From: conty@cbnewsl.cb.att.com (Conty)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.anime
Subject: Re: Urusei Yatsura popularity
Date: 6 Apr 92 18:48:58 GMT
Organization: AT&T Bell Laboratories

In article <4078@sumax.seattleu.edu>, kuo@sumax.seattleu.edu (Chih-Ping Kuo) writes:
> >>Unfortunately, there don't seem to be all that many UY fans anymore.  :-(
> 
> they are just hybernating, there is not much to talk about UY when no
> new materials had come out that warrant discussions.
> 
> > 1) There's too much of it for completists to get ahold of it all, unless
> > you're a very rich completist.
> 
> I don't think the core of the UY universe (34 manga books +6 movies) are
> that much to handle.  The TV series and OAV series, beyond a few, are
> simply adaptation of the manga.

That IS a lot of stuff to buy, regardless.

> > 2) It's old.  Well, by anime standards.  Most of the stuff that gets
> > the most attention in fandom these days is less than 10 years old.  UY is
> > older than that, right.

Well, the original manga series started in '78 or thereabouts.  There even
are disco references in one of the early stories.

The UY TV series started in late 1981 (according to my Anime Timeline).

> > 3) It's esoteric.  I have to realize that I will never completely understand
> > the humor in UY, and that the humor that is explained to me I won't find
> > funny.  I wonder if the know-it-all's on the net, who love to show off their
> 
> I am no Japanese, but I have no problem understand most things in the UY
> universe.  puns helps, but if you don't understand them, you simply only
> enjoy the rest of the humor, not all of it.

Agreed!!!

> I have no problem w/ people explaining the puns of UY, I think they
> shall be encourage to share more of their knowledge, not trying to tell
> them to stop for fear of discourage people from getting into UY.
> 
> beside, is puns like Megane, Chibi, Perm, Ataru, Sakuran that hard to 
> understand?

Yes, if you don't know a word of Japanese.

What's the pun in "Ataru"?  Seriously.

> > Lum -- control-freak-bitch on the outside, loving, caring, woman inside
> 
> all of her characteristics are really on the outside.  Lum doesn't have
> another dark/shadow side of her.

It's not a "dark" side.  It's that her character is not one-dimensional.
She can be all sweetness and light, or she can be a domineering b*tch.
It's them alien moods.  :-)

> > Ataru -- Lecherous nerd out, perfectly honorable gentleman inside.
> 
> think about Dan Fielding of Night Court, then you have a perfect
> fix for the earlier Ataru prototype

By Jove!!  I think you've got it!!

> > Mendo -- Ataru's exact opposite: honorable gentleman outside, petty jerk
> > inside.
> 
> actually, Mendo and Ataru are really more alike to each other, just Mendo
> is born in a rich family and a little handsomer, and Ataru can do EVERYTHING
> a little better than Mendo in school

No, I still agree with Ryan.  At a first glance, Ataru is a girl-chasing
jerk, while Mendo is the smooth gentleman.  No wonder most of the girls in
Ataru's class (including Shinobu) have fallen for him one time or another.

But dig a little deeper into their personalities.  Ataru has proven himself
to be dependable if the going gets tough, while Mendo's ultimate concern
is to prove that he's better than Ataru.

> on your desire for someone to subtitle the shows where new characters are
> introduced.  since my list for UY characters are more than 100+, w/ at
> least 20-30 can be consider the core characters (appear more than once)
> it will be a big jobs, and not everyone have the LD set wants to do the
> dub anyway.

A core character is a character that appears more than once?  Huh?
No, the core character list for UY is less than 20.  You'd need 20 or
so stories to cover them all, and that's counting two-parters as separate
stories.

Let's see:
	Ataru		Shinobu		Ataru's Parents
	Lum		Rei		Lum's Parents
	Megane and Co.	Mendo		Ryoko
	Ryunosuke	her dad		Onsen-Mark
	Benten		Ran		Oyuki
	Sakura		Cherry		the Crow princess
	Jari-Ten	Inaba-Kun

20 exact, and I KNOW I'm stretching it.

> my recommendation? get the original manga, easily available, essentually
> provide 90%+ of the same storys from TV and OAV with little variations.
> the only things that are not on manga and deviated greatly from the manga
> style is the 5 movies (1,2,3,4,6)  they and the OAV are much easier to obtain
> than the TV series.

You're only confirming Ryan's argument.  Neither one of us can read/speak
Nihongo, so the manga series is not "accessible" to us.

If you need to do this to "get" UY (which I don't think is true), it's no
wonder there are so few UY fans.  :-/

P.S.  The so-called "cliffhanger" ending for UY is not.  The last manga story
(which became the fifth UY film) has a more-or-less open ending, but it is
by no means a "cliffhanger".  It doesn't have the "closed" ending of MAISSON
IKKOKU (Godai and Kyoko get married), but it has an ending (of sorts).
-- 
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			      jester@ihlpl.att.com
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