An odd one this, it feels a little like an earlier episode. While it has one title, it’s definitely two stories, and Mendou is completely absent from the first half. An unused script perhaps?
Both stories involve Ataru, Shinobu, Lum and the Stormtroopers on a school picnic.
In the first half Ataru rescues a dehydrated Kappa and is taken to an underwater palace for a reward. It plays out like Urashima Taro but with out the time slip. And more electrocution.
In the second Mendou appears and suggests that they go exploring a limestone cavern. Ataru plans to use it to get alone with Shinobu, Mendou plans to use it to get alone with Lum, Shinobu plans to use it to get alone with Mendou and Lum plans to use it to get alone with Ataru.
This being UY, first the girls manage to get their plan to work. And in their second attempt Mendou and Ataru end up in an embrace, lost and separated from the girls.
This situation gives us insight into Mendou’s fatal flaws! For he is both claustrophobic and scotophobic (fear of the dark), however his incredible pride allows him to overcome them when women are watching him. Soon they meet up with the girls again, and they realise they are all lost.
When they find a trail of empty cans they follow them and find a space ship with an alien in a cryogenic asleep. And a load of full cans of food. However they can’t find a can opener. There’s some malarkey with them getting the cans open, but once they eat the alien food they become too fat to get out the ship, and without a way out of the ship and indeed the script, they end the episode on a terrible pun.
Phew, this episode is rather weak, particularly coming of the last episode. Outside of the business involving Mendou’s fears, the stories just feel flimsy and aimless. I suspect these were quite close adaptations of actual manga stories as they feel like they’d work better in that format.
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Yu Yamamoto wrote the episode, storyboards were by Mamoru Oshii, direction by Masuji Harada, and animation direction by both Hayao Nobe and Yuji Yatabe.
I stated on episode 17 that I thought Harada and/or Yatabe were weak, and the good news is this was the last UY episode either would work on (though some of their work would appear in flashbacks/clip episodes). This further suggests that this was a hold over from the last production batch.