Urusei Yatsura/YMMV

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• Adaptation Displacement - The anime adaptation is sometimes more fondly remembered than the original manga, particularly the more surreal and experimental episodes and films (where director Mamoru Oshii started making a name for himself).
• Alternative Character Interpretation - The primary antagonist in the series is Lum. She's the one who assumed Ataru wanted to marry her (when all he said was "Now I can get married"), and basically intruded on every aspect of his life since due to that assumption. Sure, Ataru is a Jerkass, but he has a good point about wanting to enjoy the days of his youth and how he's the victim during his rant in the episode, "After You've Gone."
• Non Sequitur Scene - So very many. However, the most notable one occurs in Movie 3: Remember My Love. The orb which contains Lum's curse traps Lum and Ataru within its energies. We then see visions of fairy, dinosaur, and seagull versions of Lum and Ataru meeting and falling in love with one another. Not only does this scene have no bearing on the plot, but it also makes no sense even in the context of Lum and Ataru's predicament. And once it's over, it is never mentioned again.
  • Thanks to the Reset Button, there are countless Big Lipped Alligator Episodes.
• Ear Worm - Every single opening and ending theme.
• Ensemble Darkhorse - Lum, to the point that she actually supplanted the Official Couple.
  • Megane and company would also count in the anime. In the manga they are in the background a half-dozen or so times.
• Fan-Preferred Couple - Ataru/Lum, to the point where Takahashi was forced to make them the Official Couple.
• Germans Love David Hasselhoff- Inverted. The show's focus on Japanese puns and mythology has left it one of the least-known and loved Takahashi properties in the United States.
• Ho Yay: Thanks to a lipstick that draws the lips of the people using it together, Ataru and Mendou end up in a full-frontal smooch by mistake. Both are promptly disgusted: a dappya fish monster even offers the readers three panels to recover from this shock. The participants of the kiss think they require more.
• I Am Not Shazam
• Iron Woobie: Ryuunosuke.
• Jerkass Woobie: Ataru and Ran.
• Jumping the Shark - Averted. While the TV series did have a small handful of bad episodes, the series wasn't canceled because of the quality decreasing, but because the animators were very much burned out after animating 195 episodes and 4 movies without any major breaks between seasons. Sometimes they were working on the TV shows and movies at the same time!
  • The 6th movie may count, but it was made long after the series had concluded.
• Les Yay: Ryunosuke goes out with Ran...so she can learn about femininity from a Girly. Ataru actually tries to interfere to try and stop Ran from turning lesbian.
  • In the anime version of the "magnetic lipstick" story, Ryuunosuke accidentally has a kiss with Shinobu after they get daubed with the lipstick as well.
• Nightmare Fuel - "The Horror of Outraged Oyuki". Ran's afraid of her for a very good reason... The BGM especially amps things up.
  • "And Then There Were None" sends the gang to a desert island (over 20 years before "Deserted Island Syndrome") to be graphically killed off one by one. It was just a prank on Ataru, but still. (Funnily enough, this episode was ranked #2 in the penultimate episode's Top 10 countdown.)
  • Also, the department store marching band in Beautiful Dreamer.
• Relationship Sue - Possibly Inaba - arguably, this non-threatening Dogged Nice Guy serves only one purpose in the story: providing Shinobu with a proper Love Interest after she finally gives up on Mendou. Naturally, he comes in very late in the story.
• Spotlight-Stealing Squad: Lum. Played straight with Megane in the anime.
• Tear Jerker: Some of the most memorable moments in the series are these.
  • Ataru's class is raising caterpillars and, despite an overly large and ugly one eating all of the food, Ataru spends the entire episode working with Lum to keep the rest of the class from hurting it, believing it will become a beautiful butterfly. At the end, it turns out to be a fairy whose first words to Lum and Ataru are, "Mama! Papa! Thank you for believing in me."
  • In one season finale, Ataru mistakenly eats some food that Ran made for Rei that increased exponentially in size once inside the stomach, thus making him get incredibly sick. Lum enters an Alice in Wonderland-style realm to look for Ran to get an antidote, but Ataru's monitor flatlines before she does and Lum breaks down sobbing. Fortunately, Ataru got better and the monitor was simply unplugged on his end.
  • The most popular episode includes one as Ataru breaks down in tears in the middle of an alley, clutching a small doll that Lum left behind when she suddenly left town. While she simply had to renew her passport to continue living on earth, it's the first instance where Ataru demonstrates her truly loves Lum by how much he misses her.
  • Kitsune hears a fairy tale of a fox who defeats an oni to rescue a girl trapped inside of a picture. When Kitsune next visits Tomobiki, one of the first things he finds is a photo of Shinobu. Having never seen a photo before, Kitsune believes she's trapped in the picture and his reaction is just heartbreaking.