From: pckyip@athena.mit.edu (Patrick C Yip)
Subject: Re: Urusei Yatsura popularity
Organization: Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Date: Tue, 7 Apr 1992 05:43:34 GMT

In article <1992Apr6.184858.1403@cbnewsl.cb.att.com> conty@cbnewsl.cb.att.com (Conty) writes:
>In article <4078@sumax.seattleu.edu>, kuo@sumax.seattleu.edu (Chih-Ping Kuo) writes:
>
>> > 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.  :-)

No in/outside, just as Kimagure as Madoka, so to speak.

>> > 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.

Both Chih-Ping Kuo and Conty have their points. I guess it's somewhere in
between, both Mendo and Ataru are quite alike, but they are also different
in many ways. One of the most interesting things is to see how SIMILAR and
how DIFFERENT they are under different situations. That's the attraction of
Urusei Yatsura. It's not easy to summarize them only with the said words
above. BTW actually I think Ataru is pretty smart in his way...

>> 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.

Where is Sakura's fiance? He appeared in many stories too.
And the three brats, Ginger, Pepper and Sugar? They were in the main role
 in quite a few stories..
And Megane's brother and parents? (oops forget his name, the baseball Samurai)
And Shingou, Mendou's secret bodyguard?
And Ataru's buddies in the class? (one of them with spots on his face)
And Ryunosuke's opposite, the boy who's just like a girl? (I keep forgetting
 male's names :p)
And the principal? Kotatsu Neko (effectively the vice-principal)?
And other teachers besides Onsen-Mark appeared occasionally too.
And there are Mendo's dad, Ten's mother and ....
And if you count the final chapter (which constitue one whole volume of manga)
as more than one stories, you have Karla and her finace (his name?)

There are more than 30!!!!

BTW Crow princess is Kurama hime. (I remember only beautiful female's names,
 see how perverted I am :p)

>> 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.

I think THIS is the main reason why UY couldn't catch on here. Although
UY is such a rich and fascinating universe, anime fans here effectively know
only the 5 movies that have been subtitled and that tiny portion of manga
that were translated. And people don't know the real stuff, having not read
the main stuff in the manga (that early part of manga really doesn't tell much
about what the manga's like in its mature stage). 

The manga isn't too difficult to get, but compared to many other titles 
38 volumes is quite a lot, I must agree.
It's kinda old because no new SUBBED or TRANSLATED stuff is coming to the 
fans here, not because it itself is old.
It isn't that esoteric.

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

UY episodes is kinda hard to find here, that means the best way to get into
UY is the manga.

>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).

For a "love" affair with the male as a girl hunter, such "open" ending is 
the norm. See how CityHunter ends....



<<Self-appointed High Priest of the Cult of Urd, Belldandy and Skuld>> :-)

Patrick YIP (a.k.a. YO^SHIGO^)   **the one who's more into MANGA than ANIME**
pcky@melange.lcs.mit.edu                   -<-r-    -   |             | |
pckyip@athena.mit.edu               + +      X     /T. E+B    X  =    I I
                                    @ @  ,  / \     |   |     \  &    * *
=====>> "AH, MY GODDESS!!" ======>> a a      me      gami    sa  ma