There’s a piece of music here, about 3 minutes in, that is a total pastiche of The Beatles’ “Magical Mystery Tour”. That and the awesome Moriyama-led animation are the highlights here.
For once again it’s a Lum’s Chums episode. Ataru does not appear at all, much to my displeasure. Ran’s picnic is ruined by Neptunian Lemmings falling through a portal, so she goes to vent her spleen at Oyuki for not controlling her Lemmings. Oyuki’s cold reaction leaves Ran worried that she’s mad at her for some reason.
When she discovers a lemming in her picnic basket, it slowy becomes clear. Oyuki is trying to find the missing Neptunian Lemming Leader, and asks Lum and Benten for help. They visit Ran, find the Lemming and hoping to provoke a fight between Ran and Oyuki, Benten shows Oyuki the critter is at Ran’s house. Oyuki arrives, and is still very calm. This makes Ran paranoid and Benten mad that Oyuki isn’t getting angry. Eventually in attempting to get the pair to fight, Benten ends up fighting Ran.
After many explosions all over town, Oyuki gets them to calm down and they return to Ran’s home. There they finally see Oyuki get mad as she tells off the lemming. Unfortunately when Oyuki gets mad, there’s lot of collateral damage, and the three friends end up taking the brunt of her ice attacks too…
With the bigger budget, Moriyama turns out some really good looking animation here, both the action is superb and so are little things like mouth shapes and posing in talking heads scenes. There’s lots of little things that show the animators were feeling pretty free here, like the Ohmu cameo in the screencaps above. It’s just a shame that without any of the Earth characters to ground it, the episode feels a little off storywise.
—
Yuji Moriyama is back to using his other spelling here. Odd.
Screenplay: Yoshiyuki Suga
Storyboard: Junji Nishimura
Director: Junji Nishimura
Animation Director: Yuji Moriyama