うる星やつら OVA episode 03 (OAV anime)
Urusei Yatsura OVA Ep. 03 review

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Shinobu is walking home from the grocery store when Ataru, fleeing from Lum, grabs her. She knocks him far away, but then Soban races to her, proclaiming his love. The now angry Shinobu knocks Soban into the sky and walks away, lamenting her lack of a love life with a decent guy. She stumbles upon a blonde-haired guy dressed in a rabbit suit, desperately in need of food. He takes a carrot and scarfs it, but when he comes on too strong to thank her, she sends him flying too, where he flies past Lum and into subspace. There, he meets with a group of human-sized rabbits who’d been wondering where he (Inaba) had gone. They ask him for a key, but he doesn’t have it, leading the rabbits to worry about the situation, but figure that no human could use the key so it should be OK.

Shinobu finds said key, which Lum IDs as a subspace key. Lum creates a subspace door, which Shinobu then unlocks. Shinobu steps through and falls into subspace, followed by Ataru and Lum. There are tons of doors all around, so after Lum grabs Ataru and Shinobu, she flies them through an open door, where they find themselves back at Tomobiki City. Ataru is off to chase a girl, so Lum chases him. Shinobu starts walking away when she encounters a woman named Shinobu who’s speaking with another woman. This Shinobu has a child named Kokeru, who’s father is named Ataru, and whom has the same lecherous behavior as the Ataru Shinobu knows. This causes Shinobu to wonder if they’ve gone into the future.

Meanwhile, the rabbits are cleaning doors in subspace when they find an opened door, leading to the place where Inaba lost the key. They wonder if humans have now discovered the Room of Destiny. Inaba goes to retrieve the key while in the “future Earth,” Shinobu laments the discovery that she will marry Ataru in the future after seeing her future self address Ataru’s parent’s as “mom” and “dad.” Inaba pops in from a garbage can, telling Shinobu she can’t accept this. He gives her his card, which states he’s from the Destiny Production Management Bureau. Meanwhile, Lum and Ataru discover they are in the future when they see that Tsubame and Sakura are married with two kids. Ataru’s attempts to see more results in Sakura punching him into the sky.

Elsewhere, Ataru lands on the future Shuutaro, who’s there to personally fire the future Ataru. Adult Shuutaro instinctively reacts to the teen Ataru when the future Ataru is seen in the distance. Lum, observing from on high, thinks that Ataru is coming home to her future self, but is horrified to learn that her future self is married to Rei, and that Ran is dedicated to killing said marriage. Lum returns to Ataru, who’s also furious with the future they’ve witnessed. The two encounter Shinobu and Inaba, where upon learning whom Inaba works for, Ataru demands Inaba fix this mess as none of them like the future they’ve seen. Inaba says they can’t change this future, but in the Room of Destiny, they can go through another door and see another future.

After taking them to a locker room to put on the proper uniforms (bunny girl costumes for Lum and Shinobu, a rabbit costume for Ataru) so they can travel from place to place, Lum wants to find a future where she and Ataru are married, but Ataru wants to find a future where he has a harem. The next future they investigate has Ran married to Rei, but Lum is married to Shuutaro with Ataru as their servant and Shinobu is still single, chased by Soban. The trio split up, but find no future to their liking. Lum is not happy that no future she visited had her married to Ataru. Ataru is upset to, not that he was not a rich harem master, but that he wasn’t even a modest harem master, married to all of the beautiful girls and women in his life. Shinobu laments her future has no love for her, so Inaba decides to do something about that.

Taking them to the Destiny Factory, Inaba ignites the furnace and has each of them make a doorknob imbibed with their vision of a perfect future. After making their doorknobs, Inaba is about to take them to the Room of Destiny to put their knobs onto doors, thus creating the futures they want. However, the rabbits come in and capture the four, putting them on trial. Inaba is found guilty of treason and is to be boiled alive. After the rabbits reject a plea from Shinobu, Inaba tells Shinobu that he’s OK with dying if it means she has a happy future. Shinobu uses her great strength to break out of their cage, where the trio free Inaba and grab their doorknobs and flee to the Room of Destiny, where each now has their their doorknob.

The rabbits appear and send Inaba falling through subspace so that Shinobu goes after him after punching the lead rabbit. The rabbits back off when Lum threatens to fry them, but manage to knock her doorknob out of her hand. Ataru gets away and gets his knob on a door, where he finds his dream one-room harem, though the women complain about the lack of space, and Lum isn’t there.  Ataru doesn’t like a future without Lum, especially when he learns how his future self abused her.  Upon leaving that future, Ataru throws away his knob, but feels Lum is partially responsible. Lum hears him call her an idiot, so she’s going to punish him since Ataru’s behavior is why there are no futures where Lum and Ataru get together.

Shinobu saves Inaba and hides him from the rabbits by entering a door with her doorknob. The rabbits are puzzled over why they can’t find Inaba when Ataru shows up, fleeing from Lum. Lum’s attempts to fry Ataru end up frying half of the rabbits. The survivors tell Lum to stop, so she fries them as well. The lead rabbit gets furious, and the rabbits join him, but neither Ataru nor Lum are listening and the rabbits get electrocuted again. Meanwhile, Shinobu and Inaba see her future, where she imagined things not having changed in terms of Ataru chasing women, Lum chasing Ataru, Shuutaro wanting to punish Ataru, etc. However, thanks to Inaba, she realizes what would have been acceptable to her before no longer is, so she kisses him on the cheek in thanks.

Back in the Room of Destiny, the enraged rabbits decide to trash all of the future doors and just start over since they control fate. Ataru and Lum end up going through a door where they see themselves in the future getting married. Since the door they are in is being cast down, Ataru decides he has to save this future, so he and Lum leave and he tries to keep the door from falling. The rabbits jump onto the door, sending it and Ataru crashing down. Lum has had enough and again electrocutes the rabbits so that they crash down.  Shinobu and Inaba arrive after Lum thanks Ataru for trying to save their future. Inaba gets them safely back to their own world, telling Shinobu that if they should meet again in the future, he’d like to take her out to tea.

Ten-chan is angry that they went exploring without him, but as he and Ataru eat watermelon, Lum fumes over the fact that her doorknob was lost.  She blames Ataru for this, so he again he flees for his life, Ten-chan also giving chase to find out what is going on. Elsewhere, Shinobu is walking home with groceries when Inaba falls from the sky. He tells her his punishment was to reconstruct the future doors solo, but he asks Shinobu if he can take her out to tea and a movie. Shinobu happily agrees as Ataru races through, chased by Lum, who’s determined to fry him again for his bad behavior. Meanwhile, Inaba returns to the Room of Destiny, where he finds Lum’s doorknob and places it on a new door.

Thoughts/Review:

The first thing noticeable about this 3rd OVA episode (which I see one credible source calls a TV special, but every place else refers to it as an OVA) is the higher production values in the OP, which continues throughout the episode. The character designs are changed somewhat (Shinobu especially so), but visually, things look good.

I got a chuckle at how much Sakura as a wife was made to look like Kyoko from Maison Ikkoku, except that here, Sakura’s apron didn’t have the chick with the “Piyo Piyo” on it.

That aside, this wasn’t so much a funny episode, but it was a highly enjoyable one. It was fun seeing various futures being shown. At the same time, I couldn’t help but have a Back to the Future Part II vibe from all this, except that this OVA came out in 1987 while the 2nd Back to the Future movie came out in 1989.

I did find it interesting that although Ataru still wanted his harem, it wouldn’t be complete without Lum. It was even more interesting to see Ataru’s negative reaction to his future self’s mistreatment of Lum so that she left the harem.

Also interesting is how during Lum’s and Ataru’s argument, both had valid points against the other.  For Lum, the root of the problem is Ataru’s constant pursuit of other women and his dream of a harem.  For Ataru, it is Lum’s clingy nature, combined with her constantly frying him.

Still, at the end, the fact that Ataru was willing to save the future where he and Lum get married was a nice touch.

Another nice touch is the romance that has evolved between Shinobu and Inaba.  During the first future that we saw, Shinobu was married to Ataru, which would probably have been the future had Lum not come to Earth. After all, in those early TV episodes, Shinobu actually wanted to marry Ataru and vice versa. Then, Shinobu shifted to an attraction for Shuutaro, but with Inaba, she has a nice, hard working guy who truly cares about her. I don’t know if he’ll show up in other OVA’s, but I gather that Shinobu and Inaba do become a couple.

In the end, this nearly hour-long OVA plays like a movie, with high production values and an interesting, entertaining story.  After the failure of the first two OVA’s, I’m glad that the third one is a good one.