Shutaro Mendou arrives and the series kicks it up a notch.
The first story deals with the arrival at Tomobiki High of Shutaro Mendou.
Mendou is the heir to the Mendou Comglomerate and he’s enrolling at this school to prove himself a leader of men and inspiration to others. He’s rich, handsome, well mannered, everything Ataru isn’t.
Or so it appears.
In fact he’s only polite to the girls in 2-4, to the boys he threatens imprisonment, torture, and machine-gunning. When he runs for class president the boys force Ataru to run against him.
When the voting ends in a draw we get to see that it’s not just Mendou Shutaro making an impact this episode, animator Masahito Yamashita is too. He animates an insane duel between Ataru and Mendou, that you can see at 1:42 in this video:
That and the earlier parachuting scene blow away anything we’ve seen so far in the series in terms of movement and staging.
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In the second story the thin line between Ataru and Mendou is drawn.
Time and time again the show will return to the idea that, outside of their upbringing, Ataru and Mendou (and as we shall see in later episodes… Ten) are very similar in their behaviour.
This similarity is laid down straight away in this episode about horoscopes, where Lum’s spaceship computer determines that Mendou is her ideal match. And at the same time Shinobu uses her horoscope to determine that Mendou is a great match for her, because he’s an Aries (born on April Fools day!).
However Ataru then reveals that he too is an Aries, shattering the girls faith in horoscopes, particularly when the description for Aries seems far more descriptive of Ataru than the seemingly well mannered Mendou.
So, Lum breaks out some Extra-Terrestrial horoscope apparatus, shrinks the two of them and tests their compatibility with her. Eventually, on Libra, she determines they are both as idiotic as each other, and she should just pick who she likes – Ataru. This upsets the girls of 2-4 and they enter the machine too, closely followed by the boys. Then the thing breaks.
And they all end up turned into constellations.
The final word is left to Mr & Mrs Moroboshi who are now much happier that their son has been turned into stars.
The presence of Mendou really changes the dynamic, he’s not a villain like Megane tends to be, but he is a real rival for Ataru. To Ataru, he’s a genuine threat to Lum’s affections, which he now doesn’t want to lose (even if the reasons why are less than noble). Likewise he’s a threat to Shinobu’s affections too. We’ll see her move from being Ataru’s girlfriend who’s had her boyfriend stolen by Lum, to being Mendou’s girlfriend. Not much of an improvement for her, but it makes Lum and Ataru more sympathetic than they are in those early episodes.
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Yu Yamamoto writes both stories, Mamoru Oshii directs and storyboards, Asami Endo is the animation director.
Tameo Kohanawa directs and storyboards the second story. Yuji Yatabe was on animation direction.
The gulf in animation quality between the two stories is huge. Even taking out the Yamashita scenes, Oshii/Endo are miles ahead of Kohananwa/Yatabe. Kohanawa doesn’t direct that many of the Pierrot episodes so I wonder if those are where the workload’s being picked up by other people in Pierrot who aren’t necessarily the main UY staff.