うる星やつら OVA episode 08 (OAV anime)
Urusei Yatsura OVA Ep. 08 review

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Ataru, Lum, and Shinobu are at Shuutaro’s home and looking at a statue of a goat on a hill, which Shuutaro says has an interesting story, namely that one cannot have their photo taken in front of the statue. Shuutaro’s father immediately shows up and takes several photos, angering Shuutaro since his dad was the one who’d warned him from the start. The next day, they take the developed photos to Sakura-sensei, as some of them show a ghost goat in them. She takes the case and they return to the Mendou estate, where Sakura is shown an old photo with the goat when it was alive, and is told the story of how the reluctant goat was forced into the picture to be a sacrifice since there was a believe that the person in the middle of the photo would die. Thus, they have to protect the pictures from the ghost goat eating them, lest they die. That night, Sakura places them inside a spell mandala since destroying the photos results in the death of those in the picture.

Various noises have the group doing investigations around the Mendou mansion, with the usual wackiness going on. A goat shows up and despite Sakura’s use of an ofuda, the goat eats it and the other photos.  It isn’t a ghost goat but a pet of Ryoko’s, who decides to have some fun by letting her goat eat all the photos. Shuutaro’s father arrives with the ghost goat and a bucket full of prints. Ten-chan arrives with a weapon to get rid of the ghost goat, which Shuutaro fires, but it ends up making the ghost goat a fire-breathing giant. Shuutaro has his military attack, but they get wiped out and the Mendou mansion is destroyed. The ghost goat immediately eats all their photos before Shuutaro’s father emerges from the rubble.  It is here that the group learns that they will in fact die, but only after living a normal, long life.

Thoughts/Review:

This was one of those episodes where it is nutty and stupid with little in the way of humor that I like. Then again, what did I expect with a title like “Goat and Cheese?” Plus, it was another Shuutaro-Shinobu-Lum-Ataru adventures, which isn’t bad, but after the introduction of Inaba, I guess I hoped for something more.

The Mendou family has always been stupid.  Ryoko comes in just to cause trouble and be stupid, but her stuff wasn’t too bad. Shuutaro’s father, on the other hand, was just annoying.  I figured that there’d be some catch like what we had here, meaning that Shuutaro’s father just created a bunch of meaningless crap and the characters were forced to eat it, thinking it was the real deal.  So basically, the story was a fail for me.

I did note that the character designs were changed a bit for this episode. While everyone was still recognizable, they were all noticeably different from the normal style that we’d become accustomed to. It kinda gave the characters a bit more of a mature, older look.

In the end, this OVA episode is just “meh” to me with little entertainment value and a lot of eye rolling.The kaiju parody stuff couldn’t even save this one.