I’m more than a little in awe of Rumiko Takahashi. Sometimes, I try to imagine just how many pages of manga this woman must have drawn in her life, and it hurts my head — kind of like trying to imagine the number of stars in the universe. Not only is her body of work intimidating, but that back catalogue contains multiple hit series. Furthermore, her stories appeal to people all over the world, across age and gender lines. She has received some worldwide recognition for this (most notably her induction into the Will Eisner Comic Awards Hall of Fame in 2018), but as far as I’m concerned, it’s not enough. If I ruled the world, her name would be better-known than any pop star or Hollywood celebrity, and we would all celebrate the International Takahashi Festival sometime in October. Sadly, I do not rule the world yet (and I haven’t thought of any cool events for the festival yet, except ogre cosplay and really epic games of tag), so I’ll have to settle for reviewing her manga for now.
While series like Ranma 1/2 and Inuyasha have been available to English-language readers for many years now, until recently, Takahashi’s first series was stuck in licensing purgatory. Fortunately for us, Viz Media has licensed all of Urusei Yatsura, Takahashi’s debut series from 1978, and just started publishing it in handsome omnibus editions. Volume One contains the first seventeen chapters of the manga, along with some amusing bonus material.
As a fan of the creator, I’m thrilled with this edition, but if I try to evaluate it just as another manga on the shelf competing for your hard-earned dollars, things get a little more complicated. Yes Takahashi is a huge talent, but this was her first manga; this was created back before she mastered a lot of the skills she became known for. I think this inexperience shows, especially if you’ve read her later manga first. The comic timing consistently seemed off to me, like Takahashi was rushing to cram in as many jokes in as possible, and the characters aren’t as immediately appealing as the cast of say, Ranma 1/2. Lum herself is perfect from the word go, but her rival Shinobu is annoying (imagine all of Akane Tendo’s prickliness, with none of her warmth and charm), Ataru isn’t the world’s most sympathetic protagonist, and a lot of the other characters kind of blur together, despite their lovely designs. I think we meet about three different alien princesses in this volume (not even counting Lum) and I’m already forgetting who’s who.
That acknowledged, Urusei Yatsura has some unique qualities that set it apart from other Takahashi series, even if it’s less polished at times. The whole interstellar scale of the story, with Ataru and Lum hopping around space and getting into misadventures on different planets and different dimensions, gives the series a feeling of larger-than-life zaniness that’s rare in any form of entertainment. While the jokes can often be repetitive, featuring either Lum or Shinobu getting jealous and lashing out, the humor arising from the mock-space opera setting is a lot more clever and wry. Situations like Ataru running afoul of the Interstellar Taxi Union adds variety to a series otherwise in danger of becoming too one-note.
The art is a joy throughout. It looks dated, of course (how could it not?), but in some respects, the old-school look works in its favor. Everything is clean and easy to follow, without anything flashy to distract from the storytelling. Takahashi’s style may have become more refined over the course of her career, but even this early on, she still had a knack for drawing cute-yet-sexy heroines, among other things. Sometimes I found the transition from panel-to-panel a little jarring, wondering if I’d missed something in between, but the major story beats come through fine. Sometimes I wish the art were a little more detailed, but the simplicity is part of the charm here; I’m just greedy and wish I could get a better look at some of the characters since the designs are great.
I feel pretty comfortable recommending this to all fans of manga, but with one caveat; if you have minimal patience for the whole “girlfriend gets jealous and slaps her boyfriend” type of joke, you should stay far, far away from Urusei Yatsura. Ataru getting beat up by his various lady friends is a staple of the series, and while I don’t find these jokes particularly funny, it’s just something you accept when reading this manga…kind of like how you accept that anvils magically fall from the sky when you’re watching Looney Tunes. It’s just the nature of the beast, or Ogre, perhaps. At some point you kind of tune out the jealous-girlfriend gags as background noise and appreciate the real humor to be found elsewhere; if you don’t think you can do that, you’ll likely be too annoyed by that aspect of the series to appreciate its other qualities.
Is Urusei Yatsura Rumiko Takahashi’s best work? Based on this first volume, I’d say no. But it’s still a really fun, silly manga that more than holds up four decades later. I can find stuff to nitpick easily, but once you meet Lum, you will love her, and that’s really all that matters.
