うる星やつら episode 151 (TV anime)
Urusei Yatsura Ep. 151 review

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Spring has come and everyone is bored, so much so that Lum’s Stormtroopers can’t even muster the strength to be outraged long over Ataru’s poor treatment of Lum.  Ataru dreams of chasing babes while Shinobu talks of parallel worlds at lunch and how the tears of a heroine can change everything. That evening, Ataru comes home and drinks Lum’s alien canned beverage since they had nothing but water in the house.  Lum is upset by this and leaves crying.  Over at Shinobu’s house, she is about to got to bed but finds herself with a giant, alien lizard that she defeats in her usual style. A call from her mother makes Shinobu discover she’d never left her room but had torn her pajamas as happened in her fight.

Back at Ataru’s house, he finds himself in a desert with a Coke when a parched Lum arrives and dies of thirst, causing Ataru tears of remorse. When he awakens, he finds himself still dressed in his dream clothing.  At school, Ataru brings her a canned beverage but Lum is not impressed.  Ataru gets angry that his apology is being refused, causing Lum’s Stormtroopers and Shuutaro to give him a couple of major beatings.  They find out that Ataru drank Lum’s can of eye drops and is laughed at though Lum had to cry to keep her eyes moist.  Shinobu overhears this conversation and thinks back on the tears of a maiden tale she told but figures this can’t be connected to her own strange incident.

Sakura-sensei has her own strange experience as Ataru’s class continues to experience more and more strangeness such as each window looking out into a different world.  Some babes appear chased by another Ataru, which leads an unnamed female in the class to say she saw this happen yesterday.  Realities seemed to be mixed as both Ataru’s, Shuutaro, and Shinobu leave the class and end up trapping the others.  They discover that the school has been bombed out as Sakura-sensei joins them.  Soon, they are all duplicated numerous times over as Lum and the others escape the classroom.  Outside, they find the sky has been replaced with mirror image of the land they are on.  The Ataru’s make things worse and all take beatings as a result.  However, the weirdness now becomes the normal.

Thoughts/Review:

Meh!  This really isn’t my kind of episode.  I didn’t find anything funny about it as it was just too strange.  Making multiple copies of the different characters doing some of their cliched or “trademark” things doesn’t make it more funny.  As a result, I sorta just yawned through most of the episode and wondered, “What the heck am I going to write about?”  Not much.  ^_^;

Well, there was one thing I liked — Ataru’s dream that Lum died had him actually crying and remorseful enough that he buys Lum a beverage the following day.  I liked that, not that he cared for very long as witnessed when the bikini babes came through the classroom and he gave chase.

The production staff decided to once again go nuts on the tribute stuff.  I think nearly every Japanese monster from Godzilla on had a cameo with Godzilla getting the most screen time. Heck, even the UFO from Close Encounters of the Third Kind gets a cameo. I didn’t have a problem with this, but it was part of the “add more things to the screen” thought process that started with a single duplication of Ataru and went downhill from there.

So, I’m not going to waste anymore time on this and move on to the next episode.  ^_^;