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Urusei Yatsura (うる星やつら) is a well-known
1980s
manga and
anime series. The title is a complicated Japanese pun which roughly
translates as "those obnoxious aliens".
This cartoon spanned six films, 218 TV episodes, and ten
OVAs. It was created by
Rumiko Takahashi in
1981. It concerns the adventures of a group of teenagers on a slightly
fantastical and often ridiculously surreal version of Earth.
The series is very light-hearted in nature and often quite bizarre.
The Story
The story concerns an extremely lecherous and very unlucky high-school
boy, Ataru Moroboshi, and bikini clad alien princess Lum. Lum is in love
with Ataru because he accidental proposed to her, even though he chases
after every humanoid female other than Lum. (It's not that she's
ugly, it's just that he lost interest in her as soon as she
started chasing him) The series is mainly episodic, with
only occasional plots spanning more than one chapter/episode. Each
chapter/episode usually concerns Ataru's ill-luck, his lechery (and Lum's
jealousy thereof), or the wide variety of weird humans and aliens who
love, hate, or simply meddle with Lum and Ataru
Only You
The first movie was entitled Only You. The main characters
are:
- Lum, an alien princess who can fire out bolts of
lightning
- Ataru Moroboshi, a lecherous human, with whom Lum
is in love
- Elle, another alien princess, who is in charge of
Planet Elle
- Benten, Lum's friend
The basic plot of the first film is that the five-year-old Ataru steps
on Elle's shadow during an impromptu game of shadow-tag; in Elle's
culture, this is viewed as a marriage proposal. Twelve years later, Elle
returns to Earth in order to marry Ataru - by which time not only had he
forgotten the events of his childhood, but he was also going out with Lum.
The rest of the plot focuses on Lum's attempts to prevent the marriage.
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