うる星やつら episode 39 (2002)
Urusei Yatsura 39 (2022) review

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Fujinami buys a small island for ¥300, angering Ryuunosuke. She invites her friends to the grand opening of the island beach cafe, where they soon learn the island is haunted. Fujinami’s friend, Shiowatari, and his child died on the island. Their ghosts appear in the cafe to explain how they died. Further, they learn that Fujinami and Shiowatari are old friends who betrothed their children to each other. Thus Ryuunosuke finds herself betrothed to the “female” Nagisa.

Fujinami prevents Ryuunosuke from revealing she’s a girl. Nagisa wants a kiss from Ryuunosuke in order to pass onto the afterlife. Ryuunosuke objects. Meanwhile, Shinobu and Lum find it odd that Ataru and Shuutarou haven’t hit on Nagisa. Eventually, Fujinami knocks out Ryuunosuke, but Nagisa’s ghost status means physical contact isn’t possible. However, the tears from a special urchin causes Nagisa to get a body. Ryuunosuke flees, only to discover that Nagisa is a man.

Sometime later, Ataru again beats Ten-chan in a game. Lum tells Ten-chan it is time for bed. He attempts to burn Ataru with a breath attack, but Ataru uses a frying pan to shield himself. He then whacks Ten-chan with it. Ten-chan dreams he’s on a dragon, about to attack Ataru when a big foot comes down on him. He awakes to find Ataru’s foot on him.

Ten-chan leaves and on the street, finds a fairy stuck in a puddle in another dimension. The fairy needs his parasol to escape. After many misadventures, Ten-chan gets the parasol back to the fairy. As a reward, the fairy makes Ten-chan’s dream come true. Unfortunately, it was literally the last dream Ten-chan had.

Thoughts/Review:

Man, Urusei Yatsura 39 was filled with characters I despise. The first story came from manga chapters 341 and 342 (OG anime OVA 5). The second story came from manga chapter 299 (OG episode 186, which was heavily padded to fill an entire episode).

Story 1: Fujinami Stupidity

I hate the Fujinami character with a passion. The 2022 adaptation hasn’t done anything extra with him, which is good. Unfortunately, he’s a central part of the first story in Urusei Yatsura 39. He’s an evil character and not remotely funny. But Takahashi-sensei thought he was, so she often brought the sod back. And I suspect, this story laid the foundation for Ranma 1/2.

That aside, Shiowatari and Nagisa are set up to be the equal and opposite of Fujinami and Ryuunosuke. Fujinami raised Ryuunosuke as a boy, but she rejects it and wants to be seen as a girl. Shiowatari raised his son to be a girl, making him a cliched otoko no ko (fem boy) character. Despite being male, Nagisa has no problem looking and acting like a girl to please his father. No doubt, Takahashi-sensei thought this was funny too, but in my old age, I see this as child abuse, plain and simple.

Story 2: Ten-chan Stupidity

I hate the Ten-chan character with a passion. But, like other characters, the 2022 adaptation has kept that to a minimum. Yet here we are with the second story of Urusei Yatsura 39 focusing on Ten-chan. Fortunately, this was the shorter story in the episode. I’m amazed that the OG adaptation squeezed an entire episode out of this rubbish.

That aside, the story is a basic fetch quest. And the gag payoff is about as dumb as one can imagine. Ten-chan thinks making his dream come true is him marrying Sakura, or defeating Ataru. So “Ha! Ha!” when the gag is that Ten-chan’s last, literal dream comes true. Again, not funny. Stories like these really made me wonder how Takahashi-sensei became so popular with her manga.

Final Thoughts and Conclusion

Let me wrap up my review of Urusei Yatsura 39 with some final thoughts.

• The official subtitles are absolute fetid fecal matter. I honestly don’t understand how people this bad get employed in the business. That aside, I only complain again when something really irritates me. This time, Fujinami’s catch phrase “Umi ga suki!” is the culprit. It literally means “(I) love the sea/ocean!” He likes the phrase so much, he has it on his shirts. So naturally, HiDive change this to “Ocean Lover”. Why? One often sees shirts that say “I love X”, and this is no different. Further, it is his bloody catch phrase.
• On the subject of annoying characters, Torajima got some air time. This cat character always irritated me in the OG anime. He’s been mostly absent in the 2022 adaptation. But he gets an extended cameo here.

In the end, Urusei Yatsura 39 is a terrible episode, filled with stories featuring the most irritating and annoying characters imaginable.