Lightning, Fire and Ice

Ataru is a man of simple pleasures. When it’s sukiyaki night at the Moroboshi house, he’s super-pumped. Unfortunately he’s never able to partake in the feast, as Lum grabs him and leaps through an inter-dimensional portal she made in his closet that leads to the Oni homeworld.

Lum is in battle gear, and soon so is Ataru. The lines are drawn between the Oni and the “Lucky Gods”. Ataru feels like some kind of bloody, horrific war is going to start, but the “battle” takes the form of…tower basket ball toss, an even not out of place on school sports days.

This is kinda boring to Ataru, until he spots a major babe in Benten, one of Lum’s old friends (Ishigami Shizuka). Back home, Ataru’s parents wait as long as they can, then eat all the sukiyaki, before hearing their son’s voice and freaking out. Cherry arrives to help them speak to their son, now allegedly dearly departed to the hereafter.

In reality, they can just hear him through the portal as he flirts with Benten. While she’s understandably “who is this guy” at first, once she realizes he’s Lum’s husband she decides to have a little fun at her expense and plays along. This results in Lum and Benten, the two basket minders, ignoring the game completely to fight over Ataru.

Before Cherry summons Ataru’s voice again, he has Ataru’s folks make more sukiyaki, at which point his mom has lost her patience and holds the tiny priest at knifepoint. He does the same nonsensical chanting as his niece Sakura, tuning into Ataru just as he’s facing his “punishment” as the weakest link on the losing team: being pelted with pellets by both sides.

As is typical of Urusei Yatsura, the next morning is a bit of a reset, but Ataru is in bed with a cold. Somewhat surprisingly, Shinobu is by his side tending to him, and Lum is nowhere to be found. Soon Mendou, Ataru’s friends, and Cherry are crowding the room, just as it starts to grow very cold and snowy.

Lum went to Neptune to visit a friend through the portal, so a bit of the icy world seems to be “leaking” into his room, including an avalanche’s worth of snow that buries Ataru. He’s dug up not by Shinobu or his friends, but by a new character who resembles a yuki-onna. She goes back through the portal and then down a deep chasm.

Starting with Ataru (who is pushed), everyone follows suit, and lands upside-down on the snow-packed surface of Neptune. There, Ataru reunites with Lum (in a smart tiger-print two-piece combo more appropriate for the climate than her usual bikini), who reveals the yuki-onna is her old friend Oyuki (Hayami Saori, of course).

Neptune is a world full of nothing but women, which makes it a paradise for Mendou, who is all to happy to dig snow for them endlessly. Meanwhile, Oyuki invites Ataru, Lum, Shinobu and Cherry into her futuristic mansion. Ataru can’t help but flirt with Oyuki, incurring the rage of both Shinobu and Lum (as well as Lum’s lightning).

Ataru begs to go somewhere where he’ll be safe from their wrath, praising Oyuki for being a pure, gentle, and above all non-violent maiden. However he soon finds that Oyuki, who ditched her outdoor robes for a revealing ice-blue one-piece, was planning to seduce Ataru all along. Things are about to get racy when the wall crumbles before them and B-Bo, Oyuki’s yeti attendant, takes exception to Ataru’s presence.

B-Bo chases Ataru through the Neptunian wastes and back through the portal to Earth, where news choppers capture the ensuing rooftop spectacle. Once the King Kong style incident is over, Ataru finds himself in a full body cast, tended to by both Shinobu and Lum, who hoped he learned his lesson about chasing every girl with a pulse. Of course, he didn’t learn, and will never learn—otherwise he wouldn’t be Moroboshi Ataru!

The third and final segment is the shortest, and takes place after the credits. At the end of the semester, Ataru has an announcement for everyone: he’s retiring. His teacher thinks this means he’s dropping out due to his upsettingly terrible grades, but it’s Mendou who shatters the fourth wall by assuming Ataru was retiring … as the main character of Urusei Yatsura.

Everyone goes along with this, because everyone wants to be his replacement. It results in a callback to every character large and small we’ve met so far in the first six episodes, each making their case. Finally Ataru has to disappoint them all: he’s not retiring from being the MC, but from the school presidency.

Mobile Suit Gundam: The Witch from Mercury – 03 – I’ll Stop the Rain for You

In the third episode, Suletta finally manages to verbalize what she wants, and how marrying Miorine might jeopardize that. It’s nothing so much as a list of normal things one does in high school: making friends, giving them nicknames, lunch on the roof … going on dates. Miorine doesn’t get why marriage would preclude that last part. Miorine also tells Suletta not to worry; the legal age for marriage is 17, and so they won’t get hitched until her birthday at the earliest.

All she needs to focus on is winning the duel, or they’re both finished. On a call with her confirmed mom, Lady Prospera tells her daughter that she didn’t raise no witch. The next day at school, Suletta gets all the attention for the wrong reasons from most of her peers, while Nika proves to be true blue, albeit one a little too into Aerial’s technical specs.

Guel, having test piloted his dad’s company’s new Darilbarde, hides his frustration with it being piloted by AI, with his usual arrogant front and paeans in two. We also learn Prospera blackmailed Guel dad at the inquiry with he knowledge of his assassination plot. Don’t mess with Suletta’s mom.

Suletta is overjoyed to be invited back into Miorine’s garden, but Miorine makes sure she understands that doesn’t make them best friends. Their garden time is interrupted again, but this time by the true-neutral Elan Ceres. He be devoid of outward emotion, but he gives Suletta her first contact from a boy and hopes she’ll fulfill the wishes on her list.

Elan, along with Shaddiq Zenelli, are members of the deulling committee, and bring Suletta and Guel together to go over the terms and stakes and officially approve the duel. There’s another haughty rich girl in the committee, Secelia, who mocks Guel following daddy’s orders. But Suletta scolds Secelia and defends Guel.

Suletta may be pushy with her aw-shucks old-fashioned ideals due to the longtime isolation that galvanized them. But at least in this case (and most cases) she is correct, and Guel acknowledges and appreciates her gesture, all but thanking her when the two are alone in the life after the meeting. He also all but admits to liking her “gaining two” philosophy.

I’m glad these two had this moment together prior to the duel, as Guel has been given a lot more dimension in these last couple episodes. Unlike his father and bootlicking brother, personal honor is important. So he is not coming into this duel in a good place, considering he’s mostly just along for the ride in his new suit.

After a video call from Miorine basically wishing Suletta luck we see that Guel’s dad has made another “arrangement” to assure his son’s victory. His brother tells his dad such “tricks” aren’t needed for his Guel to win.

After Suletta half-heartedly states the dueler’s creed (helped along by Guel), the duel commences. The two mostly just feel each other out, but little does Suletta know that Guel isn’t even at the controls: the joysticks are moving on their own. Such is his dad’s desire to win, his son is merely ballast.

Then the “arrangement” occurs when a false heat error activates the dueling ground’s sprinkler system. The resulting “rain” dissipates Aerial’s ranged beam weapons, making it a close-quarters swordfight. Miorine protests, but Elan says such tricks don’t invalidate the duel, but are a part of it; a part of the duelers’ strength. He believes if Suletta is truly a “witch”, she’ll survive this duel even with the opponent cheating.

With that in mind, Elan also doesn’t stop Miorine from heading out into the dueling ground to correct the error causing the rain, which she learns was caused by Guel’s groupies, as she suspected. With the rain subsided by Miorine, her fiancé shifts into high gear, putting her swarm in play.

Guel protests the actions being taken by his suit’s EV, but his dad warns him to just sit there and let it win the duel for him. But Guel can’t do it; not after he was caught off guard in his first duel, or after hearing Suletta’s credo. Letting his dad decide everything is simply running, which will only gain him one. He wants this win to be his win, so he smashes the autopilot and takes the reins.

Suletta can tell that something has changed, and can also tell that Guel is good as hell at piloting a mobile suit. But she also knows she can’t lose; not with so much left on her school wish list. She takes Guel’s antenna, gains her second win in as many duels, and tightens her grip on both the holder title Miorine’s hand in marriage.

Miorine, or “Mio-Mio” as Suletta attempts to nickname her, releases all her built-up tension by smiling and laughing over Suletta’s victory. Suletta also gets a congratulatory text from Elan (which includes an exclamation point that just seems wrong coming from Elan). She then sees Guel standing outside his defeated suit, and exits her cockpit to meet him.

She first apologizes for underestimating him, saying he really was strong in their duel (Suletta wisely doesn’t say that she’s simply stronger than him, even if it’s true). Hearing those words from Suletta, as well as knowing that even though he lost, he lost with his own will and hands to a superior opponent, stirs something in Guel.

Maybe it’s also the way the dramatic light hits Suletta too, but he takes her outstretched hand with both of his, gets down on one knee, and exercises his will once more, in keeping with the ideals she taught him before the duel. That said, she most definitely did not expect that to result in him asking her to marry him.

Just as rejecting Guel and accepting Suletta as her groom was an act of Miorine’s own will and rejection of her father’s dominance over her life, Guel is also deciding he’ll fight how he wants and love who he wants. I’m glad Guel isn’t just a one-dimensional spoiled rich kid, and thrilled to see how his sudden proposal will make things messier for Suletta and Mio-Mio going forward.

But hey, going forward gains you two, or more!

Urusei Yatsura – 01 (First Impressions) – The Winner Takes It All

In this reboot of a sci-fi/rom-com anime from 1981 (41 years ago) we’re introduced to Moroboshi Ataru (Kamiya Hiroshi), an unrepentant horndog in a Waldo shirt who ogles a comely jogger mere seconds after reaffirming his love for his long-suffering girlfriend, Miyake Shinobu (Uchida Maaya). That status quo is suddenly shattered by an alien invasion of earth by a race called the Oni.

But these aliens are the sporting type, so they give humanity a chance to avoid subjugation: if a randomly selected human can catch the Oni’s leader’s daughter Lum (Uesaka Sumire) by the horns in a game of tag, the invasion will be cancelled. The human they randomly select is Ataru, of course. And Lum? She’s a total babe.

The game of tag is internationally televised and held at a soccer stadium packed to capacity. Unfortunately for Ataru (who is preternaturally unlucky having been born on Friday the 13th), Lum can fly, and proves extremely hard to catch.

He only has ten days to tag her, and those days go by utterly devoid of success. On the evening before the last day before humanity is doomed, Shinobu decides to give Ataru some extra motivation: if he succeeds, she’ll marry him. Ataru genuinely cares for Shinobu, so the next day he’s all vim and vinegar.

Upon finally catching Lum by the leg, he learns she has another power: electricity. But that doesn’t faze him. As his bride-to-be watches and he repeatedly shouts “Marriage!” he intensifies his pursuit of Lum, eventually grabbing her into an embrace and relieving her of her tiger-print bikini top.

Using the top as a lure, for the first time Ataru brings Lum to him, and uses said top as a distraction as he allows her to reclaim it while he reorients himself and grabs her by the horns, thereby winning the game of tag and saving earth from invasion.

Ataru is instantly a global hero, and he’s ready to marry Shinobu right then and there … but there’s one problem: all those times he shouted “Marriage!” while chasing Lum? Lum thought that meant he intended to marry her. And having lost the game fair and square, she agrees.

Neiher Ataru nor Shinobu (especially Shinobu) like this, but Lum is absolutely intent on being Ataru’s wife. When he declares that he only loves Shinobu, he makes Lum cry, and when she calls Shinobu on the phone (this series is very much lodged in the 80s, tech-wise) both girls accuse him of two-timing.

That said, Shinobu is on board with Ataru’s plan to simply ignore Lum when she uses her alien ship’s jamming tech to intrude on their phone calls.When Ataru and Shinobu threaten meet in person, Lum creates massive electrical storms, but the lovebirds still manage to unite, which is when she takes her ship into the atmosphere to intercept them.

Normally, saving the world would afford the saver a life of leisure and ease; not so for the ever-unlucky Ataru. While he loves Shinobu, he also cannot deny his attraction to Lum, even though she has a tendency to electrocute him when she perceives him to be cheating.

It is here where I admit that the premise and the character dynamics are very much stuck in the 20th century, and perhaps that’s for the best. Compare this to the reboot of the even older Dororo, which respected its source while also bringing it into modernity.

Urusei Yatsura isn’t just retro in look (albeit with a 21st century glow-up), but also retro in sensibility. The show is loud, boisterous, and a a bit backwater. But it’s also fantastic-looking, brimming with infectious energy and charm, and is mostly just a big ol’ heap of fun!