In this first episode Mendou is showing off a vintage camera, one of his family heirlooms. When he takes a photo of Lum, Ataru and Shinobu, Ataru disappears.
The camera it turns out sends people into fictional worlds, and soon Ataru is hitting on a women such as Cinderella, Juliet and Cleopatra as they repeated use the camera to try and get him back.
Eventually Shinobu has had enough and smashes the camera, which causes Ataru to get trapped on a raft in the middle of the ocean. Everyone agrees it’s best to leave him there for a while until he learns his lesson.
Not a great story, the idea is sound but the animation doesn’t live up to it. In fact it’s some of the worst in the series so far.
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However the second one is a big improvement.
We open with Ataru jogging early in the morning, however this is simply a new way to chase women. Then on his way to school he spots a 100Yen coin on the ground, and while retrieving it breaks the fall off a woman trying to commit suicide. He’s proclaimed a hero.
Later, he makes a fool of Mendou and to settle it they have a tennis match that Mendou loses easily. Further surprise is to be had when Ataru is humble in victory and delivers a noble winners speech to his defeated classmate.
However when he makes a V for Victory sign with his hand, a devil appears. On a moped, with a pink dog in a little trailer.
It turns out that Ataru’s jogging route matches the devil’s insignia and he’s accidentally sold his soul. When he made a V-sign, the initial of the the devil Velial, the devil returned to claim his soul.
Ataru is, of course, stubborn and bites Velial’s hand when he tries to shove it down Ataru’s throat to get the soul. And then he starts to shove his own hand in Velial’s mouth to steal HIS soul.
At which point everyone decides this is stupid, leaves and the episode ends.
Far better animation, especially the tennis scene. While it’s very much a parody of sports anime & manga, still executes those cliches very well. And the whole thing flows better too. Definitely one of my favourite early stories.
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Hiroyuki Hoshiyama wrote both stories.
The first story had storyboard & direction by Masuji Harada and animation direction from Yuji Yatabe.
Mamoru Oshii was storyboard/director on the second story, with Hayao Nobe on animaton director duties.
I’m edging toward Masuji Harada and/or Yuji Yatabe not being that good compared to some of the of the other creators working on the show. Like episode 13, their interpretation of Hiroyuki Hoshiyama’s script here isn’t as good as the effort made by the team on the other half of the episode.