Urusei Yatsura’s Lum-chan
Urusei Yatsura was a popular anime/manga series back in the days when dinosaurs and Betamax roamed the Earth (i.e. the 80s). It is a love comedy about an alien princess named Lum/Lamu.
There were other miscellaneous characters but we don’t talk about them any more because records of them have been long lost in the passage of time and everyone watched the show for Lum anyway.
Anyway, some twenty odd modern illustrators and mangaka drew their individualized version of Lum-chan for the new reprints of the Urusei Yatsura manga. Picture and name list after the break.
The original mangaka, Rumiko Takahashi, herself did the first volume’s illustration to serve as a comparison to her artwork from two decades ago. Each subsequent volume of the reprinted series contains a special illustration of Lum done by an artist chosen by Takahashi-sensei.
The name list is as follows (original Japanese version), sorted by volume number:
- Rumiko Takahashi (Urusei Yatsura)
- Mitsuru Adachi (Touch)
- Mine Yoshizaki (Keroro Gunsou)
- Eiji Nonaka (Cromartie High School)
- Sensha Yoshida (Utsurun Desu.)
- Takashi Shiina (Ghost Sweeper Mikami)
- Kazumi Yamashita (Tensai Yanagisawa Kyouju no Seikatsu)
- Fujihiko Hosono (Gallery Fake)
- Kazuhiro Fujita (Ushio and Tora)
- Kazuichi Hanawa (Keimusho no Naka)
- Ryouichi Ikegami (Heat)
- Minoru Furuya (Ping-Pong Club)
- Noizi Itoh (Suzumiya Haruhi no Yuuutsu)
- Kazuhiko Shimamoto (Hoero Pen)
- Ryouji Minagawa (Project ARMS)
- Hiromu Arakawa (Fullmetal Alchemist）
- Isami Nakagawa (Kuma no Puutarou)
- Moyoko Anno (Hataraki Man)
- Atsushi Kamijou (TO-Y)
- Takatoshi Yamada (Dr. Kotou Shinryoujo）
- Goushou Aoyama (Detective Conan)
- Junji Itoh (Uzumaki)
- Taiyou Matsumoto (Ping-Pong)
- Katsutoshi Kawai (Monkey Turn)
- Tetsuo Hara (Fist of the North Star)
- Yuu Watase (Fushigi Yuugi)
The picture is incomplete and it isn’t sorted in the same order as the name list, so you’ll have to do a little seek-and-match yourself. Ops, ignore that.
The reprints have been coming out since November last year. There will be a total of 34 volumes, so we are left with eight more mangaka who have yet to be named.
And you gotta hand it to Noizi. She can take any female character and obliterate every aspect that is unique and distinct in its character design. It’s sort of like being assimilated by the Borg.
[ Source: ASCII.jp ]
November 6th, 2007 at 1:09 am
Haha, I really have to agree with you about Noizi!
I think she’s a good artist but most of her artworks looks more or less the same to me most of the time o.O’
November 6th, 2007 at 1:12 am
I like that Eiji Nonaka stuck to his usual art style when drawing Lum, that makes his rendition look exactly like all his cromartie characters. That is automatically hilarious.
November 6th, 2007 at 1:34 am
I agree with Primeparadigm here. :3
It’s the best of all the renditions I see here. :P
November 6th, 2007 at 1:57 am
Haa I can only recognize 4 (5 thanks to the comments XD) The Cromartie one is hilarious LOL I like Hiromu Arakawa’s one and the only thing that attracts me to Noiji Itou’s artwork is her colouring. I have to totally agree that her female characters looks as different from each other like Hisashi Hirai’s LOL I have a Gurren Lagann fanart done by her though and it was pretty decent.. Since she didn’t really use her usual style…. Fine, it’s actually damn awesome and I wish she’d draw like that more often LOL
November 6th, 2007 at 2:13 am
Fujita’s best manga is the Karakuri Circus…
November 6th, 2007 at 2:54 am
Urusei Yatsura? My that brings back memories. I remember that Hayashibara Megumi, then a relatively-unknown seiyuu, was at a convention once to promote Ranma Nibunnoichi. They had bags with Ranma-chan on one side and Lum on the other. The audience was supposed to answer questions by flashing Ranma-chan for “yes” and Lum for “no”. They protested vehemently since they argued that Lum could not possibly be a *negative* thing.
That said, I never liked the Lum in the anime that much. The original Lum from the early manga was definately Not A Nice Person. Takahashi-sensei herself had said outright that Shampoo was her attempt to write Lum as she was meant to be written, not the Lum-lite that editors had forced on her. Still its great that Urusei Yatsura is being reprinted. My old tankubon aren’t holding up that well. T_T
Personally I always preferred Benten, Sakura and Ryuunosuke in that order but then again what red-blooded male could object to a hot babe in a tiger skin bikini? Just remember to duck and cover when she gets her hands on umeboshi….
November 6th, 2007 at 3:20 pm
Hey !
don’t call me a Dinosaur ! >_<
but anyway , gotta love what Nozoi did , and lets not forget Eiji Nonaka’s one XD
November 6th, 2007 at 3:24 pm
“…and it isn’t sorted in the same order as the name list…”
Well, at least the mangaka I’m familiar with are in the right order. I never read the manga, so I don’t know how close Rumiko-chan’s new rendition is to the original, but I can say it’s fairly analogous to the InuYasha and Ranma manga when compared to their anime counterparts (of which I am familiar, in Lum’s case), and certainly indicative of her distinctive style.
I LOLed hard at the Cromartie mangaka’s rendition. Looks like one of the “non-fanservice” extras from every 80′s chicks-in-prison movie. Right in line with the Cromartie style. Maybe it’s a dig at…
Noizi Itoh… I love her style. The characters are gorgeous, and the coloring and composition regularly superb… But it’d be nice if she could draw more than 3 or 4 female faces. That’s not Lum in that picture, it’s Imouto-chan (or Wirlhelmina with different eyes, or Tsuruya-san, or Hecate…) cosplaying as Lum.
The Arakawa-sensei version surprised me, as I’m so used to the FMA style, but it’s a very cute pic. Arakawa has always been good at drawing cute females, even though I don’t think this one is the cutest of the bunch.
That distinction would have to go to Yoshizaki-sensei’s version. Keroro Gunsou has always been an underappreciated font of moé (even when it’s appreciated, it’s still underappreciated), and its mangaka is a genius at drawing incredibly cute girls (manga Mois-dono is possibly the most moé character ever, especially if read with Noto-sama’s voice in mind…) without resorting to overblown caricature like many other artists.
Still, I’ve got to give credit to Ryouichi Ikegami for going the realistic route (last on the second row, and one of the ones where the name is switched up). Of course, “realistic” is relative, when you’re talking about a green-haired, pointy-eared, cute-little-horned alien oni vixen…
November 6th, 2007 at 3:29 pm
Ah you are right. It is sorted. XD
It looked wrong at first because I missed out a name or two in the middle of the list.
November 6th, 2007 at 8:06 pm
If someone has a link to the missing pictures (or just Atsushi Kamijo’s one), please post ^^
November 7th, 2007 at 11:21 pm
Wait till you see Ito Noizi’s new pen name which means Itou Noise Pollution in kanji. Nice try with word play but in any case, it just means more Shanas and Mikurus for us to fap to.
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OtakuGen.comNovember 16th, 2007 at 9:56 am
Urusei Yatsura – Redux…
Urusei Yatsura 25: Cover of Urusei Yatsura 25, reprint. Taken from ascii.jp
It’s Deja Vu, all over again. And my wallet is hurting in anticipation of my next spending spree. Still, this reprint has something special going for it: every volume of t…
December 2nd, 2007 at 1:05 am
Lum, Urusei Yatsura is my favorite anime of all time. ^_^
I like #’s 1, 3, 6, 13, and 15. XD
June 30th, 2008 at 4:42 am
clean stay night black german head
January 10th, 2010 at 10:06 pm
Despite a common believe, Lum ain’t a princess. Her father is a boss, but there’s not any mention to her family’s royalty.
September 27th, 2010 at 8:52 am
Here’s a singing LUM cosplayer group from Japan
http://www.japansugoi.com/wordpress/urusei-yatsura-lum-cosplay-singers/