URUSEI YATSURA

, also known as ''Lum'', ''Lamu, the Invader Girl'', or ''Those Obnoxious Aliens'', is a well-known late 70s to 80s manga (1978-1987) and anime (1981-1986) series created by Rumiko Takahashi. The English translation of the manga, published by Viz Communications, was divided into 2 series titled ''Lum'' and ''The Return of Lum'', named after the main character. The manga received the Shogakukan Manga Award in 1981.
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 France from 1988 on TF1 and later across the United States on PBS, from 1998. ^[1] 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 about half a dozen episodes translated and dubbed in the United Kingdom and shown as ''Lum the Invader Girl'' on BBC Choice shortly after its launch.

Contents

Title explanation

Characters

The story

Differences between manga and anime

Theme songs

Movies

OVA Releases

Games

References

External links

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 obnoxious, so…"). 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; hence, the title can be seen as an untranslatable combination of "Those noisy hooligans" and "Those jerks from the planet Uru". AnimEigo did in fact release a few episodes in English-dubbed form under the title ''Those Obnoxious Aliens'', but production of the dubbed version was aborted, and aside from this release and several of the movies, the series is only available in English in subtitled form.

Characters

Main articles: List of Urusei Yatsura characters

The story

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, an area of the Nerima ward of Tokyo on a slightly fantastical and often ridiculously surreal version of Earth. The story centers around an extremely lecherous and very unlucky high-school boy, Ataru Moroboshi, and the bikini clad alien princess Lum. Lum is in love with Ataru because he accidentally proposed to her, even though he chases after every humanoid female ''other'' than Lum. (It's not that she's ugly, it's just that he lost interest in her as soon as ''she'' started chasing ''him'', and also probably because she uses her powers (which come in the form of electric shocks) on him many times.) The series is mainly 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.

Differences between manga and anime

There are a few differences between the stories of the manga and anime series. The most noticeable 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, and whilst some fans think that it is not considered strictly canon, technically it can be fit anywhere in the series before the fifth movie.
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. Finally, some stories are slightly altered (mostly by adding or removing plot detail) to better suit the anime format.

Theme songs

;Openings:
#''Lum no Love Song'' (ep.1-77)
#''Dancing Star'' (ep.78-106)
#''Pajama Jama da'' (ep.107-127)
#''Chance on Love'' (ep.128-149)
#''Rock the Planet'' (ep.150-165)
#''Tonogata Gomen Asobase'' (ep.166-195)
;Endings:
#''Uchū ha Taihen da!'' (ep.1-21)
#''Kokoro Bosoi na'' (ep.22-43)
#''Cosmic Cycling'' (ep.44-54 & 65-77)
#''I, I, You and Ai'' (ep.55-64)
#''Yume ha Love Me More'' (ep.78-106)
#''Koi no Möbius'' (ep.107-127)
#''Open Invitation'' (ep.128-149)
#''Every Day'' (ep.150-165)
#''Good Luck: Towa yori Ai wo Komete'' (ep.166-195)

Movies

Main articles: Urusei Yatsura 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. Following is a list of these OVAs, 'official English title' in bold, followed by the original Japanese, (a rōmaji 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)

Games

A number of video games based on the ''Urusei Yatsura'' manga and anime were produced in Japan over the past twenty years:

Name	Publisher	System	Genre	Release Date
''	Jaleco	Famicom	platformer	1986
''Urusei Yatsura''	Micro Cabin	MSX2	puzzle game	1987
''Stay With You''	Hudson Soft	PC Engine	visual novel	1992
''Urusei Yatsura''	Nintendo	Game Boy	visual novel	1992
''Dear My Friends''	Game Arts	Sega Mega-CD	visual novel	1993
''Endless Summer''	Marvelous Interactive	Nintendo DS	dating sim	2005

References

1. Absolute Anime

External links

★ AnimEigo - United States distributor of the Urusei Yatsura anime.

★