Urusei Yatsura is the first published comic from Rumiko Takahashi, and probably still the strangest (or at least most surreal). Starting in 1978 in Shonen sunday and running for nine years, the series amassed a literal legion of fans which grew further as it was translated into other languages. Despite the fact it is no longer running it still remains amazingly popular and attracts a steady flow of new fans as more people become aware of manga and anime.
The manga spawned a TV series which ran for over 200 episodes. It shows it's age now, but is still as hilarious as it has always been. To follow the TV show there were 6 movies made of which 5 were released by Animeigo in the west, but they never released number 2 "Beautiful Dreamer" which was confusing. This was later made available by Manga corps, although I am still no clearer as to why this happened. Most listings seem to forget about the second movie too, it wasn't as if it was bad, it just wasn't insane like the rest, but more poetic and lyrical, it still retained the humour though and in my opinion was the second best Urusei Yatsura movie after number 4.
They stopped producing the anime after that too, or so they thought, for years the fans cried out for more and these cries became louder as more fans appeared. So they eventually gave in and agreed to produce an OAV series to quieten them down. Apart from the production values and the animation quality it is hard to tell any time had passed at all between the movies and the oav, as the characters, setting and continuity (however minor^_^) remained intact
Review by Alia |
