Lum-A-Day 099 – Fast Food Wars

Ah, this is a great little episode, back to feeling more like the product of creators on the show rather than an adaptation of the manga. Which is what I prefer. The main illustrative factors in this is how intertwined The Stormtroopers are to the plot and the use of characters from episode 64 “Goodbye Season”.

Megane and Chibi have gotten jobs in a local noodle shop. When Lum, Ataru, Kotatsu Neko and Cherry pay them a visit, they all run into a mysterious man who appears to be a gourmet of noodles. However Cherry soon reveals that this man is a Fast Food Fighter! This dying breed of men and women have dedicated their lives to eating as much as possible at fast food joints without paying for it. This particular man is “Fried tofu and dough noodle Ryuu”.

Soon, the other Stormtroopers, who are working at other fast food joints, are reporting that they too have just been faced with Fast Food Fighters. As they ponder the reason for these warriors of eating appearing, they discover that Mendou is opening a supermarket. They confront him and accuse him of hiring these fighters to destroy the local restaurants so people will go to his store.

Mendou doesn’t want to cause disruption in town, and he’s organised a event to help ease the move to his supermarket – an eating contest. If Ataru’s team of Tomobiki eaters can beat his team of eight imported Food Fighters he won’t open the supermarket.

Ataru’s team consists of himself, Megane, Cherry, Lum, Kotatsu Neko, Gyudon Mask (the Beef Bowl shop mascot and prowrestler) and of course… Sakura. They want Ogin, one of the girl gang leaders who has occasionally appeared in earlier episodes to join but she refuses. However when Mendou removes Kotatsu Neko from Ataru’s team by bribing him with a deluxe kotatsu, Ogin agrees to compete. The two sides must eat everything served, with team members eliminated when they leave the table.

It turns out that Ogin was “Fried tofu and dough noodle Ryuu” student in fast food fighting at one point, and when the contest is down to Ogin and Sakura vs. Ryuu and the “Beef Bowl Bastard”, she duels her master and wins, before fainting from overeating herself.

With only Beef Bowl Bastard and Sakura left, Mendou pleas for Sakura to stop so she doesn’t ruin her figure. Sakura dismisses this, telling it’s OK as she’s on a diet at the moment. This statement makes Beef Bowl Bastard fly out of his chair in surprise and Ataru’s team wins!

The script here feels the most like Ito’s future work on Patlabor, a perfect mix of the mundane and the strange. The opening scene in the noodle shop is fantastic, just one long sitcom scene driven by the dialogue and the animation rather than some overly complicated plot. Unlike most of this production batch, you could slide this into an earlier batch and it wouldn’t look too out of place.

Screenplay: Kazunori Ito
Storyboard: Iku Suzuki
Director: Iku Suzuki
Animation Director: Noboru Furuse

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