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Urusei Yatsura
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is a well-known late 1970s to 1990s manga (1978-1987) and anime (1981-1986) series created by Rumiko Takahashi. The show is also known as Lum/Lamu, the Invader Girl, and, Those Obnoxious Aliens. The English translation of the manga, published by Viz Communications, was short-lived, and was divided into two series titled Lum and The Return of Lum, named after the main character. The manga received the Shogakukan Manga Award in 1981.
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Encyclopedia
is a well-known late 1970s to 1990s manga (1978-1987) and anime (1981-1986) series created by Rumiko Takahashi. The show is also known as Lum/Lamu, the Invader Girl, and, Those Obnoxious Aliens. The English translation of the manga, published by Viz Communications, was short-lived, and was divided into two series titled Lum and The Return of Lum, named after the main character. The manga received the Shogakukan Manga Award in 1981. The series is considered an excellent source for references to Japanese culture and mythology.
The anime version spanned 6 films, 11 OVAs, and 195 half hour TV episodes (comprising 218 separate stories, as the first season's episodes consisted of two fifteen-minute segments), which originally premiered across Japan on the terrestrial Fuji Television network between 1981-1986, and was later aired across Japan by the anime satellite television network, Animax, who have also broadcast the series across its respective networks worldwide, including Southeast Asia, Hong Kong, Taiwan, South Asia and other regions. The series was also aired in Italy from 1983 on many local channels, in France from 1988 on TF1 and later across the United States on PBS, from 1998. AnimEigo is the North American distributor for all of these except the second movie Beautiful Dreamer, which is distributed by Central Park Media. There were also two episodes (four stories) translated and dubbed in the United Kingdom and shown as Lum the Invader Girl on BBC Choice shortly after its launch.
Title explanation
The original title is a Japanese pun, and roughly translates as "those obnoxious aliens". The word urusei is a crude way of saying urusai, which means "noisy" or "obnoxious", and is also a slang phrase for "shut up!" (As in, "You're being noisy, shut up!"). The second word in the title, yatsura, is the plural form of , the low-respect pronoun for "the person over there" and carrying the connotation of a hooligan or jerk. However, the kanji for is used. Japanese names of other planets end in the suffix -sei (Mercury is Suisei, Venus is Kinsei, Mars is Kasei, Jupiter is Mokusei, Saturn is Dosei, Uranus is Tenousei, Neptune is Kaiosei, and Pluto is Meiosei) Along with the pun, the title roughly translates as "A bunch of noisy Alien People". Oniboshi is the name of the planet from which Lum, Ran, Benten and the other alien characters originate (according to the manga), although it is sometimes (mistakenly) referred to as Uru as well.
AnimEigo did in fact release a few episodes in English-dubbed form under the title Those Obnoxious Aliens, but the dubbed VHS tapes sold poorly and production of the dubbed version was aborted after only two episodes. Aside from this release and several of the movies, the series is only available in English in the United States in subtitled form. Viz Comics released part of the manga in the United States in 1989 under the title Lum * Urusei Yatsura and The Return of Lum, but this release is now out of print.
Plot
The series is very light-hearted in nature and often quite bizarre. It concerns the adventures of a group of teenagers who live in Tomobiki, a fictional area of Tokyo in the Nerima ward (Takahashi's later series Ranma 1/2 also takes place in Nerima, which is where she herself lives). The name comes from the Rokuyo calendar, in which Tomobiki translates as "dragging friends along"; while that day is not especially lucky or unlucky, it will cause one's luck (whether good or bad) to transfer to another person. The name likely refers to how the arrival of Lum the alien has made the town a very weird place, with other aliens often visiting and various disasters befalling it, usually the local high school or protagonist Ataru Moroboshi's house, and usually having something to do with Lum and her friends. As such, it is a rather strange thing to name a town. The story centers around an extremely lecherous and very unlucky high-school boy, Ataru Moroboshi, and the bikini clad alien Lum.
On the first day of the story, Sakurambo (or Cherry, as he prefers to be known) suddenly predicts very bad luck to Ataru; upon returning home, the boy encounters a very nasty surprise: a party of oni aliens have come to conquer Earth. They give mankind a fighting chance, however; through the computer, they have randomly selected a human to compete against their representative in a game of tag. Should the chosen human - that being Ataru - win, they will withdraw. It turns out that his competitor is not their rather robust leader, but his daughter, the bikini and go-go boots wearing princess Lum. If Ataru can grab her horns (a characteristic of oni or ogres, in English) within ten days, he wins. However, Lum easily outruns him without even trying due to the small fact that she is capable of flight. After nine days, the whole world is beginning to feel highly agitated when the most Ataru is capable of doing is accidentally pull Lum's bikini top off. But Shinobu, Ataru's childhood friend and current girlfriend, promises to marry Ataru if he catches Lum and saves the Earth. With newfound motivation based on this and the fact that Lum doesn't seem to have another top (as she had come to pester him about returning the other one after his friends had left), Ataru tricks Lum into flying at him to get her bra back and thus catches her horns. In his moment of triumph, he yells "Now I can finally marry her!". Lum, misunderstanding this as immediate marriage, accepts his proposal on the spot amidst the general celebrating that Earth is saved.
Lum falls in love with Ataru after he accidentally proposes to her, while Ataru is always chasing after every girl he sees (despite them not being interested in him) leading to Lum physically punish him with electric shocks, another ability of hers (in the story, flying and electricity are not related to any technology). Lum never calls Ataru by name, even to other people she calls him by the English word, "darling". This is the main reason for the many occurrences of the word throughout the titles and songs of the series. The series is heavily episodic, with only occasional plots spanning more than one chapter / episode. Each of these usually concerns Ataru's ill-luck, his lechery (and Lum's jealousy thereof) or the wide variety of weird humans and aliens who love, hate, or simply meddle with Lum and Ataru.
Characters
Media
Manga
Anime
The series was adapted into a 195 episode Tv series that aired from October 14, 1981 to March 19, 1986. It was originally shown on the Fuji Television network between, and was later rebroadcast by the anime satellite television network, Animax. Movie and OVA adaptions followed.
There are a few differences between the stories of the manga and anime series. The most noticeable (bar Lum's hair being green from originally being iridescent) is how some of the later stories and characters in the manga (such as Shingo, Inaba and Nagisa) are not part of the regular TV series, only appearing on the OVAs. Additionally, the anime officially ends with the fifth movie; the sixth was only an anniversary special.
Also missing from the anime is Kosuke, one of the students of classroom 2-4 and the only one outside the main cast who is reasonably developed in the manga. His character, in stories that called for Kosuke, is usually replaced by Perm. Further, Lum's Stormtroopers in general, who early on in the manga were dropped from the cast of regulars in favour of more dimensional characters (such as Kosuke) became major regulars in the anime and were used in many cases when it was necessary for Ataru and (especially) Lum to interact with school chums. Additionally, Lum's cousin, Ten, was introduced much earlier in the TV series (episode two) than in the manga. Finally, some stories are slightly altered (mostly by adding or removing plot detail) to better suit the anime format.
Movies
OVA releases
Urusei Yatsura also has a number of direct-to-market video releases which include stories not covered in the TV series or movies. All but one of these were released after the ending of the series, so popularity may have also been a factor in the continued release of new animation. Also, unlike the others, Inaba the Dreammaker was first featured as a TV Special before being released on video. For the American release by Animeigo, they were released over 6 discs that were sold individually. In the Uk, they were released as a value boxset by MVM. Following is a list of these OVAs, official English title in bold, followed by the original Japanese, (a romaji transliteration in parentheses), and the original Japanese release date (also in parentheses):
- (1985)
- (July 18, 1987)
- (December 2, 1988)
- (December 8, 1988)
- (August 21, 1989)
- (September 1, 1989)
- (December 21, 1989)
- (December 27, 1989)
- (June 21, 1991)
- (June 21, 1991)
- (1993)
Theme songs
Games
A number of video games based on the Urusei Yatsura manga and anime were produced in Japan over the past twenty years:
External links
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