To Kill with Love (愛で殺したい, Ai de Koroshitai??) or "The Things We Do for Love" in the first Viz Translation, is the 6th chapter of the Urusei Yatsura manga.
Summary[]
Ataru learns that he isn't Lum's first love when the jilted oni Rei comes to town, demanding that Ataru give Lum back!
Plot Overview[]
One evening, as Cherry sits down to a pot of hobo stew, he sees an ill omen in its contents and immediately rushes over to the Moroboshi household, certain it will involve Ataru. Ataru is busy trying to lean up, which angers Lum, as she realizes he's doing it in anticipation of a visit from Shinobu. On her way to the Moroboshi house, Shinobu is accosted by a strange creature; part tiger and part cow. It carries her to Ataru's room, where it transforms into a handsome male Oni. An angry Lum explains that this is her former fiancé, Rei, who has come to try and win her back. But she wants nothing to do with him; aside from his ugly transformation, he's also a brainless eating machine. She goes so far as to lie about being pregnant with Ataru's baby, which inspires Rei to challenge Ataru to a duel. A sweet potato eating duel ensues, and Ataru miraculously wins.
Characters in Order of Appearance[]
Trivia[]
- This chapter marks the debut of Rei.
- Like the other initial chapters, this chapter seems to have taken its name from a song that was popular at the time, in this case a 1978 piece by the band サーカス (Circus).
- When Happosai sees an evil omen, the kanji character kyo (凶), which literally means "doom", appears in his soup.
- Ataru can be seen reading multiple manga in this chapter, including the Urusei Yatsura manga itself and Shin Tamura's Dekin Boy (できんボーイ), which began featuring in Shonen Sunday in 1976 and is the likely inspiration for Takahashi's recurring "chudon" sound effect.
- During the sweet potato eating contest, Cherry keeps track of the scores by writing the kanji character (正); as this character requires 5 strokes to complete, it is Japan's traditional equivalent to the tally mark/hash-mark system used in Western society. Each stroke of the character represents one sweet potato eaten.
- The large pipes seen stacked up in vacant lots throughout the series, such as the ones where Cherry pitches his tent, are called dokan (土管), and are leftover sewer pipes left behind in the wake of the construction boom that resulted from the post-World War II Japanese Economic Miracle. Their ubiquity in real life inspired many manga and anime artists to include them as scenery in their works, and they are the likely inspiration for the iconic warp pipes of the Super Mario Bros. franchise.
- In between the releases of chapters 6 and 7 of Urusei Yatsura, Rumiko Takahashi would also publish her one-shot doujinshi, A Band of Young Ruffians (不良青年団), as well as the first four chapters of her five-chapter mini-series Dust Spot!! (ダストスパート!!).
- Sweet potatoes were first introduced to Japan in the 1600s, first being grown in the southern region of Satsuma (now part of southern Kyushu) before spreading out across the nation; for this reason, they're often called satsuma-imo in Japan. Between an Imperial decree in 1732 for Japan to cultivate sweet potatoes as an emergency secondary food crop against famines caused by poor rice yields and the sweetness of the tuber, sweet potatoes soon became a beloved part of the Japanese culinary landscape, especially for sweet treats. Many Japanese kindergartens and elementary schools have a tradition where students are taken to sweet potato fields during the Autumn months and given a chance to dig up, cook and eat the tubers themselves.