うる星やつら episode 152 (TV anime)
Urusei Yatsura Ep. 152 review

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Kotatsu-neko meanders through the day and ends up at Ran’s place.  As she takes a shower, the giant cat helps himself to the oden Ran has made, which has been spiked with a love mushroom to make the eater fall in love with the first person the eater sees.  Naturally, when Ran steps out of the shower in nothing but a bath towel, she is the first person Kotatsu-neko sees.  Ran flees but Kotatsu-neko won’t give up.  When the chase catches Lum’s sight, she follows and ends up being forced to fly Ran to a giant smoke stack.  Kotatsu-neko follows and Ran hides in the hole until Lum takes a message from the cat.  The message of love is something Ran doesn’t want and causes her to fall down the stack, where she ends up in a nearby public bath, emerging from the water where Lum’s Stormtroopers are relaxing.

As Lum makes an antidote, Kotatsu-neko is depressed and won’t eat.  Thus when Lum brings him food with the antidote, only the crows eat it to ill effect and Lum is left with a present of an apron to give to Ran.  Ran is not happy and decides to remove the giant cat from the Earth, first with a large beam rifle, then with a shoulder fired rocket launcher.  While causing great destruction, nothing dissuades nor harms Kotatsu-neko.  Lum figures this must be true love, so naturally, Ran returns home to make more oden for Rei.  Kotatsu-neko enters and consumes the pot of oden and then leaves, meaning that he never loved Ran but the oden that Ran made.  Thus, Ran’s plan to make Rei fall in love with her is a bust and Kotatsu-neko is depressed as he thinks of that oden and those mushrooms.

Thoughts/Review:

If I were to visually express a review of this episode, it would go a little something like this.

Yep, that could cover it.  ^_^;

Urusei Yatsura is so much of yo-yo in how it is up and down in terms of being funny or even interesting.  Here, we have a series of random things to fill time while Kotatsu-neko and Ran have their completely predictable (and thus unfunny) episode.  For starters, there’s the principle happily sighing over the arrival of spring.  Then, Ataru and Shuutaro get an unfunny, running gag of Shuutaro attacking Ataru with his katana only to have every attacked stopped by Ataru.  Then, there’s the pointless trip of Megane and company to the neighborhood bathhouse with Megane instructing the others on how they can peek into the girls side without getting into trouble, followed by that happening with two gags — Kotatsu-neko interrupting them and the Ran later emerging from their bath.  “Where’s the humor?” I asks me-self.  ‘Tain’t there, that’s for sure.