Lum-A-Day 055 – Bad Boy Musashi: A Success Story

Another new year’s story with the cast sent back in time.

This time Onsen-Mark is cast as Musashi with Cherry cast as Takuan. Ataru and Lum appear to be simply 16th century versions of themselves (though they might be meant to be Motoida Matahachi and Otsu). Mendou is cast as Kojiro.

Musashi, Kojiro and Ataru are responsible for many food thefts in the region, but all of them end up credited to Musashi. The villagers then hire Sakura to track down Musashi (Sakura and Shinobu are cast as the heirs to the Yoshioka School, Sakura as Yoshioka Seijūrō and Shinobu as Yoshioka Denshichiroo) along with Kojiro.

The whole episode is little more than a series of historical references tied to Ataru and Onsen-Mark being chased around while eating and running at a series of restaurants. And when I say historical references, I mean the characters from UY dressed up as various people Miyamoto Musashi killed. As well as all the characters mentioned so far we also see Chibi as Shishido Baiken and Kakugari as Muso Gonnosuke.

There’s also an odd gag involving Kojiro’s monkey getting bigger throughout the episode. And it all ends with a very convoluted gag involving fugu and getting buried on Ganryu Island.

Not a great episode, though it did remind me that I really ought to get Vagabond sometime. Even discounting the fact that 60% of the gags require knowledge of Musashi’s story, it’s just not very well animated. Nothing excited me about the episode I’m afraid.

Thankfully the next episode is a very kinetic one if my memory serves me correctly.

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Also this episode we get the fourth ending theme:

I,I, You and Ai by Izumi Kobayashi

This was also the credit music (and animation?) to the first UY movie Only You.

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Still no idea who 鳥南 乃 is…

Screenplay: Kazunori Ito
Storyboard: 鳥南 乃
Director: Junji Nishimura
Animation Director: Hayao Nobe