うる星やつら episode 131 (TV anime)
Urusei Yatsura Ep. 131 review

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

As Shuutaro and his octopi watch a sci-fi movie, Ryoko makes a voodoo doll of Shuutaro and abuses him through it. However, because the doll scares her, she has it delivered to Ataru without letting him know what it is. She tells Shuutaro that the doll is now someplace safe, but doesn’t tell him Ataru has it. As such, Ataru ends up causing Shuutaro pleasure or pain, depending on the situation, as he goes through his day since Ataru wears the doll around his neck but under his shirt. After Ataru flirts with Shinobu and Lum punishes him, Shuutaro realizes that Ataru has the voodoo doll.

Shuutaro is forced to protect Ataru at all costs from everything, including stampeding horses, cattle, and an elephant. Ataru is touched by this until Shuutaro starts feeling him for the doll. Not knowing its power, Ataru is then informed by one of Ryoko’s guards and thus he uses the voodoo doll to inflict pain on Shuutaro. Shuutaro arrives the next day with his own voodoo doll of Ataru and the two end up using the dolls against each other.

Thoughts/Review:

This had the potential of being a very funny episode. It was certainly amusing, but somehow, it missed many good comedy marks as the episode kept trying to bring in Gothic and horror feelings, both with the crows (ravens) and with the music, especially in the first half of the episode. Having this dark atmosphere does not help and doesn’t even lend itself to dark comedy stuff.

The other thing that hurt this episode was comedic timing. Once we knew the voodoo doll had been given to Ataru AND we knew that he had no clue as to what it was, we then knew that bad things were going to happen to Shuutaro. However, everything came off fairly predictable and right when expected, thus removing most of the humor of the moment for me. Even the stampeding horses and cattle didn’t have the impact it could have had. When Ataru kissed and lovingly caressed the voodoo doll because it was from Ryoko, I think it would have been funny to have Shuutaro react as if he were being kissed and caressed. Instead, he reacted as if being tickled, which puzzled me.

That’s not to say this episode was bad, but I was disappointed because I could just envision laughs galore and there weren’t as many for me.

Fortunately, I cannot say that there were no laughs. For example, in the baseball game, I figured Megane would make a huge pitch and hit Ataru with it, thus causing Shuutaro pain. I didn’t expect the pitch to fall short and Ataru basically tap it, golf style. That made me laugh, though immediately, I knew Ataru would slide and Shuutaro would feel that, which wasn’t funny to me (timing) but was mildly amusing.

The biggest laughs come from the wrongness of Shuutaro and Ataru having moments together all because Shuutaro protected Ataru.

I was struck by the movie Shuutaro is watching at the beginning. It reminded me of many of the sci-fi anime movies and OVA’s that I saw when I lived in Japan. Its kind of funny how so much sci-fi anime from the 80’s contained a specific look and feel to them.

What’s up with the pointless Kotatsu-neko moments? Yeah, I know — filler. _

In the end, we have an episode that was enjoyable for the most part, but just didn’t make my expectations on the whole. Oh well.