Urusei Yatsura 2: Beautiful Dreamer

Urusei Yatsura is one of my favorite anime series for many reasons, and one of those reasons is the wacky brand of comedy that comes with it. That said, Beautiful Dreamer is completely different from any other work related to this series. The comedy is still there, but it's greatly toned down and replaced with more of a serious story as the cast of characters find bizarre things happening to the world around them. It's a drastic change to the usual feel of the series, but the end result is something I've long considered a masterpiece.

The story, of course, is fantastic. ... The art is very good for its time, that being the early 1980's, and the music fits perfectly with what's going on in the movie. But one of the things I enjoyed the most about this movie relates to the cast of characters. Normally with the Urusei Yatsura series, Ataru and Lum are focused on very heavily. And while they are a big part of this movie, they also take a backseat for a lot of it, allowing some of the supporting characters to take much bigger roles than usual and show some of their depth. Onsen-Mark, Sakura, and Mendo all get a rare chance to shine, and it's really a pleasant change from seeing them in the background all the time.

Even if you've never seen any of the Urusei Yatsura series before, this movie is a great, great watch. I know because it was the first piece of the Urusei Yatsura anime that I had the pleasure of watching, and I enjoyed it so much that I sought out the rest of the series afterward. If you ever find yourself awake at 1 A.M., pop this movie in your DVD/VHS player. There are few better things to watch right before you go to sleep for the night.

"Things are a mess for Yusojusunku, time and space are objective things. Fact is, time is simply a creation of your human consciousness. Now, what if there ain't no human beings anywhere in the world? Wouldn't clocks and calendars be a waste? Maybe there ain't no such thing as time that flows in one direction..."



Ah, the Urusei Yatsura series--one of the flagstones of the 'Rumik' empire, and probably Takahashi's very first legitimate hit series. The last thing someone would expect to go well with Rumiko Takahashi's slapstick wild style of character writing and gag jokes would be Mamoru Oshii, the man best known for directing ... Ghost in the Shell. But here, in the second Urusei Yatsura movie, it was decided that the film should be helmed by Oshii himself. It results in a fun, wild, surreal journey of the mind that never fails to enchant.

Story: 8
This is a very simple storyline under a very complex guise. You ever see the movie Groundhog Day? That's the basic idea of how the movie starts out--the same day seems to be repeating itself over and over again, that is, the last day of preparation before the school festival. But as the days repeat, the world itself seems to see some impact of this 'Groundhog Day' as the people around them start to disappear and the world itself seems to crumble into decay. That is, aside from specific places needed to cater to the needs and desires of those trapped within.

All in all there are technically a lot of unneeded scenes that are just there for the surreality factor but in all honesty it all comes out looking pretty good story-wise. The viewer does understand by the end exactly what is going on in this strange situation. The only part that I personally didn't get is why Ataru seems to be getting blamed for it, when it seems more like the creation of this world is the fault of Lum. But this was the 70s, I suppose, and blaming pretty girls wasn't in vogue at the time.


Art: 7
This is a difficult one because, well, to be fair...the animation has a lot of fun stylistic choices and tends towards being very inventively surreal. But I won't lie: this isn't exactly high budget animation. It seems like a lot of money was cut out of the character animation to make absolute sure that the more trippy scenes hit harder, resulting in some pretty inconsistent character faces and movements. It's worth watching for those surreal scenes (I'm particularly fond of their flyover of the Tomobiki turtle), but the rest of the animation is mostly just serviceable at best.

This is Takahashi in her earliest days so the actual style itself is still kinda goofy. It isn't yet the more refined style of Inuyasha, nor the goofy-but-consistent style of Ranma 1/2 in its earlier runs. If that isn't your thing, especially in combination with surreality, then this may not be your kind of movie. To me I feel that the stylistic choices mix together surprisingly well.

Sound: 6
Let's start out with the music--it's a combination of atmospheric creepy tones and 80s synth. And lemme tell you, the 80s synth gets really hilarious really quickly. Its hard to contain your chuckles when the movie goes from a serious moment of contemplating the situation...to what looks like an 80s music video for a resort. It mostly all balances out, and I suppose the 80s synth fits the scenes in their own chuckle-worthy way, but it can still get a bit intrusive. It probably seemed less so when the movie was actually released.

Now on to the dub. The voice work here is fairly over-the-top to match the exaggerated personalities of the characters, and for the most part I feel like a lot of the voices DO fit in their own ridiculous way. But it is hard to call this a 'good' dub as it falls into almost every classic pitfall of a bad dub job: mispronouncing names (Mendo as MenDOW, Sakura as the classic SaKOOra), switching character genders (an overall issue of the Urusei Yatsura dub is that Ten, Lum's little brother, is referred to as female for some reason), and flapping lips that don't quite line up with what's being said (though to be fair, this may just be the animation).

Most laughable of all is the voice actor for Mujaki--this guy cannot act. He has an opening appearance with a lot of promise in its foreboding tone but it immediately gets shot to hell the second he reappears. None of his lines seem to match up with his lip movements or even the emotion he's trying to display. I personally feel nostalgic value for the dub, but otherwise, I'm not sure if it would sit well with your average viewer.

Character: 9
Rumiko Takahashi wackiness at its best. Ataru the thoughtless lecher (probably one of the few anime perverts who DOES deserve what's coming to him), the serious Miss Sakura, the naive and childish (but aggressive) Lum, the uptight and 'sophisticated' (read: up his own ass) Mendo, and the four off-beat but somehow charming friends of Ataru....all of them are inherently flawed as people because its just funnier that way, and it tends towards making most of them likeable.

Even Lum, who fills a character slot I don't usually like, is charming in her naivety and childish views on the world. In a situation where she would normally seem selfish and vain for what is going on, she instead comes off as more of a well intentioned but misguided individual. Even the person acting on her whims, Mujeki, again comes off as simply well intentioned but misguided. They're all pleasant to watch for the most part, because while they're overexaggerations of personality traits there is a certain realness to how they react. Accompanied by silly Takahashi facial expressions, of course.

Enjoyment: 10
Now I may have talked down to a few elements of this story, but the fact is that a whole group of simply okay aspects can come together to make a solid and enjoyable movie. Beautiful Dreamer does just that. The characters never keep you in a state of being uninvested, and the story has a certain weight to it that truly lends itself to some of the heavier dialogue. Despite some obvious cutting corners in the animation, a good amount of it actually does keep the viewer attention with some of the more elaborate and surreal scenes.

I personally enjoy this film every time I sit down and watch it, flawed or not. So my personal enjoyment for this just happens to be very high. Your buck may vary, I suppose, but I would have to say that it is something of a visual classic that is definitely worth a watch if you have the time.

Overall: 9/10

The Ursei Yatsura franchise & TV series is an insane, wacky, hyperactive, frantic, comedy show with most of its humour rooted in Japanese culture and in general it's not really my cup of tea. However the director, Mamoru Oshii of Ghost in the Shell fame, whilst using the characters and setting of the TV show tones down the madcap slapstick nonsense a notch or two and instead creates a trippy, surreal, philosophical film concerning dreams and how they interact with reality. It's still a comedy but this has got miles more depth than anything seen in the TV series.

Without any knowledge of the TV series ... this film will probably baffle newcomers with its strange cast of weird characters and its odd and unreal universe. However if you can get past that obstacle then there's a really clever and well made film underneath that explores themes and ideas concerning the nature of dreams and what we percieve as reality, territory that Oshii would return to and expand upon in his later films, whilst reamining an enjoyable and light hearted comedy. A quick briefing on the Japanese folktale of Urashima Tarō and Zhuangzi's butterfly dream may also aid understanding of the plot if needed!

This is one of Mamoru Oshii's earliest directed movies, and like many things he's touched it has a cult following that simply goes nuts for it. What makes Urusei Yatsura Movie 2: Beautiful Dreamer an outlier, however, is that it's created using a previously existing setting and cast of characters that weren't originally created by Oshii. The legendary Rumiko Takahashi takes credit for the original concept here, about a high school boy who accidentally convinces an alien girl named Lum that they're now married. Thus, hijinks ensue. The original series has had an incredible impact on Japanese culture, but is relatively esoteric for a Takahashi ... work for its romantic comedy that places a heavy emphasis on referencing the country's own culture. This movie has persisted with a considerably large audience due both in part to Oshii's attachment as well as it being an understandable, accessible story to those not familiar with Urusei Yatsura. But this isn't simply considered a solid Urusei Yatsura tale, but rather an early example of Oshii's storytelling ambitions with a focus on disorienting dreams and fittingly surreal animation.

The usual cast of Urusei Yatsura are preparing for the upcoming school festival day and night, but it slowly dawns on them that they've been trapped in the same repeating day. As things continue to become stranger and stranger at random, the group eventually need to find a way to return things to normal. The summary sounds rudimentary, but that's because it's ultimately a rudimentary story. A lot of the praise and discussion of Beautiful Dreamer seems a bit hyperbolic, perhaps relatively contextualizing itself to the time it was made and released. It's an early Oshii movie, so it's fine that it's not as ambitious as his later works. It was an early English dubbed anime movie, so naturally it would have a profound impact on people not accustomed to the eccentricities of much anime. From that perspective, it may pack quite a punch. From a broader perspective, the bulk of Beautiful Dreamer is left in the past, as much of it is the now that passe slapstick romantic comedy that defined the original series. The lecherous main character and his idiot friends goof about without a care in this dream world, often getting into antics that don't take advantage of the dream concept. Even when strange things are happening around the group they're always so spaced out and mostly downright mundane. The city gets abandoned and filled with water at a moment, and everyone goes for a swim. But it's otherwise a generic beach scene even though the reason for it coming into play is bizarre. So much of Urusei Yatsura is stuck in that mundanity despite a different context around it and it's difficult to sell any event as "strange" in a series that's inherently fantastical and exaggerated. The creative visuals and transitions are in an extreme minority throughout this slapstick fest. A ten minute climax where things start to get as trippy as billed doesn't really cut it in the face of all the bland, frivolous, fooling around earlier, and this turns out to be all Urusei Yatsura has to offer for people looking outside of the original series. Even the fundamental theme of reality and dreams being indistinguishable isn't taken to any conclusion. This observation is made, no detailed philosophy is attached to either side, and then the story's resolved. Sadly, Beautiful Dreamer ends up being a movie with little to say and without many creative ways to say it. As a historical document for hardcore Oshii fans it may show some of his progression as a director, but for typical fans there isn't enough of him to grasp onto here. Urusei Yatsura fans may greatly enjoy this fresh concept pairing with the usual style of humor and characters they enjoy, but as for everyone else this isn't a very relevant movie. It's a thoroughly pleasant experience, but for a movie about a journey through dreams its feet are kept on the ground.

What happens when director Mamuro Oshii (Ghost in the Shell) and creator Rumiko Takahashi come together to make a movie? Well, in 1984 the second Urusei Yatsura movie debuted. It is regarded as the best of the Yatsura movies by the fans. An interesting fact was after the “failure” of the first movie; Oshii wanted to stop catering to the fans and do the film his own way. This was so far from the original show that Takahashi almost rejected the script. How did it turn out?

Urusei Yatsura is a wild and crazy time with all of the characters interacting behind Ataru and Lum. It ... is a hilarious non-stop comedy fest with little regards for a story and primarily focusing on making the viewer laugh. However, Oshii went the opposite and minimized the slap-stick humor and created a plot, and story involving all the characters. It is still a comedy at heart, but with a story on top of it, really invoked the viewer of the franchise to something incredibly fresh and interesting. Plus, the art, animation, and sounds are all top-notch to still hold up today.

There are two downsides to Beautiful Dreamer. One, if going into the movie without a simple knowledge of the show and its characters, the casual fan will probably suffer a bit. Two, as the show focuses on Lum and Ataru and each episode continues from there, Beautiful Dreamer seems to focus on all the shows characters as a whole. Basically, not enough Lum and Ataru until near the end.

Not much of the actual plot can be explained without ruining the experience of watching and learning yourself. If one could guess, based on Oshii’s future works, it has something to do with reality and what it means to perceive it.

Beautiful Dreamer is a pleasure to watch and the supporting cast of characters get a chance for air time in the foreground instead of the background. A little more Lum and Ataru time would have been nice, but a fun watch none the less. Who knows, it might be good enough to motivate some to watch the original show.

In my early days of anime fandom, Rumiko Takahashi was probably the first mangaka whose works I was heavily into. My favourite of her manga series? Maison Ikkoku. When it comes to anime adaptations though, Urusei Yatsura would top my list.

It says something about Mamoru Oshii as a director, that he is able to achieve something like making this film and not compromise on the humour and tone that run through UY as a whole. All the elements that this film introduces just astounded me upon first viewing, as most hollywood films similar to this weren't to come along for 9 years (groundhog day being ... the key example here).

The quality of artwork is quite a leap from the tv series and also the first UY film. For a film made in 1984, it holds up surprisingly well.

All in all, this film will make you wonder where its story is going, what's going to happen next, etc. As i close, i have to ask, isn't that what all the best fiction does?

So, obviously the main reason I watched this without watching the show was because Mamoru Oshii directed it. But it was also available in English on Amazon Prime when I had other things I needed to do, so that made doing so pretty convenient. It's a good movie. I just felt like I was missing a lot because I didn't know the characters and it's a very characterization-driven story. It seems like it's almost fair to say the story doesn't make sense if you don't understand Lum's dynamic with the rest of the cast. At it's most basic level, it's not too complicated. But, on ... another, there was a really good scene where a character performed some process of elimination to figure out what was going on and it all came down to the relationship web. Which, honestly, was a pretty impressive payoff even if I didn't fully understand.

Oshii is hit and miss for me because I love basically all of his visual ideas in the abstract, but I frequently find the results somewhat or very boring outside of certain highlights. This film is very much in that vein. I like basically all of its ideas, but it didn't seem to come together such that I could watch it in one or even two sittings.

Ah yes, the only Urusei Yatsura movie people actually give a shit about. Let's talk about it. So, here's a funny joke, I drew a complete blank when writing this review. Talking about this film is going to be difficult for me, and I'm not going to summarize the film like I did for the previous one. I will talk about the premise of the film, however. Tomobiki high school is starting up a cultural festival and the first thing I immediately noticed was that quality of this film was much higher than the previous one. Within the first five minutes of the film, it's ... already pretty hectic with students, props, entertainers, and all kinds of shit running around. The main cast of characters are also preparing by making...what I first thought was a Nazi themed restaurant, but I'm not entirely sure. The Swastika was originally called a "Manji" in buddhist culture. It symbolized peace and prosperity, but after looking at the theme of the restaurant, I was pretty confused.

Grade A asshole, Ataru Moroboshi, and Mendo Shutaro are tasked with bring back food for the rest of the gang, because they plan to stay the night at school to finish up the restaurant. This is where I'll stop describing the film, because shit starts to get unnerving and puzzling for the gang. I definitely see the appeal of this film and why people can't shut the fuck about it. The actual plot of the film is not that good, but I can give you a few reasons why you should watch it through a pros and cons list. Yayyyy!

Pros:
• THE VISUALS. Incredible looking, detailed backgrounds, animation, and just general art design.
• Bizarre Cinematography (The good kind)

Beautiful Dreamer is a beautiful film. Firstly, this movie is the master of darkness. With the digital age of animation, I believe that newer anime have trouble creating true darkness that cel animation can do so easily. Digital anime is too bright and colorful; it has this shiny glow to it. Meanwhile, older anime has this more darker and analog feel to it, and many shows and movies of this era can pull off the darkness in a way digital anime can't. Not trying to disregard digital anime, there's pro's and con's for both styles of animation, it's just that this film in particular is in a completely different solar system when it comes to visual presentation. The scene where Ataru and Mendo are going out to get food downtown in the middle of the night, the background looks like an abyss. The whole scene itself is pretty creepy.
This movie was made to mess with your mind. Strange camera angles and shots of landscapes that look gorgeous, yet also ominous. This movie is a MUST-WATCH for the visuals alone. Like how, and without going into spoilers, the wind chime scene with Shinobu, or the multiple Atarus in the school, or the giant statues of the characters. It's almost like a fever dream at certain points. This does lead into a problem that I have with the film.

Con:
• The Plot.

The concept behind this film and the dream ideas are very fascinating, but the story is not much to write home about. Really, the only reason you would watch this film is for the visuals/mind-fuck scenes and nothing else. The reason for what's going on and the reason for the conflict is not particularly interesting. The pacing is okay. I really like it when an anime takes it's time and let's you process what's going on instead of introducing one thing after another without anytime to breathe *cough* *cough* Crusher Joe *cough* *cough*. I will say, the final stretch of this film where Ataru is stuck in the dream segments goes on for a bit too long. It's the last twenty minutes of the film and it should be cut down a bit, in my opinion. Mujaki's motivation is weird, but I think he's cool. Highly recommend this film. 8 out of 10.

Movies: 1 < 2

Story: 6/10
Art: 10/10
Sound: 8/10
Characters: 6/10
Enjoyment: 7/10
Overall: 8/10