Tag: Urusei Yatsura

Urusei Yatsura: The Triumphant Return of Some Terrible Bastards

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hisui_icon_4040_round I have to say I’m glad that there are still anime and manga licenses that can surprise me. Despite the number of crazy anime licenses (that are not Macross) that have been announced there is still about one a year that pleasantly surprises me. The one for 2018 was the fact that Viz said they were going to try and release the Urusei Yatsura manga again despite dropping the license twice before. I was generally content with the anime release from AnimEigo from a few years back but I can’t say I was not at least something secretly hoping for a full release of the manga even if it felt highly unlikely. So I was a bit blindsided in the best possible way by the news and have been waiting for the new and improved books ever since then.

This post is less of a review and more of my observations on the first volume. Like with some of my Type-Moon posts none of what I would write would even remotely be considered objective or measured. This has always been a series that I loved and was very important to my early hardcore fandom so to say I look upon this book with rose-colored glasses is putting it kindly. If anything think of this as a look into the thoughts of a super fan.
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No Case Too Small: Urusei Yatsura

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The case in question is episode 75 of Urusei Yatsura: “And Then There Were None“

hisuiconNo Case too Small is the ongoing feature of the blog where we look at a mystery based episode of a non-detective related show. Since today is Halloween we decided to do a very thematically appropriate episode of Urusei Yatsura. Usually Urusei Yatsura is a madcap screwball comedy where the most lecherousness young man in Japan is engaged to a beautiful but jealous alien princess with electrical powers. Around this time in the production of the show you can sense that the crew was getting bored with straight adaption of the manga and were pushing the boundaries of what they could get away with in the series. Episode 71 was “Shinobu’s Cinderella Story”  which was a mostly a humorless noir story involving a Shinobu getting involved in a murder over the inheritance of a vast fortune. This episode also takes the crew of the normally goofy series and places them in a terrifying murder mystery with the cast dying one by one in various gruesome ways. While the mood might be in strong contrast to the shows’ normal vibe it is perfect macabre story for today.

Lum is the type of show where you never know what the next episode will be about, it is a rather odd and varied assortment of short comedies running the gamut of success. But you always expect comedy, and maybe the occasional tender moment, so this episode comes off as particularly creepy. And even the few attempts at silly just cement how bizarre the tale is.

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Anime 101

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There was a formspring question a while back about what anime you would show a class, we liked it so we expanded it into a little post. Imagine you are a professor. You have students who have anime studies as a major. What titles should they be familiar with in their first year that introduces them to the major? Lists like this are never really complete especially when working in some sort of restriction like our 10 TV series and 5 movies but there is only so much time in a semester. It also becomes more difficult as the years go by and more and more shows are produced. But you can still attempt a good foundation. It is important to note that not all of these titles are necessarily the best representations of their genre. Titles were often picked because it helped show the full range of what anime has to offer more than being the pinnacle. The shows here are meant to show what anime can produce in order to help the student decide where they want to focus their studies. So here’s what we thought of, what would be on your list?

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