The following contains spoilers for Episode 18 of Urusei Yatsura, "Indelible Lipstick Magic!!/Lethal Attacks: Yaminabe!," now streaming on HiDive.
With the major characters in Urusei Yatsura having been fully introduced, the series now has the room to focus less on introducing and establishing and characters and more on the silly, hilarious shenanigans these ridiculous characters get up to on a day-to-day basis. The two stories here show how crazy things can get when these characters are left to their own devices.
Both stories this time around mostly focus on the many characters and personalities in Ataru's class. While not every character in that class is a major member of the cast, they all provide extra levity and hilarity to what is already an extremely humorous situation.
"Indelible Lipstick Magic!!"
In a lab on her ship, Lum is hard at work creating something mysterious. The end result turns out to be a tube of lipstick, which Lum immediately applies to her lips. Happy with the results, Lum immediately goes to Ataru and tries to put the lipstick on him. Ataru naturally resists, and since Lum refuses to explain what the lipstick is, keeps avoiding her attempts to apply lipstick to him. Ten shows up during their fight and gets marked by Lum's lipstick, which immediately causes Lum to kiss Ten where he was marked. Immediately realizing what the lipstick's secret is, Ataru tricks Lum and Ten by pretending to throw away the lipstick, pocketing it for himself.
At school, Ataru looks for someone to put the lipstick on and settles on Ryunosuke. Ryunosuke falls for it instantly, being enamored with something as feminine as lipstick and immediately puts it on. As Ryunosuke admires herself in the mirror, she doesn't notice Ataru putting on the lipstick himself. Ryunosuke starts being pulled towards Ataru's lips, though she manages to avoid kissing him by punching him in the face. Lum soon shows up and ends up being pulled to Ataru only to be stopped by Mendo and Ataru's other friends. Lum realizes that Ataru tricked her and took the lipstick, and Ataru is forced to reveal the lipstick's actual use.
The entire classroom goes crazy over the lipstick, with the girls immediately grabbing the lipstick and trying to apply it to Mendo. Mendo initially resists, but when he realizes that he might be able to use this to score a kiss with Lum, he readily applies the lipstick. Meanwhile, the other students are trying to keep Lum and Ryunosuke from accidentally kissing, while Ataru makes things worse by still trying to get a kiss from Ryunosuke. Fed up, Ryunosuke smacks Ataru away, sending him flying towards a lipstick-wearing Mendo. The two end up locking lips, though they struggle to get away from each other as soon as possible.
Not wanting to miss out, the rest of the class, especially the male students, quickly start applying the lipstick. To make things worse, Ten arrives with lipstick still on his face, while Onsen Mark also ends up with lipstick marked on his forehead. The lipstick starts pulling on students this way and that, to the point that students have to run just to get away from its pull. As the chaos grows and the class turns into a stampede the bursts out of the school, Ryunosuke swears she'll never wear lipstick again.
"Lethal Attacks: Yaminabe!"
In Ataru's classroom, the students vote on what they'll do for next week's recreational activity. The winner is yaminabe, where food is placed into a hotpot in a dark room, making it a mystery what is in the pot and what the participants are actually eating. Excited about the event, Lum creates something bizarre in the kitchen and immediately brings it to Ataru to try. Ataru instantly runs away, but Lum flies after him and attempts to throw the food into his mouth, finally managing to get Ataru to eat one by tricking him. The food turns out to be incredibly spicy, leaving Ataru with burnt and swollen lips.
Ataru is furious over Lum's aggressive acts of affection, but Lum insists that she was just trying to make him something good to eat. Ataru decides to take revenge by figuring out what food Lum dislikes and making her eat that. When he asks Lum, she tells him she doesn't like chomchomp, a vegetable from another planet. Ataru attempts to get Ten to get him some chomchomp, but when he hears it will take ten days, Ataru decides to find something on Earth Lum doesn't like instead.
Ataru carefully observes Lum over the next few days, trying to figure out what foods she dislikes. However, she seems to eat anything and everything without complaint, revealing that the flavoring of Earth's food is so mild to her that it doesn't taste like anything at all. As the two bicker, a waitress places down gyoza with extra garlic for another table, and the stench drives Lum to escape the restaurant. Ataru, realizing that Lum is weak to garlic, immediately eats up the garlic gyoza and runs to harass Lum with his breath. However, he gets distracted by nearly every girl he meets on the street, causing his breath to lose potency. Eventually, he makes it home just to be blasted in the face by Lum's air freshener.
Unwilling to give up, Ataru decides to grab raw garlic and bring it to the yaminabe. On the day of, the students start putting in bizarre ingredients into the hot pot along with Ataru's raw garlic and Lum's various hot spices. Ten also arrives, having met a vegetable salesman on the way to find chomchomp, and throws it into the pot as well. The meal begins and quickly ends with the majority of the students being knocked out, with Ataru himself ending up with the chomchomp, a living carnivorous plant that quickly gobbles him up.
Lum's Sci-Fi Shenanigans
This episode sees Lum take center stage, with the core of both stories being something that she cooked up while left to her own devices. Being an alien with access to bizarre technology, Lum's inventions turn even the most mundane situations into the strangest circumstances.
While this episode may lack the lore or character development one might hope for, Urusei Yatsura is mainly a comedy, and it certainly is hilarious to see how all these characters bounce off of each other in all of these different situations. With the core cast settled, fans can expect to see more hilarious stories coming up in the future.