Urusei Yatsura

Episode 11

While I am a little bit disappointed that we didn't get a Christmas episode to coincide with the holidays, what we have here is probably one of the funniest ways I can think of wrapping up the year in-universe. Not only do we get introduced to Mendo's younger sister, but her antics also make up the humorous driving force of the entire episode. Mendo tries hard to be proper and gentlemanlike, but it turns out he's the outlier in his family, as the rest of them are just massive trolls. He seems to have very little patience for his sister, which may explain his dislike of Ataru outside of simple jealousy; he's probably had to deal with pranks for most of his life. It's not a groundbreaking example of characterization or anything, but it is funny.

That said, it is a little disappointing that Mendo's tendency to regress into a child when locked in the dark was just sort of glossed over despite it popping up more than once in this episode. When that plot point was first introduced, I figured it was going to be some kind of flaw that would become a bigger deal if other characters found out about it. But it didn't really end up going anywhere, because all the girls just ended up liking him the same way. Maybe there will be a time in the future when Mendo realizes that he can be vulnerable around women without necessarily losing his popularity with them, but if that moment comes, it's probably not gonna be for a long time.

The second half of this episode was far funnier than the first and it actually took me a while to figure out what the heck was going on. I'm sorry, I just didn't expect Mendo's family to be using their entire estate like a giant Monopoly board where they used all of their money and connections in order to force everybody into the exact positions they wanted them to be in. It was so funny and out there that I didn't even mind the lack of excuses to involve the entire cast. Overall, this is a funny episode that truly went out with a bang, and I can only hope that my year ends in a similarly exciting way.

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Urusei Yatsura is currently streaming on HIDIVE.