うる星やつら episode 128 (TV anime)
Urusei Yatsura Ep. 128 review
Urusei Yatsura – 128

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

After Ten-chan becomes a de facto tennis ball for an annoyed Ataru, he encounters hero of justice dressed in western-styled superhero costume. After drinking some water, the man calls himself Super Delicious Yuusei Golden Special Reserve Gorgeous Aftercare Kit #28 and gives Ten-chan a costume and some accessories to become a new hero of justice. Since the costume makes Ten-chan faster, he attempts to attack Ataru but fails. So he returns to #28 and receives more gear to help him. However, each and every time Ten-chan tries to attack Ataru, Ten-chan takes a beating.

Meanwhile, Super Delicious Yuusei Golden Special Reserve Gorgeous Aftercare Kit #28 has been seen by Ran, who reports this to Lum. Lum is very angry and is determined to get back at this hero. As Ten-chan continues to fail despite being given more and more devices, Lum recalls her own childhood when she and Ran helped a Super Delicious Yuusei Golden Special Reserve Gorgeous Aftercare Kit guy. In return, that hero gave them costumes and gear as well but it was all a scam to sell expensive Super Delicious Yuusei Golden Special Reserve Gorgeous Aftercare Kit products to kids. Lum finds Super Delicious Yuusei Golden Special Reserve Gorgeous Aftercare Kit #28 and gains her revenge, leaving this poor salary man of justice to wonder where the children who crave justice are.

Thoughts/Review:

This episode showed how the Japanese are unafraid of using English in their products by coming up with the wonderfully absurd “Super Delicious Yuusei Golden Special Reserve Gorgeous Aftercare Kit #28″ name (28 said in Japanese). Naturally, AnimEigo showed great fear in not letting “Yuusei” through but choosing to translate it. One can argue that there’s nothing wrong with that, but I keep thinking of the Japanese kids who likely really didn’t understand the English words spoken, yet that didn’t stop the Japanese from using them. I’m not really arguing it should have been left in, but I’m just noting the differences in cultures.

Further on that front, the new OP and ED theme songs are heavily English and English respectively. The songs did nothing for me at present, but I suppose they could grow on me at some point.

On the translation front, I did notice that this episode seemed to take quite a few liberties in the adaptation. I’m going to guess that since Super Delicious Yuusei Golden Special Reserve Gorgeous Aftercare Kit #28 was designed like a parody of Superman, AnimEigo felt that it was OK to give this episode’s adaptation more of a domestication than normal.

As to the episode itself, I’ve stated before that I don’t like Ten-chan, so any episode where he takes a beating is a win. Any episode where he takes multiple beatings is awesome! *lol* I was amused by the notion of some superhero-type character actually being a salesman. The long, rambling dialogs on justice and doing the right thing certainly don’t come across as a sales pitch.

In the end, the episode is rather mediocre with the enjoyable part coming from Ten-chan getting whacked repeatedly. There are no really good laughing moments though, even with the Ten-chan beatings. Oh well. Can’t win them all I suppose.