Beautiful Dreamer, three views in
Originally uploaded May. 5th, 2025.
Love's a boomerang, dude.
I’m currently rewatching Rumiko Takahashi’s Urusei Yatsura. It’s been a bit of a monumental task – 195-ish episodes, a slew of movies and OVAs, and the remake is a lot. But it’s been fun, and every now and then I invite a few friends to peek into the chaos.
A while back I took a number through the second movie – Beautiful Dreamer. It was an event planned for a while with no definite date, very much a “I’m sure we’ll get around to it” kind of deal, only to be pushed further and further away until it finally happened.
And it was an experience, to say the least.
It was a film I had seen before, when I was much younger. This was the third time, actually. Urusei Yatsura has always been a part of my adolescence going into adulthood. It’s a weird series, with a weird overarching premise, a weird main cast, and weird, frustrating plotlines – but it’s always taken that notion of weirdness in stride (they make this clear in the very first ED, “Uchuu Wa Taihen Da“).
But Beautiful Dreamer is different.
You could say taking a romcom and turning it into this, like, dreamlike waltz of an artpiece that makes you feel periodic unease is a bad idea. But I think it actually benefits from it because of the message its trying to tell, and which characters its trying to use.
Ataru Moroboshi is a character I want to discuss at length at a different time, so I’ll keep it brief here. He is incredibly frustrating to watch through the show, but he’s written in a way where you hate him but you can’t… hate him. He is the show. The lifeblood of it, through and through. Ataru is complicated. He should be easy to hate, but the story makes it difficult to do so. He makes you want to wring his neck when he opens his mouth or moves his feet, sure… but you know there’s something else he knows. You know there’s something else he’s holding deep within his heart… his feelings for…
…Lum Invader, the girl from space who is also equally as frustrating. Disregarding everything I said about Ataru, it feels like the world – the universe – revolves around Lum within the context of the series. Everyone is at her fingertips, whether she wants it or not – except for Ataru, much to her dismay. This is also extrapolated in the film – to the point where the ost and visuals shift alongside herself.
And yet, despite these two truths, neither of them feel like the true protagonist for a good portion of the film…? It’s the kind of movie to keep juxtaposing exactities of the show and turning it on its head. It’s not a deconstruction – it’s a bit of a sidegrade, an alternate universe Urusei Yatsura. One that the audience at the time did not enjoy.
The previous movie, Only You, was more in line with the content of the manga and show. The plot was very Urusei Yatsura-esque – a push and pull between warring alien factions over the details of a wedding arranged from years and years ago. But that was exactly the problem that Beautiful Dreamer tries to rectify. No more of the same. One hundred plus episodes in… things would have to change. Even if things would have to return to the status quo after… they’d at least try to make the most of it.
It’s a movie you’re supposed to watch more than once. Ideally, you watch the movie twice, because you realize exactly what is going on in the confusing, exhausting world the students of Tomobiki are placed in, the way the conflict penetrates each of their souls, and the dreamlike nature of it all… very differently the second time through. That’s the ideal, anyway.
Exhausting.
That’s a good word for this movie. It’s a movie that will drag you through the mud. I mean that in the nicest way possible, of course – it’s the good kind of exhausting. Dreams are exhausting, after all.
All this time I’ve neglected to talk about the director of the series up to this point, Mamoru Oshii of Ghost in the Shell/Patlabor/Jin-Roh fame. Exhasuting is an excellent way to describe how he felt about the series and its circular nature, and why Only You wouldn’t cut it. Of course one of his final works on the series would be the one that feels the least like UY.
But does it really?
UY at its core is a romantic comedy, sure. Hijinks ensue within the day to day, with a song here and there. But it’s always been confusing. It’s always been weird. It’s always been a roller coaster of triumphs, of despair, with the feeling of traveling the galaxy and aging a lifetime in just an afternoon.
And Beautiful Dreamer achieves all of that and more.
So maybe, in a way, Beautiful Dreamer is the piece of work that captures that vibe of Urusei Yatsura the most, out of everything the series has was or will become.
We’ll see if I hold that opinion when I watch it again.
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