うる星やつら episode 186 (TV anime)
Urusei Yatsura Ep. 186 review

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Ataru and Ten-chan are playing Godzilla vs. Rodan where Ataru wins. Ten wants a rematch and tries to fry Ataru, but gets knocked out. In his dream, Ten rides Rodan to what appears to be a victory against Ataru, but a giant foot crushes Rodan as the real Ataru kicks Ten in his sleep. Ten is irritated the next morning as he floats through town. Finding a puddle, he discovers a trapped dream fairy who promises to make a dream come true if Ten can find his parasol. Ten goes off to find it, imagining himself marrying Sakura and becoming Superman. When Ataru interrupts his fantasies and a mean way, Ten imagines Ataru turning into a bull, where Ten fights and defeats him. Ten then discovers Torajima has the parasol, so the cat plays keep away from Ten, but ends up losing the parasol when he attacks Ten.

Lum finds the tiny parasol and gives it to some baby birds. When she sees Ten attempt to take it, she scolds him. Ten tries to explain as Ataru takes the parasol in order to have his dream come true. Ten fries him, gets the parasol, and ends up diving back into the puddle where the fairy was, which Lum and Ataru cannot enter. Inside the dream world of the puddle, Ten finds a girl named Hydel Mardel, whom he plays with for a while. When they are done, she kisses him, after which, Ten discovers the dream fairy in bed and ill. Returning the parasol to him, the dream fairy causes a rainbow to take Ten back to Ataru’s house. Ataru and Lum race there, where Ten is waiting, holding a special umbrella. He opens it, only to have a giant foot and leg crash through Ataru’s house and destroy Rodan, which was similar to how Ten’s dream in the night had ended.

Thoughts/Review:

This episode was somewhat odd, and certainly full of filler, but not a bad one.

Kicking off the oddness was Ten-chan’s fantasy about marrying Sakura-sensei.  That just looked so wrong to me.

Ten-chan as “Super Ten-chan” was amusing. The scene with the space shuttle made me sad though, considering how the U.S. has chucked it in on the space frontier. And to think, once, we were innovators for space. Now, we are losers, dependent on others for lift into space.  *_*  But I digress…

Ten-chan’s journey in the dream land was where the oddness kicked up a level, as if the entire production team did drugs.  Ten-chan playing with Hydel Mardel, who resided there as a result of Ten-chan’s dreams, was clearly designed to pad out the episode (now watch someone tell me she was in the manga).  I say that because she allows Ten-chan to waste time before finding the dream fairy, then when the time wasting is over, she just vanishes like a fart on the wind.

The Godzilla and Rodan references were pretty neat.  I was amused by the notion of Ataru still playing with toys. ^_^

The twist ending of the episode, where Ten-chan had his dream come true, wasn’t surprising to me. In fact, from the moment Ten-chan started fantasizing, I figured that “dream” wouldn’t equate to “wish,” but would probably mean a literal dream.

As an aside, did the word “parasol” really need to be translated as “umbrella?”  Both “parasol” and the Japanese word for umbrella were used.  As such, I would have used “parasol” untranslated, and “umbrella” when the Japanese word “kasa” was used (although “kasa” can mean parasol as well).

In the end, better than last episode, but not as good as one would have liked.  Ten-chan takes a few beatings from Ataru, which puts this one slightly above average for me.