Lum-A-Day 057 - Domestic Quarrel â€“ To Eat or Be Eaten?!

A day late because of router death…

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Lum’s father is kicked out the house after a row with his wife about the size of their starter course, and moves in with Lum and Ataru. This greatly annoys the Moroboshis as it means their fried prawn dinner will have to stretch further. Only for Mr Invader to…

Of course Mr and Mrs Moroboshi are too polite to actually complain and so falsely praise him on his appetite. Over dinner he reveals that he’s staying until Lum’s mother apologises…

There’s lots of little pieces of business early in the episode rather than an overall plot. Ataru and his Mum discussing eating tactics. Ataru and his Dad arguing over how best to serve instant noodles. The reason Mr & Mrs Moroboshi sleep in seperate beds (Mrs Moroboshi has what Kramer would call “The Jimmy Legs”!).

After the break, Mr Invader follows Lum and Ataru to school. When Onsen-Mark, Ataru and Lum discuss how to get rid of him, Ten stirs things up by telling his uncle that they are insulting him. This fires him up and he decides to teach the class how to be a real man.

Which involves this long, confusing rambling speech that makes little sense and offends all the girls in the class.

Finally Lum’s mum shows up to fetch her husband. And once again Ten stirs things up, this time by telling her the truth about what her husband has been saying.

So she beats him up.

Then in the next scene Lum beats Ataru for making a similar speech about girl chasing.

Then it goes all weirdly sentimental with Mr Moroboshi actually managing to stand up to his wife for the first time in 57 episodes.

There’s some nice animation in here, the flashback to Lum’s parents as newlyweds is very good. However the script sort fizzles out in the second half. Once again Ito proves to be great at scripting comic scenes, but getting to the end of the story is hard for him.

A couple of lengthy bits of Maison Ikkoku product placement show up here.

Mrs Moroboshi has a Piyo-Piyo apron on.