うる星やつら episode 13 (2002)
Urusei Yatsura 13 (2022) review

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis:

The school cracks down on students going off campus to purchase meals during lunch. To this end, Onsen-sensei provides a list of popular eating establishments for teachers to snag disobedient students. Shuutarou and some other students help the teachers, while Ataru and Lum lead the charge for eating freedom. Ataru and Lum’s group find an apparently “clean” restaurant, only to discover Onsen-sensei and another teacher waiting.

The group find an okonomiyaki. Lum orders a spicy one, which she rams down Ataru’s throat after he starts hitting on a waitress. As such, Ataru begins a desperate search for water, forcing teachers and Shuutarou’s group to flee. Meanwhile, Onsen-sensei gets busted by the cops as he’s wearing a cat costume while attempting to snag students. At the end of the day, the battle is a draw with Lum, Ataru, and a few students standing as well as a few teachers.

Sometime later, outside a cafe, Ataru notices Sakura-sensei, Shinobu, Ran, and Lum fawning over Ten-chan. As he ponders things, the girls get Sakura-sensei to show them a picture of her fiance, Tsubame. Ten-chan orders a Love-Love Catchball, which will reveal the destined partner of the person who puts the small ball to their eye. Shinobu finds she’s destined to marry Tsubame. Ran sees Ataru. Lum sees Rei. And to skeptical Sakura-sensei, she sees Ataru and Shuutarou.

On cue, both guys show up under the table, so Sakura-sensei clobbers them. The girls begin to get angry with each other and the guys once they learn the truth. Meanwhile, Ten-chan discovers that he was mistakenly sent a Trouble Catchball, meaning the one you see is the one to avoid. As such, Ten-chan makes a hasty retreat.

Thoughts/Review:

Interestingly enough, this 2022 version of Urusei Yatsura 13 felt more like the OG anime than any previous episode has. The difference is that this modern take didn’t drag things out like the OG anime did.

Off Campus Eating!

As bad as these hideous Sentai subtitles are, the Japanese did use the term 買い食い, which does mean in-between meal snacks. So even though AnimEigo used the term “lunch” in OG anime episode 46, the 2022 Urusei Yatsura 13 did in fact use the correctly translated word for the subtitles. (And I’ll complain about the subtitles in a bit.) One thing the OG anime episode did a better job of is explaining why the teachers felt the need to stop students from eating lunch off campus. The new anime doesn’t.

That aside, the pacing of the new anime is brisk, but on point. There’s not a lot of time wasting as there was in the OG anime. That may sound surprising, considering how many “charge” moments are in the 2022 version of the story, as well as a lot of other elements that may seem like filler. But imagine all of the above, then stretching that to a full episode, and adding an annoying Cherry and Ten-chan to boot. 😅

While the students visited the same locations in the OG anime as in the new, a lot of the outcomes were different. My favorite was the okonomiyaki restaurant, where Lum forces Ataru to eat a spicy okonomiyaki. Sure, it is a cliched, “the food is hot” moment, but it still made me laugh. In the OG episode, Sakura-sensei comes in, so Ataru bribes Cherry to deal with her.

Destined Lover

The second story in Urusei Yatsura 13 was adapted in episode 60 of the OG anime. As with the previous story, the new anime doesn’t massively pad out the story to waste time. Further, the 2022 version allows us to actually see the guy the girl sees, sans Shinobu. As such, we don’t have to go through some chart to explain things like they did in the OG version.

As usual, I found the modern take on the story to be funnier. Again, a lot of the extra stuff from the OG episode isn’t missed in the new version. The way the girls slowly begin to realize what the others saw, and the anger they had at each other and the guys came off pretty funny. Although I will say that though I enjoyed the modern take better, I did miss Shinobu going off. And I missed Lum frying both Ataru and Shuutarou.  In the modern version, Shinobu is calm (and smitten) while Lum only fries Ataru.

Final Thoughts and Conclusion

Let me wrap up my review of Urusei Yatsura 13 with some final thoughts.

• This anime series still doesn’t feel 80s enough to me. Some of the clothing mildly makes me think of the 80s. But it isn’t enough. I wish the series did more to make me think, “80s!”
• The Sentai subtitles for this episode are just rubbish. Basically, whomever is adapting this thing is just making crap up as they go. Indeed, it wouldn’t surprise me if this script was ultimately the dub script. For example, “You really are an Oni” becomes, “Curse you! This is too cruel!” And that’s just scratching the surface. Man, these are worse subtitles than the crap fansubs of back in the day.

In the end, sans Sentai’s crappy subtitles, Urusei Yatsura 13 was a rather fun romp. If felt more like the OG anime, only without nearly as much padding and stretching.