Anime: Urusei Yatsura 3: My Love 6im1l

Can ing love be so random?

This is the third movie installment in the ever popular Urusei Yatsura series. As always they do not have any plot continuity, however, if you haven't seen at least 1/4 of the TV series I would not recommend you to watch this movie or read this review.

The plot is a straight forward in this movie, Lum gets a cursed put on her, and through a series of random events gets captured. It is then up to Ataru and friends to figure out why and a way to save her, "ish". As always the plot isn't quite important, although, I must it the incoherent set of events is showcased quite nicely in a bad way.

Overall the movie follows what I've grown to love in Urusei, and do think it is a good addition to the series.

Ratings

Animation They made things that beautiful?
It obviously isn't the best thing I've ever seen, but compared to the series and other things in its time, its well AMAZING. Even for today's standards it can for a half decent movie, which really says something about the current state of things :S.

Backgrounds
They have very nice and detailed backdrops and scenery throughout the movie. From the distorted space time travel, to the multiple dimensions, to even the amusement park and city landscapes. The movie is taken place in many different places and they did NOT skimp on putting the detail in each place.

Motion
This was also top notch. They had quite a few chase scenes and random objects exploding as always, these were all done quite cleanly and looked believable. Even the electrical shocks from Lum were given the proper detail to make them look like real lightening bolts shot out of her hands.

Character sets
They use the same ones as always, but in the movie they are much cleaner and balanced at all times. You really rarely see the characters get distorted or look wrong from different angles. They also have a nice variety of the adult and kids versions of the characters that also stay consistent.

Sound Weird 80's music with English Lyrics?
The sound was, well it worked fine. I'm a big fan of many of the TV series themes, however the ones used in this movie did not have the same charm.

OST
Its the same sort of music and sound effects used in the series. Not much to discuss here.

Voice Acting
The voice acting also remains the same, I.e. Hirano Fumi reprises her role as Lum, Furukawa Toshi keeps the role of Ataru and etc. etc. They continue the great work from the series, such that really after a while you get soo used to the same annoying squeals and nagging.

Theme songs
The only thing I can really rate and discuss is the songs used in the film. They choose some weird English songs with lyrics about love. The only problem is, its a Japanese singer singing and you can easily hear the Japanese accent come through. I have nothing against Japanese people singing English songs, just it really doesn't sound good at all. That and trying to set such a lovey dovey mood doesn't really fit my personal visualization of Urusei.

Story
If I were to only take the story into consideration, the movie felt had the feel of a few episodes from the TV series. Since it does get broken down into separate parts that could very well of been individual stories. So you might ask well why is the rating low? The major problem is more the lack of a comprehensible story. You can't really try to understand anything that happens, because its just not possible. I mean if you just ONLY take the premise of the story its already ridiculous enough: An old witch curses Lum, because she isn't invited to her being born party: The curse makes her get separated from the one she loves.

Characters
As always any development made with the characters are always reset, so really should I even consider giving a rating here? Well just for this movie alone they try really hard to show love and attachment to friends and family. In some sense it was successful. However, really I don't feel as if putting such a serious tone and drama really fits this series? I don't, but for some reason the movies have all had much more serious tones and issues. Anyways, for the actual rating itself, I feel that the typical and unoriginal development merits the mark I gave it. Otherwise I would of loved to not given a rating at all.

Value and Enjoyment
I probably would never re-watch this movie again. Although I do think they have some cliched messages to say in the movie which give it some value. Having said that I DID enjoy this movie, since it still is Urusei. The funny thing is I really didn't enjoy this series that much when I first started watching it, but as I watched more it definitely has gotten me hooked. Its safe to say I'm a big Lum er and find this movie and the series itself to be hilarious. Having said that hope you all think the same and give this movie a go :).