Urusei Yatsura 2: Beautiful Dreamer

Urusei Yatsura is one of my favorite anime series for many reasons, and one of those reasons is the wacky brand of comedy that comes with it. That said, Beautiful Dreamer is completely different from any other work related to this series. The comedy is still there, but it's greatly toned down and replaced with more of a serious story as the cast of characters find bizarre things happening to the world around them. It's a drastic change to the usual feel of the series, but the end result is something I've long considered a masterpiece.

The story, of course, is fantastic. ... The art is very good for its time, that being the early 1980's, and the music fits perfectly with what's going on in the movie. But one of the things I enjoyed the most about this movie relates to the cast of characters. Normally with the Urusei Yatsura series, Ataru and Lum are focused on very heavily. And while they are a big part of this movie, they also take a backseat for a lot of it, allowing some of the supporting characters to take much bigger roles than usual and show some of their depth. Onsen-Mark, Sakura, and Mendo all get a rare chance to shine, and it's really a pleasant change from seeing them in the background all the time.

Even if you've never seen any of the Urusei Yatsura series before, this movie is a great, great watch. I know because it was the first piece of the Urusei Yatsura anime that I had the pleasure of watching, and I enjoyed it so much that I sought out the rest of the series afterward. If you ever find yourself awake at 1 A.M., pop this movie in your DVD/VHS player. There are few better things to watch right before you go to sleep for the night.

The Ursei Yatsura franchise & TV series is an insane, wacky, hyperactive, frantic, comedy show with most of its humour rooted in Japanese culture and in general it's not really my cup of tea. However the director, Mamoru Oshii of Ghost in the Shell fame, whilst using the characters and setting of the TV show tones down the madcap slapstick nonsense a notch or two and instead creates a trippy, surreal, philosophical film concerning dreams and how they interact with reality. It's still a comedy but this has got miles more depth than anything seen in the TV series.

Without any knowledge of the TV series ... this film will probably baffle newcomers with its strange cast of weird characters and its odd and unreal universe. However if you can get past that obstacle then there's a really clever and well made film underneath that explores themes and ideas concerning the nature of dreams and what we percieve as reality, territory that Oshii would return to and expand upon in his later films, whilst reamining an enjoyable and light hearted comedy. A quick briefing on the Japanese folktale of Urashima Tarō and Zhuangzi's butterfly dream may also aid understanding of the plot if needed!

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This is one of Mamoru Oshii's earliest directed movies, and like many things he's touched it has a cult following that simply goes nuts for it. What makes Urusei Yatsura Movie 2: Beautiful Dreamer an outlier, however, is that it's created using a previously existing setting and cast of characters that weren't originally created by Oshii. The legendary Rumiko Takahashi takes credit for the original concept here, about a high school boy who accidentally convinces an alien girl named Lum that they're now married. Thus, hijinks ensue. The original series has had an incredible impact on Japanese culture, but is relatively esoteric for a Takahashi ... work for its romantic comedy that places a heavy emphasis on referencing the country's own culture. This movie has persisted with a considerably large audience due both in part to Oshii's attachment as well as it being an understandable, accessible story to those not familiar with Urusei Yatsura. But this isn't simply considered a solid Urusei Yatsura tale, but rather an early example of Oshii's storytelling ambitions with a focus on disorienting dreams and fittingly surreal animation.

The usual cast of Urusei Yatsura are preparing for the upcoming school festival day and night, but it slowly dawns on them that they've been trapped in the same repeating day. As things continue to become stranger and stranger at random, the group eventually need to find a way to return things to normal. The summary sounds rudimentary, but that's because it's ultimately a rudimentary story. A lot of the praise and discussion of Beautiful Dreamer seems a bit hyperbolic, perhaps relatively contextualizing itself to the time it was made and released. It's an early Oshii movie, so it's fine that it's not as ambitious as his later works. It was an early English dubbed anime movie, so naturally it would have a profound impact on people not accustomed to the eccentricities of much anime. From that perspective, it may pack quite a punch. From a broader perspective, the bulk of Beautiful Dreamer is left in the past, as much of it is the now that passe slapstick romantic comedy that defined the original series. The lecherous main character and his idiot friends goof about without a care in this dream world, often getting into antics that don't take advantage of the dream concept. Even when strange things are happening around the group they're always so spaced out and mostly downright mundane. The city gets abandoned and filled with water at a moment, and everyone goes for a swim. But it's otherwise a generic beach scene even though the reason for it coming into play is bizarre. So much of Urusei Yatsura is stuck in that mundanity despite a different context around it and it's difficult to sell any event as "strange" in a series that's inherently fantastical and exaggerated. The creative visuals and transitions are in an extreme minority throughout this slapstick fest. A ten minute climax where things start to get as trippy as billed doesn't really cut it in the face of all the bland, frivolous, fooling around earlier, and this turns out to be all Urusei Yatsura has to offer for people looking outside of the original series. Even the fundamental theme of reality and dreams being indistinguishable isn't taken to any conclusion. This observation is made, no detailed philosophy is attached to either side, and then the story's resolved. Sadly, Beautiful Dreamer ends up being a movie with little to say and without many creative ways to say it. As a historical document for hardcore Oshii fans it may show some of his progression as a director, but for typical fans there isn't enough of him to grasp onto here. Urusei Yatsura fans may greatly enjoy this fresh concept pairing with the usual style of humor and characters they enjoy, but as for everyone else this isn't a very relevant movie. It's a thoroughly pleasant experience, but for a movie about a journey through dreams its feet are kept on the ground.