Urusei Yatsura Chapter 62 Discussion

I guess the manga actually had some sort of time progression even if the characters don't age or get promoted to different grades. The anime was a bit more unclear about this except for a few movies that showed the year the movie was released. Don't remember which ones though. Probably Movie 4.



It's a bit of a shame that characters don't age but when you're writing an episodic comedy with no clear ending in sight I guess linear progression of time wouldn't make much sense.



Ataru and Lum draw their (mis)fortunes but I saw a commenter saying they cancel each other out. That'd be hilarious. Ran working as a miko is kinda cool.



One detail I noticed is that Sakura started having straighter hair instead of the messy hairstyle of before. Kind of sucks cause the messy hair made her look gorgeous. But I guess straight hair is easier to draw. Kind of reminds me of how Super Saiyan was invented so Toriyama didn't have to color the hair black.



What's more interesting is that in this chapter Sakura's "accurate" fortunes imply that at some point in the future, Ran might fall for Darling.
Obviously this doesn't actually happen. But I wouldn't be surprised if Rumiko Takahashi was actually experimenting with this idea cause Urusei Yatsura was still relatively new.



But I saw some theories based upon this chapter saying that Ran was initially meant to be to Lum what Lum was to Shinobu early on in the series. I feel like Rumiko tried this once already with Kurama which didn't work cos she fucked off somewhere and she attempted to do the same thing again with Ran.



If that was the plan the series could've gone in a wildly different direction to the one we know today. Kind of sucks that we don't get more Ran cause she's one of my favorite characters but ultimately I think it was a good idea to not introduce another love triangle. Maybe the fortunes cancelled each other out in the end like the commenter said or maybe Rumiko sensei was just doing a little bit of trolling.



It's also interesting that the original anime adapted this chapter so late into the series. I guess Studio Deen really needed more content to adapt and couldn't help but go back to the early chapters of the manga that were skipped.

the fact that Sakura is the sorta-kinda lead role in the chapter directly following the 'new lead character' chapter, that has got to be the author trying to make implications!