Short post again, as I’ve been busy today.
Ten’s horn falls off his head during a fight with Ataru causing Ten to lose his powers.
When Ataru throws it out the window it ends up in the hands of the vengeful Ran, who after stopping for a self-pitying flashback or two, begins plotting, in the mistake belief that it’s Lum’s horn that is fallen off. I think this is first time we get a flashback to when Lum and Ran were little kids and we see Lum would always cause trouble and Ran would get the blame.
Ran delivers an ointment to Lum to rub on where the horn’s fallen off. However instead of a horn growing back on Ten’s head, a cactus grows instead. Ten is ashamed and hides it from Lum, so he goes around town with Ataru, who spends most the day trying to humiliate him.
Meanwhile Ran invites Lum out thinking that it is Lum who will be embarrassed. However when Lum shows up unaffected, Ran panics and runs away. Just in time to bump in the similarly chased Ataru, who is being persued by the now re-horned Ten…
Visually this episode is odd. The character designs look slightly different, there’s lots of blink an you’ll miss them visual gags, strange visual metaphors and the backgrounds are different too. For instance we see the Moroboshi house at a completely different angle to the shots established so far into the show.
It’s still a well animated episode, but there’s just enough off about it compared to the preceding episodes to be noticeable.
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Related to the slightly different visual style is the fact that this is the first episode directed and storyboarded by Kazuo Yamazaki (Maison Ikkoku, Five Star Stories). Yamazaki would go onto take the Chief Director’s seat when Oshii left and his visual style isn’t quite the same as Oshii’s (though I’m basing that more on Maison Ikkoku as I’ve not seen much of the Yamazaki-era UY). It will be interesting to compare this, and more notably episode 35 (which he did animation direction for as well) to the later episodes he was in charge for.
Yu Yamamoto was the screenwriter and Hayao Nobe was the animation director.