August 18th, 2011 
AstroNerdBoy うる星やつら episode 168 (TV anime)
Urusei Yatsura Ep. 168 review
SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:
Ataru dreams of being served food by the girls in his life, which Lum notes from her closet bed. At breakfast, he complains about his mother’s meal but when Lum offers to cook, Ataru finds his mother’s food not so bad. Megane is at home blathering about his breakfast before summer school. Shuutaro complains about his daily bacon, eggs, and toast even though it is perfectly cooked. Lum and Ataru walk to school and look at the clouds while in space, aliens from Planet Kappo accidentally drop a bowl from orbit. Back on Earth, Onsen-sensei and his class are in a foul mood over summer school with the students missing lunch and Onsen-sensei threatening to keep them through dinner as well. It is then that there’s a massive impact outside, leaving a massive crater.
Ataru spots Onsen-sensei in the crater and the students rush out to find him over a nabe bowl filled with nabe. After they beat him, Lum determines the bowl to be alien, so Cherry is the only one brave enough to eat the nabe, which initially seems poisonous but Cherry says it was the best food ever. The others start thinking of foods and the bowl fills with them, which Cherry eats and gets beaten for. Again, the students try to properly fill the bowl, but Cherry ruins it and takes another beating. On the alien ship, their food stores are being drained as the students fill the crater with food. The aliens come and reclaim their bowl and food. However, the aliens also bring up the students, who continue to stuff themselves.
Thoughts/Review:
This was not the episode to watch while hungry, since it was all about eating and naming various tasty Japanese dishes.
As is happening all too often, the episodes are low on content and require massive filling. This time, it was lengthy and boring complaints from characters about breakfast.
Then, there was a musical interlude showing Kotetsu-neko and Ten-chan, who had no part in the episode.
Then, it was another musical interlude with bits of dialog about “lets make something weird get weirder” (or something like that).
That took nearly half of the episode. The rest of the episode was mildly amusing with the “magic bowl” and Cherry getting beatings for ruining things. I think the funniest moment came when they thought Cherry was dead and figured they should probably bury him.
Its episodes like these that makes one wonder how Urusei Yatsura lasted so many years on TV. However, I will plow through to the end to be completely fair.
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“Its episodes like these that makes one wonder how Urusei Yatsura lasted so many years on TV. However, I will plow through to the end to be completely fair.”
Well the series went through several overhauls over the course of its run. The extremely simple early episodes, then the very heavy Mamoru Oshii episodes, and the early Yamazaki episodes where the animation received a huge bump. While Yamazaki is still directing at this point he ran into the same problem that almost ALL Rumiko Takahashi series experience: people get sick of the repetitious humor (this seems to be more prevelant with how English speakers react than her orignal Japanese audience).
To me all Takahashi series have this pattern:
The all have extremely strong starts and good middle portions but ultimately they wear out their welcome by the end of their TV runs.
Oddly enough, any corresponding OAVs and movies seem to always reflect the best of the series.
The only show exempt from this is Maison Ikkoku because it had a defnitive ending and the last season of the show was just one big wrap-up arc with some great animation.
There are some gems in this season but even I admit that most of this part of the series seems a blur to me.
To me all Takahashi series have this pattern:
The all have extremely strong starts and good middle portions but ultimately they wear out their welcome by the end of their TV runs.
So far, that’s been my experience as well, though with Maison Ikkoku, it ended well (which I see is your experience too).
Oddly enough, any corresponding OAVs and movies seem to always reflect the best of the series.
I did notice that in the Ranma 1/2 series. I do plan to watch the UY OVA’s and movies.
First of all, I’d like to say how much I enjoy reading the Urusei Yatsura entries on your blog. For reasons that are probably obvious there aren’t many bloggers writing about each episode, so it’s good to read the thoughts of someone also struggling through the latter part of the series.
I just got done watching this episode (168) and it was the most frustrating and excruciating Urusei Yatsura experience I’ve had in a while. It was awful. The sheer amount of filler rubbish in some of these later episodes makes me dearly wish that the two-stories-per-episode format hadn’t been entirely abandoned after the first series, because these anaemic plots could use some serious paring down.
At this point the golden age of the Oshii/Ito era seems so very far away, but I’m hoping there are still a few gems left between now and the end.
Oh, and the second song that plays, “Uchuu wa Taihen da!”, is the one used for the show’s very first ending sequence.
Keep up the good work!
First of all, I’d like to say how much I enjoy reading the Urusei Yatsura entries on your blog. For reasons that are probably obvious there aren’t many bloggers writing about each episode, so it’s good to read the thoughts of someone also struggling through the latter part of the series.
Thanks. ^_^ Admittedly, blog posts for UY aren’t instant traffic draws, but I am surprised to see people going through many or all of the old episode reviews while cruising the Internet for information on the series.
The sheer amount of filler rubbish in some of these later episodes makes me dearly wish that the two-stories-per-episode format hadn’t been entirely abandoned after the first series, because these anaemic plots could use some serious paring down.
Yeah, they could. I wasn’t that keen on the series and its 2-story episodes early on, but to keep things tight, that could be helpful.
At this point the golden age of the Oshii/Ito era seems so very far away, but I’m hoping there are still a few gems left between now and the end.
As do I.
Oh, and the second song that plays, “Uchuu wa Taihen da!”, is the one used for the show’s very first ending sequence.
I hadn’t even realized. ^_^;;;
Keep up the good work!
I’ll certainly try. ^_^
“Its episodes like these that makes one wonder how Urusei Yatsura lasted so many years on TV. However, I will plow through to the end to be completely fair.” it’s by comments like this one wonder if you know anything about humor AT ALL
Humor is subjective. So what I might find funny, you might not think is funny and vice versa. That aside, I just didn’t find the episode that funny outside of one moment. It was mostly boring to me, as I recall, packed with meaningless, unfunny stuff.
Then phrases like “It’s episodes like these that makes one wonder how Urusei Yatsura lasted so many years on TV.” Should have had place in this review.
The humor in this series is considered, I think I can say by the majority, good. That’s why it lasted. I wonder what you find it funny and what anime( in the same category of course, comedy) you like.
By the way have you even read the manga?
I never did read the manga. It is one of those things that I should do, but I just haven’t had the time.
If humor is subjective phrases like “It’s episodes like these that makes one wonder how Urusei Yatsura lasted so many years on TV” shouldn’t have had place. I think I can say with no fear of refusal the majority of those who know this series find the humor good.
I wonder what you think of the manga, if you read it, and what kind of comic anime you like to say that
So to be fair, there were episodes of Urusei Yatsura that I found outrageously funny. You can look through all my reviews and see where I praised the series and where I didn’t. The problem is, as I recall it, that the anime adaptation of Urusei Yatsura was uneven. It depended on who was doing the show.
Maybe I came out as a jerk with previous answer but it’s only that phrase irked me a bit: while I stand by the statement the majority appreciate it and you probably like the series too, many seem to like to destroy it just because and it’s especially annoying giving the fact often the series they watch own a lot to UY and Rumiko Takahashi
Hope you didn’t mind too much
Nah, I was not offended. 😁 Still, there were stretches of Urusei Yatsura where a lot of the episodes bored me. And there were episodes where I really enjoyed it or laughed my butt off. Hopefully, you can read some of my other episode reviews to see what I mean.