うる星やつら episode 189 (TV anime)
Urusei Yatsura Ep. 189 review

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

A depressed Onsen-sensei heads home one evening from the public bath, and when a cockroach interrupts his meager meal, he imagines it to have Ataru’s face. Other roaches take on the faces of his other students, but after he traps them in a roach motel, he decides to tackle the problem with his students head on by having home visits, forcing the parents to deal with the rot there. Onsen-sensei chooses the Fujinami family, the Mendou family, Shinobu’s family, and the Moroboshi family for his first home visits. The principle worries that Onsen-sensei is taking on more than he’d have the stamina for, but Onsen-sensei disagrees, citing the fact that if one eats the foods they don’t like first, they can enjoy the rest of the meal.

Heading down to the school’s store, Fujinami and Ryuunosuke are in a typical fight. Fujinami tricks Onsen-sensei into proclaiming his feelings for Sakura-sensei over the intercom system before Fujinami and Ryuunosuke resume fighting, injuring Onsen-sensei and knocking him out. When he comes to, it is in Sakura-sensei’s health station. She advises him to take it easy, but he refuses and goes to the Mendou estate. Overwhelmed by the size of the place and the sheer number of staff on hand, mostly security and private military, Onsen-sensei fails to make his case to Mendou-san.  When Shuutaro comes in, Onsen-sensei is grateful to see him, but his sudden moves cause Shuutaro’s bodyguards to beat Onsen-sensei fiercely.

The beaten Onsen-sensei manages to get to Shinobu’s house that evening, where she’d been watching a period drama of a teacher in love with a female student who didn’t appreciate his affections. As such, seeing Onsen-sensei’s actions, which come from his beatings and exhaustion, she punches him out in fear.  Onsen-sensei manages to get to the Moroboshi home, where they are not pleased at being stood up.  Though he makes it into the entryway, he can make it no further inside, thus no one knows he’s there.  After hearing them eat the meal, including his portion, Onsen-sensei crawls away and through the snowy streets. He’s ready to give up when Lum transports him to her ship, and then flies him to her planet. There, he’s treated with a lot of respect and is grateful. As such, he and Lum’s father get drunk. Lum returns to Earth, leaving Onsen-sensei in the clutches of her father, who still wants to drink.

Thoughts/Review:

If this episode was supposed to be funny, it failed big time.  Seeing Onsen-sensei get beaten and abused just isn’t funny to me.  I suppose he’s supposed to represent a typical Japanese teacher (or something), but man, this was too much.

If the episode tried to evoke sympathy for Onsen-sensei, it failed here too, mainly because I just didn’t care. I already knew his quest would fail. It was just a question of how tedious the journey to said failure would be.

To be honest, there wasn’t anything good in the episode. That’s because as a character, Onsen-sensei isn’t strong enough to carry an episode by himself.  Add to that the boring stuff, such as the typical fights between Fujinami and Ryuunosuke, and frankly, it is amazing that I didn’t fall asleep.

Man, with only six episodes left, this isn’t a good way for a series to depart.