And now a reminder that this was made in 1981.
Sakura pays Ataru a visit to ask him out. Of course it isn’t what he expects, she’s inviting Lum, Shinobu and the Stormtroopers too to a disco. On the way they are “surprised” by Ozuno Tsubame, Sakura’s boyfriend & practitioner of Western occult arts.
He’s returned to claim her hand in marriage, but she’s not interested. However he accompanies them to the disco and there they are surprised to discover Cherry chilling. He refuses to give Tsubame permission to marry his niece until he demonstrates his spiritual power.
Then we get a load of dancing animation.
Once that’s dealt with we get find ourselves back at the plot, Tsubame uses the spiritual energy from the dancing & Ataru’s natural bad luck to summon Satan. However this turns Ataru into Santa. And then a bear (akuma = “ah! kuma” pun). With his third attempt he tries to summon a horned goat and gets Rei instead.
Ataru gets mad and starts fighting with Tsubame over Sakura, Rei starts fighting with Ataru over Lum and so on. It all comes to a peak with Tsubame summoning a ridiculous number of spirits and mythological creatures. Who all start disco dancing!
Yay disco!
—
In the second story Princess Kurama returns to take Ataru back the 12th Century to train with her ideal man, Ushiwaka Maru, her father. Which is odd, because in her first appearance she appears to be an alien and now she seems to be an Earth tengu. They disguise Ataru as a tengu and he goes to become his apprentice.
Lum and Ten arrive and Kurama’s dad is shocked at her dress or lack of it. So Ataru takes it upon himself to train him in admiring the female form. Meanwhile Lum finds Benkei and tells him to render Ushiwaka Maru unable to have children, so that Kurama will cease to exist.
Despite Kurama and Lum’s interference the pair become friends (albeit not how history remembers). Kurama’s father gives Ataru a speech about abandoning everything to achieve his goal and be a real man.
Of course this simply inspires him to set himself the goal of sleeping with 1000 women…
—
Tsubame is played by Kazuhiko Inoue. Other notable roles include Joe in Cyborg 009 (1979), Mamoru in Blue Seed, Anthony in Candy Candy, Insp. Shiratori in Detective Conan, Dusty in Legend of the Galactic Heroes, “Susan” in Sexy Commando and, of course, Kakashi in Naruto.
Takao Koyama wrote both stories, Keiji Hayakawa was storyboarding and directing the first story, while Motosuke Takahashi covers the second one. Asami Endo is animation director on both.