うる星やつら episode 139 (TV anime)
Urusei Yatsura Ep. 139 review

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

As Onsen-sensei finishes his English class, he announces that there is a special test on what would be their normal day off and that attendance is mandatory. Ataru is frustrated as he has a date and the three tomato otaku state that their tomato crop is at a critical state and they can’t abandon it. After school, Ten-chan decides to relieve his bordom by hanging out with Ataru and Lum’s Stormtroopers, who are in the yard looking at a porn magazine. Ten-chan gets frustrated that they won’t let him see what they are looking at and so breathes fire at them, setting fire to the tomato greenhouse. Toshi manages to save three of the named tomatoes and refuses to punish Ten-chan. Ataru decides to punish him instead by planting Ten-chan before the other club members punish Ten-chan.

Ten-chan decides to get revenge by using a device to increase the mass of the school so that it is “planted.” Lum figures Ten-chan did this and as all the exits are blocked, Onsen-sensei gathers all the food for rationing. The students don’t trust him and tie him up. The three gardening club members take the three surviving tomato plants to their clubroom as Ataru leads the way to recover this food source. In defending their tomatoes, one of the club guys whacks Shinobu and rips her clothing, leading her to have her vengeance. Two of the club guys are taken out but their leader, Toshi, takes out several others and hangs them from the ceiling.

Shinobu and Shuutaro make it back to class and realize they were the only ones to come back. Shuutaro goes to look for them as Ataru makes the horrifying discovery of the student victims. After discovering that what appeared to be blood was in fact ketchup, Ataru is attacked by Toshi with a chainsaw. Fleeing, Ataru encounters Mendou, who engages Toshi with his Murasame blade, only to have his sword destroyed. Shinobu rescues Megane and the other students while Shuutaro and Ataru flee from Toshi. They manage to whack him with a door removed from one of the classes, causing Toshi to crush the last tomato. Meanwhile, Lum uses Ataru’s hand-held game to make a mass reduction controller to counter Ten-chan’s. Lum goes overboard on the device, causing the school to float as Toshi goes nuts over his lost tomatoes.

Thoughts/Review:

What an absolutely strange and funny parody episode we have here. Initially, the whole thing about these three guys having this major tomato fetish, to the point of giving every tomato a female name, was just so weird, wrong, and creepy. Thankfully, the episode got better as time went on.

It is always great to see Ten-chan take a beating. I was thinking that he might actually get away with burning down the greenhouse, but Ataru was there to make sure that didn’t happen. Planting Ten-chan in the ground was unexpected, which was what made it funny.

As a horror parody (Texas Chainsaw Massacre seems to have played at least some role), this episode ends up working quite well in the 2nd-half of the anime. You had the babe who gets her clothing torn (Shinobu), though she gets hers in the end. You had the “slaughter” of some of the group (Megane and company) complete with their “bloody corpses” tied to the ceiling of the classroom. Granted, this being Urusei Yatsura, it was obvious that the blood would be ketchup but I liked out the whole scene was played to enhance the horror aspect, complete with Ataru’s shaken appearance on having made this horrific discovery.

Toshi with his chainsaw and giant tomato mask chasing Ataru and Shuutaro completed the parody aspects. I laughed out loud when Ataru in essence handed off Toshi to Shuutaro to deal with. After all, Shuutaro carries a katana around and as expected, Shuutaro did his thing with his sword. Having his sword destroyed as a result was what I hoped for and I got it. Ataru and Shuutaro often make a good comedy pairing in situations like this and they didn’t disappoint here with their defeat of Toshi.

I got a chuckle out of Onsen-sensei’s quoting the lyrics from the Beatles song “Yesterday” in English class. I’ve heard the Beatles were popular in Japan.

So, we have a rather enjoyable horror/slasher parody episode here with a Ten-chan beating as icing on the cake.