Lum-A-Day 117 – Lum-chan’s Becoming a Cow?

Kinda entered into a little bit a doldrum with this production batch, so lets see if I can channel my old job where I’d have to write film synopses in 200 words or less.

Lum gets bitten by a cow while visiting a pet shop (there by a Takahashi leap of logic). When she falls asleep while watching a (space) vampire film and wakes up with longer horns on her head, she thinks she’s turning into a cow. While she hides and worries about this, Ten tries not to tell Ataru, Mendou and Megane. When Ataru finally learns her fate, he shows some rare caring feelings for her. Meanwhile Ten learns from his uncle that this horn growth is actually their race’s immune system at work. We leave Lum embarrassed at her mistake, while the still unaware Ataru builds a cow shed in the garden.

I’ve left a lot of what’s wrong with this episode out of that synopsis. Namely thick, thick layers of melodrama and Lum drawn as a cow-woman. This is all padding to bulk the manga chapter out to the length of an anime episode, and it is dreadful.

Also the character design here looks very soft and slack, like the effort of drawing Lum slightly out of character made them forget how to draw everyone else properly too. The direction is fine, as are the layouts. Just the actual character animation disappoints.

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Screenwriter: Toshiki Inoue
Storyboard: Kozima Tamiko
Director: Iku Suzuki
Animation Director: Setsuko Shibuichi