I failed yesterday. Distracted by Spotify and Fallout 2. Still 42 straight days before falling off. Let’s get back on that tiger!
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Once again, the episode can be summarised in one sentence. Lum and Ten get drunk on pickled plums.
When Ten starts acting tipsy after eating a pickled plum from Ataru’s lunch, Ataru is accused of getting him drunk. To prove his innocence he feeds Lum the plum from Megane’s lunch and she too gets drunk.
The problem is Lum and Ten are both very mean drunks. They go on a rampage through the school, burning and electrocuting anyone who doesn’t give them a plum.
When Mendou and Megane make Ataru go after Ten, Lum thinks it’s because Ataru wants to marry Ten instead of her (she’s really quite drunk at this point). And when Mendou and Megane are caught by Onsen-Mark in pursuit of Lum, their teacher thinks someone has smuggled alcohol into school. Mendou, annoyed at their pursuit being curtailed, says that if Onsen-Mark finds alcohol in 2-4’s classroom, he’ll dance naked. Those two events right there? They’ll play into the ending, OK?
So we get a music video sequence for the insert song “Margarita”, then we get back to the plot where in Ten sets Ataru on fire, causing him to run to the nurses office, where there are 38 other burn victims being treated. After Ataru saves Sakura from Ten, Cherry appears with alcohol to treat the burns. With the alcohol now in play to give us our inevitable ending, Lum appears, gets jealous seeing Ataru with Ten, and steals the alcohol, claiming it’s rubbish compared to plums.
Cut to Onsen-Mark searching vainly in the classroom, he’s about to demand a strip search when Lum flies in carrying the alcohol. Leading to our inevitable ending where Mendou has to stand by the promise made mid-episode!
Animation is all over the place in this episode. Some nice sequences, for instance when Ten first eats the plum and the lazy swagger of the Margarita sequence. Not to mention some nice quick sight gags like when the class’ lockers are opened one by one. And finally, someone on the staff really liked Onsen-Mark, he’s often drawn in much looser, wilder cartoon style than some of the stiff poses the younger characters have this episode.
But there’s also some scenes where characters just look thrown onto cels without any consideration to other characters positions in the shot. That alongside some sloppy cel painting in spots makes it uneven.
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This is Tomoko Konparu’s only UY TV script and it’s a good one. However she also provided the screenplays for the first, third and fifth films. She’s currently behind the scripts for Dezaki’s Genji Monogatari Sennenki. Other notable projects include series composition for Chi’s Sweet Home, Nodame Cantabile and NANA. In short, she’s a big deal.
Screenplay: Tomoko Konparu
Storyboard: Kozima Tamiko
Director: Kozima Tamiko
Animation Director: Asami Endo
