Reviews

I'm watching these movies and writing these reviews back to back and it's starting to wear me down. In terms of plot, this is definitely the weakest of the three movies I've seen so far. It doesn't have much going for it, and I would say that the first film is better than this one, but only slightly. Minor spoilers in this review. In 1967, a wicked witch who was connected to Lum's family wasn't invited to see Lum's birth. This, for some reason, makes her furious. So in return, the witch creates a curse on Lum that will always cause her misfortune in love. She will never find happiness with her true love. The curse was placed into an orb, and many centuries later, it was discovered by a young boy. The specific year was 2267, just in case you were curious.

Come to present day, present time 1985. The town of Tomobiki creates a new amusement park called "Tomobiki Marchenland." Lum thinks it would be an excellent idea to bring her piece of human garbage darling, Ataru Moroboshi, along for a date. Lum is such a sweetheart. Everyone else in Ataru and Lum's class come along as well even though none of the supporting characters have no significance to the overall plot whatsoever. Enter the new antagonists, Ruu and his servant Oshima. Two characters who both have weak and strange character motivations that are explained later in the film. Things do take a turn for the worse when Ataru volunteers for a magic trick and is transformed into a pink hippo. It's later explained why this happens, but the entire conflict between Ruu and the main characters is pretty lame and underwhelming. The stakes are not that high in this film.

I would compare Ruu to Mujaki, the antagonist of the previous film, except Ruu is not as powerful and not as well written. They do have similar abilities of altering time and space, but Ruu's powers don't mess with your mind as much. The only thing in this film that I believe is worth mentioning is the chase scene between Lum and Ruu. They go all over the town of Tomobiki. They go inside of a Fun House and the mirrors surrounding them look great. You see the both of them in so many different angles and positions. They end up flying downtown and the scene was beautifully drawn and animated. That's the only thing noteworthy about this film. It's a pretty generic film and after watching Beautiful Dreamer, it was just disappointing and not entertaining. I can't be too harsh, because it's Urusei Yatsura, so if you love the series enough you're going to watch this film, regardless. I'll admit, Hideaki Anno did a superb job animating some of sequences, good job on his part. The music is good. "Born to be Free" is probably my favorite song in the soundtrack. The other songs are pretty mediocre. This movie gets a 6 out of 10. I would put it below the first film, but the difference in quality is not that big.

Movies: 3 < 1 < 2

Story: 4/10
Art: 6/10
Sound: 6/10
Character: 6/10
Enjoyment: 5/10
Overall: 6/10