Neptune is Beyond the Closet (おし入れの向うは海王星, Oshiire no Mukou wa Kaiousei?) and The Confusing Dinosaur Age (ハチャメチャ恐竜時代, HACHAMECHA Kyouryuusei Jidai?) are the two segments of the 8th episode of Urusei Yatsura.
Summary[]
- a
Ataru, Shinobu and Lum’s Stormtroopers wind up in Neptune through a portal discovered in Ataru’s closet where they are greeted by Lum’s friend Oyuki.
- b
While in the air, Lum, Ataru, Ten and Kintaro accidentally wind up back to the dinosaur age.
Plot Overview[]
- Warning: the following text contains spoilers about the plot or the series.
- a
Lum’s Stormtroopers are taking flowers to Ataru, who has a cold, even though idiots are supposed to be too dumb to catch them. Cherry notes that they appear to be taking on unlucky features from too much exposure to Ataru.
In Ataru’s room, he bemoans being sick when Lum is visiting a friend and his parents are away. Shinobu says it’s too bad they can’t take advantage of it, which Ataru promptly tries to do. She protests that Ten will tell Lum, but Ataru assures her that he’s bought Ten’s silence with chocolate. He continues to press his suit until the Stormtroopers arrive to find him out cold with a baseball bat bent over his head. Megane demands to know what Ataru’s done with Lum, and he explains that she’s visiting a friend on Neptune and won’t be back for a week. He adds that he wouldn’t be sorry if she were gone for a year, which earns him a gout of flame from Ten.
Ten notices that everyone else is shivering, and mist starts coming out of Ataru’s closet. Megane insists on opening it, saying that he feels something good is behind it, and promptly gets buried by a ridiculous amount of snow.
Looking into the closet, they see a strange void and a beautiful woman in a kimono giving them a literal come-hither look. Ataru is all for it, but Shinobu tries to stop him, saying that she’s a yuki-onna, but Ataru insists that beautiful women are always right, and the group plunges through the vortex.
They fall through the vortex long enough to suggest that the episode was running short, and land in a plane of ice and snow. They are greeted by the woman they saw before, a gracious woman in a white kimono with long, blue hair. Ten identifies her as Oyuki, and Ataru puts two and two together just in time for Lum to arrive (wrapped in a tiger-skin cloak). They fly back to Oyuki’s d8-shaped palace in a skimmer, Oyuki saying that she’s glad to finally meet Lum’s husband, and Shinobu, the mistress. There are a proliferation of beautiful women and no men, which pleases the Stormtroopers greatly.
Inside, Ataru asks about the connection between Neptune and his closet. Oyuki explains that they deal with their “snow problem” by dumping it into the 4th dimension, and their computer chose his closet as the exit point (which should surprise nobody by now). One of the handmaidens adds that they now have plenty of saps to shovel the snow, and everyone laughs at the Stormtroopers’ misfortune. Ataru snaps back to being annoyed, but Oyuki’s handmaidens remove her thermal outer layer and his brain shuts down, earning him punches from both Lum and Shinobu.
There is a loud noise and the ground shakes, and Oyuki goes to quiet what the handmaidens tell them is B-bo, who thinks of their mistress as a sister. Fade to Ataru staring into the distance and fantasizing about Oyuki (oddly, in her kimono and not her swimming costume). Lum and Shinobu see through him at once, but Ataru defends himself by saying poetry.
The girls start barracking him, which quickly escalates into electrocution. Ataru runs and finds himself in Oyuki’s bedroom. She’s mildly surprised when he starts pressing his suit, and points out that he has Lum, but he attempts to defend himself with poets again.
At this point the ground begins to shake and B-bo presents himself.
Outside the Stormtroopers are shoveling (they don’t even have snow shovels, just ordinary dirt shovels) when B-bo chases Ataru and they both leap into the portal. The others arrive and ask where Ataru went. Upon finding out, Lum says that she wanted to strangle him with her own hands, while Oyuki muses that things were going so well.
Back on Earth, the Moroboshis are returning home from the first vacation they’ve had since their vacation, but downcast that they have to return to Ataru. A tank passes them, and they worry that Ataru has done it again, which is instantly confirmed by a passing paperboy. They turn around to head back to the hot springs as a line of tanks passes to surround the Moroboshi house, where B-bo is on the roof, holding Ataru.
- b
Ataru has borrowed an autogyro from the Aviation Club at school, and challenges Ten to a race. He teases Ten (letting him catch up and then pulling ahead, putting one of the wheels on his head) until he is startled by the sudden appearance of a pterodactyl. It’s carrying Kintaro, who notes that he doesn’t spend all his time riding around on a bear. They attempt to start another race, but all four collide in an explosion.
They awaken in a strange place, which Ataru thinks is Monsterland but Kintaro identifies as Mesozoic-era Earth. Lum notices that Ten is missing. Ataru is all for leaving him in the fourth dimension, leading Lum to electrocute him and, incidentally, the pterodactyl. After crashing, Lum and Kintaro split up to find Ten, leaving Ataru alone. He is spotted and chased by a tyrannosaur, but manages to knock a rock into its mouth while scrambling up a hill, then slips and vanishes over a cliff.
Lum flies around calling out for Ten, until she spots a round, tiger-striped shape. She picks it up, but it turns out to be an egg that hatches out an adorable baby dinosaur, which calls her “Mommy”. The Dappya alien pops in to explain imprinting, and asks Ms. Takahashi if this is for real.
Ten flies around looking for the others but is found by an adult dinosaur of the same species, which takes him to its nest, drops him in with the other tiger-striped eggs and tries to incubate them. It cries when Ten tries to leave. Lum arrives and tries to make an exchange, but neither dinosaur is having it. (This dinosaur appears to be of Barney’s species, incidentally.)
Ataru is complaining that he wants to go home, but changes his mind when he sees what appears to be a sexy cavewoman. He’s apparently suffering from Mesozoic beer-goggles or something, because it turns out to be a sexy female dinosaur (you can tell because it has breasts). It is smitten with Ataru, and as it chases him the Dappya alien pops up to explain that creatures sometimes fixate on the first member of the opposite sex they see, which is known as “loveprinting”. (As a bio major, I must have slept in that day.)
Ataru scrambles back up the hill and runs past Kintaro, who grumbles about his getting involved with a female dinosaur and follows. They wind up back at the same place as Lum and Ten. Ten asks for Kintaro’s help in getting away from the mother dinosaur; Kintaro obliges by trying to mug her.
Ataru appears again, riding the female dinosaur and followed by a stampede of every kind of dinosaur you’d expect in a variety pack of plastic figures, regardless of type or era. Lum and Kintaro try to get the mother dinosaur moving, but she won’t budge, and they all fall back through a time vortex and reappear at the Moroboshi’s house.
Cast[]
- Megane
- Perm
- Kakugari
- Chibi
- Cherry
- Ten
- Ataru Moroboshi
- Shinobu Miyake
- Oyuki
- Lum
- B-Bo
- Ataru's Father
- Ataru's Mother
- Kintarō
Trivia[]
- First Appearance of Oyuki.
- The ending in the first segment is a reference to King Kong.
- A picture of a Dappya alien is seen in the first segment.
Differences from the manga[]
- a
The plot is basically the same.
- Ten doesn't appear since he had yet to introduced.
- Cherry also comes along.
- Oyuki appears in Ataru's room after his closet is opened, and the boys volunteer to escort her back to her planet.
- The ending in the manga has one skipped part where following B-bo playing King Kong on the roof with Ataru in the Fay Wray role, it then jumps forward to the newspaper headline, then ends with Ataru in a body cast, lying in bed and complaining that the portal is still open, while B-Bo and Oyuki lean over him amidst a snowdrift.
- b
- Kintaro overtakes Shūtarō Mendō's role.
- The story in the manga ends at the point Lum tries to exchange Ten for the baby, while an amorous pterodactyl pursues the glider.
Gallery[]
