うる星やつら episode 133 (TV anime)
Urusei Yatsura Ep. 133 review

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

Asuka encounters her “oniisama,” Tobimaru, for the first time and assumes that because he has starry eyes like her, he must be a woman. When he denies this, he gets thrown off. Meanwhile, Asuka’s father says that he’s never met his daughter thanks to the custom of the Mizunokoji family, which does not allow girls born into the family to have any dealing with any man until the turn fifteen. When Lum lets it slip out that Asuka’s beautiful, Shuutaro realizes what’s up and goes to find Asuka. He and Ataru begin to chase her all around, taking a beating in the process as Tobimaru watches helplessly from a tree until Asuka uses that tree as a weapon against Ataru and Shuutaro. A tranquilizer dart from Asuka’s staff soon stops her panicked rampage.

Elsewhere, Ryoko has learned that her “oniisama” was taken in chains to the omiai and she launches the Mendou military at the Mizunokoji estate. Ataru and Shuutaro are placed in chains as is Asuka, to keep her from fleeing. It is decided that the omiai will continue with the main house going underground to shelter from the attack. Tobimaru decides that he can’t let either Ataru nor Shuutaro have his sister, though both of them manage to break free from their chains, causing Asuka to break free from hers. Ataru realizes that Asuka is in love with Tobimaru, which he’d not intended.

Lum attempts to explain what a husband and wife are and why Asuka can’t marry Tobimaru when Ryoko launches the Octopussy attack without knowing what it is. She ends up in a mecha suit that is all flash and nothing else. She ends up in the omiai room as the Mizunokoji forces launch missiles to destroy Octopussy, destroying the entire compound instead. When Asuka hears Ryoko address Shuutaro as “oniisama,” she changes her attitude towards him since she’s been taught that “oniisama” are a special kind of man. As such, she begins to address Shuutaro as “oniisama” to the astonishment of everyone.

Thoughts/Review:

A fun episode but not nearly as funny as part one.

As before, the chases were funny to me. Now that Shuutaro got into the chase, we had that extra dimension to keep the chase funny with Ataru and Shuutaro in a competition to get to Asuka. The punishment they took was funny only because they kept coming back for more. Yeah, it was predictable, but it just ended up being very funny just the same.

The weirdness of the Mizunokoji family tradition regarding female children was a bit off-putting to me. AnimEigo used the term “adopted” to describe how Asuka’s and Tobimaru’s father came into the Mizunokoji family and maybe that’s the term used (my Japanese isn’t good enough to know). However, he married into that family since the Mizunokoji family is the more powerful one, which is part of Japanese tradition. Anyway, I don’t know how I got off on this topic, but I understood why Asuka’s father hadn’t seen his daughter, but the tradition is whacked.

Ryoko’s military attack wasn’t funny until the Octopussy part, and then it was just amusing for the most part. I did laugh at how this mecha suit was so feared by the all-female staff defending the Mizunokoji estate, especially when it had no abilities at all. Still, I suppose that this was the only way the writers (or even Takahashi-sensei if this story is in the manga) to get Ryoko to the mansion so that Asuka could hear her address Shuutaro as “oniisama.”

I suppose that with the introduction of Asuka, we have one more in the bevy of babes that Ataru will want to pursue. The difference here is that Shuutaro wants Asuka too but I’m guessing the “oniisama” issue will crop up there.

So, this episode is somewhat of a letdown from the last episode, but still enjoyable for the most part.