Urusei Yatsura #01 — The Comedy of the 1970s
October 13th, 2022
I would like to think as a society that we have moved past deafening screams as a joke.
Impressions:
I'm someone without any real nostalgia, or even honestly much exposure to this series besides laughing at clips of the British dub, so I was pretty skeptical of an avowed "true adaptation", particularly of something as old as this is. So the question is whether they actually updated things for modern animation and audiences, or did they just change the cutsey music and dancing in the OP for bubblegum pop music and idol dancing? It really seems like it's largely the latter. It's also fairly eye-rolling to see them with smartphones too before ditching all that in the actual episode.
Mostly, it's just the same nonstop shouting that completely exhausts and annoys me. I prefer my humor to be more off-kilter, deadpan, and witty, or at the very least, showing that the creators have a real passion for what making the show. This was more like the director just told all the voice actors to be as loud as possible. Nothing can be said that cannot be screamed, and that things are yelled comprises half the jokes. I can't even put forth the idea that modern humor has moved past this, but even for screamy 'comedies', this one is particularly aggressive and grating. It doesn't matter to me in the slightest whether or not that's more accurate to the original. It was annoying then. It's annoying now.
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The ironic part of this remake is that the 80s version of this series is still the superior show. Namely due to a few factors: there’s actual build ups to its jokes, the show doesn’t try to make you point and laugh at the jokes compared to what the remake constitutes as “jokes”, the punchlines aren’t all shouting matches and are genuinely effective, there’s actual visual comedy that’s not full of obnoxious filters, and it’s willing to deviate from the manga for the sake of adding jokes that fit better for the screen and stories that are more relevant for character development.
All this show has to offer? Shinier visuals and more convenience due to the cluster of episodes, OVAs and films that the 80s series spawned. Not an improvement.