Urusei Yatsura – Lum-chan, you’re always our darling!
好きよ 好きよ 好きよ…
Yeah, we love Lum-chan so much, and we’re so happy that the new Urusei Yatsura anime series is now on TV!
Created by Rumiko Takahashi, the original manga appeared on the pages of Shonen Sunday in 1978, and since the first episode, all the readers of the magazine fell in love with the extremely beautiful alien-oni princess from the planet Oniboshi. Every week millions of people waited for the new episode, but at the very beginning the series was discontinued due to the difficulty of Takahashi-san meeting the deadlines of the publisher, but luckily for us, this fact won’t stop her to draw even more bizarre ‘n funny adventures starring Lum, Ataru, Shinobu, and all the other superstars of the Tomobiki High School.
As one of the most impactful series of the 80s, Urusei Yatsura keeps intact all its great features even if you should read it 44 years later the original publication; and as an important pop-cultural phenomenon it soon left the paper to appear also in anime, movies, video games, clothes, food, and more more more…
Very different from any other series that appeared before, we can say without any doubt that Urusei Yatsura is like a cosmical kyogen embellished by many legendary cameos including Char Aznable, Ultraman, Hulk, the Stay Puft Marshmallow Man, Godzilla, Nausicaa, Creamy Mami, just to name a few.
One, two, three! DIVINE RETRIBUTION!!!
Inspired by the Chinese-Hawaiian bikini model (and singer as well) Agnes Lum; Lum-chan was initially a secondary character, included to make the relationship of Ataru and Shinobu a little more spice, but episode by episode she gained even more importance, and in more than 40 years we can clearly consider her the main protagonist. But how can we consider Lum within the series? Well, she’s an agent of chaos, in fact, due to her nature of alien and oni, she’s a sci-fi/folkloristic invader that came to bring a huge amount of weirdness all around the planet.
Even from the anime side, Urusei Yatsura delivered a lot of unmissable moments like in the movie Beautiful Dreamer. Directed by Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell, The Sky Crawlers, Patlabor), the second movie is probably the most experimental anime film ever released.
Even if Lum has a passive secondary role; thanks to this movie the popularity of the series raised up to previously unimagined heights, and all around the planet. With its mystery post-apocalyptic atmosphere and meta-fictional characteristics, Beautiful Dreamer is universally considered the quintessential Urusei Yatsura work. Even from the doujinshi point of view; Urusei Yatsura inspired a vast number of aspiring mangaka to create new stories starring the Tomobiki personalities exploiting different genres and the omnipresent lolicon style, and above all the opening of thousands of fan clubs in which people could meet and talk about their favorite characters.
Now, 44 years later Urusei Yatsura is back on TV with a brand new anime series; obviously, a so important release brings us a lot of unmissable items that make us so happy. Cushion covers, t-shirts, bags, boxers, calendars… Lum-chan, we 好きよ more than anyone else in the galaxy!
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