Urusei Yatsura Anime Release Date and New Visual Revealed

Rumiko Takahashi’s Urusei Yatsura revealed its second key visual on its official website along with its October 13 premiere date.

The anime is set to run its two cours (quarters of a year) continuously within the next six months. The series’ entire run will adapt selected stories from the manga and will last a full year, or four cours but not consecutively. It is scheduled to air on Fuji TV’s Noitamina programming block and other channels marking the manga’s publisher, Shogakukan’s 100th anniversary.

The star-studded cast includes:

Maaya Uchida (Hunter x Hunter’s Alluka) as Shinobu Miyake.
Mamoru Miyano (In/Spectre’s Kurou) as Shoutarou Mendou
Wataru Takagi (Cyberpunk: Edgerunners’ Pilar) as Cherry
Miyuki Sawashiro (Wotakoi’s Hanako) as Sakura
Kana Hanazawa (Cells at Work’s Red Blood Cell) as Ran
Katsuyuki Konishi (Prison School’s Gakuto) as Rei
Saori Hayami (Kakegurui’s Yumeko) as Oyuki
Shizuka Ishigami (Overlord’s Tia) as Benten
Hiroshi Kamiya (Attack on Titan’s Levi) as Ataru Moroboshi

Takahiro Kamei (episode director on Fire Force, Jojo Bizarre Adventure) will serve as series director alongside Masaru Yokoyama (Classroom of the Elite, Horimiya) who is the music composer.

The other staff members include:

Kazuhiro Takamura & Mikio – Sub-character Design
JNTHED, Yoshihiro Sono – Mechanic Design
Ryo Hirata – Prop Design
Kaoru Aoki – Art Design
Masanobu Nomura – Art Director
Ayaka Nakamura – Color Key Artist
Kanji Oshima – CG Director
Yuiichirou Nagata – Compositing Director of Photography
Yoshikazu Iwanami – Sound Director
Kiyoshi Hirose – Editing

Urusei Yatsura is written and Rumiko Takahashi who also created fan favorites like Ranma½ and Inuyasha. The manga series was first published in Shogakukan’s Weekly Shonen Sunday from 1978 to 1987. The series heavily references Japanes mythology, culture, and puns.

It was adapted into an anime television series by Kitty Films and Fuji TV from October 14, 1981, to March 19, 1986, with 195 30-minute episodes.

Viz Media released the series in North America under the names Lum and The Return of Lum in the 1990s but dropped it after 9 volumes. They re-licensed the manga in 2019 and began an omnibus edition under the original title and new translations.

The television series, OVAs and five films were released in North America with English subtitles and dubbed by AnimeEigo. They provided comprehensive notes on the series to allow people to understand the many cultural references and jokes in the series.

Viz describes the series as:

Revisit the acclaimed romantic comedy about an unlucky human boy who meets a beautiful space alien princess in this large trim-size edition with all-new translations and new cover designs. In the series, Ataru Moroboshi’s supernatural encounters with the feminine kind all start when he’s chosen to play tag with an alien princess named Lum who invades the earth on her UFO. Ataru has ten days to touch Lum’s horns or aliens will take over the earth! As it turns out, the game of tag is only the beginning of Ataru’s troubles, as he continues to attract strange encounters with otherworldly beings like the beautiful snow spirit Oyuki and the sexy crow goblin Princess Kurama!