Ataru is trying to hide from Lum when he runs into a beautiful woman, who faints in his arms. However it is ruse, the beautiful woman is a Shinto priestess who plans to use to Ataru’s unlucky nature to draw out evil spirits that are ailing her.
This is the introduction to our next main character, Sakura, the niece of Cherry, the wandering monk we met in episode 1.
Anyway, she manages to transfer the spirits onto Ataru in some nicely animated scenes (the colour design on the spirits is great), and that’s the end of that story.
The second story involves the students at Tomobiki High getting excited about a “real babe” who’s coming to start work as the new school nurse. This is, of course, Sakura.
Ataru, not having learnt his lesson from the first story is still lusting after her (as are all the other male students. And possibly the animators too). However once questioned by his classmates, he starts to relive the terrors of the first story.
The boys in 2-4 soon start to fake injuries to get to visit Sakura. Ataru however is starting to feel genuinely ill from the evil spirits possessing him, so the Stormtroopers rush him to the nurse’s office.
Then it all gets very complicated and silly. Due to Ataru’s possession by a disease spirit, real diseases get upset and infect the school in bizarre ways. It was also what was making him lech over Sakura when she first came into the school. This is learnt when Lum uses a gizmo to make one of the diseases grow so it can tell them. Yes, germs can talk if sufficiently large.
Sakura then successfully exorcises the spirit when her robe slips and the spirit catches a glimpse of her cleavage, leading to the spirit leap out of Ataru’s mouth in lust. The boys of class 2-4 then proceed to kick the spirit in. The diseases are happy too, now the spirit is gone they can get back to acting liking the flu viruses they are, and proceed to infect the school.
The final irony is that now cured of the disease spirit, Ataru begins acting in exactly the same way as the spirit, chasing Sakura round the school, much to Lum’s chagrin.
Sakura’s a sort of character you don’t seem to get nowadays in the shows that can trace their heritage back to UY. The sexy adult woman character, if there even is an adult character, now seems to get written as a parody of sexiness, Saori Shikijo in Mahoromatic for example. Sakura’s humour doesn’t come from her being sexy in an exaggerated way, it’s from other characters’ reaction to it and a number of other personality quirks, which we will see in later episodes.
Sakura is voiced by Machiko Washio, who is, I believe, now more famous for her role on the TV series Ooku than her anime voice roles. Sakura seems to be her main anime performance of note, with most of her career being in the theatre (she was part of the New Literary Theatre Company from 69 to 89) and television drama. Also worth noting she does have role as the similarly named Midori Washio in Oshii’s Red Spectacles, as well as playing the mother, Tamiko, in his Gonsenzo-sam Banbanzai OAV series.
Episode 5 is once again a Yu Yamamoto scripted episode. The storyboards and direction on the first story are from Mamoru Oshii and animation direction is from Hayao Nobe.
The second story has Motosuke Takahashi (Supercar Gattiger, The Wonderful World of Nils)Â storyboarding and directing with Asami Endo on animation direction.