October 14 marked a very special day: it was 40 years ago that Urusei Yatsura, the first run-away blockbuster manga-and-anime multimedia empire, started airing on TV. Let’s take a look back at the importance of this series over the years, without which none of the anime and manga we know today would have been possible!
The Importance of Urusei Yatsura
Anime in the U.S. in the 80s can be divided into two timelines: B.R. (Before Robotech) and A.A. (After Akira). In the years before 1985’s Robotech, when anime was so deep underground you basically had to hang out at the monthly anime club meeting at your local university so you could score some 6th-generation VHS copies of Future Boy Conan (without subtitles, of course) from the weird dude in a trenchcoat with the huge anime collection at home. Once Robotech created the first really large wave of people eager to learn more about “Japanimation” (as we called it at the time), other important works arrived, like 1988’s Akira and 1989’s gender-bending Ranma 1/2, which sowed the seeds for the explosion of anime we’d all enjoy in the 1990s.
But there was one very special early work that made all of this possible, which was Urusei Yatsura, the hugely popular manga that got its start while Rumiko Takahashi was still a university student. The subsequent anime was a huge hit in Japan, garnering 20% of the country’s viewership for years. It caught the eye of early anime fans around the world, who started to pay attention to this completely new and unknown thing from Japan.
Urusai Yatsura also helped prove the long-term potential of well-planned anime franchises to appeal to many kinds of fans, who would gladly open their wallets and buy anime magazines and artbooks, record albums, and other fun products. The unbelievable success of the Urusei Yatsura marketing machine proved that other shows could be as successful.
The Story of Lum and Ataru
Ataru is a human male from Japan, but he’s not just any human: he’s a perverted lech, whose eyes wander onto any cute girl who walks by. Lum is an alien princess from the planet Oniboshi who has come with her family to invade the Earth. But she’s not just any alien: she’s a space-ogre, capable of flying and shooting lightning out of her fingers whenever her boyfriend’s heart wanders.
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My Life with Urusei Yatsura
Although I consider Maison Ikkoku to be the “perfect” Rumiko Takahashi work, I am thankful that I was able to experience Urusei Yatsura, and all that the show had to offer. I learned so much from the show, including that the Japanese have onomatopoeia “sound words” for things like kyoro kyoro, literally Ataru’s eyes moving from side to side as he looks for a new girl to hit on, and that there’s an established character ♨︎, pronounced onsen mark, which designates a volcanic hot spring on a map. The character is the teacher’s name (pronounced Onsen Mark-sensei).
Five Things You Didn’t Know about Urusei Yatsura!
It Has a Lot of Characters, but Don’t Worry!
If you browse the Wikipedia page for other series, there are a ton of characters listed. The most important ones are:
- Lum, the titular invader.
- Ataru, her intended, who has eyes for pretty much every other female except Lum.
- Shinobu, Ataru’s girlfriend and the closest thing we had to moe back then.
- Mendo, a rich boy who acts tough with his samurai sword but has terrible claustrophobia.
- Ran, Lum’s violent but entertaining childhood friend.
- Cherry the Buddhist priest, and Ten-chan, Lum’s baby cousin.
- Oh, and Sakura, the bad-ass school nurse. Just look at her in action.
Here’s a nice remastered version of one of the openings. pic.twitter.com/xnoT8JXN4U
— Peter Payne (@JListPeter) October 3, 2019
It Helped Created the Genre of “Anisong”
We take the fact that being an anime fan means also collecting the music albums from the anime we love for granted today, but at the beginning of the 1980s, this wasn’t a thing yet. The large number of songs used as opening and ending themes across the series, as well as in the many films, gave the creators plenty of material to release in album form, and fans were happy to buy.
It Had the Most Important Topless Scene in the History of Anime
In the first episode, Atari is charged with touching Lum’s horns, something that’s impossible because of her ability to fly. He gets the great idea of stripping her top off, allowing him to capture the prize. The giddy buzz generated whenever Western fans saw this moment helped prime them for everything that would come afterward.
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Rumiko Takahashi is one of Japan’s Most Financially Successful Creators
With a stellar career with more the 2.5 million volumes sold as of 2020, it’s no surprise that Rumiko Takahashi-sensei is one of Japan’s wealthiest creators. At the height of her career, she was making a basic fee of US$3000 per page for her works running in Shonen Sunday, for a cool $66k a week, 52 weeks a year.
Lum is “Cosplaying” as a Traditional Ogre
It can be hard to know how to “parse” Japanese culture when you’re viewing it from the outside, as we are. While it’d be easy to look at any anime character wearing tiger-print clothing and sporting horns, and believe they’re emulating Lum somehow, in reality, the aliens are extraterrestrial ogres from the planet Oniboshi, who are adopting existing tropes associated with ogres on Japan’s Setsubun holiday in early February.
How Should New Fans Approach Urusei Yatsura?
Obviously for a series that’s got 195+ episodes, 10 OAVs, and six films, none of which are in distribution on streaming, it’d be easy for a fan to not know where to start. My advice would be to just stick to the films, either the first one (Only You) or the second one (Beautiful Dreamer), and continue if you like the story and characters. The second film, pictured above, has a really dark story and is well-regarded by fans.
Thanks for exploring the long history of Urusei Yatsura with us. Are you already a fan, or are you considering dipping your toes into the water and seeing what it’s like? Tell us below, or on Twitter!
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