I am pretty sure this is a terrible idea but apparently Urusei☆Yatsura is back.
If you are not familiar with it, it’s an old manga and anime series from the early 80’s by Takahashi Rumiko, the female author who later penned Maison Ikkoku, Ranma½ and Inuyasha. The anime was a gigantic hit, launching the career of many legendary animators, such as Oshī Mamoru (Ghost in the Shell).
The plot is about a mercurial alien teenage girl, strong enough to destroy planets, who arrives on Earth and misunderstands that a complete loser from a random Japanese high-school has proposed to her, inadvertently leading him to save the world but also getting into all sorts of trouble between his dashed hopes to date the schoolmate he actually likes, the hijinks caused by his extremely temperamental self-proclaimed fiancée and the hefty expectations of the rest of Humanity. The tiger-striped bikini-clad heroine Lum (Lamu in some translations) is one of the most iconic babes in Japanese animation and overall Japanese pop culture.
I wonder if they’ll stick to the original series’ plot and/or insert the movies within the series. Somehow seems inconceivable to not include Beautiful Dreamer (the second movie) within the main story, given how influential it was in modern Japanese animation.
One thing I am disappointed about is that they did not use this opportunity to « fix » Lum’s hair and give it the outerworldish iridescent appearance it was supposed to have in the manga version. It’s just a more complex green than in the original anime.
This will surely make the Mediterranean West of Europe happy but it is interesting they did not go for Ranma½ which, as far as I understand, had reached a more mainstream following in North America.
I am assuming Maison Ikkoku would need such a rewrite (especially to comply with the modern US market’s sensibilities) that it’d be either impossible to adapt as a modern show or become a completely different show.