The GHZ Forum

So, there it is. It only cost 15,000 yen, which is exorbitant even by the exorbitant standards of Japanese DVD prices. I really thought I'd evolved beyond this kind of frivolous spending, but what choice did I have but to relapse? There is absolutely no justification for a grown, college-educated adult to drop the equivalent of a hundred and fifty bucks on 75 minutes of entertainment that doesn't involve a prostitute - especially considering there's only 25 of those minutes I'm even interested in. But what choice did I have?


Now I face a new dilemma. There's 25 minutes of new Urusei Yatsura in that box. The first new Lum animation in almost 20 years. I want to watch it. And I will. But then what? What's left? What motivation do I have to continue living beyond that point? Is there any? I'm not sure.


Most people are afforded the comfort of not knowing the exact day and minute of their deaths. But here on my apartment floor sits a 25-minute countdown. A 25 minute chess match with Death himself, a game I am destined to lose. All I have to do is start it. And start it I eventually must.


What choice do I have?

Maybe you can cheat death by leaving one minute unwatched. Kind of like how Homer tricked the Devil Flanders (for a time) in that one Simpsons episode...

Well, at least when you're dead you won't feel guilty about spending 15,000¥ on animu.

You can always pretend you'll live until the next 25 minutes of Urusei Yatsura will be made.

Or you can break the law and read doujinshis.

I have no idea what the fuck you're talking about.

Maybe if you watch it it won't be as good as your unrealistic hopes have blown it up to be, and then you can move on with your life?

Or maybe you'll just kill yourself anyway out of disappointment. Iono.

Buy it.

Buy the everloving fuck out of it.

(then rip it onto your computer, subtitle it into English, and send it my way, lolz)

Maybe if you watch it it won't be as good as your unrealistic hopes have blown it up to be, and then you can move on with your life?

Oh, that was never a concern. Urusei Yatsura, for me, is on an ethereal plane beyond all notions of good and bad. I could watch 6 straight hours of Ataru eating gyuudon and I'd be perfecly content and entertained. It's become kind of like breathing for me. The bottom line is that

I HAVE WATCHED IT.

AND IT WAS AWESOME.

I didn't catch all of the dialogue, but it's mainly action anyway (Oshii was definitely nowhere around). The short of it is that it's swim meet day at Tomobiki high school, but everyone is baffled when the competitions begin in the gym rather than the swimming pool. They have to run an obstacle course around the school to get to the pool, and the whole place has been laced with booby traps, such as a giant, labyrinthine water slide maze with only one route that leads to the pool - the others lead to far less pleasant scenarios.

When the survivors make it to the pool (Ataru cheats), they find they have to play a rather anticlimactic game of pool basketball - except that the ball is a bomb. More madness follows, there's giant snakes and aliens and strange creatures and Sakura's fishing injured students out of the pool with a rod & reel and Ryuunosuke's running from her maniacal father whose trying to get her to wear men's swim trunks and Cherry falls into the pool and gets mistaken for an octopus and Kotatsu Neko farts alot and then eventually Lum fries Ataru and inadvertently everyone else in the pool. The prize is a Dappya statue and a kiss from the principal (which nobody wants), so everyone makes a deliberate effort to lose. Of course it ends with a tank battle and the whole school gets encased in ice. Every base has been covered!

Almost everyone in the recurring cast gets a speaking role - even Ataru's parents and Sugar, Ginger, and Pepper. They even found a part for Ryoko Mendou! Sadly, Megane and Lum's stormtroopers don't have speaking roles, but they do each have background cameos. Kousuke, Ataru's friend from the comic who is usually represented by Perm in the old anime, has a speaking role - the first time he's ever been animated. The only voice that was definitely different was Ryuunosuke's father.



So yeah, my life once again has absolutely (absolutely) no purpose or meaning and as I stare into the vast existential nothingness before me I can feel my life energy slipping away. With luck, I'll be dead before dawn. Give all my games to charity. Tell Mom I love her.

Green Gibbon! wrote:The only voice that was definitely different was Ryuunosuke's father.

So yeah, my life once again has absolutely (absolutely) no purpose or meaning and as I stare into the vast existential nothingness before me I can feel my life energy slipping away. With luck, I'll be dead before dawn. Give all my games to charity. Tell Mom I love her.

He didn't yell out "Masako", did he?

No, but he did scream "Umi ga sukiii!"

You can still rebuy it on Blu-ray when it shows up.

And then wait another 20 years for new stuff, like some people said above.

So you better keep yourself alive until then. :)

I've actually been binging on UY for the past couple of weeks. I'm about 140-something episodes and 3 movies in. I was a bit worried when they changed directors to Yamazaki but they actually managed to improve on it in a lot of ways. I think a lot of my favorite episodes are post-Oshii, but that might be because they're fresher in my mind.

That said, I'm a little disappointed Megane and company don't have speaking roles, but at least they acknowledged them in the background. Here's hoping someone rips this onto the internet some time soon.

Protodude wrote:That said, I'm a little disappointed Megane and company don't have speaking roles, but at least they acknowledged them in the background.

Shit, I totally missed this. Having a UY reunion and not having Megane yell out LAAAAAAAAAAAAAMUUUUUUUUUUU is the equivalent of an aborted fetus. Next you're gonna tell me Mendo doesn't yell MOROBOSHEEEEEE either.

Download it like every other weaboo. Is it an English edition or can I assume you speak Japanese to some degree.

Gibbon lives in Japan.

Allegedly.

I stopped surfing this community in the early-mid 2000s, so I'm assuming it happened somewhere in between. So, what are you doing over there? I could have sworn you were a skinny white guy.

Neo wrote:Shit, I totally missed this. Having a UY reunion and not having Megane yell out LAAAAAAAAAAAAAMUUUUUUUUUUU is the equivalent of an aborted fetus. Next you're gonna tell me Mendo doesn't yell MOROBOSHEEEEEE either.

Yeah I know, it's totally gay. Megane and the stormtroopers are hardly Takahashi's characters, they were fleshed out by the animation staff, and I'm under the impression that Takahashi never really liked them. So they always get ejected these days. But even if Megane proper can't appear, you'd think they could've at least found some kind of cameo for Shigeru Chiba. They sure the hell got everyone else in there.

So, what exactly was it that inspired you to create a Sonic fansite over an Urusei Yatsura fansite? I'm getting the vibe that it was a duty grudgingly performed as recompense for some terrible misdeed that you're no longer obligated to uphold.

Look, in 1997 Sonic was awesome.

I've been on the internet for too long...

Delphine wrote:Look, in 1997 Sonic was awesome.

Sonic R? Maybe you're right... Way better than the most recent spin-off games...

The GHZ was created in 1997.

Did the internet already exist back then?!

I feel old.