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Urusei Yatsura 4: Lum the Forever (うる星やつら4 ラム・ザ・フォーエバー, Urusei Yatsura 4: Ramu za Fōebā?) is the fourth film in the Urusei Yatsura franchise. It was produced by Kitty Films, primarily animated by Studio Deen, and released by Toho to theaters on February 22, 1986.

Synopsis[]

When Mendo has an ancient sakura tree cut down, it wakens the sleeping spirit of Tomobiki, which becomes enraptured with Lum.

Plot Overview[]

A large car wends its way through the streets of Tomobiki one rainy night, passing through a tunnel and disturbing some rats where they are gnawing on a power cable. As the car speeds on, rainwater seeping from the rocks above touches a newly severed wire, creating a surge of energy that seems to follow the car as it races along the power lines.

The car belongs to Shutaro Mendo, and is currently playing host to the Mendo heir, Ataru Moroboshi, Lum, Shinobu Miyake, Megane, Perm, Chibi and Kakugari. Class 2-4 has decided to try their hand at movie-making once more, and the group are about to head their separate ways after a recent meeting. Mendo asks Lum to handle making the costumes, which she happily agrees to. Megane observes that the recent rain is really screwing with their filming schedule, whilst the other three members of Lum's stormtroopers roughhouse in the back seat next to him. Their attention is briefly drawn away as the streetlights alongside them suddenly go out, which Chibi uses as an opportunity to scare Megane with one of the film's props. The bespectacled otaku scolds him for this and hits him.

Meanwhile, the power surge rolls on and on, blacking out the entirety of Tomobiki.

Mendo's car makes its first stop at the Moroboshi household, letting out Ataru and Lum. They exchange pleasantries before heading in for the night. They are unaware that a power cable has disconnected itself from their neighboring transformer, which is still surging with power.

The next morning, Lum goes for a jog before school starts, during which time one of the Mendo family's spy satellites watches her. More unusually, a small flock of songbirds take a liking to her and start hovering around her. They even continue to follow her when she returns home and changes for class, shadowing her all the way to Tomobiki High School. Mendo and the stormtroopers are smitten with this image of Lum as a real-life Disney princess figure, grabbing the camera and filming her whilst Megan waxes rhapsodic over how beautiful she is. Ataru is far less impressed, grumbling over Lum being "too friendly with strangers".

Ran suddenly arrives on the scene, and the birds suddenly fly over to hover around her in the same way as they were doing to Lum. Ataru tries to flirt with Ran, but the birds suddenly turn on him, pecking and clawing him before they fly back to Ran. They chirp at Ran, and she gently scolds them that Ataru isn't as scary as he looks. A dumbstruck Ataru asks Ran if she can really talk to birds, and she explains that both she and Lum can empathically communicate with animals, likening it to "a song without words" - well, they could, and were quite good at it when they were young, but the talent has waned with age. Lum points out that she and Ran are seventeen years old, after which the birds fly away and the three teens head off to class.

That evening, Class 2-4, along with Onsen-Mark and the Tomobiki High School Principal, gather on the Mendo estate for a nighttime hanami (sakura blossom-viewing party). Shinobu comments on the beauty of the enormous sakura around whose trunk they have gathered, and Mendo explains that the tree, named "Tarōzakura", has reached three hundred years old this year, and over those three centuries has been a veritable guardian angel of the Mendo family. Sadly, the tree's heartwood has become infected and is rotting away, so it will probably die come winter. This year's hanami will be Tarōzakura's last.

A surprised Shinobu asks if this means that Mendo really is planning to have the tree get cut down as part of the movie they're making. Mendo confirms it, and notes they're considering using grafting to create a Tarōzakura the Second.

One of the Black Glasses Squad announces the arrival of Sakura and her party. Always happy to see the beautiful miko-nurse, Ataru distracts Lum by slipping her an umeboshi, leaving her too drunk to stop him from running to greet Sakura. His enthusiasm wanes when he sees her ghastly entourage of yokai. She explains to a curious Mendo that the various ghouls and goblins are all "very familiar" with Tarōzakura, and leads them over to the tree, inadvertently scattering some of the more timid partygoers in the process.

When they arrive, they discover Lum is kneeling on the ground with her ear pressed to Tarōzakura's trunk. Sakura gently asks Lum what she's doing, and the drunken oni replies that she's listening to a song. She assures them that they can hear it too if they listen closely, and seeing Sakura and the yokai close their eyes to listen with every sign of enjoyment, the various teens try to imitate them. The exception is Shinobu, who wanders off to a nearby overlook to stare at Tomobiki and start musing philosophical. Her perhaps somewhat jealous thoughts are disrupted when Mendo places a jacket over her shoulders, warning her that the chill winds are picking up and coaxing her to return to the party.

Meanwhile, in the Tomobiki garbage dump, two homeless vagabonds are sharing some sake when one of them drunkenly attempts to turn on a busted television set. To their immense shock, it comes alive - and then every other TV in the rubbish also comes to live, screens glowing and sending the two fleeing in panic. The glowing screens briefly resolve into an image of Lum, captured that morning by the Mendo satellites.

The next day, Class 2-4 begins shooting their movie. As with Megane's past experiences in film-making, it's a genre mashup with a somewhat slipshod plot, combining an old Japanese legend with a Western-style 80s slasher movie.

As Shinobu narrates, in the year "1986", a group of young campers are murdered by a trio of murderous psychopaths (played by Perm, Chibi and Karakuri), with only one man (played by Ataru) escaping the slaughter by fleeing into the woods. Three days later, he stumbles into an isolated village, whose inhabitants live as tanuki, amongst other bizarre customs, and from there stumbles into a world of folklore.

The intro having been filmed, now it's time to set things up for the next few scenes. In a makeshift editor's room, Shinobu asks Megane if he's sure that this is OK as a pamphlet copy. Distractedly, he assures her that the trivial details are all "McGuffins", an English loan-word that he clarifies means "meaningless". Meanwhile, the rest of the class prepare sets for the interior shots, and set up a scale model and marionettes for the more fantastical aspects of the movie's next segment. Once all the preparations are complete, shooting resumes.

Now Cherry takes the role of narrator as the in-universe movie resumes. Ataru is put up in the house of the village elder, who is deathly ill. That night, he is awakened to the sight of trees moving in from the forest to speak to Tarōzakura, the sakura tree and guardian spirit of the village. As he eavesdrops, the trees reveal that Tarōzakura is sick, and its efforts to heal the sickness are causing the village elder's illness. Though the trees talk about how Tarōzakura's death may mean misfortune for the villagers with it no longer present to ward off evil spirits, Ataru focuses instead on how the village elder can be cured if Tarōzakura is killed, which can be done by striking it with a salted axe.

Megane calls cut, and he and Ataru exchange a vitriolic mixture of compliments and insults on their respective skills as actor and director.

The next day, it's time for the big tree-felling scene. As Shinobu helps Lum get properly dolled up for her big scene, Ataru and the tanuki actors start shooting the scene. As planned, Ataru takes a real axe, covers it in salt, and drives it into Tarōzakura's trunk. What was not planned was for the sakura to start spewing frothing green ichor from the cut! The students of Class 2-4 can only watch in disbelief as Ataru's blow grows into a cleanly severed cut, bringing the huge tree crashing to the ground, where it rots away in a boiling froth of green foulness that leaves a massive, eerily ribcage-like structure spread across the ground where the trunk fell, amidst a noisesome stain on the ground.

Megane demands to know if the cameraman caught that, and is almost apoplectic to hear that all the electronic equipment has spontaneously failed.

At Sakura's house, the miko is just complaining about needing to feed her yokai guests when her place experiences a blackout. At the same time, the yokai suddenly say forlorn farewells and disappear, to her confusion and surprise.

Back at the Mendo estate, Mendo, Ataru and Megane are fortifying themselves with coffee. Shrugging off what they saw as just more of the weirdness that has become commonplace in their lives, they resume filming.

As Cherry narrates for the in-universe movie, the death of Tarōzakura did indeed restore the village elder to full health. But it also allowed a plague of evil spirits to bedevil the village. Desperate for salvation, the villagers prayed, and were answered with a miracle; a beautiful goddess, the Oni Princess (played of course by Lum) descended from the heavens and banished the evil spirits with her holy light. To honor her, the villagers held a festival that very night.

However, during the shooting of the big festival procession, Ataru trips and knocks over the prop prayer gates, causing a domino-esque cascading crash that ruins the shot. Mendo and Megane scold Ataru, who defiantly argues back. The argument only ends when Shinobu notices that Lum hs spaced out, and she calls them over. She doesn't react until Ataru sprinkles pepper on her, causing her to sneeze. She apologizes, assuring them she's just tired, but can't resist looking off into space again.

That evening, two members of the Black Glasses Squad are patrolling the ground when they sport a bizarre sight, even for Tomobiki; the prop lanterns, altars, and holy cymbals start to float in mid-air, creating a ghostly procession for three female phantoms - long-haired women wearing hannya masks and dressed in archaic robes. The two men run to a nearby pond and begin pouring cold water over themselves in a purification ritual, watching as the three ghostly women pass through a prayer gate and disappear, after which the props float back to earth and become inert. Thoroughly spooked, the men decide to tell nobody of what they saw.

The next day, dismal gray clouds hang over Tomobiki's skyline and a gale-force wind howls through the trees - much to the dismay of Ten, who is forced to take shelter due to his meagre flying skills. He wonders why he can't find his friend, Kotatsu-neko.

At Tomobiki High School, Ataru easily bests Perm in a speed-eating contest, and then goes to flirt with Shinobu, offering to take her out for oshiruko after class. She bluntly turns him down, and then smacks him repeatedly with her desk when Ataru starts to tickle and then nuzzle her. Undaunted by the beating, Ataru instead nimbly lands on the desk of a slumbering Ryūnosuke Fujinami, and attempts to sneak a kiss whilst she's asleep.

This is the last straw for Lum, who zaps Ataru - but after a moment's instinctual panic, he realizes it doesn't hurt! In fact, when he snaps his wrist, he deflects the energy beam back at Lum and knocks her flat on her butt! The oni can only stare at him dumbfounded, as do the rest of their classmates, whilst Ataru gloats about having built up immunity to Lum's shocks at long last and how this means he can now flirt with girls without fear.

Soon afterwards, during PE class, Lum wanders the school grounds, deep in thought. Spotting Ran as she lets several male classmates try to ask her out, Lum tries to zap her old friend turned recurring pest through the chainlink fence. Ran just starts giggling as the energy tickles her, and Lum morosely concludes that her electricity is getting weaker, and she doesn't know why.

Meanwhile, Tomobiki High is suddenly swarmed by cicadas and dragonflies in numbers akin to a biblical plague. Much to the shock of the students, who point out that it's only April.

That afternoon, the skies have cleared up. Mendo and Shinobu meet up by a fountain in a scene out of an old romance novel. Meanwhile, Ataru and Lum are wandering the streets of Tomobiki, with Lum simultaneously flying by Ataru's side and clinging to his arm. Lum pleads with Ataru to slow down, pointing out that it's been some time since they went shopping together and he doesn't have to rush. Ataru just scoffs, then scolds her for clinging to him so openly, with Lum scoffing back that he does worse when he's chasing girls.

Ataru insists that the two things are different, something Lum calls him out on. He storms ahead, leaving Lum flailing desperately behind him as she tries to fly after him, only to find she can barely move through the air. Ataru actually doubles back to check on her, and she explains that she just can't get up to speed for some reason. Ataru's sympathy lasts for only a few seconds before he goes running off to chase girls; Lum can't even begin to chase after him from the air anymore, and she is left behind to fume.

Ten wanders onto the scene, and Lum begs for him to help her find Ataru. Ten nonchalantly advises her to give up on the lecherous loser, only to be shocked when he realizes that Lum is currently unable to fly at speeds even he can achieve. She tries to assure him it's nothing, and instead focuses on seeking out her straying boyfriend.

As she searches, she is unaware of a weathervane rotating unnaturally to point right at her, a strange bead of light forming in its empty eye socket...

At some point, Lum becomes separated from Ten as well, and finds herself jostled around in the maddening crush that is shopping in a Tokyo community. Deciding to make the most of it, she starts wandering around, and finds herself passing by Mendo and Shinobu on what seems to be a date! Happy for the two of them, or at least excited to see two of her friends, Lum asks them where they're going... but the two of them just stare at her in total confusion. It's as if they don't recognize her...

Mendo and Shinobu leave the puzzled Lum behind and continue with their date, enjoying each other's company until well after dusk. At a bus stop, Mendo is about to kiss Shinobu when he suddenly and vividly remembers meeting Lum back at the mall. He barely spares Shinobu the time for a quick apology before he goes racing off into the night, looking for Lum. Behind him, Shinobu's confusion quickly gives way to a confused but no less jealous rage, with the super-strong schoolgirl ripping the bus stop sign out of the ground and twisting it into a knot whilst screaming in fury.

The next morning is unnaturally cold, with everybody commenting on it. As Megane catches his morning train commute from Central Tomobiki to Lower Tomobiki, his thoughts are filled with desire for a beautiful young girl - not Lum, but an ordinary high school girl. He stops himself, wondering why he's so smitten with her; he doesn't even know her name! But he brushes that off as inconsequential; he'll never know if he doesn't ask, after all. Before he can either pursue that strange feeling of something being wrong, or try to speak to his new love, the train arrives at his stop and he has to scramble to get off.

Elsewhere in Tomobiki, Karakuri undergoes a similar sequence of events as he catches his morning bus. As does Chibi, biking to school.

The three members of the Stormtroopers, as it so transpires, literally run into each other as they are pursuing their new fixations to Tomobiki High School. The sight of their fellow rabid fanboys seems to break a spell, and they snap back to their normal behavior. Megane scolds Karakuri and Chibi for forgetting their oath to cherish and adore Lum above all other girls, before Chibi points out that they've never been interested in any girls other than Lum before now, and wonders what changed to make them suddenly take notice of human girls.

Meanwhile, Lum is in the Tomobiki High's nurse's office, consulting Sakura about her strange symptoms. Sakura notes she can't really diagnose an alien, but does her best to try and help Lum think of what might be the cause. Lum notes that everything started with a strange feeling of dread that began whilst she was shooting the movie over the weekend. This causes Sakura to blame stress as the culprit, and she encourages Lum to take it easy. With the problem seemingly resolved, she makes a joke about an oni's summer illness, and worries they could get an earthquake next.

And that's exactly what happens. Tomobiki trembles, the students of Class 2-4 rushing to their window and staring in disbelief. Before their stunned eyes, the hill upon which Tarōzakura sat undergoes a drastic metamorphosis, the site where the great sakura tree once stood sinking inwards even as the rest of the hill rises higher, creating a shape akin to a volcano looming high over the town. The stump of Tarōzakura becomes the epicenter of a crater that is subsequently flooded by waterworks disturbed by the shifting earth, burying the tree's remains at the bottom of an unnatural lake.

As night falls, Lum sits on a bench with Ten hovering nervously over her shoulder. The young oni asks Lum if they shouldn't head home, and she protests that she wants to stay here a little longer. She notes she's feeling very odd - as if she put something down somewhere and forgot it. Suddenly, a stabbing pain rips through her head, and then she finds herself floating - or falling - in the middle of the busiest part of Tomobiki, the buildings stretching up to surround her, a cacophony of loud noises and a riot of bright, flashing lights assaulting her senses...

And then the fearful voice of Ten cuts through the chaos, and she opens her eyes to find herself on the ground next to the bench where she started. Ten asks if she's okay, but all she can say is that she had no idea there were so many sounds.

The next morning, Lum goes jogging again. The day is unremarkable... but, when night comes, Mendo sits in one of his rooms, listening to classical music and enjoying a cup of coffee as he thumbs through an old photo album. Suddenly, he finds something that makes him drop his cup in shock. He phones Ataru and orders him to come around straight away, even sending two of the kuroko to pick him up. Megane is also summoned, and he is immediately convinced that some strange, sinister, supernatural force is at work in Tomobiki. Ataru is far more skeptical, pointing out that Megane's waning feelings much just be a result of so many fruitless months of pining for Lum from afar, whilst the mountain and the bizarre weather could just be freak occurrences. But he has no such smart answer for Lum's waning power, and when Mendo shows him that Lum has mysteriously vanished from the photos taken of their class trip to Kyoto, even Ataru is forced to concede that things are stranger than usual.

As the three youths hold their meeting, snow begins to fall upon Tomobiki. Back at the Moroboshi house, Lum spots the snow and is delighted, opening a window to admire the unseasonal beauty before beginning to write in a new diary she wishes to create.

Back at the Mendo estate, Mendo voices his theory that the strange phenomena are tied in some way to the film they made the previous weekend. He confesses to be unsure how precisely they are connected when Ataru asks the obvious question.

At the Moroboshis, a bird suddenly flies in through the window in Ataru and Lum's bedroom. It perches on the desk and then on Lum's finger, chirping excitedly to her. The oni can only shake her head and apologize, explaining that she no longer understands it. The bird stares at her, and then flies off back through the window.

At the Mendo estate, Megane observes that the film's ending was inspired by the Mendo family's legend of an oni princess, and asks Mendo for the gist of the true story. Mendo confesses that he heard the story from his grandfather when he was young, but that was a long time ago, so his memory is foggy. They will have to speak to the former Mendo patriarch, and that won't be easy; the eccentric old man has decided to seek enlightenment in a chamber dug out 1,200 meters below the Earth. He leads Ataru and Megane into an express elevator, and the dangers of seeking out Mendo's grandather are quickly made apparent when Ataeru and Megane nearly step out of the elevator and straight into a bubbling pit of molten lava.

Meanwhile, Ten arrives at the Moroboshi household, having gone to Lum's UFO for a warm bodysuit to fight off the unseasonal chill. An embarrassed Lum tries to hide her new diary from Ten, but he spots it and immediately wants to read it; in her struggle to keep it away from him, Lum leaps out the window with the intent of flying away, only to learn the hard way that she is now completely flightless. She plummets into the snow-covered garden below, a panicked Ten trailing her. To his horror, not only has she been knocked unconscious by the fall, but her horns have vanished!

At the Mendo estate, Ataru, Mendo and Megane suit up in insulated wetsuits and go diving into the lake where the remains of Tarōzakura now dwell, which stretches unnaturally deeply into its artificial mountain.

At the Moroboshis, Lum regains consciousness, and ironically she ends up standing watch over the restless and unconscious Ten.

In the depths of Tarōzakura's lake, the three youths oversee the final preparations to hoist the rotting remains of Tarōzakura from its watery grave, having spoken with Mendo's grandfather offscreen. They give the signal and helicopters being to hoist. As the tree's enormous roots are dragged up from the mud, they bring with them the skeletal remains of a young woman clad in moldering finery, a sight that sends the teens fleeing for the surface in terror!

In her room, Lum suddenly hears somebody call her name. Curious, she peeks out behind a blind and is shocked to see Ataru standing in the street under a light, holding the hand of a little girl in a tiger-striped dress. Without thinking she sprints down the stairs and races to them, but they turn and walk away around a corner as she approaches. She follows, and what she sees is bizarre even for Tomobiki; circus performers and a parade of children, two of whom look like youthful versions of Mendo and Shinobu. The weird gathering goes marching off through now-foggy streets, and whether intrigued or flat-out bewitched, Lum follows them.

Ironically, even as she does this, Ataru is being ferried back home by one of Mendo's chauffeurs, careening through the streets at a break-neck pace as a panicked Ataru urges the driver to get him there. The car has barely skidded to a stop before Ataru leaps out and goes racing up to his room, screaming Lum's name... but all he finds is a sleeping Ten and Lum's newly aquired diary. He picks up the diary and starts to read it, even as Ataru's mother, oblivious to the reality of what is going on, comes up to Ataru's room and tells him that Lum just left, calling Ataru's name as she went. Ataru can only give her a mournful look at this revelation.

Meanwhile, Lum strides out of the mists onto the shore of Tarōzakura's mountain-top lake. She pops an alien tablet into her mouth in midstride, then walks resolutely into the lake without stopping.

In his mansion, Mendo has retired to his bed. Desperate to escape the visions of that ancient corpse in its cradle of roots, he seeks refuge in his dreams. He dreams of being an up-and-coming gladiatorial champion in a dystopian, sci-fi setting, adored and loved by countless beautiful maidens. He handily defeats his latest opponent, a monstrous cyborg version of Onsen-Mark, and is then ferried away in a hover-bike chauffeured by a submissive Ataru Moroboshi. Only a brief and strangely troubling glimpse of a green-haired girl before he flies away from the arena mars his triumph.

In this dream-world, Mendo goes to visit Sakura, who is his fiancee. When she pleads for them to get married, and Ataru reveals it will take at least three years before they can do so, Mendo decides to take care of things. The dream then flashes to Mendo's wedding ceremony, as he weds Sakura... and a couple of dozen other girls, including Shinobu. But no sooner has the ceremony completed then he spots the green-haired girl jogging past the entryway, and he sends Ataru to chase her.

The dream Ataru chases her down, but when he corners her in an alley and she turns to face him, he recognizes her as Lum. She smiles at him, then walks through the wall like a ghost, leaving him to collapse to his knees and start gibbering behind her.

Then the dream shifts again; Mendo is about to take off on his honeymoon with his new harem, but suddenly the memory of Lum pours into his mind again and he goes racing off to try and find her. He trips and falls down some stairs, only to find himself awake, having fallen out of his bed. He is relieved to realize it was just a dream, but when he goes to breakfast, he finds himself confronted by a shocking site; Tarōzakura's mountain has frozen over, and a chunk of the city from his dream is now entombed amongst the ice. Worse still, everything outside of Tomobiki's borders has vanished.

He's not the only one seeing it, either. All over Tomobiki, people have woken up to this bizare sight, and they are quite concerned by it.

Mendo arranges for everybody to meet at Tomobiki High, and personally picks up Shinobu. As he escorts her to the school in one of his cars, he tries to talk to her about what he thinks is going on, but fog seeps in through the window and puts Shinobu to sleep. She has a dream based o the romantic novels she adores, where she is courted by both Ataru (who cannot stop chasing other girls even her) and by Mendo - only to snap awake after she sees her dream-Mendo walking arm in arm with a version of Lum.

As Mendo and Shinobu arrive at Tomobiki High, Lum is sitting amongst Tarōzakura's roots at the bottom of the lake, life preserved by whatever alien pill she took.

Mendo explains his theory to the gathered crowd, who react skeptically. In fairness, the idea that the collective consciousness of Tomobiki, the genius locus of the city and its surroundings, has been stirred to wakefulness by the continued presence of the alien Lum, is rather far-fetched, which Mendo admits. Before things can go much further, Ataru and Ten arrives, the former quite out of breath. Dismayed, he tells them all that Lum has vanished.

Meanwhile, in her watery bed, Lum slips into a strange dream-world, falling a chalk-like path through an inky black void.

Back in Tomobiki, Mendo has summoned Tobimaro Mizunokoji to his estate. Ton asks his old rival why he was summoned, but Mendo hesitates. He instead waxes nostalgic about their childhoods, then brings the conversation to the fact that their families are actually related. He assures Tobimaro that he holds no grudge against either the Mizunokojis or Tobimaro himself... Which is Tobimaro's only warning before Mendo suddenly attacks him with his katana, declaring that Tobimaro has to die for the good of Tomobiki.

When Tobimaro naturally tries to run away, Mendo sets his family's private army on him. But Tobimaro has an almost Ataru-like ability to survive against impossible odds, and he quickly contacts his own family, setting the two private armies to war. The battle rages on into the evening, even as Megane obsessively polishes his homemade battlesuit and Ataru tries to concentrate on his homework.

And through all the carnage, Lum's body continues to slumber in her watery prison...

The next morning, the battle enters a new phase, with both Mendo and Mizunokoji drafting their employees to pad out their respective forces. By this point, the war has almost become a game. As Mendo prepares to lead the students and staff of TOmobiki High as their general, Ataru scoffs, calling Mendo's plan out as foolish; even if it can somehow return Tomobiki to normal, Mendo can't guarantee it will return Lum. Stripping down to his exercise uniform, Ataru goes jogging off through the wartorn streets.

Meanwhile, Lum continues her plunge through the strange dreamworld her mind has been entrapped in. SHe passes briefly by visions of circus performers entertaining the child-forms of people she knows, and then stands face to face with the being she knows is responsible for her predicament. It resembles a twisted tree of iridescent light, its branches curled protectively around an equally luminiscent form resembling a baby girl nestling in her mother's womb. She demands to know what the being is, and it replies that it is "still no more than the memories of this town".

Lum demands to know what it means by that, but in response, it conjures the child-forms of Ataru, Shinobu, Mendo, Ran and the Stormtroopers, who beg Lum to play with them. She can't resist, and goes off to do just that.

In the real world, the fight goes on and on for two days without cease. Only after the city has been leveled, the machines of war ground to nothing and the fighting men and women utterly exhausted does the fighting cease. Even Mendo and Tobimaro's will has broken, and they all want nothing more than to go back to the real Tomobiki. And Ataru? Ataru has kept running through the entirety of the battle, but even he finally falls flat on his face and lies still. As fog starts to roll back in, he mournfully sighs Lum's name.

In her dream-world, Lum suddenly stops in the midst of her playing. She realizes that she has been distracted, and declares she needs to go back home. The child-like semblances she has been playing with mirror this sentiment and then vanish. She turns to leave, only to suddenly stop and whirl back around, confronted once more by the spirit of Tomobiki.

The spirit assures her that it's alright; it can survive on just the memories now, and the upper world belongs to Lum and her friends.

Lum turns her back on it and walks away into the darkness.

Dawn rises over the ruined Tomobiki, and Ataru finds himself jostled awake by Kotatsu-neko with a cup of cold water. They are promptly joined by Sakura, Ran, the Stormtroopers, Mendo and Shinobu, as well as Sakura's various yokai friends. Suddenly, sakura petals begin raining down, before Chibi points out that Lum is approaching from the distance. As she gets closer, the various frozen dream-forms crumble and disintegrate.

Sakura tells Ataru he should go to Lum, and after a "helpful" nudge from Kotatsu-neko, he heads over towards her. As he walks away, Shinobu muses if things will go back to the way they were, but Sakura assures her that the future will inevitably change.

This inspires Lum's Stormtroopers with the idea that maybe there is hope for their futile crush, so they grab their guns and chase after Ataru, firing as they do. He outruns the explosions, and right into Lum's grateful arms.

The shot of Lum embracing Ataru whilst an explosion blossoms on his heels then becomes an image on a partially dismantled TV, electronical components sinking into the ground like roots, which then turns off. Then the end credits play.

Characters[]

  • Ataru Moroboshi
  • Lum
  • Shinobu Miyake
  • Shutaro Mendo
  • Megane
  • Perm
  • Chibi
  • Karakuri
  • Black Glasses Squad
  • Tomobiki High School Principle
  • Onsen-Mark
  • Kotatsu-neko
  • Sakura
  • Cherry
  • Ataru's mother
  • Ataru's father
  • Ran
  • Ryunosuke Fujinami
  • Ryunosuke's father
  • Mendo's father
  • Mendo's mother
  • Ryoko Mendo
  • Tobimaro Mizunokoji
  • Asuka Mizunokoji
  • Tobimaro's father
  • Tobimaro's mother

Trivia[]

  • The basic plot is centered on the great cherry tree Tarōzakura and what happens after it is cut down during the making of a movie. The fourth film is the subject of much debate, as it is probably the hardest of all the Urusei Yatsura films to fully understand. Many consider it to be a multi-layered masterpiece, while others feel it is little more than a confused and rambling mess.
    • Not helping is that it seems like a number of scenes were planned but cut. Most notably, Ataru, Mendo and Megane go to speak to Mendo's grandfather about the Legend of the Oni Princess, but that scene never occurs during the film, with it instead skipping to them unearthing the remnants of Tarōzakura - and the inexplicable human remains buried in its roots.
  • A Making of Urusei Yatsura 4: Lum the Forever (メイキング・オブ・うる星やつら4 アニメ製作の実際?) documentation about the film was released on 15 February 1986.
  • Shinobu narrates that the movie Class 2-4 film in the opening scenes of the movie takes place occurs in "1986", which is a clear reference to the release date of the actual movie.
  • This was the first Urusei Yatsura film to be released by AnimEigo with an English audio dub.

Gallery[]

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