Yuji Moriyama is great. He really hits his stride here, to the extent I wanted to go and watch more of his work right away.
In this episode, Sakura has given her purification wand to Cherry to purify, leaving her with a lot more unwanted attention than usual. For not only does she have her usual problem of the boys of class 2-4 fawning over her, she’s being followed by wandering spirits who have a similar stalkerish interest in her.
Seeing a chance to get a date with Sakura, Ataru fetches the wand from Cherry, but gets into a ruckus with Ten and Torajima. This leads to the setting up of the B-plot, where Torajima ties Ten to a haunted flask. Lum and Ten hear a voice inside wanting out, so they drop it on the school, crashing into Mr Fujinami and Onsen-Mark’s afternoon drinking session. Unfortunately inside the flask is a drunken ghost, sealed for 200 years and looking to make mischief.
Meanwhile, back in the A-plot, Ataru tries to bribe Sakura into having a date with him in return for the wand, but she declares she’d rather continue to be haunted than do that. He sides with the spirits, until Cherry appears and shouts some sense into the situation. He’s more concerned about the drunken ghost, who was quite the handful it seems and so they seek it out. The ghost is quite small, until Mr Fujinama gives it a bottle of sake, and then it gets out of contol.
So Sakura has to exorcise it, taking the spirits following her, Ataru, Onsen-Mark and Mr Fujinama with them. Lum is distressed to see her “Darling” disappear, but Sakura reassures her he’s safe.
Cut to the Moroboshi household where we see the spirits (and humans) have have all been sent to, much to Mrs Moroboshi’s annoyance.
Great stuff, the only quibble I have with episode is how under cooked the B plot is early on. While that would be fine usually, it essentially forms the climax. Had the threat of the drunken ghost been established earlier, it would have felt a little more even.
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Tokio Tsuchiya joins the screenwriting team, they’d go onto to work on series composition on Maison Ikkoku, as well as working on live action adaptations of Sukeban Deka and Oishinbo.
Screenplay: Tokio Tsuchiya
Storyboard: Naoyuki Yoshinaga
Director: Naoyuki Yoshinaga
Animation Director: Yuji Moriyama