Sailing on a turtle

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While others are plowing through new shows like Clannad and Gundam 00, I have recently been watching some of of the old show “Urusei Yatsura” – a show that predates myself!

I was given “Beautiful Dreamer” the other day as a gift, the second Urusei Yatsura movie, and since I had read that it was a bad idea to watch it without any prior knowledge of the characters I first sat down and watched the first season of the TV anime. The show really is old, and to begin with I wasn’t really thrilled. It looked too much like Ranma½, the jokes seemed lame, and I was never very fond of the style used in anime back then. But I admit that the show grew on me with every episode. Especially after Mendou was introduced even I thought it was really funny at times – it just wouldn’t be the same without him. (As you might have guessed, he’s my favourite character so far ;))

And then I finally saw Beautiful Dreamer today. It’s a really weird movie. And I love that kind of weirdness. Things happen all the time, and it keeps surprising you as it sometimes feels as if it all ends and begins all over again. It is one of those things that remind you why you became interested in anime to begin with, how different they are compared to western animated movies and the way that they are told. At one point things got so strange and out-there that I wondered how on earth they would wrap things up without messing up. But they managed to after all.

The TV show is mostly a comedy, and there were plenty of laughing moments in the movie too. But at the same time there was always a sort of creepy atmosphere beneath it all, or at least I think so. Especially near the end there is a sequence of different scenes that Ataru has to go through – that was the first time ever I felt sorry for the guy 😉

As the theme of the story came apparent, I couldn’t help but think of Kagetsu Tohya (which I still haven’t finished *cough*) – they are actually very much alike in concept. Now I probably won’t be able to not think about Beautiful Dreamer when reading through the rest of KT.

With all the things happening in this movie, and all the little details, it can definitely be watched more than once – there are still a couple of things I am confused about, and other things I need to verify at certain points. All in all this movie wasn’t what I expected based on what little I knew about the series, and even what I knew after watching the first season. Maybe I should watch the other movies too – but I doubt they will be this good. Too bad that the danish dvd (the one I saw) isn’t of very impressive quality. Maybe I should find an import version somewhere, I heard one of them has a widescreen version….

I really recommend watching this if you haven’t already – but either watch or read through a good deal of the original material first to get to know the characters, it works better that way.

Now I just need to plow through the rest of the episodes released of the TV anime, and even the OVA. Whoa, there are a lot….

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