Urusei Yatsura

• 1. Introduction

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  Urusei Yatsura was supposed to last five chapters. That was the plan in 1978, when a young artist named Rumiko Takahashi began a comedy about an unlucky schoolboy named Ataru Moroboshi. Each chapter would throw him together with a different strange character, and then the series would end. Lum, the alien girl who later became its face, was meant to appear only in the first chapter. She was absent from the second. Then Takahashi changed her mind and brought Lum back in the third. The series outlived its short plan by years and grew into a franchise with two anime television series. How does a comedy built on a game of tag mix aliens, puns and Japanese folklore? What made a half-planned experiment so durable? And how did jokes aimed at Japanese readers find fans in other countries?

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• 2. A Game of Tag

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  One week and a pair of horns decide the fate of Earth. An alien race called the Oni arrives to invade, but it offers humanity a sporting chance instead of a war. The contest is a version of tag. A human must touch the horns of an Oni player before seven days run out. A computer picks the human. The choice falls on Ataru Moroboshi, a high school student from the fictional Tomobiki Town in Nerima, Japan. He is lecherous, unlucky and failing at school. His opponent is Lum, the daughter of the Oni leader.

  Ataru is reluctant at first, until he meets Lum. Then he wants to play. Lum surprises everyone by flying away, and he cannot catch her. Before the last day, his girlfriend Shinobu Miyake offers extra motivation. She promises to marry him if he wins.

  On the final day, Ataru wins by stealing Lum's bikini top. She guards her modesty instead of her horns. Overjoyed, he says he can finally get married. Lum takes this as a proposal and accepts, while the contest is being shown on live television around the world. It is a misunderstanding, but Lum falls in love with him anyway and moves into his house.

  Lum's arrival ruins Ataru's hopes of winning Shinobu back. Lum keeps interfering, and Shinobu loses interest in him. Ataru keeps flirting regardless. Lum answers each lapse with a powerful electric shock. Two traits define him: his lechery, and a streak of bad luck that draws in every bizarre resident of the planet, the spirit world and even the galaxy.

  Lum later enrolls at his school over his objections. She collects admirers among the boys, including Shutaro Mendo, the rich and handsome heir to a large corporation. Every girl in Tomobiki has a crush on Mendo. None of the admirers dares to force Lum and Ataru apart, since they fear upsetting her. They do try to get Ataru punished for his behavior, and they barge in whenever the pair get close. Even the town's name, Tomobiki, carries a joke of its own.

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• 3. Hidden Meanings and Old Myths

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  The title Urusei Yatsura is a pun that cannot be translated cleanly. Urusai means noisy or obnoxious, but the series writes it with the kanji for planet. A rough English version is Those Obnoxious Aliens.

  The names hold more jokes. Ataru Moroboshi refers to being hit by a star, which fits the aliens and strangers who gather around him. Shinobu suggests a patient person, which is the opposite of her actual personality. Tomobiki means friend taking. It is also the name of a superstitious day in the old Japanese calendar, which came every sixth day and was said to have no winners or losers. Funerals rarely took place on it, because people believed more deaths would follow.

  Some names came from the outside world. Lum was named after Agnes Lum, a bikini model of the 1970s. When Lum calls Ataru Darling in English, it stresses that she is a foreigner. It is also a play on Darrin, the husband in the American show Bewitched.

  The series is often treated as a rich source of Japanese culture. It draws on literature, folklore, history and pop culture, including The Tale of Genji and Urashima Tarō. Many characters are derived from mythological creatures. Sometimes the creature itself appears. Other times a character is built from its traits. Stories then play against the original myths for comedy.

  The opening contest works this way. The Japanese word for tag, onigokko, literally means game of the Oni, which explains the Oni's choice. And a myth holds that seizing the horns of an Oni makes your dream come true. That is the myth echoed when Ataru grabs Lum's horns and talks of marriage.

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• 4. A Young Artist's Universe

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  In 1977, Takahashi wrote a short story called Those Selfish Aliens. It was nominated for a Shogakukan prize for new comic artists, and it became the basis for Urusei Yatsura. The serial appeared a year later, when she was 20 years old. Until then she had published only short stories. The result blended romantic comedy, science fiction, suburban life and Japanese folktales.

  It did not take off at once. Takahashi was still a university student, so chapters appeared only sporadically. She was also working on a separate series called Dust Spot. As Urusei Yatsura grew more popular, she turned her attention to it. Regular serialization began in the middle of 1979.

  Takahashi said she had been dreaming of this universe since she was very young. In her words, the series "really includes everything I ever wanted to do." She chose science fiction for its range. "I love science fiction because sci-fi has tremendous flexibility." Her aim was to surprise the reader with every new panel, and she used slapstick to get a reaction. When ideas ran dry, she invented another character.

  The work itself was cramped. Takahashi shared a small apartment of about 150 square feet with her assistants, and she slept in a closet for lack of room. During this period she began another series, Maison Ikkoku. Its setting drew on that apartment life and on her university years.

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• 5. Pages and Editions

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  Issue 39 of Shogakukan's Weekly Shōnen Sunday went on sale with the first installment on the 30th of August 1978. The magazine run closed in the eighth issue of 1987, on the 21st of January. By then the series had passed 366 chapters and almost 6,000 pages. Those chapters filled 34 tankōbon volumes, published between 1980 and March 1987.

  Takahashi explained the ending in 2022. She said she stopped when she saw that Shinobu was happy, after the character Inaba had been introduced. She has also said she will make no more content for the series.

  The story kept returning to print in new forms. Between July 1989 and August 1990, a wideban edition appeared in 15 volumes. Each held around 25 chapters on higher-quality paper, with new inserts. A bunkoban edition followed over 17 volumes from August 1998 to December 1999. Each volume carries forewords from other manga creators on how the series influenced them.

  A budget edition called My First Big ran from July 2000 to September 2004, on cheaper paper at a low price. A 34-volume shinsoban edition came out between the 17th of November 2006 and the 18th of March 2008. It had new cover art and a section showing work by current manga artists.

  In 2016, two books gathered all of Takahashi's color artwork from the series, under the title Urusei Yatsura: Perfect Color Edition. Both were released on the 18th of January and include a new interview with her.

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• 6. Screens Big and Small

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  On the 14th of October 1981, Fuji TV broadcast the first episode of an anime by Kitty Films. It ran until the 19th of March 1986. Episodes often held two fifteen-minute stories, so 194 episodes contained 213 stories. Mamoru Oshii directed the first 106 episodes, and Kazuo Yamazaki directed the rest. The series used six opening songs and nine closing songs.

  The anime and the manga differ in who gets the spotlight. Megane, Perm, Kakugari and Chibi recur throughout the anime. In the manga they are nameless fans of Lum who fade after Mendo arrives. Kosuke Shirai is a major figure in the manga but never appears in the first anime, where Perm often takes his role. The second half of that anime sticks closer to the manga than the first half.

  Four films appeared during the television run. Only You, directed by Oshii, reached cinemas on the 11th of March 1983. Oshii also directed Beautiful Dreamer, released on the 11th of February 1984. Yamazaki directed Remember My Love on the 26th of January 1985 and Lum the Forever on the 22nd of February 1986.

  Two more films followed. The Final Chapter, directed by Satoshi Dezaki, arrived on the 6th of February 1988 as a tenth-anniversary celebration, shown alongside a Maison Ikkoku film. The last, Always My Darling, directed by Katsuhisa Yamada, opened on the 18th of August 1991.

  Between 1985 and 1991 came a string of OVAs and TV specials, starting with Ryoko's September Tea Party on the 24th of September 1985. It mixed earlier footage with 15 minutes of new material. Inaba the Dreammaker was a TV special broadcast on the 18th of July 1987. After that, the series went quiet. On the 23rd of December 2008, a short called The Obstacle Course Swim Meet screened at the It's a Rumic World exhibition. It was the first new animation for the series in 17 years.

  The second television series was announced on the 1st of January 2022. It premiered on the 14th of October 2022 on Fuji TV's Noitamina block. David Production made it, and Takahiro Komei, Hideya Takahashi and Yasuhiro Kimura directed. Yūko Kakihara wrote the scripts, and Masaru Yokoyama composed the music. The plan was 46 episodes over four cours in two seasons. The first season aired from October 2022 to March 2023, and the second ran from January to June 2024.

  The franchise also reached games and records. Bandai released a handheld electronic game in 1982. Jaleco released Lum no Wedding Bell for the Famicom on the 23rd of October 1986, in Japan only. It was a port of the unrelated arcade game Momoko 120%. Hudson Soft's Stay With You, for the PC Engine CD, earned 25.78 out of 30 from PC Engine Fan magazine. A Nintendo DS game, Endless Summer, followed in 2005.

  Music arrived early. The first soundtrack album, Music Capsule, came out on the 21st of April 1982. Lum's voice actress Fumi Hirano later released her own cover album, Fumi no Lum Song, on the 21st of September 1985.

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• 7. Crossing the Ocean

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  A fan group calling itself Lum's Stormtroopers persuaded the Californian public television station KTEH to air subtitled episodes in 1998. Such campaigns shaped how the series reached English speakers.

  The manga arrived first, after fans asked for it. Viz Media licensed it in North America as Lum * Urusei Yatsura. After a strong start, the series was dropped. Viz revived it in its monthly magazine Animerica, and because of the long gap it was retitled The Return of Lum. Reader feedback and rising popularity led to a separate monthly publication. The English release ended in 1998 and is out of print. It covered the first 11 Japanese volumes, with several chapters left out, in nine English volumes.

  On the 19th of July 2018, Viz announced it had licensed the manga again. The new edition combined two Japanese volumes into one and used new translations, based on the shinsoban edition. The first volume appeared on the 19th of February 2019. The seventeenth and last came out on the 19th of February 2023.

  The anime followed its own path. In 1992, AnimEigo licensed it, and its VHS release began that October. It was among the first anime titles sold with English subtitles in North America, though the schedule was erratic. A LaserDisc release came in 1993. The first two episodes got an English dub on the 29th of March 1995, titled Those Obnoxious Aliens.

  Every DVD and VHS came with liner notes. These explained the many cultural references and puns that a non-Japanese viewer would miss. The series reached the United Kingdom through Anime Projects from the 25th of April 1994. In 2000, BBC Choice broadcast an improvised dub of the first and third episodes as Lum the Invader Girl, for a Japan Night special. In Southeast Asia, the series aired as Lamu the Invader Girl.

  Central Park Media released Beautiful Dreamer, while AnimEigo handled the other five films. AnimEigo's release went out of print by September 2011. At Otakon 2022, Discotek Media announced that it had licensed the anime series. It had already acquired the other five films in 2020.

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• 8. Reception and Legacy

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  In 1985, the franchise earned ¥10 billion in merchandise sales. By November 2020, the manga had over 35 million copies in circulation, which places it among the best-selling manga series ever. In 1980 it won the 26th Shogakukan Manga Award in the shōnen category. In 1987 it took the Best Comic prize at the 18th Seiun Award. In TV Asahi's Manga Sōsenkyo 2021 poll, 150,000 voters ranked it 61st among their top 100 manga.

  Critics have praised its energy. Jason Thompson, in Manga: The Complete Guide, called it "A slapstick combination of sci-fi, fairy-tale and ghost-story elements with plenty of cute girls." He described Lum as "the original otaku dream girl" and gave the series four stars out of four. Graham Higgins of The Independent wrote that reading it is "a bit like channel-hopping between The Outer Limits, Neighbours, and Star Trek."

  Fred Schodt expressed surprise at how popular the first English release became. He had expected cultural differences to be a problem. Reviewing the 2019 edition, Arpad Lep of Comics Beat praised its steady sitcom ingredients: "Disappointed parents. Put-upon girlfriend. Insatiable yokai. Weird uncle. And our hero, a total loser."

  Not every reviewer was fully won over. Elias Rosner of Multiversity Comics praised the artwork, expressions and comic timing of the first volume. Still, he warned that the series is not for everyone.

  The series also shaped other works. Jonathan Clements, in Schoolgirl Milky Crisis, credited it with influencing several geek-gets-girl stories, including Tenchi Muyo! and Love Hina. Tokyo Movie Shinsha made Galaxy High School for CBS as an American version, reversing the premise so humans attend a school for aliens.

  In 1993, a band from Glasgow formed under the name Urusei Yatsura as a tribute. In 2015, a life-size bronze statue of Lum was erected at Ōizumi-gakuen Station.

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