うる星やつら episode 175 (TV anime)
Urusei Yatsura Ep. 175 review

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Sugar, Ginger, and Pepper decide on their new course of revenge on Lum, Oyuki, and Benten by using animals. For Benten, they use three octopi to ink insults on Benten’s door, not realizing she’s right behind them. This results in Benten bathing them in ink. The trio next challenge Oyuki with a penguin, but fail because it isn’t impressive a cold weather animal like a polar bear of sea lion would have been.  Benten warns Lum of what’s coming as her class takes a trip to the zoo to draw the ostrich, Yotaro-kun. Yotaro is offended by the classes insults and refuses to stand still to be drawn, taunting the class. Sugar, Ginger, and Pepper see this and decide this is the perfect animal to use against Lum.  However, they fail to capture the bird as it runs around the zoo.

Meanwhile, Ataru and Lum decide to have lunch while Shuutaro decides to draw Yotaro-kun from memory. Perm and Ataru think Shuutaro’s drawing is terrible and getting worse. When Yotaro-kun shows up behind Shuutaro, he’s offended at the drawing and snatches the drawing board away from Shuutaro to do his own sketch, which is very good. Yotaro darts off when the angry art teacher arrives. He says the picture isn’t an accurate portrayal of the dumb Yotaro-kun, so the ostrich attacks him and runs off. The bird refuses to be drawn until Shinobu and the girls compliment him. Yotaro-kun checks the drawings and is offended at Lum’s, but when she says she’s putting her whole heart into the drawing, Yotaro-kun flushes and relents.

Yotaro-kun starts stamping all of the male’s artwork with his foot until he reaches Ryuunosuke, who gets angry at being treated like a male. She gives chase as do the other students, but they are thwarted by the entire zoo, all of the animals now free of their cages. Yotaro-kun leads Ryuunosuke into a cage with a big bear who’s angry at having its lunch and soap opera interrupted. Ryuunosuke attacks but the bear produces a girls sailor seifuku, causing Ryuunosuke to hesitate on the second attack and allowing Fujinami to reveal himself in bear costume. Ryuunosuke chases her father angrily while the animals chase the students. Sugar, Ginger, and Pepper try to stay out of the fray but continue to get stomped.

The students finally do a group collage picture of Yotaro-kun which wins the praises of Onsen-sensei and the art teacher, but which offends the bird so that he attacks the teachers.  Meanwhile, the battered Sugar, Ginger, and Pepper challenge Lum with a giant, electric space eel which eats electricity. Lum is forced to flee, but attacks from the girls causes her to stop and fry them, allowing her to be captured by the eel. The girls net the eel can’t physically attack Lum since the eel has her wrapped up. As the girls fret on how to get at Lum, they try taking pictures as Lum continues to feed the eel electricity until it breaks free of the net. Then, Lum unleashes her full fury on the girls.  They eventually escape and discover their pictures are all bad, save for the last one which shows a triumphant Lum and eel gloating over the girl’s defeat.

Thoughts/Review:

I’ve often said this, but unexpected humorous moments are what I find funny.  In this case, it was having Yotaro-kun be an intelligent bird who took offense when people spoke poorly of him or drew him poorly.  I have to say that I laughed pretty hard at times thanks to this ostrich.

This led to a chase episode with the ostrich either chasing or being chased. Naturally, in a chase episode, one has to keep escalating things and so the other zoo animals getting involved worked for me, especially when Sugar and company hid in the tree and the students and animals ran down the tree.

As one might expect, Fujinami showing up unexpectedly was NOT funny and threatened to kill the whole episode.  Ryuunosuke vs. a big, bad bear was funny.  The bear being Fujinami was a FAIL!

Having the last quarter of the episode dedicated to Sugar, Ginger, and Pepper battling Lum worked for me.  It meant that the trio’s dopey quest to defeat Lum was to the point, allowing for both an apparent win by the girls before Lum’s ultimate victory.

So, thanks to the laughs, this episode was quite enjoyable for me. I wish all UY episodes were as good.