I'm Lum-chan the Notorious! (うわさのラムちゃんだっちゃ!, Uwasa no Ramu-chan Daccha!?) and It's Raining Oil All Over Town (町に石油の雨がふる, Machi ni Sekiyu no Ame ga Furu?) are the two segments of the 1st episode of Urusei Yatsura, which is also the first of Rumiko Takahashi's manga series to be animated.
Summary[]
- a
Ataru Moroboshi, an unlovely flirtatious boy, has been chosen to fight an invading alien force's champion in a 10-day game of tag. If he loses the aliens will invade Earth, but if he wins, the aliens will go home. Ataru isn't at all willing to play tag until he sees the alien's champion: the beautiful Lum.
- b
A group of admirers of Lum try to summon her UFO back to Earth, using Ataru as bait, but instead they get an intergalactic taxi that takes them though subspace, and the fare for the taxi is the value of all the oil on the planet.
Plot Overview[]
- a
Ataru angry at Cherry for him making fun of Ataru’s face.
The episode opens with a baseball match. A ball flies off into the distance where it hits a boy named Ataru Moroboshi, drooling at a passing female. Ataru is a brown haired man, who seems interested in every girl that passes. Ataru mentions about how it must be an unlucky day. A short monk is passing at that time. He mentions how Ataru has a horrible face and how he has ‘’tremendously unlucky facial features’’. After Ataru has beaten him up, the monk warns him of the danger ahead but is ignored. A car of darkly dressed men then pull up next to Ataru and kidnap him, mysteriously taking him back to his own house.
Mr. Invader introduces Lum to Ataru.
Inside, Shinobu Miyake, Ataru’s current “girlfriend”, Ataru’s parents and the darkly dressed men introduce him to a large Oni called Mr. Invader. The Oni explains their intention to invade earth. To give the humans a chance, though, they rest the result on a game of tag between a randomly chosen human and an Oni. The randomly chosen human turns out to be Ataru, and has 10 days to win. If Ataru wins, the aliens go home. If Ataru loses, the aliens invade Earth. Ataru is reluctant to participate in this game until the opponent Oni appears, the beautiful Lum. Lum is Mr. Invader's daugther, and she's wearing very little, which excites Ataru from the prospect of having to touch her to win the game as he must capture her horns to win the game of tag, much to Shinobu's anger.
Ataru falling from a pole.
On the first day of the competition, Ataru is initially confident until he finds out that Lum can fly. Over the days, he tries many different tricks to capture her, such as poles and jetpacks, each of them failing and ending in Ataru being carried away by paramedics.
The night before the tag game is over.
On the night before the last day, Ataru's Mother and Father are watching a news report, showing how nobody believes Ataru will win the game of tag and that if Ataru loses, he and his family should be executed. Ataru's mother breaks down crying shouting “We never should have had him”. Meanwhile, Ataru and Shinobu are in Ataru’s room, where he is worrying about the next day. Shinobu tells Ataru that if he wins, she will marry him as she won’t be able to stand him being a loser for life.
Ataru successes steal Lum's upper outfit, making Lum feel nervous.
On the last day, Ataru steals Lum’s upper outfit, and as an enraged Lum tries to retrieve it, Ataru grabs her horns, winning the game of tag. Ataru then smiles and talks to himself about how he is going to get married. Lum hears this statement and says she will marry him. She explains that on her planet, marriage proposals are sacred and that she will dedicate her life to living with him forever. Lum then calls Ataru ‘darling’, and tells him about how if he cheats on her he will get electrocuted. “This is fate.” Says the short monk, who is standing next to a very angry Shinobu.
- b
At Tomobiki High School, four students watch a film of Ataru’s victory over Lum, then bemoan the fact that she’s been off Earth for a week to take care of her paperwork. They announce the formation of “The Committee to Bring Lum Back to Earth” and that they have a beaten and shackled Ataru to use as bait (he was captured attempting to flee the country in Lum’s absence). They say they’ll do anything to see Lum again, and bring in a member of the Torture Research Club to prove it (apparently they go to the school from Bible Black). Ataru retorts that it can’t be as bad as Lum’s lightning. Shinobu breaks in to convince Ataru not to call Lum back, but Megane, the leader, changes his mind by bribing him with the promise of cheating on tests and introducing him to the hottest student at the nearby girl’s school. As Ataru tells Shinobu: “Shut up! Who cares about the future? I’m living in the pleasure of this particular moment!”, she breaks free and advances on Ataru while the others tremble in terror.
We cut with no real explanation to Ataru suspended on a rope from the school’s clock tower. The five male students hold hands and dance in a circle, and chant something like “Ventura ventura, space people!” (The first word is unclear, and the manga went with “Bentora” there, but the “space people” is in English.) Abruptly an unfamiliar UFO appears and sucks them aboard. They panic at the sight of the (rather friendly-looking) alien, and Ataru demands to go home.
The UFO winks out and reappears above Ataru’s house, dropping them on the roof. The alien demands that they pay their fare, explaining that he’s a space taxi driver, and for the half-mile trip from the school to Ataru’s house, they owe 3.8 mega-credits, or roughly the value of all the oil on the planet. Since Ataru refuses to pay, the Space Taxi Union appears and starts siphoning up oil from everywhere on earth, from desert wells to cans in peoples’ storerooms.
The news reveals that “the notorious Moroboshi Ataru” is responsible, and a knock comes on the Moroboshi’s door, which they take to be an incoming lynch mob. It turns out to be Lum, to Ataru’s consternation and the others’ delight. A negotiator explains that Lum has agreed to pay the debt, but only on the condition that she be allowed to live with Ataru, as a married couple. Mr. Moroboshi and Megane insist that he agree for the sake of the Earth, but he refuses, driving Lum to tears. The other students begin stomping on Ataru until he gives in, prompting the first “Darling!” electro-hug. She agrees to pay with an electro-crystal, and the cabbie says the oil will be returned within a week.
Cut to a week later, when it’s been raining oil continuously, and someone trying to smoke in public gets ruthlessly stomped by a passerby and the Dappya alien. We end with Ataru (under an umbrella) attempting to explain the situation to Shinobu while literally carrying Lum on her back, and her fans called Lum's Stormtroopers charge up from behind, trying to get her attention.
Cast[]
| Character | Voice actor |
|---|---|
| Lum | Fumi Hirano |
| Ataru Moroboshi | Toshio Furukawa |
| Shinobu Miyake | Shimazu Saeko |
| Cherry | Nagai Ichirou |
| Ataru's Father | Kenichi Ogata |
| Ataru's Mother | Sakuma Natsumi |
| Man In Black | Chiba Kouichi |
| Lum's Father | Sawa Ritsuo |
| Megane | Shigeru Chiba |
| Perm | Akira Murayama |
| Kakugari | Shinji Nomura |
| Chibi | Issei Futamata |
| Space Taxi Driver | Kimotsuki Kaneta |
Trivia[]
- In the BBC dub Lum the Invader Girl, the segments have been retitled to My Name is Lum! and Return of the Invader Girl!.
- In the same dub, any scene that displays Lum's nipples is zoomed in to censor them.
- This is the only episode of the series where it is dubbed in all of the english dubs.
- The hot babes of Butsumetsu High School mentioned in the second segment would later on appear in episodes 10, 64 and 91.
- In Episode 193.5, the first segment was ranked as #10.
Differences from the Manga[]
- a
The general plot outline is the same but the details are different. This includes:
- Ataru receiving a slap from Shinobu rather than being hit by a baseball at the beginning. Shinobu still slapped Ataru in the opening theme though.
- The military aren't involved.
- Cherry pops up a lot more often and reveals his name already (he reveals his name in Episode 3a).
- Ataru has a longer string of failures in managing to grab Lum's horns, until on the eighth day he accidentally snags her bikini top (by hand). She comes to his house that evening to demand it back; the next day, her maneuverability is reduced by her arms crossed over her chest, but not enough for Ataru to succeed. The final day, Shinobu shouts out that she'll marry Ataru if he wins, and that gives him the motivation to lure Lum in with her top and then grab her. In the anime though, in the final day, Ataru snatches Lum's upper outfit by using a gun and manages to grab her horns as she tries to get her outfit back.
- Essentially, the anime version streamlines the plot considerably.
- b
- The two are pretty similar, apart from the role of Lum's Stormtroopers.
- Explanation: The manga has a number of generic male students comprising Lum's Fan Club, but the anime chose to replace them with four specific, named characters who don't appear as such in the manga. They proved so popular that they wound up taking scenes from other characters.
- There's less material with the other students in the beginning.
- Megane mentions Butsumetsu High School which is not mentioned until much later in the manga.
- The manga follows Ataru directly, without the cutaways to the news.
- Mr. Moroboshi offers to sell the entire Earth to the cabbie, in exchange for taking them somewhere else.
Quotes[]
- a
- “Sorry to keep you waiting! I'm your opponent, Lum!” – Lum
- “We never should have had him” – Ataru's Mother
- “On my planet, marriage proposals are sacred.” - Lum
Gallery[]
