Tuned in to Rumic World!

1. Beautiful Dreamer
2. Lum the Forever
3. Only You
4. Remember my Love
5. The Final Chapter
6. Always my Darling

Most of them have something, aside from Always my Darling which is such bland uninspired nothing of a film.

Some of y'all are going to hate me for this.

1. Beautiful Dreamer - it's cinema and probably the only movie that I'd say is great, start to finish

2. The Final Chapter - The entire third act and soundtrack basically carries this for me to where this is over Only You

3. Only You - I think this one's got the best storyline and it plays it straight with the Urusei Yatsura cast, but it's executed kinda rough. This is where I draw the line at a UY movie being "good", I think it could have been better.

4. Remember My Love - It's nothing special, nothing offensive, and nothing memorable, honestly, was going to put it lower on the list.

5. Always My Darling - See, whereas Remember My Love wasn't memorable, Always My Darling is outright forgettable, and it's lower on the list solely for killing the UY franchise. Oops. It wasn't a bad note to go out on, but the series really needed something that didn't just play UY straight and didn't try to take some kind of risk, but thing is, I don't mean a risk like my bottom pick:

6. Lum the Forever - The only good thing I can say is that ending song is by far the best of all Urusei Yatsura media. 11/10, no notes. The thing is, I hate everything else about the movie, the plot's borderline incomprehensible after the first half, the pacing's all over the pace, the symbolism is somehow worse (am I as the viewer meant to get over Lum and fuck off or do I go 100% all in), and it's a shittier version of Beautiful Dreamer.

>>2033
Always my darling was kinda the straw that broke the camel’s back for the series and its fan base in regards to “let it end already, the story is over”. Now it’s not “bad” per say and I actually did kinda like it but in comparison to everything else I can see why but it did end the series ten year run and putting the cash cow to rest.

>>2018
>The Final Chapter
>Always My Darling
>Only You
>Beautiful Dreamer
>Remember My Love
>Lum the Forever

I don't care for Beautiful Dreamer.

>>2034

Yeah, honestly, the fact that it killed the franchise is what got me to put it on fifth place, I originally had it as fourth and went "what do I even remember about this movie" and remembered my own personal bias of "being bland is worse than being bad". I don't care for movie 3 more than movie 6, but I don't /actively/ dislike either of them and I remember parts of movie 3, so that's why I placed it at a higher rank.

>>2033
Lum the Forever's script is very messy, but the story is mostly straight forward and you can think of it as "Lum meets an Old One".

The tree holds the seal on a yokai that drains the lifeforce (seemingly the most important figure in town) to feed itself. By killing the tree, they unknowingly unleash this being and continues to grow until an Oni princess was able to calm it and a new tree planted to contain it. Only that it led to her eventual death.

The story in the present is a repeat of the cycle, and
Lum fufills the role of village elder and the Oni princess, so she gets her life force drained and is going to calm the being leading to her death. The being is initially an egg, then a fetus, and it seems very child like and wants a mother figure, only being child like it doesn't know limits and seems to kill its mother figure.

Have you played Demon's Souls (2009)? It's another HP Lovecraft inspired story, where a vastly powerful being can shape reality, but it's child like and it needs a mother to lull it to sleep to calm its vast power.

The being wants Lum to itself, so it tries to erase people's memories of Lum. Then after lum is drained, it starts sapping on Ten. The tree grows powerful enough that it starts producing a fog that when breathed in connects the dreaming person to the tree's power and manifests their dreams as reality.

Mendo figures this out and starts a war of the Zaibatsus to force everyone to wish that things went back to normal and to destroy the manifested dream worlds in the cross fire. It's hare brained but kinda works?

Ataru simply wishes for normalcy as well and jogs like Lum used to job. When he falls asleep and connects with the being he wishes for Lum back. The fetus like being finally understands, that Lum belongs to Ataru and the rest of the world, and relinquishes her and goes back to sleep. Presumably another tree will be planted on it to seal it.

>>2044
As I said the script? Messy with pacing issues and the story is hard to follow. It likely got re-writes for more action (hense the ending war) when it should have stayed a spooky mystery story. The overall story might have worked better as an original story. If it was called "Legend of the Oni Princess" the film would likely be much better received and liked.

For plus sides: some amazing scenes, score, and animation sequences. Mendo's date with Shinobu and his dream sequence are highlights of the film.

The symbolism is pretty obvious: Urusei Yatsura anime is over so move on. The first thing the being manifests is Lum on a tv screen, and the last image we see is Lum on a tv screen that fades away. The series was over, and the film is meant to be the send-off to it and a message to the fanbase. The fantastical being birthed by felling the tree is representitive of the Urusei Yatsura fanbase, and their obsession with lum is unhealthy. Go out into the real world and find a real woman and let Lum go. For message, Evangelion has a similar meta message for anime otaku.

This is unsourced from imdb, so take it with a grain of salt, but it does make sense. The next film is a direct almost 1:1 adaption of the comic, and then the next film was made much, much, later. To confirm or deny this, you'd have to check anime magazines from around this time, and most certainly someone at some point would have commented on it. The promotional interviews for Final Chapter would be the most likely spot where this would come up.

Sadly there's very little scanning of proper anime magazines from the 80s. There's thousands upon thousands of them so I don't blame them.