Lum-A-Day 118 – Great Achievement! The Film of Lum-chan’s Youth

Didn’t they do this one already?

Megane and the Stormtroopers decide to make a student film, at first as a means of driving a wedge between Lum and Ataru, then as a means of killing Ataru. Then when they run out of money they are faced with getting Mendou to fund it (who they so far have been using as an extra to humiliate him). Ataru warns them against this, instead suggesting he ask Lum to do a nude scene so they can sell tickets in advance. This has the expected electricity based response from Lum and so Mendou gets recast as the lead, making Ataru jealous. When they finally view the film, it resembles a stalkers eye view of Lum, with everyone else pretty much cut out. We close with Megane & crew being beaten up by Ataru, Mendou and Shinobu.

This is nowhere close to episode 72, for a start there’s no cyborg Mendou shooting his fists off in a Mazinger style rocket punch. Where that episode was wild, this is stilted and mild. Far too many musical montages with little to no humour in them. And the character design is all over the place, great in spots, and just way off in others. The Stormtroopers get the best of it, with Ataru and Lum looking like storefront mannequins in spots.

A few nice parodies in there though, a North By North West crop duster scene and a Casablanca scene with some English language dialogue that puts most modern anime attempts at English dialogue to shame. And the gag of Mendou continually trying to appear on camera in his extra roles works quite well.

Screenplay: Yoshiyuki Suga
Storyboard: Junji Nishimura
Director: Junji Nishimura
Animation Director: Yuichi Endo