Urusei Yatsura Movie 6: Itsudatte My Darling

Quick take: Meh. The story is okay, but is plagued by so many problems.

I hesitate to write a review for this movie. It's known in the UY community as one of the worst of the series. I actually waited a few weeks while I fully digested this movie to edit my review, something I normally don’t think is necessary. Honestly, the longer time goes by the more generous I usually am with a score. That wasn’t the case here, because once I started reading the synopsis, I was given a PTSD flashback. As a note, I enjoyed this movie because it is UY, not because ... it is a good movie. Scores are given relative to the original series.

For comparison, I loved the series, giving it a score of 10.

If you're going for the "Complete UY" achievement, I suggest watching this around episode 190 in the series so that you have some decent material left to make you forget about this atrocity.

The story is not a bad concept, but it just feels so familiar. I kept feeling like I've seen it before. I can see some similarities to "The Final Chapter," but I wouldn't say it's a direct copy by any means. However, that isn't the biggest problem, because if it was, I think the story would still earn a decent score. Looking at the movie, it feels like every idea put on the drawing board somehow made it into the final product. Furthermore, it feels like one giant best of segment, where the "best ofs" are situations and script, as opposed to just a re-airing. Seriously, the entire movie seems to do nothing but reference the series, while surrounded by a slightly different story. As a result, the story ends up feeling like a jumbled hot mess. There are a number of "false endings," most notably at the 30 minute mark, where I was a bit shocked to see that I wasn't even halfway through yet. Then there are times where it jumps around so quickly, that coherency is broken. UY is no stranger to bat-shit crazy, but still within the madness there was some type of coherency. This movie felt like the story board director fell asleep during production and then woke up at the premier.

The art was worse than the series. Sometimes faces were incredibly bland and featureless, other times main characters looked strange. The art in the series and every other movie was not only better, but cleaner. Remember when I said there was no coherency about the storyline? Well there is coherency between the story line and the art. Both are incredibly choppy and jump around. A bit dizzying, honestly. So much stuff happens so quickly that at times I felt like I had whiplash.

As for sound, I can only guess that they didn't have the money in the budget to hire a real orchestra. Not only is the music writing generally bad, but the vast majority sounds like it was, at the very least, recorded on a keyboard. That's being nice, because it really sounds like they just had a computer midi program play it back. They would've been better off just using the series' original score. It would've been cheap, I would've still mentioned that it was a cop-out, but it would've gotten a better score and actually been good. Acting is on par with the rest of the series.

Then let's talk about how the movie's goal seemed to be a cameo of every character ever used in the series. Kinda like it was a cameo of every situation that happened in the series. Ten's mother? Suddenly on earth standing in a random crowd of people on the street. The Phantom Red Mantle? Chillin' outside a bar on a different planet. Almost every background character was a character from the series at some point. It was ridiculous and distracting.

Is there anything I like about “Always My Darling?” Sure. The very last scene with Cherry was classic UY and made me laugh. I laughed at the scene before that as well, not because it was good, but because of it's absurd “suddenly we're all friends” approach to Lupika. And therein lies the problem, if there was anything I did like about this movie, it's overshadowed by the blatant money grab this poorly executed movie was.

I think, at heart, the storyline had potential despite being a homologation of most of the other story arcs. Honestly, had the story been executed properly and many of the reference-to-a-past-joke scenes been eliminated, I probably wouldn’t have noticed its repetitive plot.

I enjoyed this movie because it is UY, not because it is a good movie. The story isn't bad, but it is plagued by poor execution. Along with the art editing, it just jumps around too much and is really annoying. The music is just plain bad. If you want the UY achievement for watching all of the series/OVAs/movies, you'll have to sit through this long 77 minute movie, otherwise, I'd just skip it.

Finally, I'm at the last film. And I gotta say, didn't realize I was watching Ranma ½ and the secret movie I didn't hear about. That was a stupid joke, but I'll explain why I mentioned that in a second. To be perfectly frank, there's nothing really substantial to mention about this film, except for the fact that Urusei Yatsura Movie 6: Always My Darling was made for the ten year anniversary of the Urusei Yatsura anime. I thought that was pretty special and worth mentioning. Minor Spoilers.

I'll keep this short, the storyline behind this film feels like they took specific parts of previous Urusei ... Yatsura films and stitched them together to make...this. I won't summarize the plot, because I'll sound like a broken record, but if you made it this far into Urusei Yatsura and read the synopsis for this film, you know exactly what's going to happen. None of it was bad in any way, but you've seen it all before. It had some goofy moments that made laugh, and some sad moments that made me a little emotional. It's just Urusei Yatsura, that's all. The story wasn't exceptional, but it wasn't underwhelming either. It was just mediocre. I do love the scene where Ataru tricks his entire class and manipulates them into doing random stuff for the love potion. Mendo threatens to kill Ataru if he doesn't tell him where it is, but Ataru can't tell them where it is if he's dead, so he takes advantage of them. That was a great scene, but it didn't last all that long.
The music is not worth mentioning. It sounds just like the other songs from the last couple of films. Something that is worth mentioning are the character designs. I love them! I briefly mentioned in my last review that over time, the character designs, with each film were becoming more refined and expressive. I think the characters look fine in any specific way they're drawn; even in the first film. Always My Darling did an excellent job at giving these characters a more updated 90's look, it fits them very well. It looks like I'm watching Ranma ½! They have the exact same character designs, and at this point, Takahashi's art style had changed a lot over a decade.

This film was okay. It had it's moments, but it wasn't all that good. I'm still putting it ahead of Remember My Love, because that film feels so uninspired and dry compared to the other films. Keep in mind, the gap in quality between Remember My Love and Always My Darling is not that big. I'm giving it a slight edge, only because I found more enjoyment out of this film. And with that, I'M DONE REVIEWING THESE MOVIES! Took some time, and a few pair of eyeballs, but I'm done. This movie gets a 6 out of 10. I'm gonna go watch Ranma ½ for the umpteenth time. Later, fuckfaces (￣▽￣)ノ.

Movies: 3 < 6 < 1 < 4 < 2 < 5

Story: 4/10
Art: 7/10
Sound: 5/10
Characters: 6/10
Enjoyment: 7/10
Overall: 6/10