Destroy All Podcasts DX Episode 76 - Urusei Yatsura Movie 1: Only You
Hosts: Jeremy, Viga from Viga the Otagal
This is about abducting your friends with a space U-Haul, having a serious conversation about your relationship while a space war wages just outside your window, and magical one size fits all tiger print bikinis.
Click [HERE] to marry a hot alien chick.
More after the cut.
Boy meets girl meets disco monster mushroom!
Is that a spaceship or am I just at a Kiss concert?
True love or just domestic abuse?
An Oshii movie where people eat noodles and have a conversation without looking at each other? Never!
Look, suddenly it's a space opera!
Awww. Incestuous puppy love. How cute.
The fate of the universe hangs on if this boy will commit to this girl!
It's a freezer full of pretty boys!
I don't recall THE FRANKENSTEIN MONSTER CRUSHING YOUR SKULL being part of the standard wedding ceremony.
Now look closely here. Do you see the difference between this...
... and this?
Posted 10 November, 2008 - 13:05 by Destroy All Pod... |
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Comments
15 comments postedOH NO!!! Another Mamoru Oshii film. Probably the one that is least characteristic of his style of directing. It feels so strange calling this an Oshii film.
Are you guys going to do all of the movies? It is my secret shame that I own that ugly pastel box set (darn you, AnimEigo!) with all six films. It resides in a deep, dark corner of my movie shelf, concealed by a second row of movies in front of it.
The reason I ask is because the second one, Beautiful Dreamer, is far more Oshii-tastic. Kinda funny that he and Rumiko locked horns over that movie. Oshii can be a bit full of himself, but at least he tried to do something interesting with Urusei Yatsura, a series which nothing is ever resolved.
Rumiko Takahashi has made a career out of telling stories in which nothing ever happens.
...I suppose I should just listen to the podcast and find out if my questions get answered.
~Neil
http://www.dasiencomic.com/
I don't have plans to do the rest of the UY movies, but I do have plans to do the rest of Mamoru Oshii's movies. So yeah, Beautiful Dreamer is definitely coming. My love/hate relationship with Oshii continues.
Listen to the podcast, but Only You definitely has many of Oshii's stylistic elements in it. Certainly not as many as Beautiful Dreamer, but it's there.
-Jeremy
I just finished listening. I was just so excited to see this movie pop up that I had to comment right away. Yeah, I can see the Oshii-isms now. It's still fairly light, in contrast to even Beautiful Dreamer. And you're right, it's really not at all necessary to do movies 3 thru 6.
And, yeah, I am not at all a Rumiko fan. Urusei Yatsura is the one show of hers that kind of gets away with the Rumiko frozen plot syndrome, simply because it's part sitcom, but shows like InuYasha just DRAG once all the characters are established. It took me quite a number of episodes until I finally realized that there was no intention to resolve anything. Just endless anime teen angst. Annoying.
I look forward to Beautiful Dreamer.
~Neil
http://www.dasiencomic.com/
Can't wait!
I must confess, Beautiful Dreamer was the first Oshii film I had laid eyes on, let along the first UY-related thing I had ever seen too (care of SciFi channel's Saturday Anime block). The film is quite challenging over "Only You" in terms of re-watchability. You can see OY once and that's all there is, but with BD, I find there is something I may have missed the first time around and need to go back over again to finally get some idea as to what happened.
Beautiful Dreamer was on at 2AM or some awful time slot when I recorded it off of the sci-fi back in the day. It didn't make much of an impression upon me. All I can remember are all these awful phone sex ads that made up almost one out of every three commercials shown (I set my VCR to record it. We didn't have the technology to cut out commercials back in the day).
One was so bad, the chick just looked at the camera, started shaking it in a way too obvious manner, and the only dialog was "pick up the phone". I barely remember how the movie ended - Lum tells somebody to 'do the right thing' or something - it involved jumping. But I still remember that awful ad.
Strikingly, I've managed to block that part out of my head the longest, but I do understand the pain you went through! I however ended up renting the tape when per chance I saw it at a store later on so I avoided such disturbances caused by standard late night TV ad time.
God tell me about it!
It was a decent ending at least.
At least you didn't see the marathon they had once with Apollo Smile, boy that was tough! :-(
I remember both those ads and Apollo Smile hosting Anime Week. :(
-Jeremy
Thanks! It just annoyed me only slightly the information they gave her to say about the movies as factoids, such as referring to UY as "Beautiful Dreamer" when talking about it being based on a popular manga in Japan and all that. Course I would've accepted "Lum The Invader Girl" (the clunky distribution title).
If only VIZ bothered publishing more of the books as well, since they stopped after some 8 or so volumes.
This is one of my favourites, although my favourite UY movie is Remember My Love. I actually have this one on DVD and LaserDisc...
UY gets away with the non-plot resolution, I guess, because almost *anything* can happen. They can always drop in another alien if they're stuck for ideas, the makers of EastEnders should consider themselves so lucky. :-)
I'd definitely agree with Takahashis inability to resolve things generally, though there is always the "Maison Ikkoku" exception clause.
Seems like Maison Ikkoku was the only manga I could read from start to finish and feel at least glad to have wasted who much money on all those volumes to see the story come to an end that could've came faster if not for the character's taking it easy attitude.
Complaining that the overall plot never goes anywhere in this show is like complaining that Bart Simpson is still only 10 years old.
It's not like Gundam or something,it's a comedy show. You're not watching to "see how it turns out" you're watching it to laugh at the jokes and pratfalls that arise from wacky characters in zany situations.
Yeah, that's not what what my problem with Only You is, though. My problem is not that the plot never goes anywhere, it's that the characters get themselves into a situation they can't get out of so an "act of god" saves them. That's not a good ending.
Beautiful Dreamer, on the other hand, has a strong plot and a good ending, so it's not like it can't be done.
-Jeremy
I had written my own review a while back that I ought to repost on the internet some time. In my review, I not only complained that they went back in time, but that they apparently went back in time to planet EARTH...from planet ELLE...by total ACCIDENT. They didn't even set up any sort of precedent from which time travel would follow. It just sort of happened out of left field. It broke away from the prior scene so quickly that I had to rewatch the DVD a couple times just to make sure I hadn't missed anything.
I could have accepted it, if it was a more deliberate act. Like, say, Elle says, "Here, I'll prove the legitimacy of the proposal once and for all!", or if Lady Babara said, "Oh dear, it seems that marriage by shadow tag is no longer in practice.". That would still have been jarring, but it would have been a LOT better than what they did.
I still love the movie, but the last ten to fifteen minutes just falls apart.
~Neil
http://www.dasiencomic.com/
I wasn't complaining a Urusei Yatsura specifically. I was complaining about Rumiko's stories in general. And yes, that's a legitimate gripe. The woman does not know how to move a story along. She sets up the plot and then freezes it so that nothing ever really happens.
I also remarked that Urusei Yatsura is one of her few shows that actually gets away with this, because it is sort of a sitcom. In something like InuYasha, though, it's far more annoying.
That said, I found it ironic that, of the two Oshii films, Rumiko didn't like the one that tried to do something interesting with the movie format, even if it was loaded with Oshii's typical full-of-himself moments. No, she actually prefers the one that sticks to the formula of the TV show. In fact, Only You is allegedly her favorite of the six films.
I like Only You, but as a theatrical movie, it's kind of a waste.
~Neil
http://www.dasiencomic.com/
I think that one Tenchi movie that Vita was trying to remember might be "Tenchi Forever". Of course there was that other film called "Daughter of Darkness" that was it's own thing outside the "Tenchi Universe" continuity.