SummaryCritique
(Always my Darling)
Personal Critique
2.5 stars (of 5)
Pretty good by anime standards in general but utterly dissapointing from an Urusei Yatsura movie (and I use the term lightly). Even though it's called Urusei Yatsura and has Urusei Yatsura chracters, this didn't feel like Urusei Yatsura. It was more like they took another anime and stuck in a pile of brutally butchered UY used-to-bees.
Ataru wasn't acting in character in this movie. He just was so one-demensional. The movie called for him to be the most lecherous man in the universe, and that's all he was. Ataru's such a fascinating head case that there's so many levels to his corrupted personality. I just hated him being represented as nothing more than a lech. The other characters were similarily compromised for the sake of the story. Most of them would just come on, do their little routines and leave. The movie focused too much time on the characters of Lupica and Rio (who were both pretty uninteresting) and so little time on the actual UY characters.
Although the character designs were more modern looking, and very similar to the Ranma 1/2 designs, I didn't like it at all. It just doesn't suit Urusei Yatsura.
The storyline was very weak. I can tell that when creating the story, the creators borrowed almost every one of the movie's ideas from Takahshi's manga, only altering it to make them seem different. But it didn't work well. The whole thing was kind of stupid and pointless. Granted I did enjoy it somewhat, and most people will. But a lot of diehard UY fans, like me, see it as an insult to the series.
This is a not a good movie with which to introduce anyone to UY. This was an attempt to squeeze more money out of the old UY cash cow even when it had been decided that the series was officially over. It's not a bad film at all, but it's mediocre at best. Give it a try, but don't take it too seriously.