YMMV / Urusei Yatsura

• Adaptation Displacement: The 1981 anime adaptation is sometimes more fondly remembered than the original manga, particularly the more surreal and experimental episodes and films (where director Mamoru Oshii started making a name for himself).
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • The primary antagonist in the series is actually Lum. She's the one who assumed Ataru wanted to marry her (when all he said was "Now I can get married"), and basically intruded on every aspect of his life since then due to that assumption. Sure, Ataru is a Jerkass, but he has a good point about wanting to enjoy the days of his youth and how he's the victim during his rant in the episode, "After You've Gone".
  • Considering all the physical punishment from Shinobu, Ryuunosuke, and other females combined with the constant electric shocks from Lum, does Ataru subconsciously enjoy being abused by women?
  • Some have theorized that Mr. Fujinami raises Ryuunosuke as a boy not just because he wants a male heir, but also because he never got over the pain from when his beloved wife left him, and his daughter resembles her so much it hurts him. Note that the man systematically removed any image of his wife. Perhaps the reason he yells "I love the sea" so frequently is because he's deep in denial, trying to convince himself that he never loved anything, or anyone, more.
    • Another related theory is that deep down, he actually may be rather insecure about his own masculinity. There is the fact that he sometimes imitates Ryuunosuke's more "feminine" mannerisms, just to tell her how sick they make her look afterwards. There is also the incident in their second story when he replies to Ryunosuke complaining that she's a girl and can't become a boy by asserting that he was born a girl. It was most certainly meant, both in- and out-of-universe, as a kind of weird one-off joke (whose weirdness is even lampshaded in-universe), but it can come of as a bit jarring nowadays, after years of serious transgender activism.
  • In Movie 3: Remember My Love, Lum finds Ataru in the climax by following a red string tying one of her fingers to his left hand. It's then shown that he has similar strings tied to all the fingers on his right hand. Ataru is in tears when she discovers this. Is he crying because he's afraid of her usual punishment, or because he actually feels ashamed of himself?
• Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: So very many.
  • The most notable one occurs in Movie 3: Remember My Love. The orb which contains Lum's curse traps Lum and Ataru within its energies. We then see visions of fairy, dinosaur, and seagull versions of Lum and Ataru meeting and falling in love with one another. Not only does this scene have no bearing on the plot, but it also makes no sense even in the context of Lum and Ataru's predicament. And once it's over, it is never mentioned again. The idea seems to be that the orb is frantically Reality-Bending but just can't stretch it far enough to separate them. A bit rich in light of the rest of the series though. Hell, a bit rich in light of the very next scene.
  • Thanks to the Reset Button, there are countless Big Lipped Alligator Episodes/Chapters.
  • Shinobu's following the wind chimes through the streets in Beautiful Dreamer is another as, even among the random events in the plot, that one remains completely unconnected from everything else.
  • Lum's Stormtroopers hosting a Nazi-themed tea shop for their school festival in Beautiful Dreamer. Even in-universe there's questions about why Megane thinks the theming will boost sales and no one brings it up much past the first time loop, making its inclusion confusing and distasteful.
• Common Knowledge:
  • Everybody "knows" that Ataru is an undesirable lech who no girl wants other than Lum. But this isn't true. Whilst he does get rejected a lot when randomly asking girls out, even getting slapped, that's largely because of his bluntness and handsiness. Other than Lum, Shinobu was genuinely in love with Ataru prior to his Accidental Marriage, Oyuki seems genuinely attracted to Ataru in their first meeting to the point of implying she would have slept with him if the angry Lum and Shinobu hadn't shown up, Benten doesn't mind Ataru's flirting when they first meet, Ryoko eagerly encourages Ataru's affections (if only to annoy her brother), one story revolves around a Cute Ghost Girl called Nozomi who is genuinely in love with Ataru, and he has been seen successfully asking out random girls at least twice.
  • Ataru rejects Lum because both her anger and her love are equally dangerous; when she's not using her Shock and Awe powers to blast him for flirting with girls, she's giving him an electrified version of The Glomp. Whilst this may be due to the anime's usage of it, and the anime even named it as "Expression of Love" (contrasting "Divine Retribution" for her wrathful zaps), it's largely a non-issue in the manga. There, whilst she does it three times in her return in Chapter 3 and once more in Chapter 4, it doesn't appear again until Chapter 27, after which it only appears twice more in the series; the one time she does it whilst drunk from eating umeboshi in Chapter 112, and three times when Ataru grabs her heart in chapter 354. That's a total of five chapters where it appears out of 366, with 9 shocks in total. Even the anime only uses it a handful of times.
  • Lum never gets mad at her baby cousin Ten and always takes his side... except that she canonically has chastised him when she acknowledges he's in the wrong, and even once zaps him for trying to flame Ataru at school.
• Die for Our Ship: Nagisa is reviled for getting in the way of both the Ryuunosuke/Shinobu and the Ryuunosuke/Benten ships and often written out or killed off in fanfiction for those two couples.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Megane and the other Stormtroopers in the first anime adaptation. In the manga and 2022 anime, they are in the background a half-dozen or so times until disappearing after Mendou's debut.
• Fair for Its Day: On a surface level, it's a pretty homophobic work (arguably even more so than its successor Ranma ½). However, homophobia is rarely portrayed in a realistic manner, but more often as a consequence of misunderstandings and/or subversions of norms (and a character like Ataru can seemingly jump from homophobic to tolerant just because he changed sex once). And even in those few instances when homophobia is depicted in a more realistic way, such as when Ryuunosuke's desires are called abnormal or unreal, there is still sympathy towards the characters.
• Fan-Preferred Couple:
  • Ataru/Lum was vastly preferred by the audience and even the editors over the intended Official Couple of Ataru/Shinobu, to the point where Takahashi was forced to make them the Official Couple.
  • Between the popularity of lesbian shipping over straight shipping, their mutual tomboyishness, and the simple fact that a) Nagisa was an incredibly minor character in canon^note only appearing in a pair of two-chapter arcs in volumes 32 and 33 of the 34-volume manga run, and a single OVA in the 1981 anime and b) Ryuunosuke explicitly doesn't like Nagisa, Ryuunosuke/Benten is far more popular than the canon couple of Ryuunosuke/Nagisa. These shippers typically ignore that Ryuunosuke canonically didn't like Benten either when they first met. Ryunosuke/Shinobu is also popular, due to Shinobu's Does Not Like Men moments and Ryunosuke's father being a Shipper on Deck for the two prior to Nagisa's arrival.
• Franchise Zombie: A rarity for a Takahashi series, which are usually far more likely to be Cut Short after catching up to the source material and devolving into filler. This show has the biggest episode count of any Takahashi series to date (196 episodes) and ended not long before the manga did – though a crucial manga arc had to be covered in an OVA and the actual final arc was covered in the fifth movie. OVAs continued to be produced for years after the series ended, as was one more movie. The series also saw a second anime adaptation begin in 2022.
• Genius Bonus:
  • The series is filled with all kinds of subtle and overt references to Japanese culture and especially its various linguistic quirks, which show up a lot in its puns, wordplay and Meaningful Names. For example, whilst Ataru Moroboshi's Born Unlucky status includes being born on Butsumetsu, the unluckiest day of the Buddhist calendar, his home town of Tomobiki is also named after a day from that same calendar. Ironically, this led to the difficulty the series had in making it to the West, as so many of those references were assumed to be too unintuitive for Western audiences. AnimEigo resorted to packaging little informational pamphlets in their copies of the subbed anime, as well as sometimes slipping informational subtitles into the episodes themselves, and the Viz Media English translated manga volumes contain footnotes sections explaining some of the Japanese events, customs or more untranslatable gags.
  • Probably the biggest example is the story where an alien "Blue Bird of Happiness" shows up and attempts to grant wishes to all the kids in Tomobiki High, only he keeps botching the wishes; the puns in this story are based on the large number of homonyms in Japanese, and don't translate easily into other languages. This story has the biggest footnotes section in the Viz Media manga as a result.
  • One particularly prominent bonus that is never commented on in official "info-text" is the association between the Mendo family and their pets. The crest of the Mendo family is based on the popular festival mask of the comic character Hyottoko, who in myths from the Iwate Prefecture was said to be a god that could pull gold from his belly button — a natural patron for an ultra-wealthy family! With their Funnel-Mouthed Cephalopod appearance, octopuses resemble the Hyottoko mask — hence, Shutaro Mendo considers them a symbol of his family's prosperity and good fortune.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
  • The show was huge in Italy during the 1980s and 1990s and while it's not as popular as it once was, it's still enough popular to be remembered by pretty much everybody who's in their forties and even in their early fifties, with Lum being frequently cited as being the first erotic dream from many who were teenagers back in the day.
  • Beautiful Dreamer is a base-breaking movie in Japan, and was not well-regarded when it released because of its philosophical plot and departure from the series' formula. Overseas, Beautiful Dreamer is widely considered the best movie and some of the best Urusei Yatsura content of all because of its beautiful animation and, ironically, for its departure from the Strictly Formula.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In Episode 96 Ryunosuke meets a group of student delinquents from another school. One of which shares a shockingly strong resemblance to Kazuma Kuwabara. Oddly, YuYu Hakusho came out 11 years after Urusei Yatsura, and both shows were animated by Studio Pierrot and aired on Fuji Television. But it doesn’t even end there. Said delinquent is even voiced by Megane’s seiyuu, Shigeru Chiba. Guess who he later ended up voicing?
  • Megane's homemade Powered Armor, the M-HMS, from episodes 64 and 106, become even funnier when you realize they are the visual inspiration for the far more effective Protect Gears from Kerberos Saga. Yes, inspiration for, not parody of — Urusei Yatsura episode 64 aired on 23 March 1983, whilst the Kerberos Saga began with The Red Spectacles in 1987, four years later.
• Ho Yay:
  • Thanks to a lipstick that draws the lips of the people using it together, Ataru and Mendou end up in a full-frontal smooch by mistake. Both are promptly disgusted: a dappya fish monster even offers the readers three panels to recover from this shock. The participants of the kiss think they require more.
  • Also, Dracula's bat (a male) disguises himself as a pretty girl to lure Ataru (and Co.) with predictable results. In the end, Ataru manages to plant a big kiss on the bat boy's lips to Lum's ROFLMAO reaction (she knew it was a male spirit in disguise the whole time).
  • Ryuunosuke's Ambiguously Gay characterization and the running gag of how girls swoon over her even when they know she's a girl has led to quite a fandom who ship her with other girls, albeit often exaggerating what actually happened in canon:
    • Ran: Ryuunosuke's first meeting with Ran plays out like a parody of a classic Meet Cute scenario, with Ran offering a beaten-up Ryuunosuke her handkerchief out of genuine concern for the tomboy's bleeding injuries and Ryuunosuke staring fixedly after her as she leaves, as well as smelling Ran's handkerchief and begging Lum to help her talk to Ran. Her reactions are so much like a boy crushing on a girl that her classmates in-universe wonder if Ryuunosuke is into girls, and even her father assumes Ryuunosuke wants to date Ran. It's not until the second chapter of this three-chapter arc (or the second half of the original anime's episode analogue) that we're allowed to see into Ryuunosuke's head and learn that she just wants to learn how to act more girly by imitating Ran, and there's nothing explicitly romantic in her plans at all.
    • Shinobu Miyake: Aside from the intuitive appeal to yuri-shippers of a bifauxnen and a girl whose Character Catchphrase is literally "Men be damned!", there are also multiple stories where the two being a couple is invoked, albeit by playing it for laughs. In Soban's introductory story, Shinobu instinctively goes to Ryuunosuke for safety when she senses the Butsumetsu High thugs are stalking her; this leads to Ryuunosuke agreeing to play the role of Shinobu's fake boyfriend in exchange for a bra, and she even instinctively goes to kiss Shinobu as part of the performance, though Shinobu rejects her and Ryuunosuke subsequently insists she was just thinking about the bra — and considering that when the bra is destroyed, she tries to rip off Shinobu's bra to steal it for herself, well... In a later story, when asked about crushes she's had, Ryuunosuke immediately says "Shinobu". In an even later story, when Tomobiki High holds a costume party, Ryuunosuke's crazy father captures the two girls, puts them in a bridal gown and tuxedo, chains them together, and starts praying to his deceased wife's portraits about how Ryuunosuke has found a beautiful bride, with Ryuunosuke simply blushing and acting embarrassed by her crazy dad. Many fans forget that Shinobu invariably reacts with disgust or horror when it seems like Ryuunosuke may be actually crushing on her.
    • Benten: The most popular of Ryuunosuke's lesbian ships, this one stems almost entirely from material added in the 1989 anime. In the original manga, Benten and Ryuunosuke only interact in a single story, where Ryuunosuke initially dislikes Benten for being such a tomboy — Benten is initially pleased when Ryuunosuke's crazy dad informs her that Ryuunosuke is actually in love with her, just shy, but this turns out to be a reiteration of the running gag of girls not realizing Ryuunosuke is also a girl — when she learns that Ryuunosuke is actually a girl too, Benten becomes furious at her hypocrisy, leading to a "womanhood duel" that ultimately develops into a Fire-Forged Friendship when the two have to team up to beat up a horde of perverted boys trying to get gropey. The 1981 anime had the two of them first meet in a filler episode, in which they team up to rescue a missing kitten for a little girl and work really well together. The episode ends with Benten revealing that she knew Ryuunosuke was a girl all along and the two parting ways on good terms. This creates the impression in the subsequent Animated Adaptation of their first meeting from the manga that Benten knows Ryuunosuke is a girl and is still flattered to be told Ryuunosuke's in love with her, although closer attention reveals that this episode is completely ignoring the previous filler episode. Finally, the Animated Adaptation of the final arc, Urusei Yatsura The Final Chapter expands upon a sequence where Benten tries to talk Lum out of her plans to erase all of the earthlings' memories of the aliens, adding in a line from Benten about how she's grown quite fond of the earthlings and threatening to break off her friendship with Lum if she does this. Since Ryuunosuke is the only earthling that Benten has ever really interacted with in the anime, many fans believe that it's the thought of losing Ryuunosuke that is making Benten so mad.
• I Am Not Shazam:
  • Lum and the other Onis come from the planet Oniboshi. The series' title is a complicated Japanese pun that is partly based on "urusai" and "-sei" (meaning star or planet, the same kanji used for -hoshi/-boshi). The meaning of the title was explained in the Viz manga, so it became widely known, and fans have misinterpreted that as meaning that Urusei is the actual name of the planet. Fanfic then spread it further.
  • Urusei Yatsura means literally "those noisy guys", but idiomatically refers to annoying next-door neighbors. Combining the idiom with "sei" makes it something like "those noisy other-planet neighbors". You could do roughly the same gag in English with "Annoyliens". Or as AnimEigo puts it, "Those Obnoxious Aliens", which also has the fun of sounding like a '50s sitcom.
• Iconic Character, Forgotten Title:
  • The series is often called "Lum" because the English manga used the title "Lum" with "Urusei Yatsura" written in small print under it. This was probably a good decision, since English speakers can pronounce "Lum" (especially back then before the modern manga boom).
  • In some European countries, the series is actually re-titled and known as "Lamu" (Lum's name in the dub, taken from the Japanese pronunciation / spelling of "Lum", which is ラム).
• Iron Woobie: Ryuunosuke. She has a very terrible life. Forced to live as a male, in poor condition with an Abusive Parent. But she is also determinated and strong.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Ataru. He's canonically the biggest lech in the galaxy who leers at girls and often treats his devoted fiancee, Lum, like dirt or an annoying obstacle to him acquiring a harem, but considering how gleefully the universe seems to love punishing him with outrageous and consistent misfortune and how he's shown a couple of signs of being a good person deep down who genuinely loves Lum, it reaches the point where you also can't help but want him to actually get lucky for once or at least have one day where the entire universe isn't out to get him. As one review of the series commented (paraphrased), even though Ataru completely deserves every bit of suffering heaped upon him, you can't help but feel for him at the same time and hope that fate will cut him a break one day.
  • Ran, who is an embittered Bitch in Sheep's Clothing who takes things out on Lum, but it's easy to feel bad for her considering her appalling Abusive Parent. And when she was a child, she was always punished for Lum's mistakes and misdeeds.
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Elle from the first film crosses it with her collection of frozen boyfriends. Ataru, a notorious sex pest, was completely turned off when he found out about it courtesy of his friends rescuing Mendou from her.
  • Mendou himself when he takes advantage of an amnesiac Lum and convinces her that she is his fiance after her UFO crash lands on the estate. It basically proves his willingness to do anything to get what he wants even if he can't obtain it through money or charm and is a testament of how he's capable of sinking even further than Ataru would ever dare. Add Ten as his accomplice for playing along with the charade as it's a good excuse for him to get Lum away from Ataru despite the fact that is nothing she would ever have wanted.
• Movement Mascot: Since anime from The '80s and The '90s is used as part of the aesthetic of the musical movement, Lum is often considered as the mascot of Future Funk, using mostly clips of the 80s anime where she's dancing and appearing in every music video or reference to this music genre.
• Once Original, Now Common: An interesting case once a modern anime remake was announced in 2021, as many people unfamiliar with the series questioned having yet another Magical Girlfriend anime after the industry became saturated with them since the original manga's release. This despite the fact that Urusei Yatsura not only all but codified the very concept as most people know it nowadays, to the point that Lum is arguably the inspiration for so many characters in the role, but outright parodied it by demonstrating that it was anything but the typical assortment of the trope.
• Rainbow Lens: Ryuunosuke's endless distress over her father forcing her to crossdress as a man when she really just wants to be allowed to be feminine has been compared to the real-life family dynamics trans youth face.
  • A few chapters before Ryuunosuke even appears in the story, there is a couple of chapters revolving around a family of cannibals: the grandma likes to eat boys, while the father likes to eat girls. But the beautiful daughter also likes to eat girls, too... She is promptly berated by her father for alleged "luxury tastes".
• So Okay, It's Average: The most common opinion about the third movie, Remember My Love. Animation and music aside, it's a generic movie, without memorable scenes or jokes.
• Sweet Dreams Fuel: The French opening is fluffy and relaxing to listen to.
• Unintentionally Unsympathetic:
  • Whilst the early portion of the series, around the first season and first few volumes of the manga, try to present Shinobu Miyake as a sympathetic figure in the Love Triangle between her, Lum and Ataru, her tsundere attitude can make her surprisingly hard to root for. She's so quick to leap to the worst interpretation of Ataru, whose perversion isn't shown to extend any further than just an appreciation of attractive girls at first, and so ready to believe the worst of him that it seems like she wasn't ever really attracted to him in the first place. It doesn't help that while she's constantly complaining about Ataru being an irredeemable lech, she's also blatantly trying to get into Mendou's pants, sometimes at the same time. The fact that she ultimately ends the story rewarded with her perfect boyfriend in the form of Inaba while the others either end in the same dysfunctional relationships as prior or with Maybe Ever Afters makes it even harder to stomach.
  • In the earliest portion of the series, it can be hard to forget that Lum basically forced herself into Ataru's life, despite his best efforts to clear up that he wasn't actually proposing to her. Combined with her blackmailing him into letting her stay at his house, and her naked contempt for his former girlfriend Shinobu, it can be difficult not to see it as justified that Ataru treats her so coldly.
  • Ten is portrayed as a cute Tagalong Kid who, like everyone else, is sick of Ataru's perverted antics, but his actual behavior makes him come across as a Bratty Half-Pint with a grudge against Ataru for no discernable reason. While Lum only tends to attack Ataru because of something he did, Ten seems to do it just because he feels like it. Combined with the fact that he starts freeloading off the Moroboshis just like Lum while still shooting fireballs at Ataru nearly every day, he comes across as a major Ungrateful Bastard.
• Unpopular Popular Character: Ataru is treated as a loser disliked by almost all the other characters. To the fans, he's hilarious and one of the most iconic Japanese examples of Lovable Sex Maniac. It helps that he's a parody of the Unlucky Everydude in the Harem Genre, and all his flaws are acknowledged and emphasized in the story, since he doesn't even try to hide them. And unlike the usual Unlucky Everydude who is always and inexplicably a Chick Magnet for no reason, Ataru actually gets rejected by almost all the girls, which makes him more funny and relatable.
• Values Dissonance:
  • Ryuunosuke's father's abuse and forcibly making her live as a man is mostly Played for Laughs. Most people consider this very unfunny and distressing to watch, especially given today's better understanding and support of gender issues.
  • The series' overall Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male is often criticized in the current day. Lum electrocuting Ataru incessantly, Ryoko's sadistic abuse of both Mendou and Tobimaro, and Shinobu's Hair-Trigger Temper towards men are all Played for Laughs and they rarely catch any karmic retribution for any of it, unlike Ataru and Mendou's near-instant karma when they do something wrong.
• Vindicated by History: Upon release, Beautiful Dreamer got bad reviews for its Mind Screw philosophical plot and Lum being Out of Focus. Mamoru Oshii was even sent razor blades by "fans" who hated the movie. However, in later years, critics praised the movie for its visual storytelling, experimenting with time loops, and that it paved the way for later projects like Ghost in the Shell (1995). It is now considered one of the best anime movies of all time.

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