Urusei Yatsura 106
うる星やつら episode 106 (TV anime)

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Ataru and Lum’s Storm Troopers attack the front gate and are successful at taking the guards by surprise. However, when Megane mentions that Ataru’s gun is a toy, the guards turn and attack. Ataru can’t get the gun to work and it is knocked from his hand. However, it gets stepped on and explodes, leading to victory for Ataru’s side. Outside the guard house, they discover a tank and a small, single-seat helicopter. Ataru takes the ‘copter and is off while the Storm Troopers race ahead in the tank. Ataru makes it to the main house, where Lum just happens to look out and see him. Ataru is happy to see Lum, but since Shuutaro can’t have Lum’s memory return, Ataru is shot down and crashes some distance away. Meanwhile, the Storm Troopers run into a “wall” of waiting tanks and their tank is soon taken out of action.

Ataru races back through the woods where he finds them heavily booby trapped and even Shinobu is running from the Yankee leader in the woods. He’s also attacked by one of Shuutaro’s helicopters. With some of the Storm Troopers captured, Shuutaro has Lum and Ten moved to a new location while in the woods, Ataru gets whacked with a giant mallet. It is Ryoko, who has decided to help Ataru because it will irritate Shuutaro. She has a present for Ataru — a racing motorcycle and a racing suit to match. Now that it is daylight, Ataru is off and Shuutaro takes a WWII fighter plane to try to remove Ataru forever, going so far as to bomb the building Ataru hides in. Meanwhile, Perm gets captured, leaving only Megane left of the Storm Troopers.

Shuutaro returns to Lum and tells her the evil men after her will soon be dispatched. Cherry somehow is on the scene and since he’s a spy for Ryoko, it will take a year’s worth of beef bowls to bribe information out of him. Ataru begins receiving reports of multiple Ataru sightings and realizes Ryoko is working against him by helping Ataru. Ataru hitches a train until it is stopped by Shuutaro on a bridge. Shuutaro wonders why Ataru tries so hard get Lum back when he’s always going after other girls. Ataru says its because he doesn’t want anyone else to have Lum and charges. Lum sees Ataru under attack and instinctively escapes the room and flies to his aid. Shuutaro has lost.

At school the next day, Ataru is back up to his old tricks and Lum is back to giving him electrocutions to keep him in line.

Thoughts/Review:

While this episode was certainly enjoyable from a chaotic, humorous sense, it did lack the sense of poignancy that 105 had. There was an element of it through Lum, but Ataru was more in line with regular Ataru. Yet even when he laughed and told Shuutaro that as much as he didn’t like being attached to Lum, he couldn’t stand the thought of her being with someone else, I did feel that this was just an excuse. Ataru needed to save face and so just says he doesn’t want anyone else with Lum. His statement is true, but as Shuutaro I believe understood, Ataru’s feelings are deeper than what he says aloud. No one in their right mind would go through the things Ataru did to get Lum back and not care about Lum a great deal. Just my thought.

Shuutaro comes off as the real jerk in this episode. His basically making Lum a prisoner so that Ataru can’t have her is worse than Ataru flirting with other girls IMO.

While the story in and of itself is more serious, the moments of humor are just wacky. I think of Ataru running through the woods and encountering all sorts of nutty things including Shinobu running from that weird looking Yankee. Then there was the moment when Ataru emerged from the secret underground entrance by one of Ryoko’s guards and the guard ended up giving Ataru a ton of presents. Those comedy moments were the exception, not the rule though.

I do hope to see better episodes from here on out. I hear the animation quality is quite good with the next episode.