うる星やつら episode 185 (TV anime)
Urusei Yatsura Ep. 185 review

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Shuutaro’s parents and his sister Ryoko leave, allowing Shuutaro to have a New Year’s celebration that Ten-chan, Shinobu, Lum, and the self-invided Ataru attend at his house. At the new building built for Shuutaro, the group gathers, but soon Ten-chan and Ataru have the floor open up under them, which has them on a conveyer back to the front of the building. One wall starts moving in on the others, and soon they are forced out as it turns out that Shuutaro’s parents, sister, and grandfather are using Shuutaro and his guest as game pieces with the new building as the game board. The family members use all sorts of tactics to get their assigned piece to the goal, but in the end, Ten-chan is the only one to reach the goal. None of the family had him as a piece, but it turns out that Cherry had been there and had taken the Ten-chan piece, meaning he won.

Thoughts/Review:

Egad.  Chalk this episode up to the losers column, but there were a few positive moments.

The moving sidewalk turning into an escalator with Ataru making Shuutaro fall was humorous, but expected. However, Shuutaro attempting to chase Ataru back down the escalator was a bit more amusing (probably because of a similar joke in one of my favorite British comedy series, The IT Crowd).

The only other humorous moment for me came from the nearly paralyzed Ataru seeing the cute “maid-san” and suddenly finding the ability to move to chase her.

That humor moment was expanded when Lum started riding Ataru like a bucking bronco.

Other than that, the episode sucked. Shuutaro’s family playing some idiotic game with live pieces wasn’t funny.  It was boring and even irritating.  Heck, by the end of the episode, I was REALLY hoping that Lum would just unleash an electrical storm on Ryoko, Shuutaro’s parents and grandfather, and all of the security folks. At the same time, I was hoping Ten-chan would burn the joint down.  Sadly, other than Ten-chan shooting some flames of frustration at the end of the episode, which do no harm to anything, I didn’t get my wish.

All throughout this tedious travesty of an anime episode, I kept thinking, “the only thing that could make this suck more is Cherry showing up.”  Well, the production team didn’t disappoint me here and Cherry was the icing on the cake for ultimate suckiness.

Well, at least I’m one closer to the end of the series, which isn’t going out in style.