The last Masaki Tsuji scripted episode is another belter.
Fed up with Ataru’s girl chasing, Lum decides to travel back in time and use Pavlovian training to mould him into a better human being. It’s probably worth mentioning that she travels through time via a cup of tea, just in case you wanted to replicate the experiment at some future date.
She first meets a younger Cherry (looking exactly the same) and Sakura as a schoolgirl. Then she finds the 7 year old Ataru coming out of school. She follows him as he follows some older schoolgirls around and meets up with Shinobu to play house. Lum then attaches a doll to Ataru’s head, which electrocutes him whenever he touches another woman.
Meanwhile in the present day, Ataru finds the time tea and follows Lum to the past. Ataru overhears Lum explaining her plan to the young Ataru and plans to put a stop to it. However Lum’s pland doesn’t seem to have much effect on the young Ataru as he still persistantly chases women. Ataru meets the pair on the roof the shopping centre and swaps the doll with one he stole from the young Shinobu. And then promptly gets the electocuting doll stuck to his own head.
Ataru chases Lum to get the doll off his head, running right through the photo his parents are having taken in front of their new home. They then swear to never have children like Ataru and Lum.
Occasionally stiff early on in the animation, once we get to the time travel it loosens up and there’s a lot of fun character stuff seeing the younger versions of a lot of the cast (the Stormtroopers also show up during it), not to mention the conditioned reflex-based silliness.
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Motosuke Takahashi returns to storyboarding UY with this episode (last seen on ep. 16).
Kozima Tamiko directs and Asami Endo returns to the animation director chair for the first of three straight episodes.