うる星やつら episode 136 (TV anime)
Urusei Yatsura Ep. 136 review

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

A space delivery duck has an accident and causes some eggs to fall to Earth. One happens to land on Ten-chan, who’s just been literally knocked out of Ataru’s house. Ten-chan can’t separate himself from the egg and feels the need to hide the fact that he has an egg stuck to his belly. After being tossed out with some trash, Ten-chan pays a visit to Sakura at the shrine, but she detects no evil from the egg. Ten-chan doesn’t want to undress for Sakura to investigate further, so he spends the night in a field. The next morning, he awakens to find the egg gone, but a jab from a large bee-like creature who looks and sounds like Ten-chan makes Ten-chan realize he didn’t experience a dream.

Ten-chan gets frustrated that this bee keeps insisting Ten-chan is his parent. To make matters worse, Ten-chan gets a taste of his own medicine when the bee constantly sticks him with his small spear, then when girls are around plays all innocent. Ten-chan flees to Lum’s school and gets more of the same treatment but then turns around and does similar things to Ataru. When it is found out the bee doesn’t have a name, Ten-chan decides to name it “Konjou-magari” — “Twisted Personality” (“Little Creep” is what AnimEigo went with).

Konjou-maragi is not happy with the name but fortunately for Ten-chan, the space duck comes looking for the egg. He’s not pleased when he discovers it is already hatched. He says the species is known as “mirror bees” and that they attach themselves to a male host, hatch, and take on the appearance and personality of the host. Ten-chan cannot believe that Konjou-magari is an identical copy of his own personality but it is true. Ataru, Shuutaro, Megane, Onsen-sensei, Fujinami, and Cherry all reveal they have eggs attached to them as well. To the space duck’s dismay, all eggs hatch and take on the twisted personalities of the host.

Thoughts/Review:

This is another of the odd episodes where stuff is lost in the translation. For starters, the bee never addresses Ten-chan as his dad (as implied by the translation), but rather addresses Ten-chan as “Oyachan,” which means parent in the general sense. Other than use “Oyachan,” using “Dad” was the only thing that AnimEigo could do. That said, it seems to me that by using the term for “parent” in the Japanese, the writers were making a specific distinction. There are many terms for “father” which could have been used, so using “parent” means something, likely saying that Ten-chan isn’t the bee’s real father, but is his (foster) parent.

Also lost is the joke that comes attached with the term-name “Konjou-magari.” Since Ten-chan has a twisted personality, it fits him but so does AnimEigo’s use of “Little Creep.” However, “little creep” doesn’t really apply to the other males who carried eggs to term. “Twisted personality” does fit them all because each one of them is twisted in their own, unique way. Well, AnimEigo did what they could, but it is a case where little things get lost in the translation.

As to the story itself, I’ve always stated that anytime Ten-chan takes a beating, I enjoy it. Ataru only scored a couple of times and the cat Torajima scored a beating on Ten-chan as well. However, the laugh came from the woman throwing out Ten-chan as trash. *lol*

Beyond that, not a whole lot to say on this episode. It was entertaining, which is what one would want, just not anything really special.