Whoever the crew where that were on the excellent episode 83 appear to be back with this episode, as indicated by the exaggerated mouths on Ten and Cherry.
In the middle of winter, an alien snowman arrives on Earth. When it lands on terra firma, it squashes Ten, igniting his wrath. However when Ten tries to melt it with his fire breath, it ducks behind Ataru, using him as a shield. When Ten swears that it moved Ataru doesn’t believe him.
The next day the snowman is outside the Moroboshi’s house, where once again Ten tries to breathe on it, and once again it ducks behind Ataru. It then follows Ataru to school, where it waits outside the school gates (and two little kids give it arms).
When Onsen-Mark makes the class go on a cross country run, it follows them, much to Mendou and the Stormtroopers’ bewilderment. When they stop for a rest, Ten finds the snowman again and for the third time Ataru takes the brunt of the attack.
That night Ten, Lum and Cherry try to convince Ataru the snowman is alive, but he’s having none of it, declaring if he was going ot be haunted, he’d rather be haunted by a beautiful babe. The snowman overhears this and after the break, a beautiful babe presents herself at Ataru’s window. She tells him that she’s made a banquet in his honour for saving her life three times.
This, however, is what Lum and Ten see:
It turns out that all the food and entertainment that the “babe” presents Ataru is actually snow and snow sculptures. And when Ataru tries to kiss the “babe”, he’s actually kissing a snowman.
Now that’s where the manga chapter ends, but their are still 10 minutes to fill so… No, not an alien disco, it’s time for a surreal montage of first Ataru hitting on the various female characters from the series as the snowman turns into them, then the various male characters quoting deep and meaningless nonsense.
It’s all very odd, and all very Urusei Yatsura.
Definitely one of the top episodes from this batch, an almost archetypal Urusei Yatsura episode.
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Screenplay: Takashi Anno
Storyboards: Osamu Uemura
Director: Osamu Uemura
Animation Director: Takafumi Hayashi
And that’s the last episode of 1983! Which, if you’ve been following these posts you’ll know what happens next…