Urusei Yatsura

Episode 13

This episode is nothing but pure insanity and I kind of love it for that. There are no thematic throughlines, no real character development, and not even any romantic progression. Both of this episode's two parts are nothing but taking one joke or idea to the farthest possible extreme you can with these characters.

The first half is about teachers catching students who try to leave campus during lunch break to eat at other places. I don't know if this is an actual issue in Japan, but it doesn't matter because it's just a funny excuse to put all of the students and faculty against each other. Before this point, we've only really seen Ataru's homeroom teacher, the principal, and the large cat the principal is seen with, so it's nice to see a bit more of the faculty alongside more of the student body actually working together. I know we tend to stick with the usual main players, but this episode shows that letting the background characters get involved can lead to some pretty hilarious antics. Also, this might be the only episode where I think everyone legitimately respects Ataru and follows his lead. I guess it just kind of goes to show that he can be very capable when he's not acting like a total sleaze.

The second half of this episode is just Ten inadvertently fucking with everybody, even if he didn't mean to. Last week I thought Ten was just going to be this kid who acts as another obstacle to Artaru's life in order to make things more difficult while also being an excuse to tone down some of Lum's aggressiveness. While that might end up still being true, Ten is also just as capable of screwing with everybody else. Seeing Shinobu use stuff like destiny as an excuse to get with Sakura's fiancé was hilarious. In fact, Sakura's fiancé was probably one of the funnier parts of this half of the episode despite the fact that he only has like four lines. He just shows up and he's just going along with what everybody is doing even though he clearly has no idea what everyone is talking about. I think the joke is supposed to be that he's just sort of there and it's really funny despite how subtle it is. I am curious about the post-credits scene of this episode about Ten ordering something else from that online website. I'm not sure if that's supposed to lead to something else or if it's just sort of a one-off gag about how Ten didn't really learn anything from the situation that he inadvertently caused. Either way, this is a standalone comedy episode in its purest sense and when the show unabashedly leans in that direction, it's delightful.

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